Boldt Words & Images:In memory of Regula Zeller

Regula Zeller (1948-82)

For Day of the Dead 2018

By Bob Boldt

Readers of my short story “Let Me Help You with That” [published here on January 30, 2016] have already been introduced to the artist Regula Zeller, who was my artistic collaborator and lover, now nearly half a century ago. We experimented on a number of film multimedia and graphics projects. I recently retrieved from storage a portfolio of her work I almost forgot I had. It was close to All Hallows Eve, and I had a dream in which Regula appeared, young, beautiful, and erotic. The dream inspired the audiovisual poem “A High Coup Calavera #5,” my annual Calavera poem in honor of Day of the Dead, which I dedicated to the artist:



    Here are some still images from that video, with the text of the poem included as their captions:

The vapors hold something this evening
some ineffable essence of profundity.
Candlelight cannot mask the dark.
It only deepens it.

Shadows affirm the soft October tango
Madam Appearance dances with Mr. Reality
on the ceiling of my bedroom.
(I almost type tomb.)

I take another toke.

Death mounts the horizon.
He's showing up for a Devil's Triangle
with Mister and Madam.

She won't emerge unscathed
from this night's mischief.

    For those of you thrusting for a little more background, consult the story cited above about our trip to and at the Indiana Dunes State Park, on an occasion when we were stoned out of our mutual gourd.

And now, some examples of the amazing lithographs of Regula Zeller. You have to see these prints themselves to experience the feeling of making a lithograph. The lithographer draws directly onto a huge polished stone weighing as much as 35 pounds. The image, delicately drawn on the surface, is then pressed – literally pressed – into the fibers of the paper under a ton of pressure. This procedure achieves a subtle level of registration nearly impossible to duplicate. That is why lithography is still practiced today even in the presence of the most amazing computer graphics imaginable, and that is why it is such a delight to look at a lithograph by an artist as accomplished and in control of her craft as Regula Zeller was. She was worthy of all the praise a master of her craft deserves.
    As studies for some of the lithographs shown below, Regula used some of the photos and figure studies I did of her and some other male and female models.

Here we see Regula’s nude figure emerging from beneath a plaster
cast of my face, a kind of variation of the goddess of wisdom
bursting forth from the head of Zeus

Here she uses two of my figure studies of her blended
in an attitude of dominance and submission

This metaphorical elaboration illustrates Regula passing through the rather sinister
mouth of one of her lovers to escape to the challenge of yet another new lover.
(She worked from my photographs of the lovers in question.)

Regula’s modern mythological trinity, in a composite image

Regula was fascinated with birds of prey. Here we see
her disguised as an eagle woman. She made herself up as a bird
for many of my photographs, and we would construct masks
based on animal heads and characters from Greek tragedy.

Yet another of Regula’s metaphysical portraits – a transition through death
into the kingdoms of myth dominated by totemic animals

This was intended as a portrait of the Norse god Woden

Regula was a great student of anatomy, virtually obsessed
with the beauty she found beneath the surface

A bird’s breast is the victim of a deadly assault by a primal
agent of change, or perhaps just a little snakey lick

Copyright © 2019 by Bob Boldt