Ionel Talpazan, stateless, born in Romania.
Alien Registration Number: 936 934 715.
Date of birth: August 16, 1955.
No convictions for aggravated felonies.
First arrival in the U.S. on November 2, 1987, at JFK Airport, New York.
Self-employed artist with an income of $5,000-$6,000 per year.

Source: Request for cancellation of removal under section 240A of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

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ALIEN

AI Overview: The full meaning of “alien” encompasses being foreign/unfamiliar (not belonging to one’s country, group, or nature), a foreigner/immigrant (a person from another country without citizenship), or, popularly, an extraterrestrial (a being from outer space). Legally, an alien is a person not a citizen or national of the country where they reside, while as a verb, to alienate means to estrange or transfer property. 

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OUTSIDER

AI Overview: Being an outsider means not belonging to or being accepted by a specific group, organization, or social norm, feeling separate, and often viewing things from a different perspective, which can stem from cultural differences, new environments, or simply not fitting in with mainstream expectations, sometimes leading to unique insights or being seen as an underdog in competitions.

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Ionel Talpazan, known as the “Master UFO Painter,” was recognized by the New York art establishment and represented by leading art dealers specialized in outsider art.
He unintentionally violated the law by voting in federal election, assuming that as a permanent resident he was supposed to vote. What he did was a serious offense punishable by deportation, so when on his application for American citizenship he stated that he had voted, the deportation charges were immediately brought against him by the immigration authorities.

The only way for Talpazan to avoid deportation was to prove to the judge that he had made some significant contributions to the society.

How do you prove in court that you are a good artist? “Good luck to you,” as the judge routinely says after concluding the master hearing.

MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME TO FILE APPLICATIONS FOR RELIEF
Your Honor:
 

Upon the attached declaration of lonel Talpazan and the other documents attached hereto, I respectfully request that the filing deadlines in my removal case be suspended, and that on March 10, 2010, the date of my next Master Calendar hearing, they be reset. Thank you very much for your consideration of this request.


Sincerely,


Ionel Talpazan

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In the Matter of:
IONEL TALPAZAN
In removal proceedings
 
File No: A027-867-120
DECLARATION OF RESPONDENT
 
 IONEL TALPAZAN declares under penalties of perjury that the following is true and correct:
 
1.     My name is lonel Talpazan. I am the respondent in the above-captioned proceedings.
2.     I make this declaration in support of my request that this Court grant me additional time to submit any and all applications for relief from removal.
3.     1 first entered the United States as a refugee on or about November 2, 1987, and I obtained my lawful permanent residence as of that date.
4.     I was placed into removal proceedings before this Court in 2009.
5.     I am a self-employed artist, with a low income, and am unable to afford private counsel to represent me in my removal proceedings.
6.     1was formerly represented in these proceedings by The Law Office of David H. Faux, acting pro bono.
7.     However, on or about December 14, 2009, informed Mr. Faux that I no longer wished his continued representation in my case, because I was dissatisfied with the way he was handling my case. I would be happy to provide the Court with further details should this be necessary.
8.     On December 30, 2009 I met with David Stern, Esq. of the Legal Aid Society, to request that The Legal Aid Society represent me in these proceedings.
9.     On that date, I was informed by The Legal Aid Society that they would need time to  investigate my case to see if they would be able to represent me.
10.  On January 12, 2010, Mr. Faux made a motion to this Court to be permitted to withdraw as counsel. He did not, however, request that the Court grant me more time to file my applications for relief, which I believe were due to be filed with this Court on or about January 19, 2010. I believe the reason he did not do this is because I had already told him that I no longer wished him to represent me in my removal case.
11.  Although Mr. Faux had completed part of Forms EOIR-42A and 1-589, I did not participate in this process as much as I would have liked to have, and these forms have not yet been fully completed. I would have great difficulty in completing them without the help of an attorney.
12.  1 am hopeful that The Legal Aid Society will decide to represent me, but I don’t yet know if they will be able to do so. My understanding is that if they do decide to represent me, they will be able to help me complete the forms on which work has already been done, and also to help me submit well-organized documents in support of my applications for relief.
13.  I believe I would suffer great prejudice were I not given an extension of time to file my applications for relief and any supporting documents that were due on or about January 19, 2010. I would lose my lengthy legal residence in this country and be deported either to Rumania, where 1 still fear harm, or to another country where I would be a stranger.
14.  For these reasons, I respectfully request that this Court suspend the current deadline for the filing of my applications for relief, and set new deadlines when I appear before the Court for my next Master calendar on March 10, 2010. By that date I hope to have obtained new counsel who will be able to agree to a new filing deadline. Even if I have not obtained new counsel by then, I hope to have been able to obtain pro bono assistance in completing the necessary forms within a reasonable period after March 10, 2010.
15.  I sincerely apologize to the court and to the government for any inconvenience that may have been caused by my inability to timely file the relief applications, and/or by this request for an extension.
16.  This declaration has been read to me in the Rumanian language and I understand everything in it and declare that the contents are true and correct. 17 7 A cif 7
 
January 15, 2010
 Mr. Ionel Talpazan
 612 West 135th Street #1B
 New York, NY 10031

With his slight appearance and thick Romanian accent, Talpazan didn’t strike pro bono lawyers as someone they could present as a “special asset.” The lawyers saw no chance of winning his case and pressured him to choose the country to which he wanted to be deported. He was stateless and had free choice. He chose Italy.

But one lawyer, the author of a science fiction novel called “Red Cheer,” believed Talpazan’s case could be won. When the day of the “final judgment” came, Ionel appeared in court wearing an oversized sheepskin coat and broken glasses held together with yellow tape. He told the judge how his journey as an artist began. In his youth, he was enveloped by a mysterious blue light while lying in a ditch on a field after escaping the peasant family to whom his parents had sold him and for whom he had worked as a slave.

He described the beauty of the blue light with such intense emotion, so dramatically, that everyone in the courtroom was moved: his lawyer, the art dealers and gallerists who appeared as witnesses, and the judge, even though she kept a straight face. She had in his file the letters of recommendation, which stated that Ionel was a great American outsider artist, recognized by important cultural institutions. The men in suits and ties who appeared in court to testify on his behalf all looked well-mannered and competent.

The judge ruled in Ionel’s favor, but made one request: that within two month she will get an affidavit from a psychiatrist asserting that the artist doesn’t pose a threat to the society. In other words: he is just crazy, but isn’t mad. After submitting the affidavit to the court, Ionel was able to reapply for American citizenship. He seized the opportunity to fulfill his long-held desire to change his name to “da Vinci.” His dream came true, and on the same day, he became both: Adrian da Vinci and an American citizen.

THE UNIVERSE OF IONEL TALPAZAN: A TOUR

In Talpazan’s universe, galaxies are not mere clusters of matter, they are alive. They cling to each other as if organs in a body, separated by invisible membranes. One world flows into another through a gigantic funnel or penetrates its neighbor with bursts of matter. Sometimes there is a clear boundary between the two worlds; one begins where the other ends; one is black and dense, containing large, earthy planets, while the other is rarefied and bright, and the planets within it are small and shimmer with colors.

In this warm, amorphous cosmos, flying saucers move freely from world to world, almost like the messengers sent by the highest cosmic being. When viewed up close, they take on increasingly organic forms, resembling squids or hydras rather than sophisticated machinery presented on Talpazan’s diagrammatic style drawings.

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“TIME TO TRAVEL”: GREETINGS FROM ABOVE

When asked to create a series of small works, initially, not knowing how to approach the task, Ionel got frustrated. He liked his works to have a strong presence, to attract attention from afar. Ultimately, however, he found a way to express his vision on 5 x 7 inch cards, creating something akin to snapshots, similar to those taken during travels, which capture only fragments of the landscape in motion: here’s a comet, there’s a galaxy, an explosion of matter erupting from a black hole, and here’s a newly born cosmic entity emerging from a tunnel, already majestic in its crimson or violet hues. Of course, there are also UFOs discreetly gliding past the fireworks of galaxies or above the rooftops of houses, the messengers of love, the carriers of blue light.

“Time to Travel” seems to be a great title for this series, as if it encourages you to leave behind your daily troubles and embark on the journey of a lifetime.

IN THE LABYRINTH

Ironically, the “Time to Travel” series was created after a visit to a world completely different from the friendly cosmos – a world that could be described as a vast labyrinth whose walls are covered with warnings, admonitions, and accusatory questions.

 “Have you ever…?” To this question, a troubled conscience echoes: “Have I ever…?” and sheepishly adds: “I’ve never even thought of such a thing, Your Honor.”

The long rubrics to be filled in the multi-page application form look like narrow, horizontal steps, potentially leading to an exit. None of them can be skipped; detailed information must be provided about income received, taxes paid, as well as all the jobs held in the past, all changes of address, and all the misdeeds no matter how small.

This Examination of Conscience consists mainly of numbers and “yes” or “no” answers. Tedious job. It will teach humility to even the most defiant.

Let us now travel through two different worlds simultaneously: one that unfolds, and the other that emerges like a series of walls.

The world that Talpazan so joyfully explored resembled a carpet unfolding before his feet, a cosmic meadow studded with stars in ever-changing patterns, a world expanding into infinite space. The world of bureaucracy, into which he stepped in, was a world of compression, closing in from all sides, a world of ever-smaller rooms and narrowing corridors, where the sign “Exit” would suddenly switch into “Not yet.” The language used there resembles the physical environment—unforgiving and stiff. The written instructions block the free passage of thought; the paragraphs are dense; the sentences ramped into compact blocks. You move slowly from one comma to the next toward the nearest period, carefully chewing each word.

NOTES AND COMMENTS

The word “technology” consists of two parts:  tékhnē meaning method, and logos, meaning reason, which together signify logical methods of putting things together. This most basic understanding of the term best explains Talpazan’s fascination with technology – that is, with cause-and-effect processes and the interrelationship of elements. His talent lay in combining elements into a coherent whole, which was evident both in his inquiries into the functioning of flying objects and also in the “logic of methods” he employed in creating his compositions. He displayed incredible ingenuity in developing compositional schemes that allowed for the creation of countless variations, each of which made sense and was pleasing to the eye.

Technology! Talpazan liked the term. “Spiritual technology,” actually. Yes, it’s the spirit that assembles things in the most logical way.

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The cosmos certainly doesn’t radiate warmth or love, as Ionel’s paintings suggest.  Could it be that the world of galaxies seemed more friendly to him than the world of people? I hope not.  Rather, love simply came to him “from the outside,” when he least expected it, and he accepted the healing that was offered to him “from above.” This certainly creates an aura of religious art.

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Thousands of stars, intricately painted in arabesque patterns or in endless rows, attest to Talpazan’s ability to concentrate – a quality expected of an icon painter / writer, which he was in a somewhat eccentric way, striving hard to convey his unity with a higher being.

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Was Talpazan searching for his own center of gravity by creating mandala like circular forms? Dr. Jung would certainly have been pleased with these diligent repetitions.

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We all know that angels have wings but how big are the wings, and how do they grow? Are they white, or do they shimmer with iridescent colors like mother-of-pearl? What do they really look like? These are questions that every painter who believed in what the Gospel proclaims must have asked. “Hypothetical appearance” is a well-known problem in visual arts; in the Christian tradition it wasn’t enough to ask the followers to take the Church Fathers at their word, the word had to be painted, somehow. Therefore, Talpazan’s investigations into the construction and appearance of flying saucers seem to fit into the painter’s old challenge of imagining “what does something that doesn’t exist look like?”

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Imagine the mighty Danube River and the mountains of Serbia on the other side. During the 1980s Romanian-Yugoslav border was known as the “bloodiest border in Europe.” Escapees faced immense risks, including being shot by border guards, beaten if caught, or drowning. There were two ways to cross the river: swimming across where the river was wide, or at the narrow point, where the water flowing through the gorge was particularly treacherous due to strong currents and whirlpools. A statue now stands in the town of Orșova commemorating those who died attempting the crossing. So, a man who swam across the Danube to reach freedom and then went from being homeless in New York to becoming an artist recognized by art galleries and museums and whose obituary written by an esteemed art critic appeared in the “New York Times,” this man could not have been “little.” He was short, yes, and skinny, but when caught in the gears of the bureaucratic machine, acted like a tiny piece of hard rock causing friction.

Another important thing to know about Ionel is that anyone who tried to help him embarked on a path to sainthood. If you wanted to prove to yourself and the world that you were compassionate and kind, the challenge was yours, but no matter how hard you tried, you were doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the kindness of your heart was not wasted—you couldn’t save Ionel, but you could temporarily prevent him from drowning in yet another whirlpool of the Danube.

When, on the advice of the British art dealer Henry Boxer, I started contacting the people on the list he sent me, I realized that testing the limits of patience of others was one of Ionel’s particular talents. I spoke on the phone with the director of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and still remember tension in her voice as she talked about the sculpture she had commissioned for the museum, not expecting it to reach such enormous dimensions in Ionel’s tiny apartment, making transporting and installation almost impossible. Her love for visionary art was put to a serious test when she had to send six men to carry the sculpture onto the street and then on a track. Ionel admitted, without me asking, that he had driven the world’s friendliest art dealer Aarne Anton crazy by significantly overstepping the boundaries of a professional relationship. Let me also mention the gallery owners who prominently mounted his work on their gallery walls, and who would then find Ionel outside the gallery selling his work for half of the price or less.

Beneath this story lies a great deal of sadness. It’s not just that he was extremely poor and deeply lonely, but also that he was a sort of mascot for many of the people who liked him and his art. When he had his fits of anger and paranoia about being taken advantage of, he was in a way right: there were people who entertained others with his story and enjoyed buying his art cheaply. He was that bargain everyone likes. It was easy and tempting after befriending Ionel to get what you wanted and then happily walk away.

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