Ana Mendieta
http://hirshhorn.si.edu/visit/in_depth.asp?key=33&subkey=57
Ana Mendieta (American, born Cuba 1948–1985) is an artist whose career can be distinguished in part by her experimentation with a diverse range of artistic media. As a student at the University of Iowa in Hans Breder’s intermedia program, Mendieta had the opportunity to train in conceptual and performance-based art practices. She used her own body as both subject and media to explore issues of gender and cultural identity. The naked female form inserted in nature became a hallmark of her artistic production as she developed her own self-labeled genre of art, “earth-body art,” which can be described as a hybrid of two 1960s movements: earth art and body art. Her performances, documented with film and photography, often involved interjecting the performing body into nature in order to forge links with an ancestral past and present.The “Silueta Series” is one of Mendieta’s projects most representative of her study of ancient cultures, fascination with cross-cultural archetypes, and engagement with themes of gender and identity. These performances involved a contour of her body outlined in the earth or her silhouette constructed with leaves, twigs, blood, or various other organic materials. Mendieta’s paintings and sculptures mirror the ephemeral nature of her “Silueta” performances since she continued to work with organic materials, especially leaves that inevitably become transformed over time. Mendieta’s career was explored in detail in a 2004 survey at the Hirshhorn, and the collection now features a number of works that showcase her poetic, performative style.
Felix Gonzalez Torres
http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/FelixGT/FelixIntro.html
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in 1957 in Cuba, and grew up in Puerto Rico before moving to New York City. He died of AIDS in 1996. Gonzalez-Torres had his first one-man exhibition at Andrea Rosen Gallery in 1990, where he continued to show his work until his death.The estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery, N.Y.
His work was the focus of several major museum solo exhibitions in his lifetime and after his death. Retrospectives of his work have been organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (1995), the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Germany (1997) and the Serpentine Gallery in London (2000) and there are currently several of Gonzalez-Torres' works in the "Open Ends" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through Feb 2001.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres combined the impulses of Conceptual art, Minimalism, political activism, and chance to produce a number of "democratic artworks"--- including public billboards, give-away piles of candies, andstacks of paper available to the viewer as souvenirs. These works, often sensuous and directly audience-centered, complicate the questions of public and private space, authorship, originality and the role of institutionalized meaning. He used the stuff of interior design--electric light fixtures, jigsaw puzzles, paired mirrors, wall clocks and beaded curtains--to queer exhibition spaces in the most simple and poignant ways. His primary audience, as he explained in an interview reproduced here, was his lover, Ross (who died of AIDS 6 years before his own death in 1996). Yet his work clearly appeals to a large audience for its combination of formal restraint and emotional lushness. The theme of lovers is comingled with themes of mortality, loss and absence which surface in the later work. Always charged with the sensibility of an overtly queer man, his art nonetheless often passed under the radar of the self-appointed moral guardians in both the political and art worlds. Felix Gonzales-Torres was a not-so-secret agent, able to infiltrate main stream consciousness in a most beautiful and poetic way. Activist without being didactic, a catalyst of that rare combination of sensuality and political empathy, he raised the bar on future queer art making, and continues to be one of the most influential artist of his generation.
Yuyi Morales
http://www.yuyimorales.com/
http://redroom.com/member/yuyi-morales/bio
“Rambunctious art, gemstone hues, glowing pictures and paintings grand enough for a mural” are some of the words often used to describe Yuyi Morales’s artwork. Since having emigrated from Mexico in 1994 she has drawn strongly from her Mexican heritage to create some of the most celebrated books for children.
Born in Xalapa, the city of flowers and springs, Yuyi grew up among giant grandmothers, mossy house walls, and rampaging feral gardens. Amidst her family’s magical stories she learned to perceive the ordinary as extraordinary. She began drawing in her early years while believing herself the daughter of the most beautiful woman and the strongest man in the world. Eventually she would spend long hours replicating her family’s portraits, copying images from paperback graphic novels, and learning how to draw her face in front of the mirror. Under the influence of her mother, her homework brandished more drawings than words.
Yet, as a teenager, Yuyi’s penchant for imaginative stories and pictures was abandoned when she and her two sisters showed promise as competitive swimmers. Eventually she enrolled at the Universidad Veracruzana where she earned bachelor’s degrees in Physical Education and Psychology and then worked as a swimming coach until 1994, when she immigrated to the US with her gringo fiance and their newborn son.
As a Spanish-speaking immigrant and new mother, Yuyi struggled with English and her sense of loneliness in the foreign culture. She took solace in the public libraries, where she and her son practiced English by reading children’s books. In her library visits she found a renewed interest for stories, and Yuyi enrolled in evening writing classes to learn how to tell stories in English like the ones she now so much admired. She also bought her first set of paints and brushes, and studying the picture books she loved she began learning how to paint.
In 1998, along with a handful of writers, Yuyi founded the Revisionaries writers group, consolidating for herself a community that would support her in pursuing a career in children’s books. In 2000, she won the SCBWI Don Freeman grant for her work as a promising illustrator, and shortly afterwards she illustrated her first picture book for the school market, written by Isabel Campoy, titled Todas las Buenas Manos.
In 2003 her illustrations for Harvesting Hope, the Story of Cesar Chavez (written by Kathleen Krull), skyrocketed Yuyi’s work to the top of best-books-of-the-year lists, and earned her an ALSC Pura Belpre Honor, as well as a Christopher and a Jane Adams award, these last two in recognition of the causes of peace, social justice, and the higher human spirit.
Yuyi’s book of her own, Just a Minute; A Trickster Tale and Counting Book, earned Morales’s The America’s Award, a Tomas Rivera Award, and her first Pura Belpre Medal, an award given to a Latino illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
Asked about her work Morales says, “I strive to capture the incredible beauty of the every day forms using textures and colors as another way to reveal the heart of the story. I also pursue glow and luminosity with resolve. If I could ask for a talent, it would be to become a color genius.”
Residing in the Bay Area, Morales continues creating beloved books, like the Golden Kite Medal winner, Little Night, co released in Spanish as Nochecita. Upon winning the 2008 Pura Belpre Medal for Los Gatos Black on Halloween (written by Marisa Montes,) Yuyi Morales became the first author/illustrator to be three times recognized by the Pura Belpre Committee and was established as one of the leading children’s book creators working today.
Raúl Colón
BWI: Your illustrations are very unique, combining bright colors with the appearance of a rough texture. Can you describe the process you use to create your art? How did you develop a personal style?
RC: I work on medium textured watercolor paper, cold press. I start with a golden wash overall. I pencil in the full drawing followed by layers of monochromatic values (usually sepias and browns) all in watercolor. I etch the paper. Then I use Prismacolor pencils and add the final multiple layers of full color to the piece. I complete the artwork with a layer of lithograph pencil (waxy black) to bring out the soft texture of the paper. Most of this technique came about through years of accidents and experimentation.
BWI: How did you create the crosshatching lines that overlay some of the illustrations, which add texture so nicely?
RC: The crosshatching lines are etched onto the paper using a scratchboard metallic instrument with multiple prongs, like a tiny comb.
BWI: Do you vary your style when you are working with different types of stories?
RC: Sometimes I’ve used pen and ink to illustrate some stories such as Mightier Than the Sword and How to Bake an American Pie. I used pure black Prismacolor and lithograph pencils to illustrate B/W pieces in the old New York Times Book Review.
BWI: You’ve illustrated many picture books, winning in 2008 the Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for My Name Is Gabito: The Life Of Gabriel García Márquez. Do you have a personal favorite (besides Child of the Civil Rights Movement, of course)?
RC: I wrote and illustrated a picture book, Orson Blasts Off. That was unnerving and fun. A Weave of Words was another (the only book where I had the chance to draw a full–blooded, mean looking monster). But these are just “some” of my favorites.
BWI: What effect did winning the Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor have on your career?
RC: The Pura Belpré Award led to more recognition. It feeds the fire to keep you doing the best you can.
BWI: Your artwork has been featured on a mural in New York City and also on the cover of The New Yorker. Do you prefer doing children’s work to working for an adult audience?
RC: Do I like breathing in or out? I need them both. Right now I’m doing a lot more children’s work, but I’d like to balance that out a bit by adding some “adult” fare.
BWI: In the past, you have illustrated works by Monica Brown and Pat Mora (Doña Flor) with very successful results. Are there any other Latino authors you are particularly interested in working with?
RC: It would be great if Gabriel García Márquez wrote a picture book and I was the illustrator. I mean great for me.
BWI: You also recently won the Sidney Taylor Book Award for As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom. How was it different this time to illustrate a book on the civil rights movement from a child’s perspective instead of an adult’s perspective?
RC: Most picture books are told from a child’s perspective. For some reason I enjoy a child’s perspective a little more. It’s pure truth.
David Díaz
http://nccil.org/experience/artists/diazd/index.htm
While few artists remember the precise moment when they decided to make art their career, David Diaz is an exception. He clearly recalls the day in first grade when he completed a vowel worksheet that was filled with pictures of objects with incomplete words written below. A line drawing of a nose was accompanied by "n_se," and young Diaz compliantly added the "o" to the word. After that, he was inspired to use his thick red pencil to complete the picture of the face on the worksheet, and he has been drawing faces ever since. Because he did not know the term "illustrator," in a moment that he calls a mini-epiphany, Diaz realized he would become a "drawer."
Diaz grew up in southern Florida after his family moved from New York, his birthplace. Although his parents recognized his talent, they had fears of his becoming a starving artist and suggested he set his sights on a less risky career. Childhood ended abruptly with his mother's untimely death when Diaz was 16. His art then became an important emotional resource. A supportive high school teacher pointed the way for students tobecome artists by guiding them to competitions. His art blossomed as Diaz attained success in the contests. Another opportunity proved to be invaluable for Diaz when he worked several years as an apprentice for hyper-realistic sculptor Duane Hanson. Diaz remained in touch with Hanson until his death in 1996. Following graduation from Ft. Lauderdale Art Institute, Diaz moved to southern California, where he worked in graphic design firms until establishing his own design and illustration business, Diaz Icon.
Gradually, he began to turn down design projects in favor of illustration assignments, because, as Diaz remembers, he did not want to look back with regret and wonder "What if I had just focused on my true passion--illustration?" One of the many book cover illustrations the artist had completed for Harcourt, Inc., caught the eye of editor Diane D'Andrade, who offered Diaz a contract to illustrate the children's poetry book Neighborhood Odes (1992) by Gary Soto. After seeing one of Diaz's limited edition books created primarily as a promotional tool for his illustration, the editor offered Diaz the chance to illustrate a picture book based on Los Angeles street riots, Smoky Night (1994), written by Eve Bunting. Diaz approached Smoky Night with a desire to make an impact on the reader.
Inspired by sketches made while on a trip to Brazil, he created gouache paintings framed by bold borders with intricate photographic collages as backgrounds. The relatively flat paintings are perfectly matched to the textured collages, vibrant when the action heats up, softened by the end of the story. To the artist's surprise, his first picture book was awarded the 1995 Caldecott Medal. The Caldecott Medal changed Diaz's life in that the award enabled him to concentrate on book illustration. As he worked on The Inner City Mother Goose (1996, by Eve Merriam), Diaz created a number of simplified images that could function as graphic symbols or icons. His icons not only became a part of his books but they also became a business in themselves when he sold them in the form of computer software and continued to custom design them for clients.
Wilma Unlimited (1996, by Kathleen Krull) and Going Home (1997, by Eve Bunting) expanded the artist's use of photo collage, but soon he would try another style. The Little Scarecrow Boy (1998, by Margaret Wise Brown) allowed the artist to employ a lighter and less complicated style to reflect the gentle story. Silhouette forms dominated Be Not Far From Me (1998, by Eric Kimmel) and The Disappearing Alphabet (1998, by Richard Wilbur) giving a new look to Diaz's book illustration. The artist modified the technique in Shadow Story (1999, by Nancy Willard), and combined renderings in vegetable dyes, gouache, and pencil with secondary illustrations created by using Adobe Photoshop.
Other books have extended Diaz's horizons and guided him to try a variety of media and styles, including the vibrant computer art in The Pot That Juan Built (2002, by Nancy Andrews-Goebel) and the soft pastel images in Angel Face (2002, by Sarah Weeks). His work is sometimes compared to that of George Roualt or Marc Chagall, but Diaz does not seek to emulate any artist. Inspired by the innovation of Viennese Secessionists such as Gustav Klimt (1862-1914) and Egon Schiele (1890-1918), Diaz aims to break away from any constrictions and develop his own way of telling stories through illustration.
In his ceramics and the paintings the artist does for pleasure, which he refers to as his "personal work," new ideas and techniques emerge, some of which he incorporates into his illustrations. Some of Diaz's books deal with social issues fraught with controversy; but no matter what the subject matter, the artist seeks to illustrate books that offer hope. Another common thread in several of the books is a strong and kind mother figure that may be attributed to Diaz's devotion to and admiration for his late mother. "My mother formed my life in many ways," the artist said recently. "Because of my affection for her, the things she taught me remain important today." Diaz has never tired of drawing the faces he first explored as a six-year-old, but his interests have grown to encompass reading for pleasure and studying history and science. He also enjoys collecting furniture and accessories from the American arts and crafts era and glassware from the 1960s. Diaz lives outside San Diego, where he finds his greatest joy in his children.
Juan Gomez
http://sct.temple.edu/blogs/murl/2011/10/19/fairhill-juan-gomez-a-latino-contemporary-artist/
Juan Gomez is a first-generation American. His father is from Puerto Rico and his mother is from the Dominican Republic. He is a Latin-American artist and has been selling his works since the age of 14. Gomez grew up in Fairhill, a neighborhood in North Philadelphia, with parents who, in his opinion, were “supportive” of his passion and “down to earth.”
“My father bribed me and my brother one time to pay for art supplies so we wouldn’t be running out in the streets. And it worked,” he said, laughing.
Drawing was a daily thing for Juan Gomez. “It’s like the blood rushing through my veins,” he said.
His first inspiration or mentor was Anita Custalow, his first art teacher at Fairhill Elementary School. Gomez still dedicates most of his work to her because he believes she is the reason he is an artist today.
He would like to start a foundation in her honor for guiding children. He hopes that those children will turn out to be “crazy and creative and spontaneous” in what he calls a “creative jungle.”
Custalow started her 36-year teaching career at Fairhill Elementary School in 1975 and one of her earliest memories is Gomez’s art jumping out at her. She knew he had a special talent and instead of smothering him, ruining his imagination like teachers she had experienced in the past, Miss Custalow was only there to guide him.
“The biggest fight I had with him, I mean, I know he loves pencil, but when I tried to introduce him to other media, I had to fight with him about using watercolor and stuff like that,” Custalow said. “He’s just a natural talent that just took off on his own.”
Gomez has drawn inspiration from everything. He doesn’t enjoy just “tackling” one inspiration at a time, but instead likes to mix them all together and create something for his audience from that unique combination.
“He is a very contemporary artist,” said Rafael Damast, Visual Arts Manager for Taller Puertorriqueño. Damast, who is only completing the work of his predecessor Daniel de Jesús, said, “Look at the pencil marks, they’re very strong. He’s very committed. There’s no uncertainty in his work.”
It wasn’t until a fellow artist and friend suggested he take a drawing and paint it in larger form that Gomez deviated from using pencil. He was part of a group called Arte Alegre and took his friend’s suggestion from within the group. The drawing he transformed into an acrylic piece of art is called “Queen of Maze” and was drawn in 1998. One year later, Gomez completed his first non-graphite piece of art for his collection.
“It was definitely a breaking view for the more current pieces,” Gomez said.
The acrylic version of “Queen of Maze” almost marks the middle of the 20-year survey of his art that is on display now at Taller Puertorriqueño’s Lorenzo Homar Gallery. The exhibit is called “Modified Personalities” and it is the first one-man show Gomez has ever done. The show started on Sept. 30 and will last through Nov. 19. A drawing called “Untitled Silence”, completed in 1991, was the inspiration for this entire collection with 39 pieces of art.
“It’s a lynchpin to the work that we see here at the gallery and ‘Modified Personalities,’” Damast said. He found something unique about this drawing in comparison to the others.
“It’s the only piece that really does something with the white space,” Damast said. All the other pieces in the collection use little to no white space.
But, in Gomez’s mind, “Untitled Silence” is one of the few pieces of his art that he has felt an instinctual finish with.
“This piece, it finished itself. It literally threw me off,” Gomez said. “I stopped and it never progressed. It just stayed where it is now, then.”
Gomez is never quite satisfied with his work and is very critical of his own art. He normally feels that there is nothing right with his work and very rarely feels as if a piece of art is finished.
“I’m always hungry. I’m always doing work. The day I’m satisfied with my work is the day I die,” Gomez said.
Although white space is not a normal choice for his art, frames were a big decision when it came to setting up the display.
“His work extends not just from the image, but also extends to the frame of the work. Each of the frames are a part of the show, a part of the work itself, so he’s very particular about it,” Damast said. “The matting becomes the white space that inhabits these images, kind of like jewels.”
“Moonlight Sonata” is another of the few pieces that Gomez feels are really finished. To him, it focuses on the “turning of the era and the changing of times.”
Times have changed for Juan Gomez.
Alberto Becerra, a Colombian artist in the community who has known Gomez for years said that he is watching Gomez’s transformation into a mainstream contemporary artist.
“That’s a story of one person who, you know, had some guidance and school and he had a mentor. That gave him the confidence he needed,"" Damast said.
http://www.yepaintings.com/abouttheartist.htm
artist statement
When I read about the novel Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by the English writer Lewis Carroll, I was fascinated. In the story Alice wonders what the world is like behind the reflected scene on a mirror surface. To her surprise, she is able to pass through this mirror to experience an alternate world. The story is regarded as “literary nonsense” by some people, but makes a lot of sense to me. When I was a teenager I always wanted to see the world. Not until I was 33 years old did I make the long trek from China to North America to explore my “wonderland”. Although I thought I was psychologically ready for a new move, what I have experienced in North America was a lot of cultural shock: different language, different tradition, different value system and so on. I was confused and annoyed for some time at first. Then, I started to embrace my confusion and use it as the inspiration for my paintings. Frankly speaking, even though I have been here for thirteen years, I’m still experiencing difficulties in perceiving the whole picture of the new culture, as if there were a piece of glass between the world and me. In my “Reflection” painting series, I use newly-made friends here as subjects and the glass window as a metaphor to reflect my fragmented impression of this new culture, which is sometimes clear and sometimes blurry. The fragmented images look surreal, just like Alice’s experience in wonderland. Likewise, I have created a new “wonderland” where I can wander, learn and grow.
David Diaz is a quite unassuming man, always focused on his work.
ReplyDeleteI worked with him on a few projects before be concentrated on illustration.
I think he was living in Escondido then.
How very cool! I hope you discuss this with Alicia:)
DeleteThat is really cool :)Thanks for sharing that with us Drew :)
ReplyDeletewell...I know I was told to look up hispanic artists (which I am now behind again...I blame it on being extremely sick though)but I found this other artist his name is Yeqiang Wang. He is a photorealist...yes I know. BUT! he is also an immigrant and his work deals with some of the things I want to talk about. He also uses a lot of reflective objects, which I love to paint like mirrors, glass, you name it. I love the distortions and how glass seems to take the colors of everything around it, it reflects everything around it...kind of like camouflaging in a way, and it resembles adapting. Anyways, I have added his artist statement to the list of artist as well as some of his paintings. =)
ps: Thank you Drew for the magazine, I will be blogging about the artists real soon ;)
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