New York Studio School

On June 9th, I was given the opportunity to attend a Drawing Marathon at the New York Studio School.  This school focuses primarily on studying the figure and its context within a contemporary art world.  It is not about drawing like a photo printer would but creating space, volume and more so an integral composition.

 

Joseph Santore made it crucial for each student to push themselves to their limits.  He often mentioned how we all came a long way to fall into doing what we had been told to do all along in our art career.  We were there seeking things yet we still wanted to attack the drawing the same way.  If he was not going person to person giving feedback, he was at the library looking up books for us to view.  He was merciless with his comments which I appreciated.  There is nothing more gratifying for me than to be told the truth.  He would leave you alone if he saw your direction and he would comment when he saw none.  He made us think and use our educated ways to make the right decisions.  His opening speech on the first day of class talked about that fifth mark every one makes believing it is the first one on the paper.  The reality that the paper already holds four lines for you and now you will make that fifth one that will determine ratio.  He extended the concept into how this fifth line will determine all other lines.  It will test you in decision making, make you doubt about form and will push you to see something which is so familiar like an arm to become an alienated form. 

The media used were vine charcoal and acrylic paint.  We also incorporated mixed media using tape to draw.  This exercise impressed me in how it slows down the drawing process.  It makes you find the figure within the space of the paper before you mark it. 
One of the things I wanted to achieve in the New York Studio School was to create subtle transitions and draw large compositions.  I was able to achieve the latter on the third day.  I felt freedom at last when I was able to cut a large sheet of paper.  Then, I realized how my marks used to find space get out of control.  I am forced to draw all over the paper with dark strokes and disregard tonal values for the sake of linear accuracy.  One of the my drawings I felt immensely impressed which contained an amount of control and the patience needed for an erase-and-create rhythm. 
During this class, I was able to meet people in different stages of their art career: some not even out of high school, on their first to second year of their bachelor's degree, completing their master's, changing their career and trying to make it work for sake of art and already established artists.  Every single one of them inspired me to create.  I had not been in the classroom for a very long time and being back again with a group of students was refreshing. 

While in New York, I visited MOMA, Guggenheim, Met, and the Museum of Natural History.  All of them removed me from a shell I had put myself in for a long time now.  I felt at times lonely not because I was by myself, but because everyone around me seem indifferent to the value each piece possessed which I concluded in those days only an artist could be capable of feeling this emotion.  There were tourist wanting to run back home and say they attended these museums and claim they now where within the educated circle.  I saw children being persuaded to like Degas because he too liked ballerina tutus.  I took with me my camera and a small travelling notebook where I noted painting and drawing techniques.  My shoulder's tighten and by the end of three days my body could not take it anymore, but I continued even though I caused more than one stare from strangers that could not decipher what I wrote.  I wrote those tonal changes I had been wanting to achieve, color schemes I needed to remember and the freedom of their strokes.  None of these things can be captured by a camera.  Nonetheless, I took pictures when allowed and reviewed them in disbelief of the lie the camera told. 

I brought home many maps with crossed out sections I covered those days and with items from interactive installations.  One by one I will write as I can wanting like always to piece things together.

Los de aca tambien se mueren

 

It came to me that I could no longer wait for the violence to stop at the border so I could cross and see the cemeteries.  I just could not stop for time to go by and allow for things to settle.  It is not like dirt that rises when a car passes by. 

I made the decision to act upon what I said.  Many times I talked about transculturation and here I was not wanting to go to the cemeteries here in this side of the valley.  I felt there were not substantial or worthy.  It was not until I googled the cemeteries and their names seemed Mexican, indian and not all of them were Americanized.  This is when I realized that "Los de aca tambien se mueren" pobres without anyone putting restrictions on their last morada.

I went to several cemeteries being guided by satellite pictures which help be identify a Mexican inspired cemetery verses an Americanized one. 

I took pictures not knowing how I will try to address this new similar, but different landscape.  I came with terms with it and felt at home.  Here I found little bits of Mexico unable to build the same place but the little bits formed memories of Reynosa.  The names resembled patience and love. The everyday reusable items made my heart grow.

I have many stories that sound supernatural and at the same time captivating.  One were we see a women walking with no apparent reason.  At other times, those magical dogs that take me to prehistoric times where the dogs were a symbol of loyalty even in death.

Jardin del Arte

 

I haven't posted lately even though I have not stopped working. 

 

Jardin del Arte was an event I wanted to be part of for a long time and I was glad I was featured artists for "Hispanic Heritage Month" along with photographer, colleague and friend Imanol Miranda.  Together, we have invested our time to depict our culture here in the Rio Grande Valley. 

As a note to all, we are young artist with a set focus on our culture.

 

The learning experience I had this past summer made me grow as an artist.  I made my own research visiting Valley cemeteries and was surprised to find within me the same excitement I felt when I entered the cemetery where my grandmother is buried.  I have many interesting stories from these local trips and discovered that I do not have to travel faraway to learn new things and be intrigued.

 

The cemeteries I depicted in my new work have in common structures and color schemes from the Reynosa cemetery Sagrado Corazon de Jesus.  There are differences and unrecorded customs I discussed with some people that attended Jardin del Arte.  I am hoping that with my art these unrecorded customs can now be discussed  to shed some light on the transculturation lived in the Rio Grande Valley.

 

 

Figuras limpias y santificadas

New palette

En la calle a media noche 2013

Rincon de esperanza 2013


My sketches for these two compositions were buried in my sketchbook labeled as "good idea" and "haven't found out how to produce it successfully."  Now two years later, I have found the right palette they needed.  The colors came to me upon being frustrated with not knowing how to depict the images inside my head.  The vivid colors in my childhood years in Reynosa with the uncomfortable.  I dissected Mark Rothko's painting and realized he had stepped the tall grass for me to walk and find the right combinations of colors to make the night sky I had been looking for years.  There it was all orange, blue and with tints of black and white.

Up Coming Exhibitions

We are in my favorite month of the year.  I did not have a favorite month since this year.  I will be exhibiting for two major events and I am excited and ready for the roller coaster ride.  I will be in Houston exhibiting for the Art of Death and Dying Symposium and in Dia de los Muertos annual festival at the Museum of South Texas History.  I am hoping I get to meet people and get to talk to every single person.  The people that go and see my artwork never fail to make me think and light up my thoughts.

Asking for a clear mind: Email

Hi,

Thank you for writing back.  I think I have a fascination of death but I do not want for the people I am drawing to be seen as someone that should be loved.  I think I want to cover up in some way, for me, the horror of the way they died.  

I really wanted to continue doing my mexican cemeteries but I no longer can since the narcos use the cemetery to park their trucks and as storage.  In the beginning of 2010, I felt the violence was not going to affect my artwork but sadly it has and now I am wanting to portray something that I cannot get a hold of for the last year.

I have images in my mind of my grandmother being in a coma for six months and then dying.  It is the long time stillness I cannot get out of my mind.  When she died, I felt she was still sleeping.  My mom hates the smell of roses because she says it reminds her of funerals.  

I love Federico Garcia Lorca's poems.  They talks about the violence that entered Spain.  In one of this poems, he portrays a man who is coming in bleeding and he is described as having 300 dark roses on his chest.  The man is wanting to reverse his actions and says he wants to die sleeping in his bed and he is told Spain is not Spain anymore. 

I will look into the artists you recommended. 

New Zealand

I am so happy to hear from Paul.  Even though I asked him from one souvenir, he gave me four that I will cherish forever.  Look at that bird! Everything about the colors used here makes me feel like home in Mexico.

Lincoln Middle School

The year of 2011 will be unforgettable for me.  I joked around with the fact that I was a rabbit in the Chinese calendar and the rabbit year of 2011 positioned me at an advantage to win the lottery.
I never bought a lottery ticket.
I was busy looking for a teaching job where I could learn more about the Rio Grande Valley.
 
Fresh out of college, I applied in 2010 to a top ranked painting school in the United States and got accepted for its Post-Bac program which I did not accept.
At my interview with them in Chicago, I realized they misunderstood my border culture.  I had to correct them more than once about things I felt the world already knew about the border.  I talked and talked to get my point across.  After talking too much, I came to a pause and I wondered there for the first time: Do I really know my culture?
  
I began to criticize myself like I did to Octavio Paz's "Laberinto de la Soledad."  How could he talk about the Mexican identity and get some things wrong?  How could he get the borderland identity wrong?

I am in debt with Lincoln Middle School for the knowledge I gained in one year.

I would have not wanted another student population than the one I got this year.  I made it a purpose to talk about college every single day and lost track of how often I mentioned it until one of my students made a remark:  Why do you always talk about college?  We are in M-i-dd-le School.  I can still see some students taking a deep breath and others getting mad at this one student that was going to make me give a speech about, again, E-d-u-c-a-t-i-o-n.

I hope I made a difference.  A good difference.

I still remember my teachers and professors that acted ( and I am glad they did) like my mother or father guiding me in what I was to become.  My choice at the end but they gave me their valuable opinion about what steps provided more opportunities in the long run.  I love their on going selfishness of still supporting me in my life and career.

After finishing this school year, I am more humane.  I know I needed this for my writing and art to grow.

Now, it is the summer of 2012.  I am transforming what I create and with full knowledge of different perspectives of the Rio Grande Valley.  I give thanks to my students and my co-workers that gave me a good heart.

I did not win the lottery but I sure gained the good and the bad to create a good work of art.

Gloria Anzaldua Conference

In 2009, I remember being angry and a heated discussion with an individual that thought everything about Chicanos and Mexican-American culture was not important.  Oddly enough, he had chosen to take a Mexican-American class at UTPA and attended El Retorno Conference honoring the life and works of Gloria Anzaldua.  

My professor had given me the microphone to talk about my artwork and how Gloria Anzaldua had influenced me.  I tried forgetting his words but I could not.  I do not remember everything I said that day because my mind spoke without first stopping to think about it.  It came out of me.  I knew if I kept it inside my muscles would start to tremble and I would go to sleep that night angry and wake up angry for a couple of weeks.

I talked about my experience of waiting in line to get my permanent residence card and how it took more than ten years to get it.  I heard and saw people clap but I do not know if it was for approval or pity.  My anger did not go away. 

Aida Hurtado talked in this year El Retorno conference about leaving your body and how Anzaldua talked about this concept.  Hurtado mentioned that she could have written thirty book if she had controlled her anger.  She found that making someone angry leaves the person being only a body without its mind.  

I never want to be again only a body.  How about if someone cries?  Are they only a body too?

Along with Rodney Gomez and Isaac Chavarria, I participated to create a chapbook for El Retorno: Our Serpent's Tongue. I curated the exhibition at the event and even talked without breaking up about the chapbook.  My professor  Emmy Perez again encouraging me to talk.

This time the message was different.  I talked about one of my students who told me, "Miss, Why are you here?"  The student had at the time a tone of disgust.  This student, in fact, had been disgusted all week long about peers and making awful comments about the Mexican culture to the point that I lectured them every single day on the subject of valuing their culture.  When I was picking out artwork for the chapbook and going to meetings about this conference, I thought about my students.  I had taught my students everyday to write and draw their own history because I did not want them to wake up one day and dislike what someone else wrote about them.  More so, to be looked upon for something they disapproved.

I made two drawings that were given to be given to Lauren Espinoza, a poet leaving the Rio Grande Valley to study her Master's in Arizona this fall and Norma Cantu, a Chicano writer.  

I cried when I explained to Norma the meaning of my drawing.  I don't know if I should have hold it in and talked more about my artwork.  But, the moment I could not speak any more and I started to cry, my whole life flashed by in an instant.  It was the sensation people say you get when you are about to die.  I realized then why I had made it.

  

Memories of Dresses: Part 2

Memories of Dresses

Dresses are important because they remind me of places and the moments created in these places.  I often go to stores and go around just feeling the material in every garment.  As I concentrate in painting on cloth, in specific a floral one, I remember my mother and my grandmother in Reynosa.  

Powdered streets full of air,

sunlight enough to kill a

hairy dog and women

leaving flowers from

their dresses in the streets.

Going for more

I went for more and pushed myself to fill in the emptiness I felt in this artwork.  Now, how to finish it up and the most difficult question of all: how to present it?

And here is my Changito...that helps me out not to lose my needles.  I used to put them in my bed since I can remember.  Not a good idea since I have not learned to pick them all up.

Floral Border

I started sewing even before I entered kinder.  The memory of siting down on a cool gray tile floor next to a black trash bag filled with retazos from leftover material of dresses my mom had sewn is my dearest memory.  She always refused to teach me how to sew arguing that I needed to learn by seeing her at work.
I often thought she was harsh but I am glad she did.  When I moved to the United States and did not know how to speak English, I had to learn by only seeing.  It was hard but I knew how.
Every time we crossed the border, we bought fabric.  It was a must even though we did not need it for anything.  I got so used to touching fabric to feel the quality and texture which gave me a sense of what to create with it.
La tienda Dos Rios was a paradise for me.  You see, the border is not all sadness and death.  The  noise of the scissors cutting the fabric along a hard edge table and the infinite roles of fabric along the old catalogs made me create at high speed, in my mind, designs of dresses I wished to wear.
Today I mentioned to a young crowd: As you grow older, you will associate things with color and you will carry that association with you for your entire life.  A light blue will remind you of the first car you drove or your first dress.
Fabric for me reminds me of my grandmother, my mother and the border.  All three come to my mind when I see a strong floral cotton fabric that can be turned into anything.  A fabric of that quality is and will always be hard to find.  I have had this floral printed fabric for more than ten years and it suddenly made sense to me, this past December, to cut a piece of it and create art with it.

Chronicles of a Painting: Part 2

I had been with the obsession of buying canvas cloth for a long time even though I loved to paint on masonite panels.  I think it started out of knowing I could get a large amount of cloth at a cheap prize in Reynosa.  Honestly, anything that has to do with buying something at Reynosa makes me happy and much more if I pass/stop at el centro.

El centro is a place that brings me many memories that seem so distant now.  I remember entering into el mercadito and smelling leather all over the place.  I wanted everything all the time.  I wanted a zarape, a leather purse, with leather boots, a sombrero, leather coin purses, all the candy and all the dresses I could fit in.

Last year, my dad and I went to Reynosa without being scared of the violence going on at the border.  I am not a brave one but I am often reminded that I am like my dad who often says, "de algo nos vamos a morir."  It is a joke of course and a harsh one that I also love to say.  My favorite joke coming from my dad has been, up to this point, when I have told him that I was hungry and he replied with, " que bueno, es senal que estas viva."  

I often think of Federico Garcia Lorca and how he went back to his homeland even though he knew he would get killed.  I can say my thought when I crossed the border has been one of happiness.  I can never wait to smell Reynosa.  I love all its ugliness and complexity.  I take it all in.

I had been in Reynosa that Saturday less than three hours when I suddenly found myself at a supermarket restroom trying to calm myself.  I remember wanting to fix my hair in front of the mirror and noticed my hand shaking.  I was scared.  We had been at el centro to buy the cloth and upon coming out we noticed blocked streets we thought were car accidents but in reality was a preparation for a shooting.  

The military helicopter could not had been louder flying over the big traffic congestion we were in.  I saw women running inside stores and covering their heads.  The agony in everyone had vanished all my memories.

When I was in high school, I asked my mom if the amount of violence had increased with time.  If maybe, when I was little it had been calmer.  Her answer was no.  There had been no change.

I think if my grandmother and grandfather were alive I would ask them the same question about the violence that is going on right now.  It will comfort me if they said it was just the same as in the Mexican Revolution.  Yet, what an immense sadness it will generate.

Chronicles of a Painting: Part 1

I left the last painting I created this year "forgotten" to dry for a month that turned into almost three.  I started  with an attitude that usually revolves around me when I begin a painting of not caring for the painting.  My mentality is a plain one: It's just another painting.  But ultimately, it becomes more than just a painting.  Believe me when I say this, all I do becomes more than what it is because I find the meaning to attach to it even if I have to dig and dig and get my hands all muddy.

Now, I knew I had to give it up and this is why 1. I had this do not care about attitude and 2. I procrastinated until the last moment to mail in the painting.  I had always an excuse of next weekend or lets wait another month so it can be really really dry.  All excuses that are non professional.  Today I can say I mailed it.

I felt nervous to the point that I sat in the car writing a letter to Paul and his family and upon seeing my messy handwriting I rewrote it.  I bought the tube at Staples feeling weird to enter with the rolled up painting and finding it significantly easy to find the right tube when I thought it was going to take me an hour.  I made time for I do not know what and I ended up leaving the store close to 4:25pm.  I didn't do it intentionally even though I know they close the post office at 5:00pm sharp.

To my surprise, there was no line.  As I explained to the lady at the post office that I had to mail this large tube to New Zealand, I realized how naive I was of not knowing if I was doing things right.  Where do I put the address and where does my name go and who is in charge of putting tape?

More so, can I walk the painting to the truck? Where are you going to put it in the meanwhile and is there such thing as staying all night/travelling with the painting?

All I got was "thank you," "this is all it" "I will finish packing it" which translates to "yes, please go you are holding up the line."

The Art of Memory

Memories are powerful.  They often make us hold on to objects for a long time.  They make us move forward and backwards.  I rather hear people talk than talk.

Some memories are corrupted and others can pass as hallucinations.  In the end they are all subjective.  I think of memories as trees.  In Reynosa, the trees were painted white with cal so the tree would last the winter or plague; anything.  I often think about doing the same thing to memories.  I want to protect the little bits I can remember. 

And I often join them all in a world that only exists within me which I paint so it can exist outside of me.

Rio Grande Bravo

So here it is, finished.  I will always enjoy painting/ drawing the Rio Grande Bravo since it's a place I can say I'm closely related to for spending most of my life crossing it.  I hardly believe in miracles or wish for anything.  I often just think: things would be nicer if such and such thing would happen.  But, if I were to pray for anything, wish for something or just hope, it will be for the water in Rio Grande Bravo to be born again.

The dark weather is coming

Rain, cold fronts and the unexpected hurricane always show up in August and September.  For the longest time, I had not seen lighting.  I had not felt my legs hurt with a change of winds.  More changes are coming in the next days that will be a relieve from the horrible heat we have right now but I know I will miss it once its gone. 
The mesquite trees are the only ones that do not get affected by any change.  They stay green throughout the whole entire year.  Everything else dries easily here because of the heat or cold weather.  There are times that I hear people say how they wish the valley would change colors...the leaves fall and become all white.  There is no change here and I wonder if this is a good or bad.  I wonder if the young prefer change and the old prefer stability. 
The Rio Grande Bravo has changed in the course of years.  People say it was prettier back then when the water was cleaner.  I still say its a marvelous monster that makes you feel tiny and consumes your life for a moment.  We might have changed it but I wonder when it will change us because after all we cannot control it and never will.  We might use it to our advantage but once it gives up on us what will it do to humanity? 

 

The Rio Grande Bravo is unique because it has been used for unnatural purposes.  It is a body of water used to separate two countries that has been filled with bodies and drugs which are things that have stained its image.  I had never gotten close to until someone about three years ago wanted a painting of el Chalan.  I had the opportunity to cross the Rio Grande Bravo without a bridge and without fear.  I remember looking at the sky and all around me realizing for the first time it was a river, one that was beautiful.

This time I remembered a phrase my mom used to say when the cold weather would come "el cielo esta aborregado."  I will not try to translate not because I can't but because it is useless.  Meanings always get lost when they travel through languages.  I rather explain it.  People use this phrase when the sky has clouds carrying ice.  These clouds form the shapes of sheep and from there comes the word "aborregado" from "borrego" or sheep.

In my first and only visit to el Chalan, the sky was "aborregada" and this is why I realized that I had never painted the Rio Grande Bravo when a cold front was coming in.  Cold fronts always make me think more about the water.  Is the water cold?

I still need to define the painting more but here is the start. 

Darkness in the Making

 

It is interesting all the colors seen at night.  I have often seen the sky turn red and at other times tones of gray.  I have found the lights seen at night affect the way we see the sky and everything around us.  What I just stated is nothing new.  What else could they do if they are placed there to purposely affect the surrounding environment we place them in.  But each night is different.  The variables are after all nature and the light is the constant.
 Even though we put lights to illuminate to have some control of our environment, there is no such thing as a light seen every night the same.