Poem Series: Vero/Angela/Maiki

''Vero''

''Angela''

''Maiki''

These I like to describe as my poem series. Basically the pieces come into existence after I undergo a specific process. This involves me remembering. I remember specific people, places, situations, but mostly people. Friends, family, old lovers, and while I do so a make these intricate porcelain pieces that I believe incarnate them. To be able to instigate my remembrance of them, I set up a situation were I believe to remember them best. This may be by reading old letters or emails, by engaging in conversations with them online, or/and by listening to specific songs. It’s a simple process, they are simple pieces, but it’s a complex subject for me to deal with, and it’s personally important that I do so. It keeps me at balance, and from going insane.
The palettes have come to signify something truly important in my work. In some pieces they are the material that already has a weight, a history, which adds a complete different subset to the work. In these pieces the palettes are exactly what they are in normality, a platform for an object to be sent. This way I send off my strapped poems out to the world. They were written, composed, or formed, for someone far away, so it just seems proper that they have the same fate, to travel far away.
These pieces are part of a show, the Miniature / Micro-Monumental, in the Townsend University as of now, and until the beginning of November. After that they will come back to the University of Delaware together with other student’s work from Townsend and displayed here. Hopefully the show will make their way to Asia afterwards, to both Thailand and Japan.

From Here To Nowhere @ Old College

Installment pictures taken by Grant

This past weekend of September 12th I displayed a sculpture in the green areas surrounding the Old College area. Here are some of the images of the installation of the piece, and of the piece it self.

The sculpture, From Here to Nowhere, is a collection of 10 pedestrian signs that vary in height. White arrows surrounded by a white frame intend to create a personal image of the nonexistent object or place that one searches for.

Two different ideas are entwined with this piece: life goals and bilingualism. As one interacts with the piece, following the signs or just thinking about what they may direct to, one searches after something that is not there, that way commenting on the things we miss on our day to day lives while trying to reach what we may imagine to be a bigger, most important, life goals. On the other hand there is the idea that I cannot control what the public reads from the piece, which is always a factor when displaying work.

English is not my first language. Sometimes, actually almost always, I don´t know if what I said was really what I intended, or if what I heard was what was said. This is why I chose to make the piece so vague, to reference the strange case of having to translate everything on my brain to a different language.

What is it? = Coalesce Thoughts

A three-week trip into poor neighborhoods in Venezuela + three months of scholarly work + ten minute powerpoint presentation about the work I underwent throughout whole summer + a one-week art show with six other artist’s = My summer.
A coalescing series of thoughts, ideas, concepts that through the summer I investigated took control of my day-to-day routine, until I created the pieces exemplified in the accompanying images. Basically my summer dealt with exploring the scarcity of housing in Venezuela, dealing primarily with a strong interest on “invasions,” the most simplified and precarious forms of housing. Invasions (or invasiones in Spanish) are a form of improvised housing constructed on abandoned lands. The invader (invasor) seeks to stay in the land for two months, which is the time the government requires to prove the land has been truly abandoned, in order to demand ownership of the land to local authorities. The first days the house might be made out of cardboard, after a couple of days it may progress into a simple wooden/zinc construction, and as time passes the invader tries to improve the risky conditions they live in.
The two sculptures I made represent these two concepts of ownership (or lack of) and progression. On the one hand trying deal mostly with the human interactions within a space, and the other with just the physical/aesthetical aspects of the constructions I visited. The invader is in a strange "limbo-like" stage for the two months they have to stay in the land: it is not theirs, but they sleep, eat, defecate, live there; if asked to move, they might fight, but before the two month process odds are against them; hence the wheels on "Untitled" (or "Sin Titulo"). As they stablish their housings the construction starts to change and the improvable becomes permanent. The surroundings start to grow and similarly to as how they were the first ones to enter, there will be more to come, and the migrant becomes a resident. Allways a progression, never ending, just with changing variables every once in a while. A progression of materials, of time, of quantity, of history. A progression overall.
“Untitled”, or El Rancho en Ruedas (The Shanty on Wheels), how it has been nicknamed by family and friends, will be traveling around town the next couple of weeks. First will be the Newark area, to finish parking (invading?) on a the Recitation Hall Gallery Space in the University of Delaware, and be part of an art show, "I Know What Your Did Last Summer."