Artist’s Statement
In the past few years I have been making images on clay tiles after working with painting for a long time. I like the intimacy of the small scale and domestic warmth of the tiles. Working with relief suits my wish to create a small-scale drama, in the tension between three dimensions and two, the real and the imagined..
Each piece is like a ballad, sung by an imaginary griot narrating tales ephemeral and timeless, specific and general, true and invented, intimate and epic. The characters in these stories can be family members, friends, ancestors, heroes, and angels who help me remember my frayed attachment to the umbilical cord of humanity and being.
The wistful song of my griot aims for the quicksilver beauty that is contained in Whitman’s line,
“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” (Song of Myself)
Perhaps everyone has some version of having to hold on to an inherent human integrity in the face of adversity and distress. As an immigrant I have been blessed with the necessity of attending to the slip-and-slide work of holding on to connection (language, people, culture) while adapting and surviving, remembering and forgetting.
Almas Gemelas con Antecedentes is an operatic piece in that it includes the small and the large, the sweetness of life, beauty of nature, and the fragile hopes for humankind (Jose Marti’s portrait is broken) as well as the foundations of modern society in cruelty and exploitation of enslaved people made to work the brutal sugar cane trade.