ARTRINIDAD

Choice 

11’x8.5’

Wood, screws, mount

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A detail of my piece in the UCLA Undergraduate Scholarship Exhibition

Open November 17 - December 8 

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Chance

Variable Dimensions

Expansive foam, string

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Featured in UCLA’s Westwind Spring 2011 Online and Print Edition 

Online link here

Attract/repulsion 

10.5’x8’

Wood, about 1000 silk flowers, nails, florescent pull lamp, automated air freshner, carpet 

Artist note coming soon.

Recycled Roar (June 2011)

12’x6’

About 2000 Jazz Reggae Fliers, 5000 staples, plaster, chicken wire, wood

Collaboration with Armando Cortes

Commissioned and made for UCLA’s Jazz Reggae Fest 2011 

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Progress: Change Over Time

9.5 ft x 8 ft x 4 ft

Wood, Screws

The mystery of art has always been so alluring to me. The utter ambiguity of form. The feats and failures of interpretation and communication of concept between artist and viewer. The way that art seems to create worlds of both separation and equality…

These are a few things that inspire me to keep making work, to keep exploring ideas, to simplify, to reduce, and evaluate my perception and intentions of art. I admit, sometimes I question it all and have days where I just want to stop and am on the brink of losing hope due to being misunderstood. Choosing a passion and a career that is so subjective and so easily misunderstood is a heavy choice.

Misunderstanding is a complex thing. You can either fight it and demand that someone sees “your work”, “your way”, force ideas into someone’s head or just let it go and let the work take the viewer where they want to go; accept that everyone examines the world through different eyes preconditioned through a life full of different experiences. I guess as artists and even on a more basic level, as people, what we all struggle for others to be aware and respect our views. After that happens you have a choice to drop the burden of convincing people to see it your way, and once released art defines freedom and immeasurable possibility and imagination once again.

I made this work with the idea that simplicity is key. That we are beings of gradual change, and through that gradual and consistent change, unmistakeable and significant changes arise. In other words that the smallest and most basic alterations (in this case addition and subtraction) really do create undeniable progress and change. I thought about the most basic way I could present this and came up with this piece. Each piece of wood is altered simply by the addition or subtraction of wood in three inch increments. These changes in length in turn create differing weights, projectiles, and curves, giving this piece its overall form.

The fact that the material I chose initially gave the impression of solidity and structure, but in truth was delicate, fluid, flexible and easily manipulated is important. (If you walked past it fast enough or accidentally touched it, it would move.) I feel that these qualities are in direct correlation with identity; that people ironically tend to think of their identities as rigid, solid, and unbending but in truth are essentially fluid, plastic, and always susceptible to change. 

This work was first exhibited in UCLA’s Undergraduate  Scholarship Award Exhibition and now is being featured in UCLA’s Chancellor, Gene Block’s Residence.

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Signs.

Varied Dimensons: about 25’x7’ total

Stained wood, plaster, nails.

Whether we choose to or not we are constantly being bombarded by communicational subtleties during human interaction. The slight shift in gaze, the crooked smile, the uncomfortable laugh; all signs of changes of mood, expectations, and interpretation. This is something that I have been fascinated with that it often distracts me from actual conversation.

I chose to pursue this piece to investigate how a slight shift in hand positioning could completely alter the message it conveyed. How something so universally recognizable and basic could create a language on such a simple level and drag its complex connotations with it. How these connotations induced emotions and elicited only two feelings of intuition; good and bad and how we constantly chose to act on these feelings or reject them. This is true not only in hand gestures, but any other form of communication; verbal, textual, or nonverbal. I have always been fascinated with communication and the different dynamics and nuances of each, especially textual and nonverbal. 

When creating each of the hands I decided to use a mixture of easily recognizeable hand gestures, completely fabricated ones, and many that are commonly misinterpreted throughout cultures to emphasize the sheer diversity of not only hand gestures but how their connotations and meanings have the potential to completely shift with each viewer. 

I positioned the pieces in a series of straight lines, so that the viewer would be tempted to try and decode the piece and pay attention to each of the different messages/signs each hand had to offer. They are arranged in a way to mimic saccades, the way that human brains take in information.

This piece is not just about the differences caused by positioning but rather the commonalities that all of these things share. To stress this point I chose to leave each hand extremely uniform in material and color; how one human hand has the potential to create and induce so many different meanings, emotions, and connotations but is in essence still a hand. Showcasing the idea that there is always unity within all diversity.

Untitled
16”x16”
Plexiglass, water, food coloring, silicone, and my advanced sculpture peers. 

My peers and instructors took turns dripping pure food coloring into a large clear cube filled to the brim with water and watched the process that took place.

This piece is about the simple notion that all of us have a commonality between one another. No matter how you decide to perceive that commonality literally through the presence of water, physically through the reflections seen on the walls of the cube, psychologically through the murkiness created by multiple forces and actions, spiritually through our souls dropping into a large volume of water and becoming one with that entity, or any other way is completely up to you. And for that reason I left this piece to be openly ambiguous. 

I wanted to take something that everyone experiences on a daily basis - the interaction of water with other fluids/people and emphasize natural beauty that occurs everywhere that we take for granted. It was also important for me to place an object in front of the audience, give them simple instruction and then let what ever took place happen.

This piece was probably one of the most “simple” yet difficult pieces I’ve yet to do. 

Thank you Chris Leal for the photos.

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A little sneak of my second project for Advanced Sculpture.

More photos, videos and artist statement to come hopefully by the weekend.