Santa Fe, New Mexico
Inspiration
I fabricate large scale mythical creatures that connect us to another time, another place. I draw from my experience in operatic costume design and use traditional embroidery techniques, churro sheep’s wool and upcycled unusual objects.
My desire is that these shaman-like sculptures evoke a departure from conventional imagery to an unfamiliar place of wonder.
These pieces transcend the cultures we think of as the norm, the ordinary, the customary, and take our imaginations to a place of our own invention. Ultimately, I hope the viewer connects with that other place. For some these pieces take on a lifelike presence and others just enjoy the craftsmanship and appreciate them as works of art.
Style
My style is collaborative. I partner with textiles, forests, scrap yards, segundos, antique fairs, and together we lay down a blueprint of the current or next piece. It’s a democratic process where each element has a voice. Two of my more recent collaborators are native churro sheep and colcha embroidery. The intention is to preserve the historic culture of New Mexico through the integration of raw wool and traditional colcha into my pieces.
Ancestry
My grandparents emigrated to the US from Southern Italy and settled in the Midwest. Their quotidian lives, though extreme from what Sicilia offered, gave them sustenance and a sense of belonging to something larger.
In the late fifties my parents heeded the California call and settled in the Bay Area, a small town ripening with revolutionary fervor. As teens, my siblings and I drank up the culture outside our front door questioning nothing and everything.
This is a small taste of what I inherited and was exposed to. As a young girl, I stood back and observed family dynamics, Catholicism, academics and spent much of my time creating unusual art as a way of processing and expressing. It's been that way ever since.
In my late thirties I discovered New Mexico after a summer of picking fruit in British Columbia. Once landed outside of Albuquerque, I worked at the state fair, at restaurants, and wrote short stories. After a gig at the Santa Fe Opera as a seasonal worker in the costume shop, I artistic vision leapt towards larger dimensional pieces. I eventually settled in Santa Fe, but not before going back and forth to the west coast and moving where my work took me.
I dedicated her career to labor rights, traveling to factories throughout Latin America, Asia and North America, interviewing workers and factory owners. I’m now a permanent resident and lives a stone’s throw from the Santa Fe River.