A rtist Statement
Artist Statement:
I’m a first generation American born citizen from immigrant Cuban parents. I’m also one of six siblings including a twin brother who is only five minutes older than me. My parents were teenage sweethearts in Cuba, but were both forced to follow their parents into new unexplored territories in America. They left Cuba during the beginning of Fidel Castro’s regime. As countless other immigrants have done in the past, my father first entered the United States through that historical harbor guarded by the Statue of Liberty; he became a New Yorker. My mother her sister, and their windowed mother came to Miami, but then went on to various states, including Chicago. Both of my parents went on to marry other people and begin new lives. My mother had one daughter from her first marriage and my father had a daughter and a son from his. Though their first marriages did not work out, they would later find each other again in Miami. Being single parents who were both still very young, it wasn’t long before family matchmakers took matters into their own hands and introduced the couple. You can say there was a fairy tale in exile.
My parents had always been attracted for one another and grew up with similar religious beliefs, so once reunited; they quickly married and began to enlarge their family. Together they had three other children, all boys. Two of those boys were fraternal twins, of which I was one. We grew up in a bilingual home. My mother because of her travels had learned to speak English fluently and became a legal secretary. My father who first began working in LaGuardia Airport would eventually work at the Miami International Airport where he retired after twenty-five years of service.
As for me I was always a very self-aware child growing up. I had a good understanding of, as well as a deep concern for, the adults in my life and their plight.
At a young age I realized that being a child meant not having many responsibilities, whereas being an adult meant lots of worries. So I became concerned about growing up, because I didn’t think that I would ever manage as an adult, I guess a part of me did not want to be a Cuban at a time when Cubans were still the first exiles in South Florida.
I also noticed a difference between myself and this new breed of Cuban exiles. I considered myself an American not a Cuban, and I looked at these newcomers as mere refuges. Soon I would realize that these exiles were my roots staring me right in the face. As I matured I learned to identify with that perspective while in turn identifying with my Cuban roots. I acquired much of my knowledge from my Grandmother and her stories. She would give me an occasional glimpse of Cuba as she had once experienced it herself. I remember bringing these stories to life in my own subconscious and feeling as if I was seeing these memories as clear as she did. In many ways these moments spent with my Grandmother became like a form of exercise, broadening my creative senses.
The conflicts I experienced on who I was and where I came from, as well as the fact that I was one of a brood of siblings, made me search for something that was my own. In my early work I began to resolve many of these issues. I still remember my first experience in the arts at the age of five. My teacher gave us an outline of a butterfly on a poster board in order to color by section. I began cutting out the wings and affixing them back onto the body, taking unusual colors and creating designs on pure emotion. My teacher was confused at first, but she supported my creativity. Other children felt comfortable around me through my art. It was then that I learned that through art I could fit in. Always the quiet type and sort of an outcast, it was easy to voice myself through the arts. This was the first time that I felt passionate about anything at all. I wanted to be an artist from that day and beyond.
As a student attending Miami-Senior High I spent much of my junior and senior years in the art room indulging my passion and experimenting with every type of medium. Mine was a growing and obsessive passion and I began to struggle with my classes. My art teacher, at the time, Mrs. Dee recommended that I apply at the New World School of the Art program in downtown Miami. They had a program, which integrated the art curriculum of Miami-Dade Community College with that of the University of Florida into a four-year course of study. I applied and was accepted during a closed-door portfolio critique by the Dean of Admissions. The Dean had almost decided not to accept my portfolio until one of my 2-D pieces caught his eye. I had brought this particular piece in a box inside a garbage bag. I was reluctant to show this work, because I thought it was still too raw for him to comprehend. Yet based on this 2-D piece I was accepted into New World School of the Arts. I also obtained some valuable advice from the Dean who told me never to disregard a piece that may seem unfinished.
As a freshman I found myself as a student in a 2-D class taught by Fredrick Snitzer. On the very first day of class, the professor offered anyone interested in a job in his Coral Gables Gallery to work part time gallery helper. I quickly raised my hand and accepted the part time job, working after school. This first year would be the most critical year in my entire artistic life. I was learning quickly at New World School of the Arts during the morning while evolving my artistic knowledge in the evening. At the gallery I learned to stretch canvas and install the art work. More important I learned by observing many works as produced by his stable of Cuban masters. I met artists like Thomas Esson, Julio Cruz, Ruben Torres Llorca, Carlos Cardenas and Jose Bedia’. Along this journey I also discovered Dali, Etcher, Maria Brito and Luis Nevelson who inspired the boxes I still construct today. I remember staring for hours at works by Luis Cruz Azaceta and Wilfredo Lam. All of these artists in one-way or another influenced my work. I was inspired by their passionate wisdom and exploration of various materials. The impact of these first couple years attending New World and working at the gallery cemented my future as a serious artist. After my sophomore year I decided to take some time and in order to figure out exactly what kind of artist I was. I wanted to define myself as an artist,
which would in turn define my life. I wanted to discover my strengths and weaknesses. What would be my focus and subject matter throughout my lifetime as an artist? What type of medium will I concentrate on? Would I use various mediums? I had always felt comfortable using a variety of materials and so it came to pass that my peers eventually labeled me a 2-D mix-media artist. Today many refer me as a contemporary mix-media/installation artist. Those who are not interested in mix-media or installations prefer that I concentrate on my sketches and detailed drawing. Currently I’ve brought these elements together to form cohesiveness between the mediums.
In the beginning I was intrigued by the complex social structure of the “familistic society”. I believed, and still do that the family environment in many aspects can give us a view into today’s chaotic and complex world. Thus, many of my earlier art works reflect these ideas. They also focus on the subconscious interactions among family members. I studied my own daily encounters with my family members from the perspective of a brother, son, cousin and grandson. I noticed that I impacted the family core in so many different ways as well. There were sophisticated and unconscious relationships going on, the types that can only be formed by human beings. These relationships build the stability needed as we mature in society. It was this special bond between one family member and another, which fascinated me most. I began to understand that within the family unit, our most critical childhood memories are formed.
These are the same childhood memories, for better or worst, that lingers in our subconscious for the remainder of our lives. They are usually unique onto each individual, but in my case, they were shared by my fraternal twin brother. The “twin to twin” perspective on the world played a large role on how I looked at society and, of course how it affected my work. My unique view of the world stems from many of these past memories. My brother has been the subject of my work and will probably always play a role in my work at some level.
It is interesting how the things we vaguely remember, the foggy details of our lives, are sometimes more vital in building the framework of who we are than the actual Knowledge we acquire through out the years. It is precisely these details and foggy moments that embody my work and give its own life. My work, particularly from 2001-2003, attempted to capture the deeper cause and affect of my subject matter. At the time I combined 2-D and 3-D elements to capture the vision of my work. During this phase of my career, and from this large body of work, many sub-series originated; some which were completely independent and others which were experimental. Overall, however, things in my own family began to change. This style remained a constant in my work for some time, but as I continued to grow and evolve, and as things in my own family began to change, I realized that so did my art.
At the beginning of the 2004 year I decided that my work needed a change of pace and a new approach. However, change is not that easy, and soon I hit a creative wall head on. It is common for artists to experience creative blocks now and again, but the severity and duration of these blocks differ from artist to artist. I never thought that I would hit a wall, yet here I was at an impasse. I decided that this was a test and although some artists fail and even disappear into their own abyss, I was determined to continue consistently. I’ve had work documented in detail and I’ve seen my art travel abroad to various shows, exhibitions and residencies. People had purchased the work, but for me the work still needed to evolve. I decided to throw away my recent sketches and started from scratch and so a metamorphosis began.
“A new perspective a fresh approach”, that is what I kept telling myself, but what exactly did that entail? For me it meant I had to take my most passionate and important topics and transfer them into a pile of new ideas. Visually I wanted to make the work more personal. I had always spent a great deal of time sketching and creating schematically drawings. I had been known to sketch during work, in the studio and even in the bathroom if needed. So I began to concentrate on filtering this medium into this new body of work. I also wanted to tell a story in this new body of work. I was determined to create a project that would cause a mood shift in the gallery atmosphere. This shift would be caused by the drawings and 3-D elements as they coexisted in a narrative story.
Then on June 10, 2005 “Ezayah Silhouettes”, my newest efforts, opened along side with Erman’s “Air My Laundry” in an exhibition entitled Surviving Memories at Diaspora Vibe Gallery. This exhibition, my first two-man show, marked a transformation in my style. I was given a complete gallery space to be used for my mix-media work, which comprised of sculptures, onsite drawings, and projections. I incorporated graffiti like drawings into projections onto the wall near scenes in Ezayah’s life. There were life size papier-mâché sculptures hung from the ceiling, which represented the physical, solid reality of Ezayah while the projected drawings became the emotional depictions of her life. These projections were large and covered every inch of the gallery space. The lighting was dim so that the viewer could experience the projected images as silhouettes. Shadows cast by the sculptures in harmony, linked these various elements as one.
The story of Ezayah was inspired subsequently with the future birth of my first-born and in part through a conversation with a Professor regarding displacement. The topic of conversation that particular day was the difficulty of adjusting single parents trying to raise their children in a new environment. The character “Ezayah” evolved as a female since I myself thought that my wife would give birth to a baby girl as well.
I envisioned Ezayah to be twelve years of age. Her mother a single parent, decided to begin a new life in a distant town. She begins to struggle to keep her daughter from doing the same. You see, in Ezayah’s case that would mean living in a world of her own (a world her mother does not understand). The young adolescent Ezayah is without the friends she left behind. Their house sits on a solitary hillside overlooking the town below. She sits on an old wooden chair with a leather seat. Her nearest neighbor is a large oak tree. These elements figure prominently in the gallery space. The oak tree has branches extending over the hillside and because of its grandeur she finds comfort sitting next to it. It’s thousand of leaves like a canopy protect her. Eventually the oak tree becomes her only friend. This is also one of the projected images during the exhibition. Ezayah enjoys waiting for storms to rise up from the mountains behind the town below. The storms seem to make the oak tree come alive as its leaves dance in the surging wind.
She often dreams of flying away like the birds nesting in the oak tree. She struggles to be free from this new and strange place, floating freely far, far away.
After the Ezayah Silhouettes exhibition my work centered mainly on drawings. These drawings now included the graffiti-like subliminal words as discovered in the Ezayah Silhouettes Exhibition. In the past my drawings substitute for words, they spoke for my work and told the story of my sculptural pieces. Currently I’m using these same drawing as actual art. This in turn has made me more versatile in producing and completing the work during the day. My sketchbook has increased in size and has begun to resemble a mail order catalog.
My daily documentation of everyday events and occurrences has opened the door to this new body of work. Like my previous efforts, my new work still represents the reason behind the reality, but they go deeper in expressing what we perceive everyday as opposed to what we actually see. They are a combo of our everyday visual cues and our subliminal thoughts and fragmented memories, which become part of our psyche. I feel that it is important to document what I refer to as “negative memories”, because they are vital in deeming our adult personas. My work is a visual storyboard of thoughts and feelings, which represent something personal or universal. The drawings reflect not only my experiences, but also the very real experiences of others. It attempts to shed light on the darkness we all have inside and to provoke a person into delving deep into his or her own subconscious while searching out their true essence. As produced the drawings will convey life’s daily emotions while the sculptural elements act as the physical presence in the work. They combine what we see with our actual eyes and what we may see subcouciously. The aesthetic challenge is always combining the drawings and the sculptures to morph seamlessly as one.
Also important is the proposal process of future projects. Designing schematical drawings, which include installation details, elevation drawings and plot plans have inhanced my proposals for specific future projects. Skills learned as a structural designer for sign corporations have aided the utilization of blueprints.
In the 2007 installation entitled “Bedtime Cones” a complete blue print was designed in order to further assist board members and a panel of judges understand the manufacturing and installation of the work. These architectural blue prints include a work statement, construction details of the work, installation schematics, elevation plan, floor plan and a project budget. I used a similar type of proposal in obtaining approval for the Miami Beach Marina (lower level tenant elevations) commissioned mural. The mural was to done on a fifteen foot high by seventy-two foot long wall. The City of Miami Beach and Miami Beach Marina Authorities needed two complete revisions of the project prior to final approval.
My work encompasses a wide variety of mediums. From elaborate sketches, to sculptural elements, boxed pieces, to murals. I have focused on the real and the perceived and it has been both dark and light. My work like the world around me is in a constant flux, but at the same time what I am expressing has remained the same. I look forward to the unexpected and in continuing my journey as an artist.
I’m a first generation American born citizen from immigrant Cuban parents. I’m also one of six siblings including a twin brother who is only five minutes older than me. My parents were teenage sweethearts in Cuba, but were both forced to follow their parents into new unexplored territories in America. They left Cuba during the beginning of Fidel Castro’s regime. As countless other immigrants have done in the past, my father first entered the United States through that historical harbor guarded by the Statue of Liberty; he became a New Yorker. My mother her sister, and their windowed mother came to Miami, but then went on to various states, including Chicago. Both of my parents went on to marry other people and begin new lives. My mother had one daughter from her first marriage and my father had a daughter and a son from his. Though their first marriages did not work out, they would later find each other again in Miami. Being single parents who were both still very young, it wasn’t long before family matchmakers took matters into their own hands and introduced the couple. You can say there was a fairy tale in exile.
My parents had always been attracted for one another and grew up with similar religious beliefs, so once reunited; they quickly married and began to enlarge their family. Together they had three other children, all boys. Two of those boys were fraternal twins, of which I was one. We grew up in a bilingual home. My mother because of her travels had learned to speak English fluently and became a legal secretary. My father who first began working in LaGuardia Airport would eventually work at the Miami International Airport where he retired after twenty-five years of service.
As for me I was always a very self-aware child growing up. I had a good understanding of, as well as a deep concern for, the adults in my life and their plight.
At a young age I realized that being a child meant not having many responsibilities, whereas being an adult meant lots of worries. So I became concerned about growing up, because I didn’t think that I would ever manage as an adult, I guess a part of me did not want to be a Cuban at a time when Cubans were still the first exiles in South Florida.
I also noticed a difference between myself and this new breed of Cuban exiles. I considered myself an American not a Cuban, and I looked at these newcomers as mere refuges. Soon I would realize that these exiles were my roots staring me right in the face. As I matured I learned to identify with that perspective while in turn identifying with my Cuban roots. I acquired much of my knowledge from my Grandmother and her stories. She would give me an occasional glimpse of Cuba as she had once experienced it herself. I remember bringing these stories to life in my own subconscious and feeling as if I was seeing these memories as clear as she did. In many ways these moments spent with my Grandmother became like a form of exercise, broadening my creative senses.
The conflicts I experienced on who I was and where I came from, as well as the fact that I was one of a brood of siblings, made me search for something that was my own. In my early work I began to resolve many of these issues. I still remember my first experience in the arts at the age of five. My teacher gave us an outline of a butterfly on a poster board in order to color by section. I began cutting out the wings and affixing them back onto the body, taking unusual colors and creating designs on pure emotion. My teacher was confused at first, but she supported my creativity. Other children felt comfortable around me through my art. It was then that I learned that through art I could fit in. Always the quiet type and sort of an outcast, it was easy to voice myself through the arts. This was the first time that I felt passionate about anything at all. I wanted to be an artist from that day and beyond.
As a student attending Miami-Senior High I spent much of my junior and senior years in the art room indulging my passion and experimenting with every type of medium. Mine was a growing and obsessive passion and I began to struggle with my classes. My art teacher, at the time, Mrs. Dee recommended that I apply at the New World School of the Art program in downtown Miami. They had a program, which integrated the art curriculum of Miami-Dade Community College with that of the University of Florida into a four-year course of study. I applied and was accepted during a closed-door portfolio critique by the Dean of Admissions. The Dean had almost decided not to accept my portfolio until one of my 2-D pieces caught his eye. I had brought this particular piece in a box inside a garbage bag. I was reluctant to show this work, because I thought it was still too raw for him to comprehend. Yet based on this 2-D piece I was accepted into New World School of the Arts. I also obtained some valuable advice from the Dean who told me never to disregard a piece that may seem unfinished.
As a freshman I found myself as a student in a 2-D class taught by Fredrick Snitzer. On the very first day of class, the professor offered anyone interested in a job in his Coral Gables Gallery to work part time gallery helper. I quickly raised my hand and accepted the part time job, working after school. This first year would be the most critical year in my entire artistic life. I was learning quickly at New World School of the Arts during the morning while evolving my artistic knowledge in the evening. At the gallery I learned to stretch canvas and install the art work. More important I learned by observing many works as produced by his stable of Cuban masters. I met artists like Thomas Esson, Julio Cruz, Ruben Torres Llorca, Carlos Cardenas and Jose Bedia’. Along this journey I also discovered Dali, Etcher, Maria Brito and Luis Nevelson who inspired the boxes I still construct today. I remember staring for hours at works by Luis Cruz Azaceta and Wilfredo Lam. All of these artists in one-way or another influenced my work. I was inspired by their passionate wisdom and exploration of various materials. The impact of these first couple years attending New World and working at the gallery cemented my future as a serious artist. After my sophomore year I decided to take some time and in order to figure out exactly what kind of artist I was. I wanted to define myself as an artist,
which would in turn define my life. I wanted to discover my strengths and weaknesses. What would be my focus and subject matter throughout my lifetime as an artist? What type of medium will I concentrate on? Would I use various mediums? I had always felt comfortable using a variety of materials and so it came to pass that my peers eventually labeled me a 2-D mix-media artist. Today many refer me as a contemporary mix-media/installation artist. Those who are not interested in mix-media or installations prefer that I concentrate on my sketches and detailed drawing. Currently I’ve brought these elements together to form cohesiveness between the mediums.
In the beginning I was intrigued by the complex social structure of the “familistic society”. I believed, and still do that the family environment in many aspects can give us a view into today’s chaotic and complex world. Thus, many of my earlier art works reflect these ideas. They also focus on the subconscious interactions among family members. I studied my own daily encounters with my family members from the perspective of a brother, son, cousin and grandson. I noticed that I impacted the family core in so many different ways as well. There were sophisticated and unconscious relationships going on, the types that can only be formed by human beings. These relationships build the stability needed as we mature in society. It was this special bond between one family member and another, which fascinated me most. I began to understand that within the family unit, our most critical childhood memories are formed.
These are the same childhood memories, for better or worst, that lingers in our subconscious for the remainder of our lives. They are usually unique onto each individual, but in my case, they were shared by my fraternal twin brother. The “twin to twin” perspective on the world played a large role on how I looked at society and, of course how it affected my work. My unique view of the world stems from many of these past memories. My brother has been the subject of my work and will probably always play a role in my work at some level.
It is interesting how the things we vaguely remember, the foggy details of our lives, are sometimes more vital in building the framework of who we are than the actual Knowledge we acquire through out the years. It is precisely these details and foggy moments that embody my work and give its own life. My work, particularly from 2001-2003, attempted to capture the deeper cause and affect of my subject matter. At the time I combined 2-D and 3-D elements to capture the vision of my work. During this phase of my career, and from this large body of work, many sub-series originated; some which were completely independent and others which were experimental. Overall, however, things in my own family began to change. This style remained a constant in my work for some time, but as I continued to grow and evolve, and as things in my own family began to change, I realized that so did my art.
At the beginning of the 2004 year I decided that my work needed a change of pace and a new approach. However, change is not that easy, and soon I hit a creative wall head on. It is common for artists to experience creative blocks now and again, but the severity and duration of these blocks differ from artist to artist. I never thought that I would hit a wall, yet here I was at an impasse. I decided that this was a test and although some artists fail and even disappear into their own abyss, I was determined to continue consistently. I’ve had work documented in detail and I’ve seen my art travel abroad to various shows, exhibitions and residencies. People had purchased the work, but for me the work still needed to evolve. I decided to throw away my recent sketches and started from scratch and so a metamorphosis began.
“A new perspective a fresh approach”, that is what I kept telling myself, but what exactly did that entail? For me it meant I had to take my most passionate and important topics and transfer them into a pile of new ideas. Visually I wanted to make the work more personal. I had always spent a great deal of time sketching and creating schematically drawings. I had been known to sketch during work, in the studio and even in the bathroom if needed. So I began to concentrate on filtering this medium into this new body of work. I also wanted to tell a story in this new body of work. I was determined to create a project that would cause a mood shift in the gallery atmosphere. This shift would be caused by the drawings and 3-D elements as they coexisted in a narrative story.
Then on June 10, 2005 “Ezayah Silhouettes”, my newest efforts, opened along side with Erman’s “Air My Laundry” in an exhibition entitled Surviving Memories at Diaspora Vibe Gallery. This exhibition, my first two-man show, marked a transformation in my style. I was given a complete gallery space to be used for my mix-media work, which comprised of sculptures, onsite drawings, and projections. I incorporated graffiti like drawings into projections onto the wall near scenes in Ezayah’s life. There were life size papier-mâché sculptures hung from the ceiling, which represented the physical, solid reality of Ezayah while the projected drawings became the emotional depictions of her life. These projections were large and covered every inch of the gallery space. The lighting was dim so that the viewer could experience the projected images as silhouettes. Shadows cast by the sculptures in harmony, linked these various elements as one.
The story of Ezayah was inspired subsequently with the future birth of my first-born and in part through a conversation with a Professor regarding displacement. The topic of conversation that particular day was the difficulty of adjusting single parents trying to raise their children in a new environment. The character “Ezayah” evolved as a female since I myself thought that my wife would give birth to a baby girl as well.
I envisioned Ezayah to be twelve years of age. Her mother a single parent, decided to begin a new life in a distant town. She begins to struggle to keep her daughter from doing the same. You see, in Ezayah’s case that would mean living in a world of her own (a world her mother does not understand). The young adolescent Ezayah is without the friends she left behind. Their house sits on a solitary hillside overlooking the town below. She sits on an old wooden chair with a leather seat. Her nearest neighbor is a large oak tree. These elements figure prominently in the gallery space. The oak tree has branches extending over the hillside and because of its grandeur she finds comfort sitting next to it. It’s thousand of leaves like a canopy protect her. Eventually the oak tree becomes her only friend. This is also one of the projected images during the exhibition. Ezayah enjoys waiting for storms to rise up from the mountains behind the town below. The storms seem to make the oak tree come alive as its leaves dance in the surging wind.
She often dreams of flying away like the birds nesting in the oak tree. She struggles to be free from this new and strange place, floating freely far, far away.
After the Ezayah Silhouettes exhibition my work centered mainly on drawings. These drawings now included the graffiti-like subliminal words as discovered in the Ezayah Silhouettes Exhibition. In the past my drawings substitute for words, they spoke for my work and told the story of my sculptural pieces. Currently I’m using these same drawing as actual art. This in turn has made me more versatile in producing and completing the work during the day. My sketchbook has increased in size and has begun to resemble a mail order catalog.
My daily documentation of everyday events and occurrences has opened the door to this new body of work. Like my previous efforts, my new work still represents the reason behind the reality, but they go deeper in expressing what we perceive everyday as opposed to what we actually see. They are a combo of our everyday visual cues and our subliminal thoughts and fragmented memories, which become part of our psyche. I feel that it is important to document what I refer to as “negative memories”, because they are vital in deeming our adult personas. My work is a visual storyboard of thoughts and feelings, which represent something personal or universal. The drawings reflect not only my experiences, but also the very real experiences of others. It attempts to shed light on the darkness we all have inside and to provoke a person into delving deep into his or her own subconscious while searching out their true essence. As produced the drawings will convey life’s daily emotions while the sculptural elements act as the physical presence in the work. They combine what we see with our actual eyes and what we may see subcouciously. The aesthetic challenge is always combining the drawings and the sculptures to morph seamlessly as one.
Also important is the proposal process of future projects. Designing schematical drawings, which include installation details, elevation drawings and plot plans have inhanced my proposals for specific future projects. Skills learned as a structural designer for sign corporations have aided the utilization of blueprints.
In the 2007 installation entitled “Bedtime Cones” a complete blue print was designed in order to further assist board members and a panel of judges understand the manufacturing and installation of the work. These architectural blue prints include a work statement, construction details of the work, installation schematics, elevation plan, floor plan and a project budget. I used a similar type of proposal in obtaining approval for the Miami Beach Marina (lower level tenant elevations) commissioned mural. The mural was to done on a fifteen foot high by seventy-two foot long wall. The City of Miami Beach and Miami Beach Marina Authorities needed two complete revisions of the project prior to final approval.
My work encompasses a wide variety of mediums. From elaborate sketches, to sculptural elements, boxed pieces, to murals. I have focused on the real and the perceived and it has been both dark and light. My work like the world around me is in a constant flux, but at the same time what I am expressing has remained the same. I look forward to the unexpected and in continuing my journey as an artist.
"The Voyage"2005
"The Diablos Series" 2004
