Dino Vazquez - Futuro Metálico

Lorenzo Homar Gallery

Dates: April 19th to May 25th, 2013

Reception: April 19th, 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Taller Puertorriqueño, as part of the Claiming Places cycle, is pleased to present Dino Vazquez’s first show at the Lorenzo Homar Gallery. Vazquez is a self-taught Philadelphia-based artist and vernacular architect who works with found materials to create robotic assemblages. His home is a destination point in his community of North Philadelphia and an example of his singular vision. For his exhibition, he recreates his home to bring together his passions for working with found materials and design to create areas that disrupt patterns of behavior in order to comment on the repeated sequences of seeing and acting that he views as problematic in society. His work, he feels, is also a statement for the preservation and protection of the environment.

Dino Vazquez

About the artist

Born in Bayamon Puerto Rico in 1957, Vazquez recalls starting making art at age 9 with wood carvings and drawings. Then life led him away from art, and he dedicated 10 years of his life to surfing. During those ten years he developed a newfound respect for nature. Looking to settle down, he moved to the United States in 1987 where he married and raised two children. Tragic events in his life again changed his path, where he rediscovered his interest in art as form of emotional release.

Closing Reception for Entre Sombras – Site of Memory

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Closing reception poster for Entre Sombras- Site of Memory

Closing reception with the artist:

Saturday, March 30th, 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Esperanza Cortés

Entre Sombras - Site of Memory

At the Lorenzo Homar Gallery

Information about the show and the artist is here.

Amy Lee Flores: Home

 My project is about what I feel home is to me.

Amy Flores, Home, 2012, Chair, paint, photos, paper, pen, cloth and stuffed animals

 Amy Flores Artist Statement

 My project is about what I feel home is to me. The flowers play the role of nature and my last name. The doll is very special to me because it was a gift on the Three Kings Day when I was very young, its name is Taino, which is the indigenous tribe’s name from Puerto Rico. The Siberian Husky is special because it’s always on my bed and when my little brother gets scared I give it to him and he feels safe. The pillow the doll is sitting was something my step-dad gave me -- it’s truly special to me because my step-dad raised me my whole life and when he gave it to me he thought of me. It’s pink and it says “Princess”, and my step-dad thought it looked like me. I chose the colors on the chair because those are the colors I want for my room because these colors are calm yet exciting in a way. The hearts are special for me because it’s how I started drawing. It shows a sign of life and love and those are the three main things I like to have in my life. The headphones show how much I love music and how I can’t live without it. The music also shows the enjoyment I find in dancing and just having fun at any kind of party. The picture of the horse you see was one I painted with crayons. I chose to make that picture the best out of the whole coloring book. It’s my favorite because it shows the Puerto Rican flag’s colors, which is my homeland.                              

  Amy Lee Flores      

Close up

Details

Flores at work 

Dreams & Realities

Our project represents the contrast between how our community looks now and what we want our community to look like.

Jenissa Briana Rodriguez, Nestor Augusto Tamayo & Jailene Alanis Duprey, Our Community, Chair, paper, paint, cloth photographs and found materials

Our project represents the contrast between how our community looks now and what we want our community to look like. We want to show how polluted our community looks when people just throw garbage on the floor.

 Our project relates to the topic because the main theme of the project is claiming places. We are showing how we claim our place. We take care of it, plant, and make sure it looks beautiful. In making this project we used all recycled items. The sun was made out of cardboard, as were the trees. The big flowers and stones were made out of tissue paper and the waterfall was used from a piece of blanket. We thought it would look interesting since the fabric had texture, which made the fabric look like water. The leaves were pulled off of a fake bouquet of flowers. For the back of the chair we used dark colors that nobody really likes looking at so that you can tell it’s trash. We used things that people threw in the recycle bin to represent the litter on our streets.

 Our message is that if you want your community, the place you live in to look nice then you have to take charge and not let there be trash everywhere. It’s embarrassing when you see empty cans just thrown on the floor. If you see trash on the floor, pick it up. Let’s make our community look nice; it’s our environment!

 Jenissa Briana Rodriguez, Nestor Augusto Tamayo and Jailene Alanis Duprey

Rear View.  From  desolation to hope

Nestor AugustoTamayo and 

Jenissa Briana Rodriguez  by Our Community

Wide View

In the YAP Studio 

Ricardo Lopez, Street Kings Artist Statement

This chair represents “the ghetto” where violence is everywhere and easy because there are not enough cops protecting my community.

Recardo Lopez, Street Kings, 2012, Chair, paint,  pencil, paper, cloth and paint cans

Ricardo Lopez's Artist Statement

 This chair represents “the ghetto” where violence is everywhere and easy because there are not enough cops protecting my community. Violence can be good by self-defense and bad because it’s easier to get away with.

The gold crown in my chair represents how gangs claim their territory. The bullet holes and the color red in the chair represents how people get shot fighting for their area. The color black and the graffiti represents the people I see claiming their places, expressing what they feel: memorial graffiti – when somebody dies, political graffiti – expressing themselves against the government, and vandalism – to destroy someones’ area. This chair tells a story about what I experience every day in the community.

This chair also has a story about a person that is trying to rule his area that goes through fights, shootings, and drug dealing to control the area in the way he wants and sit on the throne. In my neighborhood, you can’t sleep a night without hearing gunshots, and a month without any violence.

 Ricardo Lopez

Street Kings

Detail

  

Ricardo Lopez by Street Kings

Esperanza Cortés: In Entre Sombras - Site of Memories

Lorenzo Homar Gallery

February 8th to March 30th, 2013

Reception:

Friday, February 8th, 5:30 to 8:00 p.m

Esperanza Cortés’ installations and paintings in Entre Sombras - Site of Memories, are tokens of human frailty, fears, and injustices that as a woman, mother, Colombian and Latina shape the world she sees. The Lorenzo Homar Gallery was fully resurfaced and smoothed as an essential part of the installation. Working with glass beads, clay, pigments and household objects such as chairs, sewing machine tables, metal chains and a basket she transformed into a bassinet, Cortés seeks to connect with individuals on a primal level, jolting the viewer with the familiarity of these objects against the otherwise stark presentation. She sees the female form and femininity as a center that is encircled and encompassed by compassion, violence, life, death, place and belonging.

The works presented here touch on the consequences of violence on women through war and abuse, exploitation of resources, financial insecurity, birth and death, and racial profiling.

Cortés, born in Bogotá, Colombia, emigrated to New York City at the age of four. Her interest in art began as a child and was shaped by her experiences in the Catholic Church through its ceremonies, altars, architecture and stained glass windows. She was also drawn into the arts by her family, her father’s work with metal, her mother’s knitting, beadwork and crocheting, and her grandmother’s cooking and stories of her native Colombia. As an artist, she sees a duality between personal and community roles. Within the gallery walls, her work feeds on her personal visions and experiences. Out in the streets, her methodology changes. Her work reacts to the environment, and, as she describes, is “in dialogue with its surroundings.”

Cortés lives and works in New York and has exhibited widely throughout the United States in places such as the Neuberger Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Mexic-Arte Museum in Texas.

Her website is here.

César Viveros Herrera: No Me Conformo

Poster for No Me Conformo

September 28th to November 10th, 2012

Lorenzo Homar Gallery

West wing view of the gallery

For this exhibition, César Viveros Herrera asked for the Lorenzo Homar Gallery to be painted a deep red so he could recreate a temple or “teocalli” of out of the memories of his youth. Born in Tejería, Veracruz, Viveros, working from the recollections of his childhood where he would come across ancient artifacts from past civilizations in his father’s cornfields, recreates precious iconographic pieces to construct an ancient place that is still alive and real. It is a world populated with relics of Coatlicue, the Aztec Mother God, to Kukulkan, the feathered serpent, and ancient ruins. To many of the people of his town, these relics did not seem valuable, but to him, the artifacts awoke an intense interest in learning about pre-Columbian civilization and his personal connections to them. Viveros perceives that connection with civilizations from the Olmecs to the Mayans, the Aztecs and Mexico, and with him here, a connection to Philadelphia. 

Kukulkan

As a muralist, Viveros applies his keen sense for seeing these connections to each community he makes a mural for. He is able to listen to the people, opening himself to them so to comprehend their needs and desires. In this show, he is listening to his own voices, his present context, and his cultural and ancestral influences. Over the coming weeks, he will use the walls of the gallery to create a personal mural. On November 2nd, he will conduct a ceremony for the Day of Dead. During the reception, guests can go to a computer station, provide their name, and, by using the Mayan calendar, decipher their Mayan name. 

Reception for No Me Conformo.  Participants working on the mural. 

César Viveros Herrera has been painting murals in Philadelphia for the past 10 years in a wide range of communities. His photorealistic murals offer fantastical collages, often covering entire sides of buildings to create a reflective sense of place for the particular community it depicts and with whom he deeply engages. One of his murals is New Fire (Fuego Nuevo), on Girard near 3rd street, and Cops and Kids at S. 20th St. and Point Breeze Ave. He is also the president of the Mexican Cultural Center.

Other post on Viveros is here.

Interview with Viveros is here.