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 

YAP's Dreams and Realities Exhibition

Consider the phrase: “claiming places”.

Amy Flroes,  Home, 2012, Chair, paint, photographs and stuffed  animas

In El VEstíbulo

Dreams & Realities:

Works by the Students of Taller’s Youth Artist Program

January 25th to March 23rd, 2013

If chairs could talk…

Consider the phrase: “claiming places”. What does it mean to claim your place, to mark a spot as your own? In essence, it is providing evidence of your existence. The students of Youth Artist Program at Taller Puertorriqueño questioned this when provided the opportunity to participate with the Claiming Places series. In our conversations, we discussed home, family, community, graffiti, furniture, video games, posters, etc. It was the image of the chair in the family living room that stuck in our minds. We peeled away the layers of the chair in order to understand why we came to this image and how we may use it when talking about claiming places.

The chair is a universal place of rest. Chairs can be found in your home, in restaurants, in the park, or on the street. It is a place of comfort for the traveler, the worker, the young, and the old. When we sit, we nest. The nest serves the purpose of the sitter: to relax, to learn, to collect items or thoughts, to feed – these are the evidences of our existence. Sometimes, we are even particular about the type of location of our nests. A person may ‘call a spot’ before taking a seat or go through great discussion with others about where the best place is to sit.

A seat declares the impression of a person. The depth of seat cushion dents informs how a person sits, the weight, how long a person sits or how long the nest was abandoned. Seats that remain long show evidence by stains, rips, lumps, and strange colors. When seeing an empty chair in the trash, we can imagine the nest it once was: survivor of many coffee spills and book-readings, story-time with the ones you long, refuge and safe-haven from the hardships of the outside world, or a child’s play-time rocket ship to the moon. 

It is this type of imagination and personal touch that inspired the YAP students to take classroom chairs from the Art Room and convert them into messages about themselves, their community, and their history to create a nest.

Participating Artists: Ricardo Lopez, Jai Rodriguez, Jailene Duprey, Nestor Tamayo, and Amy Flores

Teacher: Caitlin Peck

Casa Monarca and Aquí Estamos

Ahdanah talking about the people in her photos

Casa Monarca brought their students to Taller Puertorriqueño on Friday, November 9th,  to see Leticia Roa Nixon's (Ahdanah), and César Viveros Herrera's exhibitions.

Ahdanah discussing her documentary El Sol Sale Para Todos

Ahdanah discusses with the children the stories behind her photographs and documentary.  She explains that how overcoming great difficulty, these people from Mexico had come to make Philadelphia their home.  She highlights to them their connection with the people in the photographs and them being here.

Ahdanah in white

Leticia Roa Nixon (Ahdanah): Aquí Estamos

September 28th to December 8th, 2012 

El Vestíbulo

Carnival at Penn's Landing, 2012

Digital Print, 12 " x 15" 

Ahdanah was born in Mexico City and has lived in Philadelphia since 1985. She has a B.S. in Communications from Universidad Iberoamericana. Since 1992, as a photojournalist for Hispanic newspapers, she has been documenting the diversity of Latino immigrants in this city. / Esta exhibición documenta las vidas de mejicanos en Filadelfia, sus historias personales y sus esperanzas.

We Are America, 2006
Digital Print, 12" x 15"

 Leticia is the publisher of the blog “Las Recientes Noticias” (LRNews). She is a certified court interpreter for the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and is a volunteer at the Latino Partnership Initiative, JUNTOS, and Casa Monarca.

With Laura Deutch and Carlos Pascual Sánchez, she produced the video documentary, El Sol Sale Para Todos (The Sun Shines for All), in partnership with JUNTOS and thanks to a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant (April 2009). She has also published Aquí Estamos/Here We Are, a bilingual book of South Philadelphia Mexican immigrants’ oral stories.

Ahdanah was co-editor of Mirrors and Windows/Espejos y Ventanas, Oral Stories of Mexicans of Kennett Square. She is finishing her book, Arándanos, Oral Stories of Philadelphia Puerto Rican Blueberry Pickers, to be self-published in 2012, and has published two biographical books for children, Blueberry Lady and The Mexican Lindbergh.


In 2009, with Dalia O’Gorman, she co-founded Casa Monarca, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserve and promote Mexican art, culture, and traditions through artistic and educational programs in South Philadelphia.