ABOUT THE ARTIST | MORE IMAGES FROM THE SHOW
My work explores my love for bold color, voluptuous design, and strong graphic images: a passion that comes from a rich cross and sub cultural source. As the oldest son of a Cuban exile in West Virginia, I developed my aesthetic submerged in Appalachian economics and pre-Castro nostalgia. I base my images on the common appreciation and importance both my Hispanic father and rural community placed on their automobiles. These machines represented in form and function pride, optimism, and freedom. It is my desire to reflect the spirit of these things in my artwork.
I work mostly abstractly. The references to cars are not explicit. They are revealed in the motion-laden curves and churning gestures of the mechanical forms I paint. While each painting is unique, my vocabulary of outlines and solid shapes are assembled in various permutations. Sometimes elements are cannibalized from different models to design new individualized hybrids. A process akin to building customized cars. The surfaces are crisp and clean, much the same as a polished and pristine new car. Finally, thrown into the mix are retro and pop culture inspired color combinations derived from corporate logos, sports teams and stock cars. While not immediately recognizable as such, I hope the paintings resonate on a subconscious level, triggering immediate as well as elusive responses. Color and form thus becomes content as the abstractions become signs themselves for past and present aesthetic sensibilities, and iconic encapsulations of commercial design.
For the past three years I have been teaching lithography and relief printmaking in the Fine Art Department of Parson's School of Design in New York City. I am also presently teaching Silkscreen at the State University of New York, New Paltz. I began teaching Introductory and Advanced Printmaking at New Paltz in the Fall of 2002 . In the Spring of 1999 and 2000, I taught Lithography, Drawing, and Two-Dimensional Design at Dartmouth College. I have been a visiting artist at American University's Graduate Studies Program in Italy, where I instructed intaglio classes, and for four summers I have been a visiting artist and have taught various methods of printmaking at Chautauqua Institute in western New York State. I have also taught courses at the Manhattan Graphics Center in New York City, and the Connecticut Graphic Arts Center in Norwalk, CT.
In all my classes, I strive to create an inclusive community within the printshop with the intent of encouraging students to interact, learn from one another, and make full use the facilities. I tailor my curricula carefully, and design my courses to fit into the context of the students' courseload. At Dartmouth, I directed the studentsâ focus towards an investigation of content as it relates to drawing issues. Most recently, at Parsons, I have sought to introduce the printmaking process to students, while stressing formal issues that complement the focus of the design and illustration departments.
Outside of the academic setting, I actively maintain a commitment to printmaking. I am a co-founder of Cannonball Press, an online source for prints. Our goal in publishing is to revive a truly democratic twenty-five-dollar print that can be made economically, and purchased by all. We select our artists from the vast pool of young national and international talent, and promote and sell the work ourselves.
I also work as a master printmaker. For four years I printed professionally at Jungle Press Editions, a print shop that produces fine art lithographs and etchings. The artists I have collaborated with include: Rudy Burkhart, Stephen Westfall, Michael Mazur, Melissa Meyer, Joan Snyder, Brian Wood, Mary Frank, Mary Heilmann, Jacqueline Humpheries, Elena Sisto, Charlie Hewitt, and Yoshishige Furukawa. This group of artists has provided me with challenges and insights into the applications of a number of different photographic and digital media. I have assisted several of these artists with projects that combine these modern techniques with the traditional printmaking methods of stone lithography, woodblock, and intaglio.
In addition to teaching and collaborating with artists, I continue to make and actively exhibit my own paintings, drawings and prints. In 1999 I was awarded a Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio in Manhattan for one year. I exhibit locally, at the Dirt Gallery in Kansas City, and at Decatur Blue in Washington D.C. I have also been involved with community art projects both in and out of New York City. For the past four years I have been making collaborative murals and time-lapse painting projects with a group of artists called the Barnstormers. The work has included a time-lapse painting project commissioned by and created for the television show "Sesame Street," an ongoing mural project that took place at Smack Mellon Gallery, a former spice warehouse in the D.U.M.B.O section of Brooklyn, murals on tobacco barns and tractor trailers in Rural North Carolina, and at galleries nationally and in Japan.