Artist Profile | Acidwinzip

ACIDWINZIP is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery during the month of January. Her digital collages are inspired by nostalgia, Internet culture, Religion, and Art History and are comprised of computer-generated images and other elements, cut and pasted onto a digital canvas. The work is mostly a humorous take on modern internet consumer culture, our obsession with nostalgia and the internet persona. It explores the contrast of traditional art -vs- modern computer-generated art and remixing the two to create something new.

Read on to learn more about her work and influences. 

What are influences on your work and artistic practice?

Nostalgia, internet culture, graphic design from the 80’s and 90’s, Religion, and Art History are the primary influences in my art. I was deeply inspired by the Vaporwave art genre starting out. I had never seen anything like it and wanted to make my own art, as I was already a part-time graphic designer at the time. I made very generic stuff at first, mostly to pass the time. I was constantly creating and when I started it wasn’t very good. I would make a piece every day and since I was creating as often as I was, I got better a lot quicker. I also figured out what I liked and discovered that I had a specific style all of my own. I have a very good sense of what kind of artist I am now. Now, instead of posting daily, I create maybe once or twice a week. 

What drives you as an artist?

What drives me is the growth that comes with creating. My art has changed so much in the last year. I am using new compositions and new ideas. I’m excited to see what I’m going to be up to next. I felt like this lost wandering artist for so many years. Now that I have a direction and have found a path, I want to see how far that path goes. Also, I am not made for a 9-5 desk job. I’ve done that gig and I was miserable. After I quit my desk job, I was like, “I never want to do that again.” I felt that if I applied myself to something I love, it would grow to something that would hopefully become my life’s work.

Where do you find inspiration? 

I am highly influenced by the Baroque Art Period and Greek Hellenistic sculpture. I love dramatic art. I love taking elements of those periods and remixing them with images from the 80's and 90's. I am deeply inspired by beauty, chaos and drama in traditional art, but also by soulless consumerism in modern day American culture. Finally, I admire the friends that I have made on Instagram through my art. No joke, they are my greatest inspiration. These artists and musicians inspire me everyday and I have so much respect for them. 

Acidwinzip is a multimedia project developed by artist Ursula Zavala with works in digital and video art. that began November 2015 as a personal Instagram art project. She and her partner run VLH Illustration + Design and she is constantly collaborating with other Instagram artists. Her work is primarily web-based and you can see more of her work by visiting her website www.acidwinzip.tumblr.com or by following her on instagram @acidwinzip.

Artist Profile | Elyse Grams

Elyse Grams is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery during the month of December. The work that will be on view is from her "dysfunctional pottery" series in which she takes beautifully crafted ceramic vessels and alters them in such a way that they can no longer serve their original purpose. The vessels are broken, missing sides, slit open in spaces that are later mended, woven with yarn or sewn up with string. They remain beautiful, despite the loss of functionality and are meant to represent how we, as a society, hide our own brokenness and grief. 

Read on to learn more about her work and influences. 

My Body is Not My Own, Ceramic, Mixed Media. Image Courtesy of the Artist.  

What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice?

I grew up lucky enough to be surrounded by people, while not artists themselves, who were incredibly supportive of the things that I wanted to make. I read voraciously and I am incredibly interested in history, particularly women in history. While I am primarily a ceramic artist, I love learning new techniques and dabble in metal, wood, and fiber work whenever I’m able. I am still at university which enables me to develop and refine ideas over time and receive feedback on those ideas from peers and mentors. I operate under the idea of being a life-long learner. There is always a new skill or technique to learn and I want to develop and hone as many as possible. 

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

My hands have a life of their own. When I am upset or unable to express myself, I go to work. I believe that materials are a lot like languages and I am far more fluent in clay and fiber than I ever have been able to be in English. As a ceramic artist I think about the idea of functionality a lot and how that idea can be translated or talked about in different ways. In the majority of my work that idea expresses itself in conjunction with the idea of womanhood and what it means to be female. I created these works in response to an event that I could not, and still do not understand. I am passionate about art-making as a means to understand or begin to understand ideas, emotions, and events. I believe that we are a visual and tactile people, and art-making is a necessary part of life that should be nurtured.

Ceramic, Mixed Media. Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

Where you do find inspiration? 

I get most of my inspiration from poetry, history books, and novels. I have always loved to read, and find great solace in diving into someone else’s story. I am always looking for a new book to read, and if anyone reading this has any suggestions feel free to contact me with book titles! I have also been teaching art in some form or function since I was 16, to students ranging from 4 to 18. Although only a few years separates me from some of my students I walk into the classroom every day knowing that they are going to teach me something new. I am continually in awe of what they are capable of creating, and constantly think about their role in the world and how I am influencing it. 

From the Dysfunctional Pottery series, pit fired ceramic, woven. Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

Which artists do you admire most, and why? 

This is always such a hard question for me to answer; Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Judy Chicago, Gustav Klimt, are up there, but I always come back to Rothko. I have grown up visiting the Rothko Chapel, and it has a special connection to this work in particular. I go to the Chapel to seek out comfort. Rothko paintings have always been a space of reflection for me. In the absence of content I find my emotions projected back at me, the colors enhancing and shaping my moods. I have never found a space more liminal or inviting as a Rothko Chapel, and the solace I have found there throughout my life always keeps me coming back.

Steel Frame, Woven. Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

In addition to the exhibition at Provenance Gallery, you can see more of Grams' work at the closing reception of her BFA Exhibition on Friday, December 16th. On Saturday, December 17th, Grams will be selling pottery and small woven jewelry at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. She will also be showing new work in the S.M.A.R.T. Studio Space during Second Saturday in February.  

Visit her website www.elysegrams.squarespace.com or follow her on instagram @lyseygirl to see work in progress and pictures of some of her favorite art around the city.

Artist Profile | Kat Shevchenko

Kat Shevchenko is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery during the month of November. The series of paintings on view in her exhibition, Crux, is the story of the feminine archetype: the animus’ story of self realization and the possibility that the hope of transformation offers.  

Of this series of work, Shevchenko writes: "The paintings are all developed from sketchbook drawings that I did during a turbulent time in my life, where a lot of self introspection and uncertainty was rampant. They embody different moods-I felt the need to express them more stylistically, to represent a feeling, coming from a more intuitive realm, all are different facets exploring the transformative theme.  I plan to  keep exploring the Feminine in a more surrealistic narrative fashion for my future bodies of work, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface."

La Mystica, oil/egg tempera on panel, 18 x 24 in., 2015, Image Courtesy of the Artist.

What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice?

I used to be overly fixated with perfectionism with painting flawlessly and rendering every minute detail. Yet working in that manner has made me feel like I was missing something.  Reminiscing about how one of my past teachers was very encouraging to be savage and expressive with the physicality of the paint just being paint.  Now I am endeavoring to just to let experimentation, surprise and chance happen serendipitously and let myself go for change. And to let the painting breath with a life of its own, rather than get hung up on overly planning every step methodically.       

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art?

Someone once said that we are all bumping into the threads of a myth that has already been woven, I long to bring forth some clarity to the ones within my reach.  This existence is fleeting and the ability to be able to express something that was unfathomable a moment ago is what keeps me enchanted with the art making process.  When I receive feedback from someone that  says they see something in the finished work that I unconsciously was unaware of-it is revelatory, it’s like the missing piece of the puzzle falling into place completing the cycle.  

Tempest, oil/egg tempera on panel, 12 x 9 in., 2016, Image Courtesy of the Artist.

Where you do find inspiration?

Mainly natural science and cosmology have been bewildering me and keeping me wondering.  I was recently reading the essays of Carl Sagan, in one he describes how it is unfathomable to know a grain of salt, due to all the billions of atoms and their positions our mind can only hold onto one percent of that much information.  I am completely enthralled with digesting tidbits like that.  It’s the strange facts I’ll collect and stow away for later, like I was thinking about how a caterpillar completely breaks down its body as it transforms inside the chrysalis and how I could show that in a human expression. Natural curiosity of the world, culture, history, myth, metaphysics, cosmology, books, everything provides fuel for me, but nature always reigns supreme.

Which artists do you admire most, and why?

I have always truly admired Francisco de Goya, because I feel he is the first artist to truly step into the path of the modernist who unflinchingly depicted atrocities through nightmarish visions of the events and upheavals he experienced in his lifetime.  When I discovered Spanish painter Remedios Varo, I was enchanted with the multilayered approach that she used in her paintings with refined symbolism and allegory. She was intriguing being one of the pioneering female painters with an unique voice during that time; learning about  her life story was also equally fascinating.  From fleeing Spain’s Civil War to meeting the Surrealists in Paris, then having to escape France due to the World War and finally resettling in Mexico, her perseverance to not abandon her artistic pursuit despite the perilousness of life’s events was a testimony to the endurance of the creative spirit.    

Small Victory (Passion Triumphant), oil/egg tempera, 12 x 9 in., 2016, Image Courtesy of the Artist

You can view her current exhibition Crux at Provenance Gallery until November 27th, by appointment. Visit her website, www.kosmosofkat.com or follow her on instagram @Kosmosofkat to stay up to date on her current projects.

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Artist Profile | Jen Frost Smith

Jen Frost Smith is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in October. Her current installation, Adorn the Mess will be on view by appointment until October 29th. You can also view an interactive web-based performance online at https://adornthemess.persona.co throughout the month. 

In addition, Smith is the artist behind Yogurt Lump, what she considers the "softer side" of her practice. It's a more commercial and light-hearted practice of illustration and fashion accessories. You can visit her website, www.jenfrostsmith.com or follow her on instagram @jenfrostsmith to stay up to date on her current projects. 

Deluge, Installation View, Clamp Light Studios & Gallery, January 2016

What are some of the influences on your work & artistic practice?

Stanya Kahn was a visiting artist when I was in undergrad at UT and the work she did with Harry Dodge had a profound effect on me. You could be a woman and be fucked up and make videos that are surreal, yet comment on what is happening in the world without being outright political.  Yet it was political in a sense where you feel this disconnect and awkwardness that drives you to the meaning. Basically, you could be a female artist that doesn't need to rely on beauty or mysticism. That being said there is so much influence in my work. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Michael Smith to name some that have influenced me from the start. I guess a big influence is graffiti culture, pop culture, and existentialism. Ha. But it's true.

I'm always making. It's how I cope with my nervous energy. I'm always doing something creative and worrying about it. If I look too much at what others are doing I can get too negative and spiral. So while I'm actively making I just go for it. And when I'm doing research I try to allow myself admire and try not to compare myself.

Detail from Deluge

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

I'm the youngest of 7 children. My mother gave birth to me when she was 47. I grew up in a conflicted home. I've always been an artist and had a strong studio practice. In some ways, I feel this was a method to coping with abuse and trauma. My mother died when I was 21. I was in an abusive romantic relationship and everything happening to me kinda fell into itself. After I healed and cleansed myself of the dirt I was able to focus on making a career out of my artistic practice and decided to go to school to become formally trained.

Doubt Grows, Animated Gif, 2015

Where you do find inspiration? 

Lately, I find inspiration in what is happening on the East coast, Clamp Light, and Instagram. I have so many inspiring friends living in Baltimore: Madeleine Cutrona (NYC) and Margaret Rogers. The East Coast has a different vibe from here and we often exchange correspondence to flex our art muscles, so to speak. 

I also find inspiration in the energy of San Antonio and the artists who hustle, Raul Gonzalez, Megan Solis, and so 

There are so many artists in any scene who are so full of themselves that you can't take them seriously. I appreciate artists who are working to fully support themselves in this community and artists whom I work with alongside in the gallery or who pass through. 

Which artists do you admire most, and why?

I don't most admire any one artist. We are all out there trying to work through our ideas, struggles, and concepts in our own way. I admire any artist who gives it their all. Who overcomes critics and keeps fighting to show another day! 

The Fight / The Hole, Mixed Media

Artist Profile Allison Valdivia

Allison Valdivia is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in September. Please join us on September 10th for the opening reception. You can see more of her work at www.allisonvaldivia.com or by following her on instagram @allisoncvaldivia.

Read on to learn more about her work and influences.

What are some of the influences on your work & artistic practices?

I am definitely influenced by my family life growing up. I was a military brat who was constantly moving from city to city, state to state. I feel as though this sort of lifestyle created a personality that is always looking for growth and change. My mother was always working hard while my father was deployed. My older sister, at 7, would take care of me and my younger siblings. I was very shy among my peers and kept to myself quite a bit. My only outlet would be constantly journal writings, and illustrations of my day to day.

I have found that I am incredibly taken by process, getting completely lost in it. There are so many possibilities with every idea. In some ways, this causes anxiety for me, as I try to find the correct way to follow through with an idea. I am drawn to texture, finding beauty and a sort of metamorphosis where there was once decay and destruction.

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you’re able to express through your art?

Throughout my life, I’ve always felt the need to create. In my past, I found it difficult to speak directly of personal situations and I found that drawing them out as a visual metaphor was a therapeutic way for me to express my thoughts. Attending military schools as a child, there wasn’t ever any real focus on artistic practice. In college, as I studied Latin American Artists and surrealism, I found myself drawn to artists that exploit their fears and anxieties.

In my current work, I am exploring the heartbreak and disarray that occurs between broken families. I see the constant pattern of absence with the fathers, husbands, and lovers in my family as a generational absence. I uncover old family photographs, and blow the tiniest of them up into a larger size, exploiting the void that has occurred in our lives. The absent father. The absent mother. The motherless child. The childless mother.

Where do you find inspiration?

After a study abroad trip to Peru, it became clear to me that I had been constantly searching for my identity as a Latina artist. Since I was a child, I’ve been fascinated seeing old images of my mother standing with the father that I never knew. I created stories in my head of what their lives were like and continued to collect more photographs with every opportunity I had. Some of the photographs show a trace of an action, having been ripped up, or cut away, or scotch taped. These actions act as a narrative for me, as I play the part of the historian trying to understand what took place chronologically throughout my family history.

Which artists do you admire most and why?

One artist I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know is Sarah Fox. I admire her work ethic, and her honesty. I enjoy her approach to creating her pieces, her collages, paintings and sculptures. Her art is incredibly sincere and personal and that’s something that I strive for in my own work. Louise Bourgeois is someone that I look up to, as she created work as a form of therapy to escape family trauma from her childhood. Her pieces are dark in subject matter, brooding and explicit. 

Artist Profile: Andrea Reyes

Momento #6, Image Courtesy of the Artist 

Andrea Reyes is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in August. Please join us on August 13 for the opening reception. You can see more of her work at www.andreareyesart.com or by following her on instagram @andreaa.reyes.

Read on to learn more about her work and influences.

Detail, Tacto #7, Image Courtesy of the Artist 

 What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice?
I find myself influenced by children, especially when they experiment with materials for the first time and expressions of contentment and astonishment reflect on their faces. I am also influenced by the beauty of corrosion, peeled paint, plants, or any kind of texture that is rough (or smooth), porous, and colorful. I am intrigued to touch different textures any time I see them. 

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

The idea that art is full of surprises and has endless possibilities of how materials can be utilized, and the random occurrences being a probability of accident, change, and chance in my artwork. 

Momento #10, Image Courtesy of the Artist 

Tell me about your current projects. 

I am planning in creating larger pieces where I can create different experiences; probably create a bigger physical contact experience between the viewer and the painting to feel that moment of awe when observing the painting. Simply, just continue creating art with deeper experimentation, self-discovery, and by exploring boundaries. 

Where you do find inspiration? 

I find inspiration in being in a state of mind where the unconsciousness of things that I see, skim, observe, and touch in my ordinary life. I want my hands and the materials to speak by themselves, having moments of spontaneity and impulsiveness, focusing in the process of creation and trust.

Tacto #9, Image Courtesy of the Artist 

Which artists do you admire most, and why? 

I truly admire Tom Friedman; his work is about everyday material in a way that art can be made out of anything. He makes the ordinary look unordinary. Friedman is one of those artists that when I look over his artwork I am like “Damn! Why didn’t I think of that first?” Other artists that I have total admiration for are Pia Fries, Liza Lou, Jonathan Lasker, Sheila Hicks, Leslie Wayne, Brice Marden, Yayoi Kusama, and Nick Cave. They all depict ideas of infinity, the impossibility of perfection, and relations between consciousness and unconsciousness. 

Artist Profile: Nicole Geary

I Drew A Line in the Sand, 2013, intaglio, collagrah, chine collé, Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

Nicole Geary is a printmaker and sculptor whose work explores her response and connection to the environment that surrounds her. While deeply rooted in the scientific process, Geary imbues her work with complex layers of rational inquiry and emotional reflection.

Read on to learn more about Geary's work and influences.

Picton Fossil, 2015, mono print with shelf installation, Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice?

I think the largest driver of my work is probably the world of geology. Underneath all the rock stories and collections are a confluence of things including the concept of landscape, which varies from traditional Romantic notions to contemporary reinterpretations of that. Scars, bruises, and other bodily records of events tell me a lot about a personal history (mine or someone else's that they want to share) and I see them as a kind of map to a place lived. I use these influences to correlate to our relationship with land and the earth's history, which is why I'm so enamored of stratigraphy and being able to "read the rocks." I can look at a bruise and remember what happened there, so a natural pattern emerged in my work.

I also love to think about the idea of heterotopias, which is really what geologists do all the time. They imagine a place that they can never physically travel to, and can picture worlds that used to exist and recreate them in their mind, with graphs and measurements, all by picking up rocks and seeing what they tell them. These ideas excite me and I like the feeling that art does this as well.

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

I believe that art can be a proving grounds for science, and that these two worlds shouldn't be seen as separate. I like to say that in my work I'm often applying scientific analysis to an emotional realm, which is an inherently Sisyphean task, but the process is what makes this appealing to me. (It is not lost on me that I just used a rock metaphor.) 

I like to overlap geological theories like uniformitarinism and apply them to our own memories to talk about fascinating ways that the earth is as much a living being as we are, and that our relationship to it should be explored. Ultimately, I want my work to help people understand science better, and to comprehend feelings and emotions about what it means to live in an age of global concerns, such as catastrophic climate change or the need to confront our use of fossil fuels.

Drawing inspired by the bruising from a fall the artist took in Scotland, while walking on Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh. Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

Where you do find inspiration? 

I will have to answer this in two different ways, because the nature of inspiration comes to me in various ways. I will find myself surprised at the amazing patterns in a simple rock and be humbled at the beauty to be found in a square foot patch of dirt. These are truly "inspirational" in the sense of looking and being with the world. It's the first thing I learned in drawing class and the most resiliant lesson I think of again and again: to just look and to observe. But to be completely honest, inspiration must also come from being present in the studio, putting in work and meeting the goals that I set. It feels good to complete a piece that I have felt pent up inside myself.

Which artists do you admire most, and why? 

One of my favorite working arstis is Julie Mehretu, whose large scale drawings take on forms that at once seem analytical but have such built-up and beautiful layers that I love to think about the process and the human hand involved. Kiki Smith is one of the artists I admire most for her use of space and imagery in printmaking, and Ellen Gallagher for the way she incorporates text into image and reinterprets and examines race and the function of language. I've always been fascinated by the work of Mark Dion and his installations that question the authoritative voice of the museum. I'm (maybe obviously) influenced by the earthworks artists of the 1970s and include Goldsworthy and Smithson as some of my favorites to think about when I imagine new ways of working outside of the gallery space. I've been following Swoon for awhile now and one thing I admire about her practice is she consistently gives back to every community she works in, enabling people and artists where she goes. I feel I'd be remiss not to name several other artists that were early influences of mine including Nicola Lopez, Vija Celmins, Richard Long, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, and Eva Hesse. 

Discovering Time, 2015, mono print, sun print, chine collé, Image Courtesy of the Artist.  

Tell me about your current projects.

I'm currently working on developing my sculptural work into a more full-fledged part of my artistic practice through a grant from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio. I am learning to incorporate ceramics into my work as part of this grant, which makes sense to me as the clay body is literally a geological form. I've worked in sculpture in the past, but not to the extent by which this grant will help me make new and larger forms.

I'm also working on the research for a new kind of multi-stage project that I'm very excited about, which I developed more during my time at Hospitalfield residency.  This will eventually become an interactive drawing and printmaking project whereby I invite people to tell me stories that I then "translate" into visuals. I think it is a very unique opportunity to work with an audience and engage the viewer within my practice, and it is exciting to think about the ways that this might develop. I am taking awhile to put together the pieces so that it looks and feels right.

Core Sample: Texas, 2013, plaster, cement, dirt, rocks, mixed media, Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

Nicole Geary is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in June. Please join us on June 11th for the opening reception. You can learn more about Geary's work, process, and inspiration at www.nicolegeary.com, or by following her on instagram @nicolegearystudios and on facebook. 

Artist Profile: Cait Sherwood

A major aspect of Cait Sherwood's artistic process is her daily practice of working in her art journals. She fills those pages with layers upon layers of intuitive imagery, created in a variety of mediums from gouache and acrylic painting, graphite drawings, and collage. I was fascinated by her journals, and her commitment to creating without expectation or knowing where it will end up. As a result, her work is dynamic and expressive, each page a work of art.

Read on to learn more about Sherwood's work and influences.

What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice?

Journals, record-keeping, raw expression.  I like to try to eliminate the space between thinking about something and making it.  So, I am very influenced by stream-of-consciousness writing and drawing.  Handwriting, mark making, colors, nature, paper, xeroxes, printmaking, reading books.  And of course, artwork.  I especially love the art of women around the Surrealist movement.

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

Almost every day I think about how weird it is that I care about art so much.  But the fact remains that I feel a strong and definite compulsion toward art making.  I just have to trust that I am supposed to be doing it.  There are other things I like to do (like running and playing music) that I enjoy but I don't have that same type of compulsion toward.

 I very much like the aimless and comfortable feeling I get when I am making work.  When I don't make art I start to feel anxious.  I have realized that just a few minutes of writing or drawing will snap me out of that anxiety.

I just make lots of stuff by working into books and things, and other art will grow out of it--like paintings, comics, and collages.  I simply make it and share it, and sometimes I hear that it resonates with people. 

I always feel curious to see what I will make next because I can't really tell what that will be until I do it.  

Which artists do you admire most, and why? 

First and foremost, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo -- I'm obsessed with them, due to their practice of honoring the subconscious mind.  But mostly I love a lot of work that I see being made nowadays.  Artists that I see online: Alexandra Levasseur, Monica Canilao, Jiha Moon, Melissa Loop -- those are just some of them.  I am attracted to looseness and tightness mixed together, to neutrals and neons, to interesting juxtapositions of colors and forms.  I am amazed by abstraction.  I like to practice abstraction but usually I feel like I must add something representational.

Sherwood is the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in April and May. Join us for the closing reception on Second Saturday, May 14th. You can read more about her work, process, and inspiration on her website, www.cait-makes.com or follow her on instagram @cait_sherwood. 

Artist Profile: Audrya Flores

Detail, Seer, Assemblage, Image Courtesy of the Artist

Audrya Flores' fascinating assemblages are representations of her innermost struggles and the subconscious imagery present in her dreams. I was drawn to Flores' work because of the way she is able to share this deeply personal symbolism in such a beautiful and powerful way.  

Read on to learn more about Flores' work and influences.

Detail, Hand Talker, Assemblage, Image Courtesy of the Artist. 

What are some of the influences on your work and artistic practice? 

I am very influenced by the occult. Since I was a small child, I have been intrigued (and terrified) by ghost stories. The supernatural has always been a very real thing in my world. I blame it on my Catholic upbringing: spirits, holy ghosts, body and blood, altars, devils, demons, all that good stuff. 

I come from a long line of fiber artists. And while I have absolutely none of the sewing/crocheting/knitting/quilting skills of my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother (and so on and so on), I appreciate the nature of fabric. It flows and drapes and sometimes seems to be alive. Every once in a while, when I unroll a piece of particularly special fabric, it genuinely takes my breath away. This awe that I feel is the result of being around these women. I’ve picked up some tips for pattern-making, too, which plays a huge part in my artistic process. And I got my hair caught in my mom’s sewing machine once, so I feel fully initiated into the world of fiber.  

What drives you as an artist? What are you passionate about that you're able to express through your art? 

I am driven by a need to heal myself. I struggle with generalized anxiety disorder and creating art has been instrumental in keeping me healthy. It creates a quiet, dark place for me to go. I am able to examine and monitor my thoughts and feelings there. Showing my work has been a great way to relate to others. It starts a discussion. In the process of sharing, I have started to see this dark place that I go as a something special rather than a character flaw. I am passionate about revealing myself honestly, in a way that encourages others to share, too. 

I've Made my Home (left) and Protection Ritual (right), Images Courtesy of the Artist

Tell me about your current projects.

I have been pouring all of my efforts into the Devil’s Trumpet show in March at Provenance Gallery. I am really excited for the opening as well as the artist workshop I will be facilitating. Beyond that, I plan on experimenting with incorporating light into my work this spring. I am currently very interested in burial customs and cristata cacti. We’ll see where that takes me. 

Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration in my garden. It’s an obsession, really. I am very drawn to unusual plants: night-bloomers, succulents, toxic plants. These “creatures” of mine often make appearances in my artwork. Working with my plants is another self-soothing passion that was passed down through the matriarchs in my family.

Which artists do you admire most, and why?

While not a visual artist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez will always be at the top of my list. His imagery is so vibrant that the stories are closer to experiences for me. His characters haunt me. I catch myself re-reading and re-reading and re-reading. Gabo forever! At the moment, I really admire the fiber and assemblage work of Monica Canilao. And Katy Horan’s subject matter speaks right to my witchy heart. 

Detail, Image Courtesy of the Artist

Flores will be the featured artist at Provenance Gallery in March. Join us for the opening reception on March 12th. You can read more about Flores' work, process, and inspiration on her blog, www.jaguar-opossum.blogspot.com or on Instagram @audflo.