← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Artist Candida Alvarez's Five-Decade Career on Display at El Museo del Barrio
00:19:48
Puerto Rican artist Candida Alvarez emerged in the New York art scene of the late 1970s.
Loading summary
Transcript20 lines
- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [00:28]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studio. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. Coming up on the show Today, artist Lorna Simpson's new exhibition @ the Metropolitan Museum of Art is titled Source Notes. She joins us to discuss. Author Chris Pavoni is here to talk about his new Manhattan set thriller the Doorman, just out today. And singer songwriter Maren Morris joins us for a listening party for her latest album Dreamsicle today. That's our plan. So let's get things started with artist Candida Alvarez. Brooklyn born artist Candida Alvarez is receiving a homecoming in the form of two shows. A large scale museum wide exhibition at El Museo de Barrio that includes works from her five decade career and another exhibition of new works at Gray Gallery. Cultured magazine said that together the two shows will serve as a crucial update to the historical record. The show at El Museo is titled Circle Point hoop. It includes 100 works. The show opens with two colorful pieces, a lithograph titled Nueva York and a large acrylic and oil painting titled Soy Borica Boricua. The show at the Gray Gallery is titled Real Monsters in Bold Colors. Her work is displayed alongside paintings from prolific figurative artist Bob Thompson, who tragically passed away at the age of 29. That is on display at the Great Gallery on Madison at 78th street through Thursday, July 3rd. But right now joining us is Candida Alvarez. Hi Candida.
- [02:11]
Candida Alvarez
Hi Alison. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- [02:14]
Alison Stewart
I have to ask you, two shows at the same time, was this a coincidence?
- [02:21]
Candida Alvarez
Good question. It's more like a circle. I was, I mean, I could have never planned it. I mean it just kind of happened that way and I guess it was destined.
- [02:35]
Alison Stewart
The show at the El Museo de Barrio is called Circle Point Hoop. It opens with those two pieces I just mentioned, Soy Boricua and Nueva York. How did these two pieces reflect the New York that you were born into and that you grew up in?
- [02:53]
Candida Alvarez
Well, I would start with Soy Boricua, which is an earlier piece from the 80s. And it was, you know, I was making building paintings up in panels in parts to get to something bigger. I was just listening to a conversation about Joan Mitchell and I realized she was doing the same thing, but she had a really small apartment or studio, so she couldn't really see the whole thing all at once. But there is something about activating space that way and really focusing on a kind of atmosphere that the painting can live within. And so that painting was in steps. It's almost like climbing the stairs in a way. And all of a sudden you get up to your room and you can look out the window. Right. So the little portrait is like looking out the window and it's sort of a self reflective mirror, so to speak. I didn't make it all at once. I mean, the painting was put together first assembled together and, you know, and then I worked on the drawing separately. And it wasn't meant to be a portrait of myself, but it was meant to be a portrait of a woman somehow. And so. And it's almost a woman like a little girl. Right. It's hard to really figure out the age of the person. But I, you know, there was something about working on paper which is very different than working on a wooden support. The way the color lays on is very differently. It kind of is a little bit more stubborn, you know, it's just. And the other one is very smooth and your hand glides through it. I worked with my gloved hands and I also worked with brushes. And I believe the drawing was done with. With a sort of more pencil, pastel like material. And so that was a time, you know, when I was really sort of moving around in New York. I had gone to Fordham, graduated from Fordham University, and started working at a Musel del Barrio. But before working there, I was really going there because I heard about this amazing place and I took workshops there with artists like Bill Tulis, who was actually teaching. It was a professor at Pratt. And I learned so many new things. I mean, printmaking was this beautiful medium and material that I. Inks were very different kind of engagement with surface and also, you know, just the. The community of artists there. I met Bob Blackburn at another point and he was, with his print, you know, his very famous printmaking workshop. I learned so much more. But I think one of the other things about El Musael was that there were catalogs to look at. There was. And I. It was the first time I had ever seen the work of Robert Bearden. And I was so taken away with his images because it was old, like the collages that he had created, and they were so dense and packed with like parts of bodies and eyeballs and, you know, bits and pieces of brownstones, you know, just beautiful. That I just could never forget that. And the other piece was also a print. Right. So now we're talking about prints. And it was a commission that actually Lorna Simpson was in also for the city of New York to raise monies. And I forget exactly the department who put us all together. It's called the SAFE Portfolio. And so it was a very special project. And so there was several of us, maybe eight or nine, 10 artists. And I wanted to do something that kind of was about New York, that felt like New York. So there's a feeling of little windows climbing up, you know, sort of like the projects where I grew up. There's a handprint. Yeah. It was kind of a sort of a. More of a micro view, perhaps, but also. Because I was also very interested in that. You know, what. How does it. How does an urban child see the world? Right. And so when you take that elevator up and you're all, you know, you're just kind of moving up and you look out that window, you have this bird's eye view. Right. Because I was on the 14th floor.
- [07:17]
Alison Stewart
So I wanted. You know what I remember? I remember hearing an interview with you, and you talked about when you were a kid.
- [07:23]
Candida Alvarez
Yes.
- [07:24]
Alison Stewart
And how looking through stained glass windows.
- [07:27]
Candida Alvarez
Yes.
- [07:28]
Alison Stewart
Was something that brought you into art.
- [07:31]
Candida Alvarez
Well, it was. It was a fascination with them. Right. Because they were narrative and they were painted. Right. They were. There were pieces of color that also had a form of painting on top of them, which gave them a shadow. Right. Which I learned about later on because I created my own windows several years later. But it was the first time that I actually noticed sunlight, you know, piercing windows that created rainbow colors. Right. So there's that refraction of light on the floor as you're sitting. You're supposed to be listening to the priest. But I was always very distracted by the sunlight. And I just love, love that, you know, the magic of that, the transformation of that. You know, how you could read quote, unquote, windows. Right. Because they were storytelling. They would telling us stories. But it was just. There was something about living color. Right. I mean, I. I talk about that a lot too, about my. Why I paint. It's because color does. It stays alive. It shifts and it. Depending on the light that it's facing or, you know, if there's a floodlight as opposed to sunlight, you read the color very differently. So it's just like that refracted light would come in at an angle, and depending on where you were sitting. Right. You would get most of it or just a part of it. So. But those rays of light was so strong. I mean, nothing can match that kind of color, right? It's just beautiful.
- [08:59]
Alison Stewart
A new exhibition at El Museo de Barrio features the work spanning a five decade career of artist Candida Alvarez. She is my guest. You know, you're known for working across mediums, painting, collage, embroidery, video. How do you decide which medium to use? Is it the message? Is it the subject? Is it just your feeling?
- [09:24]
Candida Alvarez
I think it's a little bit of all of it. I mean, I think curiosity is indispensable. I mean, curiosity for an artist is what leads the charge, right? It's the process. It's how it. Processes begin or how you engage with processes. And I think it's a learning curve, you know, I mean, there's sometimes you just, you know, like when you start learning about oils or you start learning about acrylics and it's something that's very personal, right? How one holds a pencil in their hand, you know, some people can't work with pencils. I love holding a pencil in my hand. I love calligraphy, I love all of that. And I like water based material because it dries fast, you know, and I work quickly, pretty much. And I like changing my mind, you know, too. And so I think that, you know, intuitive, that, that, that sense of the intuitive and that sense of curiosity, right, One is very mysterious. They're both kind of myster because, like, how does it spark? How does it begin? How does, you know? And so I think that it just, it allows an artist or any human to really feel like they're living, right? And so I think it's, I think it's essential. And so picking up material, it's just really about loving something, right? Like, I love the way this smells, or I love the way it feels. I love the way it looks. I love that I can use this pencil and I can, I can use a sharpener to get it really pointed, you know, or I like the way, you know, pastels move on sort of very textured paper because it gives it a kind of, it looks like a skin. Like it has like a skin, like texture sometimes, right? So I think different material do do different things. And I think ultimately I liked a hard surface. I mean, I started to work with wood panels, you know, and then. Well, actually when I was in Fordham University, when I started, where I first learned about, you know, the studio and taking workshops was fundamental, right? And so I think the beginning points are always fundamental. You know, it's how do you begin? And so I started looking at. I was studying portrait painting first, right. And so I had models. I was working from a model and I didn't stretch my own canvases. I. You could go to Pearl Paint and buy. Right. And you could buy your stretcher bars. And so I could carry them in. And I had a big black portfolio that I put them in and whatever fit in there, that was the size I worked with. And I had great teachers, you know, Susan Crowell, Jack Whitten, Paul Brock, who was. Who was also married to Miriam Shapiro. So I learned a lot, you know, and. And Jack was also very important to me because he really kind of recognized deceit in me, that I could be an artist like. And he not only recognized it, but he spoke to it and he, he. I heard it and it allowed me to hold something that was. That was unable somehow. Right. That. And make it become a reality. Over many years, I never thought be an artist. I never knew what an artist was. You know what I mean? And so you're just taking art classes. But this idea that I could live as an artist and make money as an artist was something that I indebted to Jack for saying to me at the moment that he said it to me as I was about to graduate, right. Just before I graduated because I was taking classes with him. And so the barrio show there is the earliest piece is from 1975 and that piece was done in his class. And so, yeah, so that there's a 48 year span in that show. Unbelievable. So it's pretty amazing.
- [13:00]
Alison Stewart
I want to ask you about the video that's at the show. It's a video around your mom.
- [13:04]
Candida Alvarez
Yes, yes, yes. There's a video that I took with a little handheld video camera many moons ago in order for me to remember how to make pasteles, which was a traditional family dish. Right. It's some people, it's close to tamales, but it's not really the same. And we used paper. It was already pre cut. Sometimes it came in rolls, so you could also cut. Those are the ones you actually cut. But sometimes we just had the pre cut ones and they were square and we used string. And you know, there was a masa that took hours to prepare. You know, you had to grate because we didn't have blenders there. We had to grate the tubers, you know, the plantain, the pumpkin, the yautia, which is another root vegetable. And. And so then, you know, my mother would prepare everything and my father, they would cook the Meat and all of that, the pork that was going into it. And then the kids, there were three of us, we all helped out, so we all had something to do. So that was a nod to my mother and to what she totally was immersed in her cooking, you know, her, her feeding us. And I noticed as I was watching it recently, I said, wow. She also had, she was also very intense, intentional. Like if you look at her, she never once looked at me, ever as I was filming. And I noticed that. And I said, wow. She also has that kind of intentionality, you know, like she has that, the thing that she criticized me for. Like she would always say, what are you staring at? You know, where are you? You know? And it was like that glance. It's like that space that we go to, you know, when we have to kind of check out, you know, we have to check out in order to get back into something that's totally ours. Our privacy, our private space, our intuition, whatever that is. And I noticed that in my mother. I was like, she never looked up at me. She was so into her making that she did not have time to look up. It was just beautiful to re. Witness that, you know, and to say, gee, you know, I, and all those things that she used, I, I, I ultimately ended up using them in my work. You know, the square, the square shape, the string, you know, for some of the pieces that were done, especially the pieces that were done in the 90s when I was at Yale, because that was a real, really wonderful time to sort of rediscover and uncover my relationship to culture or to my sense of being, like, what made me different. Right. How could I create a form that was intentional, that was sort of creative from all the things that I was preaching, privy to, like all the things I heard, all the things that I saw so in the, in the home. Right. And so that would be so, so special. That would be mine. I studied also with Mel Blockner, and he was having this very big show at Yale. As I entered the MFA program in the 90s. I waited a while before I went back to school after I had graduated undergrad. So I was already older, but. And I had a son. Our son was seven months old, and he was there with us too. And so, And Mel was having this show and what was it called? The Artist Transparent, I think it was called something like this. And he had like this little p. He had, he took over a room, and in that room there might have been a little taped out rectangle with two pennies inside and two pennies outside. It was so minimal, but it was so maximal in terms of the experience that you would try the essence of that room and sort of that becoming the work. And so. But there was something about that, you know, bringing me back to the pennies that my father used to toss in the air for good luck, and also going back to the studios and noticing all these pennies around the room, you know, outside in the. In the. Where we used to do critiques, because they were playing all kinds of penny games. Right. And so I instantly thought about making a piece to sort of celebrate that in a way to sort of. To think through how could I make this penny piece? And so I found panels like wood, that were not being used. And one of my first pieces, actually, that is hanging in a museo, is called Tossing Pennies. And it's really a nod to my father and to Mel. Another in another way. Right. For that penny piece he did. And in turn, I made my own piece, which is, you know, I used a little collaged image of my son's hand that I glued into it. And then I tossed pennies onto the piece. I remember gluing them down and then connecting them with. With this. With this white paint and then attaching them, the two panels together so they became a diptych, which is things that. That I like to do. It's almost like, again, you know, multiple dwelling, like multiple. A. Multiple, you know, floored space. So it's very. So my living space is. Was always very vertical. Right, because you were going up and down. And so that. That's kind of plays a part in the work as well. Right. And so. So that was one of the first. And then there was another piece in the show that also says Dame Unumero, which is Give me a number. And it referred to my mother asking me for a number, which was her way of feeling like somebody wanted to communicate with her doing that. I gave her the number, and I would say, okay, four. And she would say A, B, C, D because it had to be equivalent to the letter in the Alphabet. Right. So 1 to 26. So A, B, C, D would be D. And she said, oh, oh, Dawood or David or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, she. It would just say, oh, I need to talk to him, or maybe he's thinking me. And she would say a prayer or whatever it is. And so there were these uncanny forms of communication. So it's not crazy that I'm also a communicator, right? In a different way, I'm a different kind of communicator. So I. Yes, for my art. Yes. And so. And for whatever it is that I, you know, it's like that intuition, Right. Sharing this magical, like this space. Right. Of sort of having the courage to kind to go to something and create something that sometimes you don't know what it's going to end up looking like. But, you know, to be the artist, it's not that easy.
- [19:45]
Alison Stewart
A new exhibition at El Museo de Barrio features work spanning five decades of artist Candida Alvarez's career. It's called Circle Point Hoop. You can also see real monsters in bold colors. Bob Thompson and Candida Alvarez. It is on display through Thursday, July 3rd at the Gray Gallery. Thank you for your time today.
- [20:05]
Candida Alvarez
Oh, this was so much fun. Thank you.
- [20:08]
Progressive Insurance
Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.