Their Daily Bread

It was probably more than 2 years ago when Margie, Mandy and I had this idea of using a house for a site specific art installation regarding women and home. We couldn't do it last year, but we did it this year at last.

I was frustrated to know that the chosen house was "historical" meaning we could basically do nothing on the walls, no sticking, nailing, hanging, painting, etc. So, what was I supposed to do, lay things on the furniture, or on the floor? Well, that's exactly what I ended up doing after weeks of not knowing if I was able to figure something out.

I decided to talk about something that concerned women in Grand Rapids around the time when the house was built. What a nice surprise to find out around that that the women suffrage movement was about to be successful.

I had to find some bed sheet donations, which was not a problem compared to what followed next.

I decided to do reproductions of articles from the local newspapers from 1911 to 1920; I obviously had no idea what I was getting myself into. Most articles regarding suffrage, women, important women, etc. were very small and hard to find in the newspaper microfilms, but not surprising there were lots of sexist ads aimed at women, I guess that was very common. So I spent long long days at the local history department looking for those hidden articles. And, although they were small, and not very frequent, I gathered a big pile of them!

I printed all of those articles on the bedsheets and covered the furniture with them.

Here is my artist statement:

For the exhibit, we are using this historic home to focus on facets of history that took place when it was young, specifically from 1912 through 1920, the years during which the women’s suffrage movement succeeded in granting women the right to vote. The house belonged to the grandfather of Dorothy Leonard. Leonard was active in the fight for women’s suffrage; she joined the League of Women Voters in 1920.

My installation represents this history through the medium of dust, dust as a remainder and reminder of things past. The dust used is a combination of flour, as a tribute to the women servants who spent their hours hard at work in this home’s kitchen baking bread, and ashes, as a reminder of those in the movement now dead.

For the first part of my installation, I researched newspapers of the era and printed reproductions of relevant stories on bed-sheets. The sheets cover various pieces of furniture in the home as a way of drawing attention to the accumulation of history throughout the years. The history that settled around these pieces of furniture is the unseen history that settles like dust around us today.

The other part of my installation uses stencils of news stories that made big news around the dates that were relevant for women’s suffrage. Instead of paint, I used flour, again to represent the dust that history leaves behind, the dust of movements that never settles, but waits to be stirred up again by women seeking justice.


The exhibit took place at the Leonard at Logan B&B in Grand Rapids Michigan from March 26-28. The artists involved were Mandy Burrow, Margie Erlandson, Anna Campbell, and myself.
There are more pictures and information on my website.

Dead End Prints

Sembrar es una forma de Resistencia

This is the title of my last exhibit at Fountain St. Church. The work has to do with seeds; the importance of saving, planting, and sharing them, also it the first time in many years that I make colorful and hopeful art, there is no satire or hidden messages this time.

To sow is a form of Resistance

This will be technically my first solo exhibit in GR. I have been working on the theme of seeds, food and nature; going from construction black and white blockprints to a more abstract colorful representation of seeds.

The artwork explores our relationship with food and the environment. Seeds tell the story of our relationship with food and our kinship with the land. 

I became intrigued with seeds when I planted my first garden. As the garden grew, so did my awareness of the political and industrial forces that destroy the lives of small farmers in the U.S., my homeland, Mexico, and around the world. 

By saving seeds from my garden to plant the next year, I participated in a process that people around the world have taken part in for thousands of years, and every year seeds are saved to be our future food. The industrial process of genetically modifying seed has transformed our 10,000 year heritage into branded, private property. 

My work give tribute to those who are working hard to protect what is rightfully theirs, and  ours.

In this exhibit the orange cones represent our relation with nature which at some point  is so absurd it becomes comical. Development of the land means destruction of the land. By constructing roads to unaccessible places, those same places get so intensively exploited they eventually disappear.

Seeds on the other hand represent our relation with food, the importance of saving seeds in order to preserve our natural heritage.

If you want to take part in this effort, please take a bag of seeds and take good care of them, plant them and witness the wonderful cycle that begins and ends with every single seed. 

http://web.mac.com/alynnguerra/Red_Hydrant/Events/Entries/2008/12/31_Sembrar_es_una_Forma_de_Resistencia.html