Gloria Rodriguez Calero


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This sandbox is in the article namespace. Either move this page into your userspace, or remove the {{User sandbox}} template. Gloria Rodriguez Calero (also known as “RoCa”) is a Nuyorican artist working as a painter, collagist, and photographer based in New York.[1]

Early life, education, and career

Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 1959, but raised in New York, she studied under Lorenzo Homar at the Puerto Rican Artists at the Instituto de Cultura, Escuela de Artes Plasticas, and at the Arts Students League of New York with Leo Manso.

Residencies and Grants

She held a National Endowment for the Arts residency at Taller Boricua with fellow artists Marcos Dimas, Gilberto Hernandez, Nestor Otero, Jose Rodriguez, Fernando Salicrup, Jorge Soto, and Manny Vega.[2]She has also had residencies at the Brandywine Workshop Center for the Visual Arts (PA, 1999), and Rutgers Center for Innovative Print & Paper (NJ, 2000).[3] She recieved the Brooklyn Arts & Culture Association Painting Award from the Brooklyn Museum and Belle Cramer Memorial Prize for Abstract Painting from the National Association of Women Artists. In 2008, she received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2008.[4]

Honors and recognition

Her work has been featured in New Jersey Networks Public Television State of the Arts Series, “SIGN OF THE TIMES” in 2008.

Exhibitions

In 2015, Rodriguez Calero was the first Nuyorican female artist to receive in depth survey of her work at El Museo del Barrio in New York which was guest curated by Alejandro Anreus entitled Gloria Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos.[5] The exhibit included 29 large acrollage canvases, 19 smaller collages, 13 fotacrolés (altered photography) on canvas board, and 3 works of mixed media on paper. The exhibition was be accompanied by a brochure and a scholarly catalogue.[6] The exhibit was reviewed and was given an honorable mention by Hyperallergic of the 20 best NYC exhibits.[7]

Style and Technique

Calero has developed a distinct original technique called “acrollage”. She employs a variety of papers, colorful glazes of paint and acrylic mediums, appropriated prints which are layered on the canvas creating striking and highly graphic yet painterly compositions. [8] These were turned into plastic skins that often resemble monoprints.[9]

There is a dichotomy in Calero’s work which bears qualities of both classical and contemporary elements. These include influences of surrealist collage, Catholic iconography, medieval religious painting, as well as hip-hop and street culture. Her work offers a balance of the abstract and figurative, sacred and profane, the meditative and boldly graphic. Her work employs bold color and carefully arranged dynamic compositions while offering an empathetic gaze on the her subject – subjects of the society she lives in. She embraces and celebrates ethnic groups, as well as LGBT community. Her work explores Afro-Hispanic Imagery and barrio life and demonstrates a belief that everyone, even the most marginalized have dignity and inner worth regardless of social class.[10] Figures in her works preach the gospel for today, reinterpreting community and providing content for the work that is ethnic, political and spiritual and thus at odds with much of the deconstructionist contemporary art of the day.[5]

  1. ^ "RODRIGUEZ CALERO: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos". El Museo del Barrio. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  2. ^ Staff, Clarion. "Honoring 40 Years of Centro: the "nu-YO-Rican" Print Project". PSC CUNY. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  3. ^ vínculo, Obtener. "Rodríguez Calero show at Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service". Tertulia Latina. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  4. ^ "Rodriguez Calero - TertuliaLatinaNYC". cargocollective.com. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  5. ^ a b Center for Puerto Rican Studies (2016). "Puerto Rican Voices: Season 3 Episode 4 (RoCa: Rodríguez Calero)". vimeo.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ "RODRIGUEZ CALERO: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos". El Museo del Barrio. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  7. ^ Hyperallergic (2015-12-16). "Best of 2015: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  8. ^ "Collection: Gloria Rodríguez Calero Papers | Centro Library and Archives - ArchivesSpace". centroarchives.hunter.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  9. ^ CUNY TV (2015-07-23). Independent Sources: Artistic NYC. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via YouTube.
  10. ^ Veneciano, Jorge Daniel (2015). Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs + Latter Day Saints [Martires urbanos y santos de nuestros dias] (in English and Spanish). New York: El Museo del Barrio. ISBN 978-1-882454-82-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)