Interviewer: Angela Siew

Interviewee: Ana Flores

Category: Visual Arts

Genre: Sculpture

Length of time: 01:08:32

00:00:00:

AS: OK, so if you could just state your name…

00:00:03:

AF: Mmmhm.

00:00:04:

AS: and maybe you know where you were born and where you grew up.

00:00:09:

AF: OK. My name is Ana Flores and I was born in Havana, Cuba in 1956. I was born to a father who was an architect and a mother who was a painter. I had three other brothers at that time. the fourth brother was born later. My parents both being artists I think had a great influence on who I am today and I seemed to have inherited the genes, so I loved to draw from a young age and then in 1962 my family left Cuba because of the Cuban Revolution and I was six at that time. Since I had already explored and sort of become an artist, a child artist, I realized drawing was a wonderful way to communicate in this new country that we found ourselves in so the first few months of school I did not have a complete grasp of the language which I did get very soon as a child usually does but, I remember the first three months I drew my way through school because I realized that was a wonderful tool for communication and I realized later on in my life as an adult and still an artist how important those early years were because I realized art was a tool for communication of you know the most complete kind and it wasn't just about me making pretty pictures.

00:01:51:

AS: Oh interesting, so at what age did you come over again?

00:01:54:

AF: At age six.

00:01:55:

AS: At age six. OK and then did you know how to speak English or…

00:02:03:

AF: Yeah and in about three months I was fluent

00:02:05:

AS: OK.

00:02:07:

AF: so you know I didn't need my art to communicate…

00:02:09:

AS: OK.

00:02:10:

AF: but it became a very important part of who I was because of having used it that way.

00:02:14:

AS: OK great. So you just started off by drawing and stuff, did you find yourself moving into other mediums as you grew older, like during teenagerhood?

00:02:26:

AF: Yeah, I think drawing and painting were the things most accessible as I did it as a young adult and I certainly was interested in design and buildings as my father was an architect and he was really pushing for me to become an architect so he would push all that knowledge on me which I welcomed but I doubted whether or not I would become an architect because you needed too many other people to sort of accomplish your visions. But then after high school I decided to you know go to art school and I applied to Rhode Island School of Design and got in with a full scholarship and majored in painting and I think it's because I knew that medium and I had always been drawing in it and you know working in two-dimension. But when I left college I think I sort of began to paint my way out of painting. I'd never liked to work on canvas, I had worked on wood panels and the wooden panels in themselves became, I realized myself that I didn't have to make square things because if they were wood they could be any shape. And then soon they were becoming all sorts of odd shapes and then they became built-up and eventually you know the wood panels became very sculptural and they became so sculptural these wooden panels would often come off the wall and hit me or something so I realized this is no longer a painting I'm getting into sculpture so I sort of painted my way out of painting and I think as I continue to mature as an artist, it was the art that sort of took me along by the nose. You know if you become a master in a medium it's sort of

00:04:26:

AF: the medium takes you, you know and you certainly are a voice in it but at a certain point it begins to pull you along and it has been a continual process of that. So I trained you know at the Rhode Island School of Design and I met my husband there who was a sculptor. So we married and then later we left the state, we lived in Connecticut for six years and eventually decided we did want to settle down and did buy a piece with some land so we came back to Rhode Island to the South County area because we had always driven through that area to go home to our families, we both had families in Connecticut and had always you know loved the rural quality of it so in 1984 we started driving the southern part of the state and found a wonderful piece of property that was you know being auctioned and because it was land and a half-built house and we sort of stole it and picked it up for a really good price and finished working on the land and the buildings and finished our home and studio so we now live there, we call it Art Farm. We have 17 acres down in Charlestown. And moving there was also a big part of my evolution as an artist. Having left Cuba, I think from a very early age I as struck by a very beautiful and powerful landscape, Cuba's a very beautiful island, and when we came to this country we came right to New England and I remember landing in a snow storm and as a child thinking the landscape had been totally erased you know and in a way psychologically

00:06:26

AF: that landscape was erased and you know, stepped into a new landscape but I was always kind of looked for a place that I could really root in and I didn't find it in my, you know, time with my family. They'd lived in primarily in West Hartford as I was growing up and that was a very, you know nice suburb kind of town, you know no Hispanics at all, we had a wonderful place there but I never felt like that was my place. So finally when we bought land in southern Rhode Island it was land and a house it wasn't just this house and it was the idea was that we had to work to build it and finish it so in a way the land sort of you know we had to work on the land and the land worked on me and I became very rooted to that landscape and my sculptural work really began to reflect that. I would use elements from the landscape in the actual construction of the pieces so there was a big shift in my work because of this sort of sense of place that I had found.

00:07:40:

AS: So do you mean that you would use actual bits from the landscape?

00:07:45:

AF: Yeah. Rocks and logs and I'd find these things during my walks and bring them back into the studio and then sort of images would come out of, you know it was a dialogue almost with the natural elements and they would suggest things, figurative shapes, I mean a tree limb might turn into a leg on a figure and they all had a very strong environmental kind of message to it.

00:08:17:

AS: So when you sculpt do you normally try to sculpt things that resemble actual objects or are they usually just…?

00:08:27:

AF: No they have a very strong figurative reference.

00:08:29:

AS: OK.

00:08:30:

AF: I brought a number of things to show you but… (opens folder and shows photograph of one of her works)...there was a, this is a major piece that came out of, this is a root from the forest overturned log, you know stump. We use wood to heat our house and so you know my husband does a lot of cutting in the woods so that was a stump that I flipped over and I had this spiral of roots and I brought that into the studio and the roots all of a sudden almost began to look kind of like a nest, or a womb and that became, then these legs were put on it and those were made out of Styrofoam and then cement and on top of that adobe with the soil from the actual land and that piece is called Gaia which is a reference to the ancient earth goddess Gaia. So you know there's figurative sort of sometimes mythological suggestions in the work that I do that comes from the landscape, but that particular piece Gaia was a pivotal point in the work that I did in that it got censored.

00:09:50:

AS: Oh really.

00:09:51:

AF: And that was a major shift, that whole episode in the way I saw my work. You know I'd been working, as I said the landscape forms had been coming out since I, since we had sort of established our place there in Charlestown and I had a studio. And the work, you know sort of the natural forms were really dictating sort of images to me. I wasn't sort of deciding what I was doing, it was almost sort of a vessel for other images that came through me and I had started doing this pieces that I realized were just a whole different departure for me, they weren't nice little things to put in people's living rooms.

00:10:33:

AS: Right.

00:10:34:

AF: And so I get this newsletter called, from the National Campaign for the Freedom of Expression and I clipped this particular article or quote that I found it in and put it on my bulletin board and if I may I'd like to read it.

00:10:56:

AS: Sure, of course.

00:10:57:

AF: It's sort of the beginning of the big sort of transformation. This is from the fall newsletter of the 1997, from the National Campaign from Freedom of Expression. It's called "Art Matters". "Art and artists can be a powerful force in society. They give voice to the voiceless, communicate new ideas, and challenge the status quo. Art matters and so do the artists who make it. Sometimes however, just making your art is not enough. When fellow artists come under attack, you may have to leave the sanctity of your studio and enter into the public political arena. I hope you will consider that an opportunity and a privilege. You will be joining a distinguished community of artists past and present who are also public intellectuals like Vaklob Haval, Pablo, Walker Evans and Toni Morrison. Are you willing to risk censure in defense of your rights of freedom of expression? Sometimes speaking out or taking action requires going against prevailing or majority opinion and sometimes your art or your action will offend people. It takes courage to express dissent, especially if you are criticizing those who are close to you who are part of your community. Offending and dissenting are not only permissible but should be celebrated in a democratic society. In his 1856 notebook, Walt Whitman wrote "agitation is a test of goodness and solidness of all politics and laws and institutions." If they cannot stand it, there is no genuine life in them and they shall die. I think agitation is the most important of all, the most important: to stir, to question, to suspect, to examine, to denounce. As an artist you will often have to deal with the gatekeepers, the gatekeepers are individuals, dealers, curators, critics, founders, panel members, other artists, and yes politicians, who stand between your art and your audience.

00:12:58:

AF: These gatekeepers may be concerned with aesthetics about race, class or sexual orientation, about politics, or about subject matter. Some are concerned about all these issues. You will often squeeze through one gate only to find another just a step ahead. Through all of this you must keep in mind who your audience is. Don't mistake gatekeepers for your audience, you audience the people with whom you really want to communicate are on the other side of all those gates." And that was written by David Mendoza, Executive Director for the Campaign for Freedom of Expression as a commencement address to the graduating class of the Corcoran School of Art on May 10, 1997. Now I read this because I clipped this out and put this on my bulletin board and a month later I was in the middle of a censorship issue over this piece called Gaia. And you know until that time I had been you know a so-called very serious fine artist working quietly in my studio and putting my pieces in galleries and museums and you know, I'd be getting commissions and all of that and it was all a very kind of focused, quiet life but you know it wasn't an activist sort of role at all, you know I was doing just sort of things in the studio and then I got censored and it was this new body of work and I was asked to be in a show at Salva Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island which is a Catholic university. And they were doing a show called Gender Power about gender issues in art. And they had selected this piece and I thought it was very brave of them to do that there and they had asked me if they could put that in the public library, they had a brand new library

00:14:58

AF: and I said "Sure, the more public the better because I'm tired of these little elite gallery spaces" so they said "OK, well we'll do that", but I said "Well let me show you a photograph first of the piece and make sure that you pass it by the officials at the library, I don't want any problems". You know I knew it was a piece that, you know it's not offensive but it's a powerful piece.

00:15:27:

AS: Right.

00:15:28:

AF: You know people who had seen it were affected by different things in it. So they showed the photograph to the dean of the library and he approved it and then I brought it in on a Sunday and installed and on Tuesday I get a letter, I mean a call from the director of the gallery saying that the dean of the library had put a screen around it, no he moved it and put a screen around it and put it in the library, in the magazine area of the library, sort of tucked away in the corner. And I said "Oh that's interesting you know, what happened?" And he said "I don't know, he just did that." And I said "Well I'm going to have to come down and speak to him obviously you know" and the gallery director said "Well should we move it out of there and just put it in the gallery?" and I said "No, you know the gallery no one will go to."

00:16:17:

AS: Right.

00:16:18:

AF: "the library everyone sees it so I want to speak to him" and so I hung up and you know part of me just felt crushed thinking "Oh God, this big institution, I have to go and deal with this" and you know so I called a few friends who were much more sort of organized in terms of dealing with the press and stuff because I knew I would probably have to go the press with this and they you know inspired me that I had a you know good cause and that I shouldn't be afraid and the press could be an advocate for my position so, don't be afraid. So then the university made an appointment with the dean of the library and said I would come and talk to him and he agreed to that and so they came a few days later and everyone went down to Newport and I was ready to have a civil conversation with the dean and find out why he was offended by the piece, you know find out what we could do, sort of find a consensus, and so I'm sitting waiting for the dean and he just doesn't come, he is sort of avoiding the appointment so the person I was with, the gallery director and the director of the art department went off to find him and finally they kind of lassoed him and brought him into the space where he had agreed to meet with us and he was you could tell very uncomfortable so I just said you know "This is a lovely building here and I'm very glad to have my sculpture here and I'm concerned as to why you're upset" and he said "Well, a student giggled." I said "Well, is that a problem?" "That's disrupting the library."

00:18:11:

AS: Wow.

00:18:12:

AF: And I said "Well you probably have students giggling in your magazine reading room, do you take their magazines away from them?" And he didn't like that. (AS laugh) And he said "Are you going to tell me how to run my library?"

00:18:28:

AS: Oh, uh oh.

00:18:29:

AF: And then he left and that was the extent of our conversation. So at that point you know I realized he wasn't up for dialogue and I began to leave and as I was leaving a few of the library reserve, you know reference people came running out to me, almost like prisoners of war (AS laugh) waving a flag and said "(whisper) We love your work." (AS laugh) "We're really glad it's here" and then they ran back in you know as if they would be seen by the dean so you know it was all very interesting and you know I didn't know this institution at all.

00:19:10:

AS: Right.

00:19:11:

AF: And didn't know the dynamics of what was going on in the library and I thought it was all very curious but I figured well my choice is either to put it in the gallery and sort of agree to defeat or pull it and go to the press and tell them what's going on because it was an obvious censorship issue.

00:19:29:

AS: Right.

00:19:39:

AF: So I did go to the press. Now my… you know at this point I had never done anything so political. Maybe it's naive of me at this point at the age, I don't know how old was I? Thirty…. five or so, never had a confrontation like that but it had just never happened and so I had to think very politically and what I was going to say to the press etc. because if they misinterpreted then I would be just this kind of weird witchy person you know doing strange things and all this. So my feather in my cup that I had was that my piece had been, I'd been selected as the Rhode Island Woman Artist of the Year to be shown at the National Museum for Women in the Arts and this was the piece,

00:20:22:

AS: Oh.

00:20:23:

AF: No they had selected another piece but then I showed the juror this piece and showed her what was going on and she said "Oh this is much more interesting", so that piece was going to Washington.

00:20:33:

AS: Oh wow.

00:20:34:

AF: So when I went to the press not only did I have an argument that you know obviously that this dean had not been cooperating but the piece had a validity outside of the state, you know it was being recognized on a national level and all this. So I went to the press and got very favorable you know press to the fact that I was being mistreated. This was unfair and the dean was just being very close-minded about this and subsequently you know… so the press gave me very positive response and the piece went to Washington and got a lot of review and subsequently two years later they fired that dean,

00:21:18:

AS: Oh.

00:21:19:

AF: Apparently there had been all kinds of issues

00:21:22:

AS: Right.

00:21:23:

AF: You know he ran that place like, he was like a Gestapo so

00:21:25:

AS: (laugh) Oh OK.

00:21:26:

AF: You know it wasn't just me but I had sort of bumped into this and I had to deal with this and after that as I had said before all this happened I had this clipped up and gatekeepers

00:21:40:

AS: Mmhm, right.

00:21:41:

AF: You know I had been very sort of you know, not blind to them but hadn't really been, I wasn't taking notice and I'd never been locked out.

00:21:50:

AS: Right.

00:21:51:

AF: And I was locked out and I began to realize you know if I want my work to speak to the public I have to go to the public and the public does not just go to galleries and museums, maybe two percent in this country,

00:22:06:

AS: Really.

00:22:07:

AF: If that, I mean I'm being, I'm just pulling that figure but it's not a high figure. You know, most people don't go to galleries, most people don't go to museums in this country, there might be blockbuster things and they'll go through for that but you know art still sort of is on a removed realm in our society unfortunately and so I realized that's not what I wanted, that's not it was not enough.

00:22:37:

AS: Wow.

00:22:38:

AF: And so my whole work shifted. First of all, the whole environmental issue which I realized was something that I cared very deeply about. I began to become you know a practicing environmentalist working with an environmental group in my area. I began a whole project of bringing environmentalists, artists and educators together called "The Gaia Dialogues" based on you know this piece but also the concept of the earth being you know…Gaia hypothesis is, it's a hypothesis in the new sciences I don't know if you know about it,

00:23:15:

AS: Oh OK.

00:23:16:

AF: It's the concept that all living forms are interconnected and there is kind of there is a scientific basis to that but there is also a spiritual power to that, I mean it takes us back to how the indigenous people think about the world, that we are all part of a larger web. So this piece kind of pulled me into a whole other realm of engagement in society and it's continued. So much of my work is in very different venues, it's out in the landscape, it's working with environmentalist groups, I work a lot with health care institutions using the arts as a healing force because I just believe art is such a powerful form of energy that if you just put it in a gallery or museum it's almost leaving a water faucet running

00:24:13:

AS: Right.

00:24:14

AF You know it's this energy that's not being used in full capacity so I work a lot teaching interdisciplinary courses that bring art into the community using the arts, doing residences sort of illustrates that too, communities that bring me in as an artist. So that's you know, it's been part of that whole…sometimes when you hit an obstacle it can be a very positive thing.

00:24:45:

AS: Wow.

00:24:50:

AF: And that's what I would like to share for the, and then that piece, from that piece I realized I did want to continue to do pieces that sort of were a you know dialogue about the earth and female form and I've subsequently started a whole series of outdoor works (looks through folder) that are much more kind of public friendly…that take that same idea and sort of make it in a form that is not you know, cannot be sort of you know it's not offensive, let's say that. And these are pieces called herb ladies. The outside form of the figure is almost like a ironwork, which is almost in the form of a female dress and then the arms and the head are made out of cement… very figurative. And what happened is when they put in parks they're planted so that flowering vines grown on them and the whole dress becomes a floral dress.

00:26:05:

AS: Oh. Wow.

00:26:06:

AF: And they get planted by community gardeners. I created a piece for the Wilcox Park down in Westerly and created this piece called "Tribute to Harriet Wilcox" who was a benefactress of the garden. (AF looks through folder, shows AS newspaper article on Tribute to Harriet Wilcox) I am now doing a project for a 9/11 memorial in New London, again a commemorative garden. So I've taken this idea of earth and you know living form and put it into a kind of series that is extremely public.

00:26:40:

AS: Right.

00:26:41:

AF: So again that initial idea that came out of that piece you know has a lot of consequences as to who I am today as an artist. When I work with environmental groups I do a lot of projects that engage the community to get involved with the landscape. This is a recent project called "Poetry of the Wild" that I've done both in the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed which is down in the southern part of the state and this past summer and fall I worked in the northern part of the state with Audubon Society and Smithfield Conservation Commission and Bryant University and these are poetry boxes (AF takes picture of poetry boxes out of folder and shows AS) which are put out in landscapes and sights you know along the landscape either conserved lands or either by the river. The poetry boxes are made by volunteer artists conservationists just sitting. They decide on a poem from the natural world that they want to put inside the box and then also inside the box is a journal so when the public comes upon the box which is you know usually very artfully done, they then go inside and not only is there a poem about the natural world but a journal to take their own, the public's reflections and musings, and this has been a very popular thing when it's been out in the landscape. It makes people pause and reflect.

00:28:09:

AS: Yeah that sounds great.

00:28:11:

AF: And we've collected a lot of wonderful sort of poems. (AF shows AS bound poetry collection from poetry boxes) This is another one, these are some of the poems that got collected.

00:28:19:

AS: Wow yeah that sounds awesome.

00:28:21:

AF: And what happens then is often these boxes at the end, they're not up forever, they're up for three months, they then get auctioned off and the money goes back into the environmental group.

00:28:34:

AS: The boxes…

00:28:35:

AF: The boxes get auctioned and then the money made from them gets put into the environmental cause.

00:28:41:

AS: What happens with the things that people write?

00:28:43:

AF: The poems, I'm collecting them.

00:28:45:

AS: OK.

00:28:46:

AF: I'll probably, I'm going to be doing it in a number of spots outside of Rhode Island and I'm just you know accumulating them and probably create a book or something, from them.

00:28:55:

AS: Oh.

00:28:56:

AF: But, so you know again I'm really finding ways to use the art in a very public way and engage people who might not otherwise encounter the arts to also sort of realize that the arts are an expressive form for them, not just for me.

00:29:18:

AS: So you're saying that Art Farm has been sort of a great influence on your shift towards looking at environmental issues. Are there any other influences, anything that you bring into your work besides maybe the things that you see around…

00:29:34:

AF: Yeah, well I think my heritage, being Cuban. I recently went back to Cuba and I realized so much of what I do… you know in Cuba it's a society that has not, it's a very historically interesting and rich culture but since Castro's takeover you know the material world has been very restricted because you know there's been embargo, you know the country's not been very prosperous though they've been doing brilliant things, but when I went to Cuba and it had been forty years since I left I realized so much of what I do is also embodied in how the Cubans live. Art for them is not just in the galleries. They dance, they play music, they're inventive about their everyday life because they have very few material goods to kind of create things out of nothing and they're incredibly imaginative about how to use you know recycled materials to create them and transform them into something else. You know as I said music just sort of pours out of the pores of the country you know everywhere you go there's music and you know it's how they breathe, it's how they speak in a way and so I saw all that I believed in the sense that art should be very much part of a community, it should be environmental, all these things were embodied in what was going on in Cuba today and here I was working in New England so far away from that and yet I was you know carrying on in that same kind of way. So that was very inspiring, it kind of reinvigorated my pride in who I was and where I came from.

00:31:36:

AS: Do you think that your parents did a lot to preserve the culture when they brought you and your brothers over?

00:31:44:

AF: Yes very much so and that's another thing that I think …. you know the risks they took for freedom you know to leave a country they loved and a comfortable life for the sake of freedom because they didn't want us being Communists, they didn't want us growing up under that took incredible amount of courage and it's only as I said as I matured, you know when I first encountered this censorship issue it was really a battle over my rights of expression, over my rights of freedom and you have to leave the comfort zone and get out there and stand up for what you believe in. And my parents were an incredible lesson in that.

00:32:34:

AS: Interesting. You said that your mother was a painter?

00:32:37:

AF: Yes.

00:32:38:

AS: So um did your mother I guess, ever talk to you about… when you were growing up like your artwork?

00:32:46:

AF: Oh yeah all the time and she was also a scholar, I mean she was a doctorate in romance languages… when she came to this country she flung herself back into university and went on to become a professor of Spanish literature, but painting is sort of her most pure self, that's what she really valued and loved to do. So yeah with my parents art was a part of the discussion, the way they led their lives was very creative, as immigrants you know they kind of reinvented themselves and my father created, built a wonderful house for us, for the family. So yeah they were an extraordinary example of you know being creative and forceful and creative and all of those things.

00:33:34:

AS: OK. So, did they I guess, did you ever show them pieces for them to comment?

00:33:40:
AF: Oh yes, very much so.

00:33:43:

AS: OK.

00:33:44:

AF: And the last piece of work that I've just finished is called "Cuba Journal" (AF looks through folder) and it's about my return to the island and it was both a sculptural installation with music and sculpture and narrative and there's a lot of writing in it and my mother and father both followed it very closely and my mother died in March of this past year right before it opened so she wasn't able to see it but she was very much a part of that show. I mean their spirit was very much their and it was a tribute to them, so yeah they've been a very important part and I've been lucky in that, I know a lot of artists who sort of had to, haven't had that family support.

00:34:29:

AS: Were any of your siblings, go into art?

00:34:33:

AF: Yeah I have one other brother who also is a very committed artist, he's a painter, portrait painter and lives in New York.

00:34:41:

AS: Interesting. So what kind of subjects did you paint before this sort of shift to environmental..?

00:34:49:

AF: It was always landscape.

00:34:50:

AS: Oh, still landscape?

00:34:51:

AF: I was always looking for my landscape until I stepped in to it you know and then it became more than just, you know as a painter you're painting sort of by the view and doing the landscape almost kind of through a window concept whereas when I began to do sculpture that was based on landscape, came from the landscape, it became a part of me, you know I was physically involved with the sculpture, it was a three-dimensional presence that was in the real world and then as I said I've moved, I'm no longer just in the studio, the work flows out of the studio, not just in the way I work with my own pieces but how I take those creative ideas and apply them to community so it kind of is part of the web of the landscape and you know community rather than just me you know safely looking out the window and creating a two dimensional view of it. Not that, not to say that there isn't powerful paintings based on landscape that people do but I need a visceral engagement with, not only in how I make the work but how I engage in the public.

00:36:06:

AS: So when you were doing painting did you always kind of feel like there had to be something more?

00:36:10:

AF: Yeah. (AS laugh) It was like this constant search you know with a flashlight, where is it, you know where is it, where is it? And I finally, I realized it and painted my way out of that into what I needed to walk into.

00:36:26:

AS: So your husband's also a sculptor?

00:36:28:

AF: Yeah.

00:36:29:

AS: Do you think that's kind of why you sort of started moving into the medium?

00:36:32:

AF: Well I saw, I was fascinated by what he could do in that you know as a sculptor you have skills that you can make real things that people sit in and he was always very functional with his, he works in metal and welds so you know he would make trailers and furniture and you know whatever he needed to plus he would also make very interesting sculptures. And I thought you know that's you know wonderful to be functional with your work as well as (mumble). So yeah he has been a big influence and technically at the beginning he was and still now we're you know always talking tech talk you know (AS laugh) and he's very engaged in the landscape as well, his fascination is the polar regions, he goes to Antarctica and the North Pole to look at glaciers and ice forms, so the two of us really inspire each other as well.

00:37:33:

AS: OK. I guess I ask that question because I was wondering you said you studied painting at RISD, so I was wondering if did you look at sculpture? Did you study a little bit of sculpture there or was he kind of a catalyst then?

00:37:46:

AF: Not at all. I had no, I'm self-taught as a sculptor.

00:37:50:

AS: OK. Was sculpture like as a discipline not really offered at RISD?

00:37:58:

AF: No, it was offered there, it's just sort of I had come from this painting and drawing background and I just you know what came to me, what I was good in and it was comfortable to just continue to do that because you know I loved it and I'm not at all… you know it all feeds into what I do today. I mean I still paint and draw as preparation for all the work that I do so it's not like it's separated at all, sculpture was really that kind of bridge into reality for me into that working with people and engaging in the public space etc. in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do with a painting... the way I did it anyhow.

00:38:42:

AS: Did most of, besides the environmental issues you mentioned female form, is that a lot of the work that you do?

00:38:52:

AF: Is the female form a…? I think it has a very strong component of what I do, you know the metaphor the female and earth as one constant through cultural forms and also as a woman myself I understand those connections. But I also deal with you know the male, now I'm much more conscious when I do work to have sort of both energies, yin and yang kind of being represented so I don't think it's strictly this kind of female perspective. I try to do both.

00:39:34:

AS: So do you think… I'm not really talented in the arts myself but I have some friends who are visual arts majors and they sort of are exploring that and when I've observed them in the VA10 classes, in the introductory classes, I saw them all working on their final projects and all of them sort of had a political message to them.

00:40:01:

AF: Mmhm. So you mean this year or..?

00:40:02:

AS: Um, just this past year I saw a couple kids in this studio kind of working on things and I don't know if that was just the environment of the school where it's kind of political, but um do you think that artists.. well I guess for yourself and other artists that you know… do you just sort of try to replicate things or just you know do whatever moves you or do you think that sometimes the art itself is political? Does that make sense?

00:40:31:

AF: You mean are there certain mood of the culture that sort of sifts into your own work or do you go after that? Is that what you're asking?

00:40:39:

AS: Oh, I'm asking if you or other artists that you know, like do you just do art or do you try to do art with like a message or something in mind, like is your art political?

00:40:51:

AF: Well I think…how do you answer that. I think you get to a certain point, I think what I've been saying is you get to a certain point where the art takes you and it's not just an intellectual kind of exercise. I think you have a responsibility as an artist of any kind to be a witness to your times, not just well… to yourself I think you have to be a witness to yourself and to your art in your own life, but hopefully in that retrospection it's not just about you but it's about a universal kind of reality and I think the times we live in, it is a time of, you know it is a very political time and I think artists can be very powerful in it, if they understand the gatekeepers.

00:41:57:

AS: Mmhm, right. (AS laugh)

00:41:58:

AF: You know that's the key you know because some artists think you know well let's put our political art in the Whitney Biannual or whatever you know and that's still within the realm of the art world. I think art can be very effective in the real world but you have to take it out of those little realms of specialization and I think it's an interesting time now because artists I think are beginning to understand that. Political art and its political messages are always part of the art academy. I mean if you look at you know the quote-unquote art world, the people who are you know sort of controlling things in the New York galleries there is this sort of certain cache or interest in the political art with a message and stuff but when it's really powerful is when you break outside of those you know little corridors and put it into people's hands somehow, empower them somehow. And you know I don't think art can cure disease or change the government, I wish it could (sarcasm), but it can give people hope, can remind them that they have certain qualities within themselves that they don't have to be voiceless, you know in their own small way they can be creative, they can be expressive and continue to practice their own you know creative powers, which then can you know affect society as a whole you know, but if you feel like it's the media who tells you what to do and the government who tells you what to do then you lose energy, you lose power and unfortunately America's become too kind of obtained by the media culture you know, so anyhow it's an interesting time…complicated time.

00:43:54:

AS: Yeah that's interesting, I really think it's really fascinating how you try to incorporate art into the public, how it's sort of the driving force. I know there's a lot of public art around campus and I think there's a Public Art Committee and they try to bring different kinds of pieces and I don't know it's interesting because we all just kind of laugh at them because they're all sort of contemporary, well for instance on the side of our Sciences Library we had a… I think it was a painting, I'm not sure, it was a donkey in a boat and it was just huge and humongous and we were all just kind of like "Um, I'm not really sure what to do with that" so… I think it's interesting that it always creates a dialogue, like people always talk about it, in some sense people were like "Wow this is so great. We're such a kind of cooky school, we have a picture of a donkey in a boat (laugh) on the side of our library."

00:44:54:

AF: Was this during the elections?

00:44:56:

AS: No actually it was just last semester.

00:45:00:

AF: But it was a lead-up to the elections right,

00:45:01:

AS: Yeah.

00:45:02:

AF: so it had a reference to the Democratic Party?

00:45:04:

AS: They didn't, actually when they interviewed the Public Art Committee, they were just like "Oh this was I guess made by someone in Italy or something" so it didn't really connect to the whole Democrat thing.

00:45:14:

AF: Oh, OK.

00:45:15:

AS: But yeah I kind of wish though sometimes that art pieces would sort of just not confuse people because we also have other sculptures around campus and we have one called a, I think done by someone with the last name Noguchi and it's just sort of this

00:45:34:

AF: Isamu Noguchi, yeah.

00:45:37:

AS: And it's just sort of this big stick thing and people just call it the phallus (AS laugh) or you know sort of jokes about it but…

00:45:45:

AF: Well you know I think if art is totally received complacently by everyone then, then it's maybe not activating anything you know.

00:45:56:

AS: Right.

00:45:57:

AF: So you know discussion, giggles, (AS laugh) all those sorts of things means that it's somehow sort of stopped you and made you think somehow, I mean hopefully it goes a little deeper than that. And sometimes also pieces don't have an understanding, people don't understand pieces when they're, I mean look at Herman Melville and "Moby Dick" I mean when he wrote that book no one when it came out even looked at it, no one read it, I mean I don't think it was published right away. Now it's a great classic so I mean things take time and it's not always understood until later, so I mean it's a form of, it's almost kind of a pinch you know to the person, to remind you that you think and feel in a complete sense, you know it's a sensory pinch and an intellectual one hopefully too. But how different artists do that depends on the artists and the times they live in etc. and I think everyone has to figure that out on their own.

00:47:09:

AS: How do you feel about, I guess sort of, there's art I guess that sort of more resembles things that people can identify, like people can look at this and say these are legs right as opposed to art, I don't know what the name of that art would be, but just

00:47:25:

AF: Abstract.

00:47:26:

AS: Exactly. Abstract, such as the Noguchi sculpture which is just sort of a straight stick-like form and then you have another piece that is just kind of like, kind of black cut-out 3-d sort of and kind of squiggly… so I guess is that art abstract, I mean how do you feel about abstract art I guess?

00:47:49:

AF: Well it all has a, but you have to see it in context when Noguchi… Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese-American sculptor, a very interesting, very good sculptor now dead. When he was doing those forms, he was responding to a time when a lot of the work before had been very figurative so he was responding to that and sort of introducing simplified forms, organic forms, and it had a real reason for you know being and a very personal one. He himself had immense contact with landscape and sense of form from his Japanese heritage which was you know very simplified and mystical in the way he thought about landscape and form and, so I think you have to try to see things in context, there's always an evolution to ideas and why they come about and it's not just in your own time and why it's there and, so I think abstract art has had a very important role in the development of art. I did abstract work, but where I am now is a result of you know responding historically to my own work and my responses to other works, so it's you know life and understanding of anything is part of a continuum, you can't just take it, you too can take it at that moment when you encounter it but hopefully you have time to reflect on it as part of a larger continuum.

00:49:32:

AS: I guess my question was that like you know if people who don't really know Noguchi or sort of what his influences were in creating pieces, I guess just students kind of like walking around campus, like somehow I feel that's kind of problematic that you know I guess is it just up to the person themselves who's viewing it to sort of see what that art represents to them or more should we try to see it in the way the artist originally, you know what influences he had or that he was trying to communicate so..? I know I do a lot of writing so I guess I kind of just think it should mostly also be up to the reader I guess to see what they kind of think of it because like artists, writers can't be there to explain the piece?

00:50:27:

AF: Right, no the work has to speak for itself, yeah. And maybe that work doesn't speak to you and that's fine. I mean not every story you read is going to speak to you,

00:50:37:

AS: That's true.

00:50:38:

AF: not every writer you read and the beauty of it is there are many choices.

00:50:41:

AS: Right.

00:50:42:

AF: So that's critical, yeah.

00:50:50:

AS: I had a question about the trip that you took back to Cuba, was that the first time that you returned after 40 years?

00:50:55:

AF: Yeah. After 40 years and part of the reason I hadn't returned any sooner was that you know my parents left and it was and Castro's still alive so with the Cuban-American immigrants there's a, almost a loyalty code to your parents that you don't go back while he's still alive because you know the… villain is still in the island sort of. So to go back I had to have a very good reason to go back, I didn't go back just as a tourist.

00:51:35:

AS: Oh OK.

00:51:36:

AF: So my parents were still alive and of course they questioned it.

00:51:41:

AS: Right. So when you were growing up I mean even now do you feel a really strong tie to you know a Cuban identity?

00:51:54:

AF: You know it's funny no. You know I grew up… well I would say I know I'm very Cuban but I grew up from the age of six on in this country and in New England and I was not surrounded by other Latinos where we lived so it's only later in life that that sort of part of me has been more…how to word this. That I've been more aware of just how Cuban I am, you know we're all in this country we come from somewhere else, you come from Asia, you know China or, is that where you come from?

00:52:38:

AS: Yeah.

00:52:39:

AF: Yeah and so we all come with different landscapes in us and that's the beauty of this country or has been until you know the immigration policy has begun to change, that you know we become American that we become something other than just where we came from so I just really embrace that. And it's exciting to have that possibility, it's exciting to hang onto your other culture but there's something very liberating about being in a place where you can reinvent yourself and become whoever you want to become you know theoretically America provides that for you.

00:53:18:

AS: So did, in preserving like the culture, did your family continue to speak I guess language?

00:53:29:

AF: Yeah.

00:53:30:

AS: How did they preserve the culture, like…?

00:53:32:

AF: Well we spoke Spanish at home, the food, you know the way I dated I was chaperoned until I was 17, (AS laugh) you know all these things were very Cuban. And you know, the sense of family being extremely important and you know, so there was many many ways, but it wasn't within a larger community, my parents had Cuban friends but not a lot in our area so it was more out of the home that that came from.

00:54:13:

AS: So when you were growing up you said that they weren't many Hispanics in that community so

00:54:14:

AF: No.

00:54:15

AS: when you went to RISD did that change?

00:54:17:

AF: No.

00:54:17:

AS: OK. (AS laugh)

00:54:18:

AF: There were very few.

00:54:19:

AS: OK.

00:54:20:

AF: I was surprised to find that there was a Latin American collection at the RISD museum which over the years they've done much more with but I was you know amazed that they had that because this is you know… now Providence in the last twenty…five years has really changed, the Hispanic population has really grown and is being celebrated but when I was an undergraduate there it wasn't.

00:54:49:

AS: What years did you go to RISD?

00:54:51:

AF: I graduated in '79.

00:54:53:

AS: OK. So did you enjoy your time at RISD or did you feel like it was a time when you grew a lot with your art?

00:55:01:

AF: It was a funny time for me… in that you know it was really good to just get focused on working at painting seriously but I also… I came to Brown for liberal arts courses because I felt that I was really hungry for more liberal arts, not just painting all the time, just drawing all the time because I just felt art had to come from other ideas, it didn't just come from technical mastery, so if I had it to do over again I probably wouldn't have gone to just an art school because I really feel like ideas and history and language and all those other forms of knowledge are so important to developing you know and the bottom line I think an artist is someone who addresses ideas, it's not just about the mark you make as far as with a paintbrush or whatever, it's what the mind is saying, it's what comes through the mind, you know what the hand says about the mind of the artist and that mind has to be developed you know and you know you can do it, you can go to a specialized school and continue to read and take in the world as much as you can but I think if I had it to do over again I would not have done that and gone to a liberal arts school and continued with my art you know whatever. But I think all of those things were very informative and when I teach now I don't just teach studio art, I teach art in a context and I sort of bring in interdisciplinary forms to teach it. So I've done a course, developed a course on art and healing and we look at the connection between art and hearing from the beginning of cultural you know time and look at how shamans were artists of the community and then with that course I then take students into the community and use a creative practicum where they can use their creativity and arts in healing form for institutional setting or whatever. So I try to not just teach them how to draw

00:57:19:

AS: Right. So I'm interested in the art and healing, you also said that you try to put your art in these hospitals…?

00:57:29:

AF: Yeah I have a lot of commissions in hospitals.

00:57:32:

AS: Oh, OK.

00:57:33:

AF: About three or four of them are in life-span hospitals that are all over Rhode Island. I've got one that's just going up in Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. So I've worked a lot within that setting since '97?

00:57:52:

AS: So, what would you, when you get to sort of the contemporary part of that course, what kind of things do you talk about, like right now in the US with the relations between art and healing?

00:58:05:

AF: Well there's a very interesting movement I think worldwide of just acknowledging that creativity is a healing you know energy and that's creativity of any kind. They've found that, they've done studies where they find that people healing from a major illness or trauma are engaged in some creative outlet whether it's writing or dancing or listening to music or making music, they heal faster. It gets, the creativity actually produces more endorphins and endorphins create a sense of well-being, so I mean there are studies of that and they are finding that when you heal in a place that has a window, you can look outside, again it's more the outcome is more positive when you heal in a space that is beautiful, that's got good colors or a beautiful painting or you can go back to your home and, it's just all of these things affect the whole person but it's basic knowledge if you look at indigenous cultures you know who have never separated art from their experience of life.

00:59:21:

AS: Right.

00:59:22:
AF: So it's really coming back to a basic knowledge that's been there all along.

00:59:27:

AS: Wow. That's great, no that seems to make a lot of sense you know that to be engaged, if you're coming back from a illness or trauma that to reengage to sort of reengage in life again is sort of more than just going about your daily activity so that if you were to do something that really excites you that…

00:59:51:

AF: Yeah it's so important, don't just watch TV.

(AS and AF both laugh)

00:59:57:

AS: Yeah.

00:59:58:

AF: You know, really use your body, use your sense and you know it you know it's so positive and I've found also working a lot in this setting that people who have been extremely hard-driven professionals who never took time for those things (AS laugh) that you might consider frivolous like learning how to play the violin or painting or you know writing down one of those poems they wanted to write, only later in life you know all of a sudden after they hit the wall they've got a chronic illness or something which might come from stress

01:00:32:

AS: (laugh) Right.

01:00:33:

AF: which might come from you know not fully engaging your senses and not allowing yourself to be artful, creative, that then they have time sometimes too late, because they only have so much time because they're dying. So you know it's an interesting, it's been a very interesting thing to work in that field and just see the positive effects, I mean it's not a cure-all you can't say that it can cure cancer but it is one of many modes of healing that is so positive and should be engaged and it's so easy to access.

01:01:09:

AS: Right. I'm also wondering what you think about how when people are sick they shouldn't really stay in hospitals, you know try to go to a different environment, at least being at home or

01:01:19:

AF: Oh yeah.

01:01:20:

AS: something like that because for a little while I was in this community service program called Musicians in Hospitals

01:01:26:

AF: Oh neat.

01:01:27:

AS: so we would just try to go in, I guess I mean I only went to a nursing home and played but they were really excited about that but like you know medical facilities are just so sterile,

01:01:38:

AF: Yeah.

01:01:39:

AS: they're just not comfortable, I could see how a person could not just even think it's sad being in there,

01:01:46:

AF: Yeah it's hard.

01:01:47:

AS: being in a nursing home or a hospital.

01:01:51:

AF: Yeah, it's hard, but I think they're kind of waking up to the idea that they have to make these places less institutional by bringing in artists, by painting them different colors, but we've got a long way to go.

01:02:02:

AS: Right

01:02:03:

AF: So what kind of music do you play? What instrument?

01:02:07:

AS: Oh. Well I played clarinet from the time I was ten until, let me see, probably my freshman year here and then I don't know, it just sort of faded away just because when I was in school I would always have orchestra everyday or band everyday, so I would mostly do classical, I didn't ever really do jazz or anything. So just the few classical pieces I remembered I played for them at the nursing home and they all really loved it, I could see how that could just be totally great

01:02:41:

AF: Right.

01:02:43:

AS: if you're kind of just sitting around all day you know and can't really go anywhere. So I guess I'm kind of interested in what is your..

01:02:51:

AF: What time do you have?

01:02:52:

AS: Oh sorry. (AS reaches for cell phone) It's 11:23 so I guess this will be, I'll just ask you a question more or two. So I guess just what is sort of like your daily schedule like, is there a certain time set aside for just working on pieces and then doing all the other stuff like…?

01:03:14:

AF: Right. Well I spend half, probably the morning from until about eleven I'm at my desk either in touch with people because I'm in the middle of a project or writing, writing's become a very important part of what I do, you know just writing articles or pieces about the work that I've done or creative writing. And then I go into the studio eleven to about five depending on what's going on, you know sometimes I'm out in a residency so I'm not in a studio but I'm working and doing my sort of engagement in another institution that's invited me to work there or whatever. Right now I'm in the middle of this 9/11 project for New London and there's been a pause because since it's a public art project there's a lot of committee stuff around it and so it's been, I was supposed to be working on it through this month but it's sort of been put on the shelf for a little while so I'm in the middle of doing all these other things I've been wanting to get to. So lately you know it's been varied, the last few years I've been really creating my own schedule depending on the projects and so that's been very positive.

01:04:36:

AS: So I was wondering, I know writers like something they commonly talk about is how frustrating sometimes you can't really get a sentence out the right way or work's not going the way you want it to, do artists…?

01:04:50:

AF: Oh yeah. I mean sometimes you know you go into your studio and you create absolute garbage (AS laugh) and I think in a way you know sort of when it starts going bad do you really begin to figure out what the problems are you know, sometimes it just flows and sure you create a wonderful piece but you always feel you're kind of starting again. I mean I always feel I'm starting a whole new series of sculptures, this "Cuba Project" that I mentioned you know I have sort of public projects that are very much public collaborative community projects and I still very much continue work that no one else works on, that I just do myself and the "Cuba Project" was the last big body of work that took me at least two years to finish that and now that's beginning to travel. But now I'm starting a whole other new body of work that you know I'm coming up with all kinds of technical problems you know it's going very slowly and you know it's very frustrating but so it never just sings along (AS laugh), the more you get into it it's a continual struggle which is fun.

01:06:00:

AS: So besides deadlines, like how do you know when a piece is finished, when you just can't work on it anymore?

01:06:05
AF: Yeah, I just can't, I mean after awhile you get to a point where you know, I mean I used to when I was younger, I used to kill pieces (AS laugh) you know I'd overdo it, I wouldn't know when to stop but I think that's part of, some of the good stuff that comes after you've been working at it for a long time is that it sort of tells you when it's done.

01:06:25:

AS: And then I guess just one last question. How did you sort of get involved with Sol Gallery and I guess if you have any thoughts about that space or..?

01:06:35:

AF: Yeah, well I support, I think they're doing great things in the Latin American community here in Providence and so you know since I'm Cuban I'm certainly a part of that dialogue though I don't live in Providence I can't be as engaged as I am but I always enjoy being asked to be part of their exhibitions and support them in whatever way I can. I think their new space will mean that they will really have to explore that neighborhood and figure out how to you know make it accessible and create a presence there so, just you know time will tell but I know that area is really being transformed as we speak, it's changing a lot, a lot of artists are there, Latin Americans live down in that area so I think that's a good place for them and you know they hadn't had a place for two years so this is a big step to finally find a place. Did you go down to the show?

01:07:35:

AS: Ah no I didn't get a chance.

01:07:36:

AF: Oh you didn't even go to the show,

01:07:37:

AS: No, I didn't…

01:07:38
AF: you didn't even get a chance to go the show.

01:07:40:

AS: but Mr. Piñera came to talk to the class,

01:07:41:

AF: Oh he did?

01:07:42:

AS: about it, so I haven't really seen a lot of the artwork that's in there. So do you happen to know if they're other non-Providence artists, I guess it's Sol Gallery would probably be Providence-based.

01:07:57:

AF: No there's some people from actually I don't know exactly where they all come from but some people are not artists per se, I think he probably told you,

01:08:06:

AS: Yeah.

01:08:07:

AF: It's about the spiritual (AS chimes in on 'spiritual') connection of people who just collect things because they're spiritual and create alters and what have you, I think it's very interesting as it has that kind of functional connection to just normal life.

01:08:22:

AS: Right, let me just check the time. Yeah it's 11:29 so I should let you go but thank you so much, I found it really interesting.

01:08:31:

AF: Well thank you.

01:08:32