Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists Gerardo Monterrubio

GERARDO MONTERRUBIO
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
ON MANO-MADE
Emily Zaiden | Director & Curator | Craft in America Center
Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino
Artists is a trio of subsequent solo exhibitions
by three preeminent Mexican-Californian artists —
Jaime Guerrero, Gerardo Monterrubio and
Consuelo Jimenez Underwood. Each artist employs
unprecedented formal approaches to material
and asserts conceptual perspectives that have
otherwise been excluded from the canon of the
contemporary art world. With prowess, they all
push the potential of their chosen media to new
heights of expression.
These three individual artists are unified by their
desire to communicate ideas and stories through
their works. For each artist, personal identity and
cultural heritage play a strong part in the narratives
that they touch upon in the art. Each uses craft
to articulate messages about American and
Chicano culture, personal experiences, Latino
and bicultural identity, and the ever-mutating sociopolitical
tensions that exist in California and the
United States as a whole. The significance of the
object as artifact and the role of the artist in
sculpting this legacy, is a fundamental pursuit
to all three.
In planning these three exhibitions, it was evident
from the outset that each artist would generate
powerful and timely elucidations, but their
Toward La Zona Pellucida detail, 2017
Porcelain, under and overglazes
18”h x 13”w x 13”d
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