Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists Consuelo Jimenez Underwood
Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists is a trio of solo exhibitions by Mexican-Californian craft pioneers curated by Emily Zaiden, Craft in America Center Director. This exhibition catalog focuses on the work of fiber artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood.
Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists is a trio of solo exhibitions by Mexican-Californian craft pioneers curated by Emily Zaiden, Craft in America Center Director. This exhibition catalog focuses on the work of fiber artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood.
Transform your PDFs into Flipbooks and boost your revenue!
Leverage SEO-optimized Flipbooks, powerful backlinks, and multimedia content to professionally showcase your products and significantly increase your reach.
MANO-MADE:
NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT BY LATINO ARTISTS
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE:
NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT BY LATINO ARTISTS
CONSUELO JIMENEZ
UNDERWOOD
December 2, 2017 – January 20, 2018
Craft in America Center
Los Angeles, CA
The third in a trio of solo exhibitions by Mexican-Californian craft pioneers
Curated by Emily Zaiden
Ghost Flowers from
Undocumented Border
Tracks detail, 2017
ISBN # 978-1-5323-5108-2
© 2017 Craft in America
Printed in Los Angeles, CA
Designed by Stacie Martinez
Printed by Typecraft, Inc. in Los Angeles, CA
This catalog was published in conjunction with the exhibition:
Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists
Craft in America Center
Los Angeles, CA
August 26, 2017 - January 20, 2018
Curated by Emily Zaiden
Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by Latino Artists is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a
far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles,
taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across
Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is
Bank of America.
CONTENTS
9 FOREWORD
10 ON MANO-MADE
13 BETWEEN THE LINES: DOCUMENTING
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD'S
FIBER PATHWAYS
39 ARTIST STATEMENT
40 ARTIST BIO
43 EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
FOREWORD
Carol Sauvion | Executive Director | Craft in America
I first became aware of Consuelo Jimenez
Underwood in 2004 when I stood in front of her
Virgen de los Caminos quilt at the Renwick
Gallery in Washington, D.C. I knew immediately
that I wanted to include Underwood in the Craft
in America documentary series which we produce
for PBS. When I met Underwood and
visited her studio in Gualala, California when
filming our THREADS episode in 2012, I realized
that her use of craft to express her ideas
about identity, the border, and human rights is
the crux of her artistic practice.
Where did Consuelo Jimenez Underwood’s love
of the handmade come from? Her father, a
bracero (a Mexican laborer allowed into the U.S.
as a seasonal agricultural worker), was also a
weaver who carried the knowledge of traditional
weaving techniques learned in his homeland. He
passed that knowledge and his manual dexterity
to Underwood, who grew up in harsh circumstances
but understood the importance of
finding her place in the world, even as a young
child. Underwood set her sights on a life of
independence, quite a goal for a child whose first
work experience took place at age five in the
fields of Central California.
Underwood learned the basics of weaving from
her father and needlework from her mother. The
handwork skills she acquired as a young person
became the vehicle for both her career in the arts
Father, Son and the Holy Rebozo detail, 2017
and her self-expression. Her work in fiber began
with embroidered blue jeans for her husband,
Marcos Underwood, who has always been the
champion of her art practice. Her work continued
with the intricate tapestries made when she began
her formal studies in fiber. It includes the quilt
she embroidered of the Virgen de Guadalupe and
her series of rebozos dedicated to her heroes. It
now involves the Borderlines installations she is
constructing in museums throughout the United
States. She continues to use her craft skills to
manifest her artistic exploration of place, politics,
and material culture.
Underwood’s artistic practice begins with the
crafts. At the risk of being identified with domestic
and amateur practices, Underwood has not
abandoned skills that might conjure up negative
connotations of the “handmade.” It is part of her
search for meaning through handwork, using
fiber to craft pieces that express her thoughts
about the human condition. These components
of her practice: craft and content, are inseparable.
We at Craft in America are especially proud to
have a Borderlines mural in Underwood’s exhibition
at the Craft in America Center, part of our
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Mano-Made
exhibition. A joint outreach project, the mural
includes the work of students from Fairfax Magnet
Center for Visual Arts and William Jefferson Clinton
Middle School. We are grateful to Underwood
for her work with our students and for touching
our lives with her art.
9
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
ON MANO-MADE
Emily Zaiden | Director & Curator | Craft in America Center
Quatlique-landia detail, 2017
10
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 commentary
became even more pertinent over the past
year and a half as the global political climate
shifted. Each artist tackles the fiber of monumental
social struggles through their work, yet they scale
their approach to the intimacy of the gallery space.
The Craft in America Center, as an alternative art
space in the heart of Los Angeles, served as a
laboratory for their exploration and expression.
For Los Angeles native Guerrero, whose show
is the first in the series, reverence for the figurative
form, and the spiritual and metaphorical potential
of glass to represent a culture at any given time,
are pathways for investigation. Jaime is one of
the few and first artists in the world to hot sculpt
life-size figures in glass. For this installation of
his work, he created his most compositionally
ambitious group of figures yet. The inherent
nature of glass in its duality of strength, yet fragility,
mirrors the nature of the human body and gives
his work added impact.
He takes glass into untapped realms with his
remarkable ability to imbue his medium with
palpable emotion and spirit. Occasionally, the
end result is a lighthearted romp in street culture.
However, in recent work, as exemplified by this
installation, Guerrero wades deep into the
waters of postcolonialism to confront paradigms
of bicultural identity.
Monterrubio’s intense exploration of the ceramic
vessel and its trajectory of serving as a canvas
for transporting cultural narrative is a driving
theme in his work. Located between muralism
and street art, two realms of the art world that
have been linked with Chicano art, his approach
to imagery on porcelain taps into pan-global
traditions that span all of cultural history. Like
Guerrero, who is inventing relics for the contemporary
world and bringing to these the voices
11
of those who are normally muted or silenced,
Monterrubio’s brush records glimpses of life in
urban Latino culture with the same desire to document
modern society for the sake of posterity.
Recently known for her series of large-scale
depictions of geographic borderlines, Underwood
instills new meaning into the cartological representation
of various border states and American
cities. Incorporating various fiber materials, found
objects, wire, and nails, she creates powerful
works of dynamic beauty that spark discussion
about the boundaries that define place and
identity. Underwood’s art consistently reflects her
personal tricultural perspective and fundamental
belief in the interconnectedness of societies.
Beyond the identifiable cultural implications, she
is compelled to shed light on the detrimental
impact of the border wall on surrounding animal
and plant life. For Underwood, our imprint on the
natural environment is the most significant
artifact that modern society will leave behind.
Working in glass, clay, and fiber, these three
pioneers are using traditional, age-old materials
in visionary ways to voice the conflicts and
uncertainty that are at the forefront of American
culture in this unpredictable time.
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
BETWEEN THE LINES:
DOCUMENTING CONSUELO JIMENEZ
UNDERWOOD'S FIBER PATHWAYS
Emily Zaiden
Rarely does an artist’s chosen media
and artwork embody her individual
essence as universally as in the case
of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood. Lines
are the root of her creative practice –
physically, representationally, conceptually,
and metaphorically. The basic unit of
her artistic process begins and ends
with the line, whether a piece is constructed
by weaving or sewing in thread
or barbed wire, or through paint, pastel,
caution tape, and even the removal of
painter’s tape. As a child, she first
became fascinated with art by drawing
with lines of embroidery thread. In weaving,
each piece is structured on a foundation
of lines and it can only grow through the
addition of threads added line by line.
This generative process via lines reflects
her central concern with the border lines
that exist between cultures and places,
past and present, and the spiritual and
the mundane. Lineage is another key
guiding principle in her overall outlook.
By no small coincidence, she charted a
deliberately linear path for herself to
becoming a mother, teacher, and artist.
Inside the Rain Rebozo, 2017
Woven wire, linen and wool thread
50”h x 20”w
Underwood’s earliest memories are tied
to cloth. As a child, she dreamed of
weaving rebozos (shawls) like those she
saw wrapped around the arms and over
the heads of indigenous women at the
Mexicali-Calexico border, where her family
13
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
Mother Rain Rebozo
detail, 2017
lived. Their colorful, patterned textiles
were what drew her attention amidst the
frenzy of people, unfolding drama, and
constant action. Many of the women
wearing these shawls were beggars.
Their handmade rebozos were old and
ragged but, to her, they were beautiful and
dignified — symbols of their indigenous
identity. She knew this was also her
identity, in part. She saw the fringy, frayed
ends of their skirts and imagined the
places they had seen.
As a young girl, Underwood learned to
embroider from her mother, and she
loved watching her father weave on a
frame loom. She was an avid reader
especially of non-fiction, thanks in part
to a book mobile that came to the fields
where she worked alongside her parents,
who were migrant workers. They lived in
both Calexico and Mexicali, where her
mother owned houses in both places,
and they would shuttle back and forth
between the two cities and wherever
they could find work.
When she was fourteen, she met a boy
at a dance who would become her
husband and they married four years
later at the age of eighteen. The couple
left the Imperial Valley and had two
children. With a family of her own to care
for, she decided to formulate a ten-yearplan
for the next decade of her life. Once
her children were almost teenagers and
her husband had finished his doctorate,
it was Underwood’s turn to go back to
school. She opted for art over religious
studies because she knew she could
challenge religious patriarchies through
her work as an artist.
She enrolled at San Diego State University
and learned to weave while studying
painting. Finally, she saw her chance to
make a rebozo of her own. Torn between
painting and fiber, while sitting at a loom
in the studio one day, she determined
that paint was not what spoke to her as
much as the canvas itself. Despite the
hierarchies between craft and art at that
time, fiber was her calling. She dove into
the field — learning everything she could
about spinning, making thread, natural
dyes, and a variety of techniques.
At San Diego State University, she attained
a master's in art and with guidance from
the respected head of the textile program,
Joan Austin. Austin came to the school
from Cranbrook and was steeped in
the Bauhaus approach to textiles. With
a strict emphasis on technique, form,
and respect for materials, she taught
Underwood process, traditions, and to
skillfully execute tight, perfect weavings.
Austin took Underwood under her wing,
leading her all over San Diego to immerse
her in the art world. Her critical piece of
advice was that Underwood find her
distinct voice.
Underwood decided that her weavings
were going to be tough — not just
aesthetically beautiful things. With skills
and a solid grounding for her artistic
practice, she went on for her MFA to
San Jose State University. While there,
she was forced to shift gears as content
became paramount to form. She learned
how to express herself as an artist and
how to use materials to help her in her
expression. Articulating the meaning
behind the work came naturally.
As the lone fiber student in the program,
she was surrounded by painters and
mixed media artists who questioned her
focused passion for the traditional
medium. She saw it as a realm that
could become her own. They questioned
14
15
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
JAIME GUERRERO
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
her obsession with weaving and her
response was, “Would you have told
Van Gogh you're getting too obsessed
with painting, try weaving?”
Shortly after finishing her MFA, she was
hired to helm the Fiber/Textile program
at the school in 1989. In accordance
with the decades plan she had plotted
for her life as a young girl in the farm
fields, she landed a tenure-track position
at San Jose State University, where she
continued to teach for the following
twenty years. Everyone who entered the
fiber studios under her watch would leave
empowered with “thread knowledge” to
be able to expand the potential of fiber
as an artistic media.
Underwood started making burial shrouds
dedicated to her heroes in the late
1980s – initiated with one for Joan of
Arc, whose story had given her hope
when she read it as a nine-year-old. These
woven wraps were related in form and
function to the rebozos she had always
admired. She wove commemorations of
individuals who were willing to die for
their beliefs, and whose strength and
courage deserved to be honored and
protected for posterity. Ten years after
weaving the hero shrouds, she created
her first true rebozo, inspired by the idea
of an indigenous woman who must use
safety pins to complete the piece
because she has no time to sew. She
reinvigorated this ancient woven textile
tradition as a format for expressing
modern concerns and conflicts. Today,
she creates two rebozos per year
through her labor-intensive process.
In her tongue-in-cheek Father, Son, and
the Holy Rebozo, she depicts what she
considers to be the "Holy Trinity of
border region headgear": the sombrero
or cowboy hat, the baseball cap, and
the rebozo, which is positioned below
the other two. Underwood notes how
the two hats serve as symbols of masculinity
and are worn on both sides of the
U.S.-Mexico border without distinction.
The authoritative sombrero at the top, in
the northernmost position, is intended to
represent the father. The baseball cap
below, a newer form of headwear, is south
of the cowboy hat, and it represents the
son. Underwood overlaid the line of the
U.S.-Mexico border in copper and silver
wire with metallic threads on top of each
of the two segments to suggest the
question: who wears what, and where?
Both hats are now interchangeable and
ubiquitous, regardless of the nationality
or citizenship of the wearer. The absurdity
of making these distinctions has undoubtedly
larger implications and Underwood
explores this theme throughout her work.
In this piece, three manifestations of
gender and cultural identity are placed
in juxtaposition. In addition to noting how
contemporary clothing and popular culture
migrate freely over borders, the piece
touches on the issue of how women fit into
the trinity of society, politics, and religion.
As a child learning about Christianity,
Underwood questioned the exclusion of
women from the Trinity. Fringe in the lower
third portion of this piece represents how
women are beneath everything and often
pushed to the bottom. Simultaneously,
the piece is indicative of how, as Chicana
art theorist Laura E. Pérez describes,
Underwood has consistently undermined
Father, Son, and the Holy
Rebozo, 2017
Woven wire, linen, metallic
and cotton thread
40”h x 19”w
16
17
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
“contemporary gendered and racialized
distinctions between art and craft that
demote weaving to a ‘feminine’ or ‘thirdworld’
artistically undeveloped ‘craft.’” 1
Triality pervades Underwood’s work as
a reflection of her beliefs and her ancestry.
Her approach to her work involves
equally the hand, mind, and spirit. Identifying
as a Californian Chicana of Mexican
and Huichol descent, she has always
drifted between the margins of three
cultures. Through her father, she inherited
her connections to indigenous and
Mexican culture, her mother was a bridge
to her Mexican-American identity, and
Underwood absorbed these histories
while growing up straddling the border.
Underwood came to understand the
border as a young child of a bracero.
Some of her earliest memories as a
three-year-old involved smuggling her
father across the border under her feet
in the family car once the bracero program
was terminated. The trauma of witnessing
officials violently taking him away when he
was discovered was something that
never left her. He played a game of cat
and mouse with the government for years
until he finally received a green card.
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
1
Laura E. Pérez, Chicana
Art: The Politics of
Spiritual and Aesthetic
Altarities. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press,
2007, p . 163
JAIME GUERRERO
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
The triality of nations is further manifested
in Quatlique-landia, as the ghostly image
of Aztec goddess, Coatlicue, seeps
through this stitched and embroidered
U.S. flag, which was formed over a nylon
Mexican flag. Underwood has worked
on merging the flags of the U.S. and
Mexico formally, structurally, and thematically
in her work since the early 1990s.
Through the zig-zagging mayhem of
colored and metallic threads, Coatlicue’s
ugly, powerful face and skirt of serpents
imbue the striped U.S. flag with her
spirit. She will not be erased nor limited
18
Quatlique-landia, 2017
Nylon Mexican flag, cotton and
metallic thread, cotton stuffing
30”h x 17.5”w
15
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
by arbitrary political boundaries. Her
pregnant, protruding belly holds both the
eagle and the snake of the Mexican flag.
2
Beverly Gordon, Textiles:
the Whole Story, Uses,
Meanings, Significance.
New York, NY : Thames &
Hudson, 2011, p. 279
Underwood’s art exemplifies what textile
scholar Beverly Gordon describes as
the “holistic consideration of the symbolic
and literal importance of cloth in human
life.” 2 She has created other rebozos to
signify a reconnection with the spirits of
the land and the elements – envisioning
them as offerings to spirits that cannot
be seen but can only be felt. After
weaving a series of rebozos dedicated
to Mother Earth, she decided in 2016 a
rain rebozo was long overdue. Mother
Rain Rebozo – woven in linen, metallic,
silk, and wool thread – was initiated as a
rain dance or prayer to encourage an end
to the California drought. This masterful
piece subtly captures the shimmer of
falling raindrops over arid earth. When
she started the weaving and the rains
finally came, her artistic meditation
was actualized.
16
Mother Rain Rebozo, 2017
Woven linen, metallic, silk and
wool thread
67.5”h x 14.5”w
Mother Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
21
The resist-dyed ikat warp anchors a
herringbone pattern of gradations of blue.
At the bottom of the piece, the defining
fringe of a typical rebozo is alluded to as
a woven implication. Underwood conceived
of the piece as a woven portrait
of the rain serpent mother. An indicative
demonstration of how Underwood plays
with the balance between tightness and
looseness in her work, she left the ends
free and unbounded by the limitations
of perfection. Incorporating threads of
varying thicknesses, she evokes the
elusive and fluid quality of water with
specks of color from the finest of threads.
“We can’t even see [water]
sometimes. It’s a mist as it
falls until it collects on the
windshield. When it’s in space,
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
you can’t see it, like these
threads. But after they build
up, you see it.”
Once the rains finally began, Underwood
created a piece to capture the wonder of
color that appears when rain falls. Inside
the Rain Rebozo is woven and embroidered
on a warp of fine blue wire with
the spectrum of color that appears as
the sun hits each unique rain drop. The
top of the piece is what Underwood calls
“the cloud kitchen where rain begins.”
The eyes, nose, and fangs of the mythical
rain serpent peak through. Individual
drops of rain fall towards the rolling
Californian landscape at the bottom.
Strips of a printed commercial fabric
separate the fine wire threads of the
fringe and serve as reminders of the
mundane acts that fill our days and lives.
This simple fabric reflects Underwood’s
fundamental belief that art can bring
the mystical into the mundane:
“I love bringing the lowest into
the highest realm.”
The driving notion that our society is no
longer living in spirit, and that we are
consumed strictly by the mundane, compels
Underwood to create works like
these to remind people that there is
something much bigger and outside of
ourselves. Underwood acknowledges the
challenges in reaching people with this
realm of subject matter in this day and age.
Nonetheless, she encourages us to question
how much of the everyday we can
put aside to instead look at larger issues.
Wire, as employed in this piece and in
most of her work, has been a signature
element in Underwood’s art since her
graduate studies days at San Jose State
University. The untapped potential of the
22
Inside the Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
Inside the Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
23
material carried her work into a new
level. The nature and properties of wire
as a strong, quotidian, and industrial
material offered both physical and
conceptual depth. She admired its solid
presence as a striking, reflective, and
unexpected contrast to more traditional
thread materials. It instilled aspects of
her own character into the work. Her
ability to create fiber forms that contain
a blend of enticing softness and inner
strength has set her work apart.
“The difference in wire weaving
is that it's like one of those
kids that you tell it to go there
and it goes over here. Whereas
with the silk, it will do what it
wants you to do and the cotton,
it's very predictable. The wire,
you've got to keep your eye
on it because it's kind of naughty.
It kind of has its own mind,
so I can deal with that. I was
one of those kids... I tend to
use [materials] to my advantage.”
Her frequent and pioneering incorporation
of barbed wire takes her material innovation
even further. To Underwood, barbed
wire is a weapon of natural devastation
due to its long standing history of being
used to impose barriers on open lands:
“The barbed wire is one of those
inventions of the colonists
here in America...to keep the
buffalo out, the cattle in... But
it was used to divide up land
and we use it now for fences.
As a child, when we had to
cross that border with my dad,
the border was a cyclone fence
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
with barbed wire around it. I
always felt that was such a
horrible, ugly mark to have
between these two towns.”
In her lacey, barbed-wire Basket from
Undocumented Tortilla Happening, she
intricately formed a traditional yet oversized
basket for tortillas from this visceral
material. The basket was the anchoring
element within an installation in 2009
that provided commentary on the state
of immigration policy. It was shaped with
the memory of her father being caught
and detained repeatedly by immigration
raids as she was growing up and the
impact of living in constant fear, poverty,
and instability. In her scene-setting
narrative for the piece:
Basket from Undocumented Tortilla Happening detail, 2009
“Imagine the wee hours of the
night, in a kitchen, in a home,
where tortillas have Spirit!
There is a loud noise, OPEN
UP!! YIKES!!! IT’S ICE!!!! The
Undocumented Tortilla Basket
remains calm and stoic. The
tortillas are super startled,
flying right off the tabletop!
It’s the migra!!!”
The tortilla has been the basis of the diet
of cultures across the Americas for
centuries. Underwood interprets its
circular shape as symbolizing a halo of
spirituality, which is echoed in the shape
of the basket. Combining barbed wire
with regular wire, she built the walls of
the basket in a pattern that mirrors
typical industrial fencing.
Around the same time that she was
constructing the walls of an enlarged
basket, she decided to create the first in
Basket from Undocumented
Tortilla Happening, 2009
Barbed wire
9”h x 29”dia
24
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
what would become an ongoing series
of large-scale wall installations that
depict the border wall. In contrast to her
intimate rebozos, Underwood made the
decision to "go big" with the border wall
installations, a message that is intended
to overwhelm and overtake the viewer
with beauty and urgency.
“There is an alarm system
going off in the borderlands
and everywhere else in the
world. Borders are changing
the earth’s physical environment
in a negative direction. I
feel no one can hear it. Maybe
if I can show it, reveal it, travel
the issue around…”
Underwood easily traces the line of the
U.S.-Mexico border freehand at this
point in her career, having depicted that
politically-charged boundary for years
in various formats throughout her work.
After being raised in the shadow of
its looming presence, she knows the
invisible line that crosses North America
by heart. This line is the beginning and
impetus of her Borderlines, which were
initiated with a piece entitled, Border
X-ings that she made for a group show
in 2009 at the Euphrat Museum of Art in
Cupertino, California. At that time, U.S.
Customs and Border Protection reported
that more than 580 miles of barriers
existed between the U.S. and Mexico.
Today, there are roughly 700 miles of
erected barriers on the nearly 2000-mile
distance between the two countries and
that number is slated to change potentially
with the current political administration.
With parallel origins in mural traditions
and graffiti, each wall evolves from a thin
pencil line that Underwood draws and
Inside the Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
Undocumented Border Tracks
detail, 2017
covers in tape before adding a scrawling,
frenetic intermeshing of paint and pastel.
These walls are the result of Underwood’s
approach to artistic mark making. The
border itself is, in her eyes, one of the
strongest acts of mark making that our
society has generated.
Each border wall installation emerges
through a progressive layering of painted,
drawn, and tethered lines. At the core of
the image, the border cavity itself, is formed
through subtraction. Towards the end of
the installation process, Underwood
removes the initial strips of tape to echo
the void that the actual wall imprints on
the land and the dead zone that surrounds
the immediate vicinity. Underwood’s
central line remains bare amidst a convulsion
of wiry scribbles and radiant streaks
of color symbolizing people traveling to
and from each side of the border.
These enveloping installations spark
discussion about the contested boundaries
that define place and identity. Beyond
addressing the social impact of the border,
giant cut and embellished fabric “spirit”
flowers float over the landscape. These
are the materialization of Underwood’s
notion of “undocumented flowers,” which
are reminders of the beauty and autonomy
of nature, which knows no boundaries.
Her lyrical reading of these flowers is a
response to the ecological impact of the
border on all living creatures.
Flowers fell into Underwood’s vocabulary
once her granddaughter was born and
was named Xochil, which means flower
in Nahuatl. At that point, she suddenly
looked at the native flowers and weeds
that grow along this threatened zone
differently. She started representing the
four “cousin” border state flowers: yucca,
Texas bluebonnet, saguaro, and the poppy
26
27
Undocumented
Border Tracks,
2017
Paper, fabric,
safety pins,
beads, wire and
found materials
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
Power Wands from Undocumented
Border Tracks, 2017
Tree branches, fabric, safety pins,
beads, wire, Dura-lar and found
materials
in her work to indicate how the natural
world is impacted by this divisive process.
By depicting these flowers, she instills
new meaning into the phrase “native
species.” They are now key elements
that appear throughout her installations.
“These wild flowers have become
state flowers, but they
don't have documentation.
Even worse, by that wall, the
life force that's in the land
that sustains them is being
decimated. There's no life;
there’s nothing growing up to
three to five miles on each
side of that wall. So, we're not
just invading their territory.
These are indigenous flowers
of America, but we're also
decimating their homeland.”
Underwood’s most recent installation,
Undocumented Border Tracks, reflects
her core wish for protecting the fundamental
ties between landscapes, cultures,
and animals, as well. In addition to the
scattered flowers, Underwood incorporates
stenciled paw and hoof prints of
various animals that make it to the border,
only to end there. Environmentalists have
expressed increased concern about
butterfly migration corridors and the future
of species of regional wildcats: the ocelot,
the jaguarundi, and the jaguar, among
other animals. Studies and reports have
asserted that the existing fence already
endangered species and harmed
fragile ecosystems.
The palette for each incarnation of these
walls links the installation to the location
where it is shown. Underwood was
inspired by the colors of Los Angeles
with Undocumented Border Tracks.
Emanating out of the whiteness of the
border are the colors of her memories
of living in a city on the edge of the
Pacific that glows at night with neon
streams of headlights and street signs.
The blue ocean waves, the beaches of
Malibu and the purple surrounding
mountains provide the initial perimeter,
which bleed into the smoggy haze of
the sprawling megalopolis. Darkness
encroaches on the outer edges of the
border wall – alluding to the stories of
crossing through at night.
This is the tenth in her series of
Borderlines. She has created a new
format for site-specific mural-based
work by incorporating various fiber and
found materials that bring dimensionality
to the piece. Integrating safety pins,
plastic beaded necklaces, torn strips of
fabric, and extra large nails, she references
the dreams and dangers that the
border signifies.
“I love the safety pin, because
it's a very humble object in
our society, but yet it has this
power to connect. I always
felt that the most important
things are overlooked in our
society and culture. I’m here
to bring them to the forefront.”
Dramatic steel nails the size of stakes
represent where the main border
crossings were located in 2009 when
31
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
she started the installations. Since then,
there are many additional crossings.
Labels for each of the border cities
dangle from safety pins on these exaggerated
nails. These are the same tags
she has used since her first wall was
installed. The machine-stitched lettering
is printed on photos taken of identical
products found on shelves in grocery
stores located on both sides of the border.
Nails north of the border are painted
gold whereas the nails below the border
are silver, symbolizing the historic U.S.
gold standard and the prolific production
of silver in Mexico. A web of caution tape,
metallic threads, and leather barbed
wire links the nails to one another. These
spikes are a reference to crucifixion, as
Underwood views the border fence as
being nailed onto Mother Earth with the
same brutality.
Underwood’s dedication to nature via
her art reflects a yearning for spiritual
connection and also her personal
bittersweet history, having spent her
childhood years on farms working the
land alongside her family. She would
arrive at school late and leave early to
help her parents. Those circumstances
made her decide as a nine-year-old that
she was going to get out of the fields
and live her life differently once she was
old enough. At such a young age, she
had already started thinking about
getting from point A to point B, which in
some ways was a reflection of how she
got through picking fruit and doing other
manual labor. It was a process of physically
moving from one line to the next
within a certain time limitation. This clear
goal of linear progress, both in her life
and the creation of each work, characterizes
her to the core. She built herself
a lifeline out of the challenges.
Power Wands from Undocumented
Border Tracks, 2017
Tree branches, fabric, safety pins,
beads, wire, Dura-Lar and found
materials
32
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
Having found her own pathway in art,
experiences from her early life gave her
self-knowledge and empathy to motivate
emerging art students for decades. She
retired from San Jose State University in
2009 to focus strictly on her art creation,
yet she remains a teacher by identity and
soul. For Undocumented Border Tracks,
she invited students from Fairfax Magnet
Center for Visual Arts and William Jefferson
Clinton Middle School to participate in
workshops to generate and install, respectively,
Power Wands and Ghost Flowers
that are interspersed across the wall.
Underwood guided them to approach
their additions to the wall as expressions
of their own aspirations, pride, and
heritage.
The students’ flowers and wands serve to
bless the land and to bring to it optimism
and regeneration, as these young people
carry the promise of the future in their
own hands. High school students were
taught to honor the strength of their
individual branches and to make wands
imbued with the power of the mind and
heart. Each wand, made from a collected
tree branch, has found elements that
dangle from safety pins and wire as
personal amulets. Additionally, transparent
images of loved ones who traversed
borders were included to inspire these
young artists as they move forward.
Student hanging Ghost Flowers in Undocumented
Border Tracks installation
ous hope that survives, despite the odds.
Underwood’s Undocumented Border
Tracks is simultaneously an altar that
commemorates freedom and the lives
of all kinds of creatures that have been
lost as a result of this physical and
political barrier. The history of the border
wall is brief when compared with the
amount of time that the natural environment
existed prior to this man-made
intervention. In a relatively small span of
years, such damage has been caused.
All that remains is a short moment of
time to prevent further destruction from
taking place on this land. Her wall is a
temporal offering. It is constructed and
in the end, removed. The larger than life
piece is ephemeral but Underwood will
undoubtedly re-conceive of it for other
venues in new places and it will continue,
as she charts her way along her line.
“The last one is always my
favorite and the idea that’s
not made yet is the coolest.”
Underwood encouraged the middle
school students to find their inner beauty
and individuality as they shaped their
colorless flowers with beads, safety pins,
and thread. Her goal was to anchor these
young people in positivity and activity so
that they can become lifelines towards
change. Her intent is for these walls to
motivate our community to stand up for
the invisible and the voiceless, the flora and
fauna. To that end, children are the tenu-
Quatlique-landia detail, 2017
36
37
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
ARTIST STATEMENT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
Crossing borders and negotiating between
three perspectives has always
been a fundamental aspect of my persona
and the basis of my creative process.
Over thirty years ago, when “craft vs. art”
was the most divisive issue in the arts, I
discovered and established my “authentic
artistic voice,” refocused my artistic
studies from the paintbrush and pigments
to “needle and thread.” Empowered
by the voices of my indigenous
maternal ancestors, I began to cross the
intellectual borders that separated the
hand and the mind(craft), from the spirit
(fine art).
Inside the Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
My work is a reflection of personal border
experiences: the interconnectedness of
societies, insisting on beauty in struggle,
and celebrating the notion of "seeing"
this world through my tri-cultural lens.
Engaging materials, which reflect a
contemporary hyper-modern sensitivity,
are interwoven to create large-scale fiber
art that is inspired in equal measures by
land, politics and Spirit.
The artwork becomes an external validation
of ancestral memory and personal
quest. Beauty, grace, and flowers soothe
the quiet rage that has permeated the
Americas for more than five hundred
years. Thus, when I weave, sew, or
embellish, the anonymous viejitas (hags)
seem to express their encouragement
and support of my creations.
Father, Son, and
the Holy Rebozo
detail, 2017
39
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
ARTIST BIO
Inside the Rain Rebozo detail, 2017
1949 – Born in Sacramento, CA
EDUCATION
1987 – MFA, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA
1985 – MA, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
1981 – BA, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA
TEACHING
1989-2009 – Assistant Professor of Art, Associate
Professor of Art, Professor, Head of Fiber/Textile Area,
School of Art and Design, San Jose State University,
San Jose, CA
2007 – Adjunct Professor, California College of the Arts,
Berkeley, CA, Spring Term
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2017 – Mano-Made: New Expression in Craft by
Latino Artists, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, solo
exhibition, Craft in America Center, Los Angeles, CA,
in partnership with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
2017 – Design on the Border: Contemporary Design
in Mexico and Mexican America, Craft and Folk Art
Museum, Los Angeles, CA, in partnership with Pacific
Standard Time: LA/LA
2017 – Shelter: Crafting a Safe Home, Contemporary
Craft, Pittsburgh, PA
2017 – Looming Spaces, Huntington Beach Art Center,
Huntington Beach, CA
2016 – Stories of Migration: Contemporary Artists
Interpret Diaspora, The Textile Museum, George
Washington University, Washington, DC
2015 – California Masters: State of the Arts, Craft in
America Center, Los Angeles, CA
2015 – Borderlines: The Art of Consuelo Jimenez
Underwood, solo exhibition, ArtRage Gallery,
Syracuse, NY
2015 – Mothers: The Act of Seeing, solo exhibition,
Nevada Museum Of Art, Reno, NV
2012 – Art In Embassies, U.S. Department of State,
Jerusalem, Israel
2012 – Looming Election, Woven Works, Craft in
America Center, Los Angeles, CA
2011 – Undocumented Borderlands, solo exhibition,
Conley Art Gallery, California State University, Fresno,
Fresno, CA
2009 – Chicano/a Biennnial, MACLA/Movimiento de
Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, San Jose, CA
2009 – Rastros y Crónicas: Women of Juarez, National
Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL
2006 – Tortillas, Chiles, and Other Border Things, solo
exhibition, MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino
Americana, San Jose, CA
2006 – Rooted in Tradition, National Museum of Mexican
Art, Chicago, IL
2005 – Tortilla Meets Tortilla Wall, InSite_05, Border
State Park, Performance at U.S./Mexico Border
2005 – Cheongju International Craft Biennale, Cheong
Ju Craft Center, Korea
2005 – Mundo, Women’s Museum, Dallas, TX
2001 – Defining Craft 1: Collecting for the New
Millennium, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
(Traveling Exhibition 2001-2005)
2000 – The Renwick Invitational: Five Women in Craft,
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC
1997 – The Renwick at 25, Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Washington, DC
1995 – Choices! Recent Acquisitions, California College
of the Arts, Oakland, CA
1994 – Rethinking La Malinche, Mexic-Arte Museum,
Austin, TX
1991 – Contemporary Visions of The Virgen de Guadalupe,
Downey Museum of Art, Downey, CA
1991 – Connections in Chicano and Latino Art, Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY
National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM
National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington, DC
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2016 – Catherine Cucinella, Border Crossings: A
Bedford Spotlight Reader (Newton Highlands, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin's-Macmillan Education, 2016).
2011 – C. Alejandra Elenes, Transforming Borders:
Chicana/o Popular Culture and Pedagogy (Lexington
Books, 2011).
2009 – Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas, Editors,
Choosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint, (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
2007 – Laura E. Pérez, Chicana Art: The Politics of
Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2007).
2001 – Jonathan Yorba, Arte Latino: Treasures from
the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Exhibition
Catalog (Co-published with Watson-Guptill Publications,
2001).
2015 – California Handmade: State of the Arts,
Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts, Alta Loma, CA
2013 – Welcome to Flowerlandia, solo exhibition,
Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA
40
41
CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD
MANO-MADE: NEW EXPRESSION IN CRAFT
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Father, Son, and the Holy Rebozo, 2017
Woven wire, linen, metallic and cotton thread
40”h x 19”w
Inside the Rain Rebozo, 2017
Woven wire, linen and wool thread
50”h x 20”w
Mother Rain Rebozo, 2017
Woven linen, metallic, silk and wool thread
67.5”h x 14.5”w
Quatlique-landia, 2017
Nylon Mexican flag, cotton and metallic thread, cotton stuffing
30”h 17.5”w
Basket from Undocumented Tortilla Happening, 2009
Barbed wire
9”h x 29”dia
Undocumented Border Tracks, 2017
Paint, pastel, nails, leather barbed wire, caution tape, thread, found beaded necklaces,
painted fabric, wood branches, safety pins, wire, beads and mixed media materials.
Wall 1: 12’h x 21’w
Wall 2: 7’h x 9’w
Ghost Flowers from Undocumented Border Tracks, 2017
Paper, fabric, safety pins, beads, wire and found materials
Created by Wiliam Jefferson Clinton Middle School Students:
Jonathan Almeida, Ussiel Burgara, Deija Dukes, Consuelo Estrada,
Joseph Gonzalez, Chrystina Gutierrez, Alexi Hernandez,
Ruth Navarro, Alexander Orozco, Patricio Perez,
Lea Pleitez, Jose Roman, Areli Rosado,
Irving Toxtle, Stephanie Vasquez, Rocio Zapata
Power Wands from Undocumented Border Tracks, 2017
Tree branches, fabric, safety pins, beads, wire, Dura-Lar and found materials
Created by Fairfax Magnet Center for Visual Arts Students:
Anthony Aguilar, Karla Avalos, Millie Carillo-Reyes,
Bryan Chavez, Cyrus Khoylow, Setareh Khoylow,
Estephanie Molina, Natalie Neyman, Evelyn Vasquez,
Aysia Yang, Vania Yescas
Created with assistance from Brenda Cruz and Sheila Rodriguez
Mother Rain Rebozo
detail, 2017
Photography of exhibition artworks by Madison Metro
43