Lina Puerta
Lina Working with fabrics and embroidery in my studio this past month
Lina Puerta was born in New Jersey, raised in Colombia and lives and works in New York City. Puerta holds an MSEd in Art Education from Queens College/CUNY and has exhibited internationally. She is currently the 2019/2020 Artist-in-Residency at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling in Harlem. She has also been honored with the 2017 NYFA Fellowship in Crafts/Sculpture, Fall 2017 Artist-in-Residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, the 2016 Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, Artprize-8 Sustainability Award, 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, alongside other awards and grants. Exhibition venues of hers have included the Ford Foundation Gallery, The Museum of Biblical Art, El Museo del Barrio, Socrates Sculpture Park, Wave Hill, and Geary Contemporary in New York City, 21C Museum Hotels in Louisville, KY, Bentonville, AR, and Pi Artworks in London. Puerta's work has been written about in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and Artnet News among others.
Untitled (Burgundy/Tapestries Series), 2016, Handmade paper composed of cotton and linen pulp, embedded with lace, velvet, sequins, trims, appliqués, fake fur and chains, 35 x 23 inches.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
As a mixed media artist, I work with different materials that I love and feel attracted to, I mix and arrange them while responding to them intuitively and paying close attention to what is happening. The materials themselves help guide my process.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on a new series of wall pieces, using digitally printed fabric, which I printed in 2017 while on residency at the Joan Mitchell’s Art Center in New Orleans. I’m layering lace with the printed fabrics and embroidering it. This series will be presented this Winter at my upcoming solo Residency show at the SugarHill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in Harlem.
We know that your time at Dieu Donne helped to create these works. Can you talk about your time there and the importance of experimentation?
I had no prior experience with paper making when I started my 2016 residency at Dieu Donne. Luckily, the residency is set up for you to work or collaborate with a master papermaker and artist who works with you through the entire residency. I worked very well with my collaborator, Amy Jacobs, and quickly became captivated with the medium. Experimentation is an important part of my process, especially when working with a new medium, I basically need to play with the material until I find something exciting or interesting about it. Then, I can start to build upon that idea.
Lina working on a handmade paper in the wet studio at Dieu Donné. Here, she is carving away paper from the surface with a water hose, using lace as a masking stencil.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
I have different themes largely relating to nature and the body. In recent years, I’ve been exploring themes around food, agriculture, colonialism and indigenous ways of relating to the natural world.
Normally, I work in series and as I create new work, the work itself often helps inform the next pieces and series.
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?
I really love some of the new BIPOC, women run spaces and organizations that have emerged within the last couple of years here in New York, such as La Salita, and Koda. Both, I’ve had the pleasure of working with and I’m planning to work with Koda into next year.
Do you have any shows coming up?
I have a couple of solo shows, one this Winter at SugarHill Children’s Museum or Art and Storytelling in Harlem; another next Summer at El Taller in Philadelphia; and a Survey show in Fall of 2021 with Koda here in NYC.
Lina Puerta’s work is now included in our show “In the Cool of the Evening,” Oct. 30th – Dec. 30th. You can visit her website or her Instagram (@linapuertaart) to see more of her captivating work.