Artist Assistantship with the De La Torre Brothers in Ensenada, Mexico

"Creativity is the defeat of habit by originality."-Arthur Koestler

This is the perfect quote to surmise my summer thus far. It implies taking a wet rag to the set ingrained dirty lines of dust on your windshield and wiping them clean of routine, it implies an end to the repetitiveness and turning your life inside out and upside down by taking a 6 hour flight and landing into undetermined circumstances...to endure something new, something unadulterated and fresh - never before witnessed by your sensory powers. Hence something original is born.

I was super fortunate this summer to be asked/selected by the my long time prof glass artist friends, the De La Torre Brothers, to assist them with their work for three weeks this summer.

And so after kissing my fam goodbye, flying into San Diego and driving down to Baja California, I am finally here. And I am loving the wine region, fish port land, the people, the spanglish and the creative studio gig! The flora and fauna is absolutely stunning...I'm mesmerized. I feel like the ranch we are stationed on is right out of a Georgia O'Keefe movie. So I thought I'd share some vignettes of my beautiful trip so far- oh n my trailer...I hope you like!!

Inspiring Artist - Sylvia Levenson

While I was taking the class at The Studio @ the Corning Museum of glass I got to visit the museum collection frequently. One of my favorite pieces (and there were many) was this piece by artist Sylvia Levenson.

It's Raining Knives by Sylvia Levenson

On of our class assignments was to seek out a piece from the glass collection to respond to via our own art work. As I get adjusted to moving out of NYC and deeper into the jaws of suburbia, and as I watch the continuing politics of fear immobilize people, I was deeply drawn to this sculpture. The title card also spoke volumes about our human exchange with fear.

For me, Sylvia's sculpture invokes the innocence of youth. The colorful houses and even the astro-turf are reminiscent of cloistered safety. The fact that she makes use of glass only adds to tenuous, fragile and volatile potential of the situation.

In my own work I am very drawn to the melancholy of loss, especially innocence lost. I had been feverishly illustrating a series of young girls in my sketchbook and was considering carefully composing them in a paper-doll fashion of sheets of glass. In addition I am very interested in stained glass, and really wanted to consider cutting my sheet glass into forms before I illustrated on them with the vitreous paint (this technique is explained in past post). I was inspired by the element of repetition as well. That is how my art pieces entitled Lost Girls was born.

detail of Lost Girls by marisol diaz

Lost Girls by marisol diaz

So with little time (for class was in its last three days) I cut sheet glass, painted and fired as many girls from my sketchbook and bunnies as I could. The scale is much smaller and less colorful than Levenson's work but the inspiration is there...in my way.
Lost Girls 2 detail by marisol diaz