Welcome to my studio newsletter!
Where I tell you a bit about my current residency!
Welcome to my newsletter!
Hello~ 👋🏼
Welcome to my first-ever 🌟art newsletter🌟! I’m excited to use this platform to share more information about what I’m up to, show new work, and update you about upcoming events or shows I’m involved in! I’ll be releasing this newsletter quarterly and when I announce save-the-dates so stay tuned!
In this newsletter:
Intro to my current artist residency at Arts at Blue Roof
Works-in-progress
Residency Highlights
Upcoming Events
Website Redesign
First two months of my residency at Arts at Blue Roof
This February, I started my current residency at Arts at Blue Roof, a wonderful organization based in Blue Roof Studios in South Los Angeles. The name of the residency is “A Room of One’s Own” (ARoOO) and it is a 4-month-long residency that provides artists-in-residence with a studio for 3 months, a monthly material stipend, mentorship, and a 1-month-long culminating show (my show, Creature Comforts, will open May 5, continue reading for more details). The residency is full of incredible resources and I am learning so much from everyone involved. Check out some of the awesome previous artists-in-residents here!
✨In the studio🧵✂️🔨🪚🪛🎶✨
I can’t believe 2 months have passed since the start of my residency. Time is flying by really fast! At the start of the residency I had to readjust to making work in a large studio space so I began by making smaller work and experimenting with some materials such as floor vinyl, mosaic tiles, and cyanotype.
Having a large studio space again has allowed me to take advantage of having a lot of floor space and make use of the height of the walls around me. I’ve started laying out materials on the walls to visualize how materials and colors might look together before placing them on armatures and I’ve also started making wall pieces. I’m enjoying the process a lot.
Every now and then I play with the potential movement of my sculptures through stop-motion animation and that’s pretty fun.
You can see other images of my work, details of works in progress, and even a few more stop-motion animations on my Instagram page.
Some highlights of the residency so far include:
the residency orientation when I got to meet the executive director of Arts at Blue Roof, Lisa Diane Wedgeworth, the AaBR program manager, Connie Martin Travino, Summer ARoOO resident Dominique Moody, and fall ARoOO resident Alexandria Douziech. All such amazing artists!
meeting my mentor Claudia Huiza, artist Kiki Seror, and previous ARoOO resident Dalia Palacios at an exhibition walk-through at Vielmietter Los Angeles for the “It’s Time” exhibition, organized by the Photographic Arts Council
my ask-the-artist q&a video:
Connie filmed me answering a few questions from an Arts at Blue Roof Instagram Q&A post. As you can tell, I’m quite nervous to be on camera but I hope this video is helpful to those who may want to know a little bit more about my work.
Upcoming Events
artist talk with Julia: As part of this artist residency I’m filming an artist talk in conversation with my good friend and awesome artist, Julia Rigby! The artist talk will be streamed live in May and I will send out more details soon.
workshop: I’ll be filming a virtual workshop with AaBR titled “Homebodies: Create a Creature Inspired by your Home” in May and it will also be posted to their youtube channel. I’ll email out when that is up.
Show: My culminating show, Creature Comforts, will open Friday, May 5th at Arts at Blue Roof and will run until the end of May. It will be at Blue Roof Studios. The address is 7329 S. Broadway Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90003. I will send a newsletter update with more details as the date approaches.
🪄Website Redesign✨
Finally, I want to share that I recently redesigned my website! I’ll be featuring a different work or announcement on the home page each month. I think this new layout is easier to navigate than my last one. I hope you’ll take a look!
Website: https://brendagonzalezstudio.com/
Let me know what you think!
You made it to the end of my first newsletter! I’m new to this so if you have any suggestions please feel free to let me know! You can reply to this email or leave a comment if anything resonated with you or if you just want to say hi back! If you haven’t already subscribed, click the subscribe button below!
Happy to hear about your residency.
Art look great.