Coccoc Painting

I was born and raised in the capital city of Durango, Mexico and in 1995 moved to San Miguel de Allende in the State of Guanajuato, Mexico. I was deeply engaged in making things from early childhood and began to draw when I was five years old. An elegant photographic image of my grandmother was a source of inspiration and idea about beauty. As well, I was awestruck by majestic mountains and expansive valleys surrounding the 16th century Spanish colonial city of Durango. I have always had a reverence for nature and knew at an early age I would devote my life to making art. Years later, I returned to San Miguel and collaborated with the non-profit art space, Kunsthaus Santa Fe and decided to make San Miguel my home. Eventually, I became co-director of Kunsthaus and developed a gallery space, which led to opportunities to exhibit in a broad array of venues such as the gallery of Guanajuato University, Grisell Villasana arte actual León, Guanjuato, the Cultural Institute Gallery of Leon, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Queretaro, Galería puente15 Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, León, as well as contemporary art museums, foundations and galleries in Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Durango, Chihuahua, Michoacan, and Tijuana, Mexico. In subsequent years, I continued to exhibit work and represent Kunsthaus Gallery at international art fairs including ARCO, Spain, ART Miami, and PINTA, NYC among others. Those events led to my collaboration– as artist, curator and museographer– with a broad array of Mexican artists including Martha Palau, Teresa Margolis/SEMEFO, and Jan Hendrix. In 2012 I accepted a position as a professor of sculpture at the Ignacio Ramirez Cultural Center of the Bellas Artes (INBA) in San Miguel de Allende, an extension of the Bellas Artes National in Mexico City. And for the next twelve years, I taught sculpture. It was during that time that I became acutely aware of the proliferation of plastic in the environment and began using repurposed refuse, especially plastics in my weaving and installations, and as thematic elements in my paintings. During my tenure at the Bellas Artes, I often functioned as a curator and museographer. One especially memorable project with Betsabee Romero, who often works with repurposed materials, included a variety of workshops and installations culminating in a show.