My current series on Fragmentation:
Fragmentation, some thoughts. Fragmentation of memory is the process of random loss of bits and pieces of a previously harmonic work of art, ideas or value systems. Where the loss occurs the process of reading, reciting or retailing of a story, tale or poem relies on intuitive reordering. Indeed, each letter, phrase or paragraph are fragments, one of the other. In this reconstruction, a mere paragraph creatively a retelling, a creative understanding of what the work might be.
As one or more letters from a word or phrase, the meaning of the original begins to collapse, to lose its once-intended identity nuance and purpose. What is left behind may be only silence, emptiness and space.
So I am challenged by Sappho, the archaic Greek lyric poet, whose "Fragment” poems are so much left to the imagination.
The purpose of my work is to intuit that which is lost - the spaces, the missing words, the intention, and to conjure from the void as a starting point of new cycle of life and meaning.

​My work
I am inspired by materials­­--items that seem to have lost their purpose and identity. In fact, I believe that materials have their own journeys, moving from one place to another. At each step, they lose something in their passage as they seem to be falling apart, then gaining as I sit at the back of a church or a synagogue, hand stitching many of the rips and “sores” in the material into a canvas for my work.

For me, this is especially true for jute sacks, and the memory of what was “inside” and “outside.” They speak to me, forcing me to question renewal, value, migration, globalization, and economic exchange. The sacks that I gather from farmers markets and take new life as part of my artwork conjure many memories and become the signifiers of exploitation and abuse as well as beauty and the creative force.

As I weave plaster, crushed pearls, resins and precious metals into them, the sacks are transformed with new life. Architecture, entropy and socio-dichotomies are “built” together as light, shadows and an infinity of scintillations emerge to unveil a new language and expression.

My past
As an eight-year-old boy, I remember vividly my grandfather taking me by the hand to the Gold Museum in Bogotá, Colombia. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. How I remember the sparks, the glitter and reflection. How magical!

​I remember to this day when we sat in a dark circular room in the museum. I was holding my grandfather's hand tightly. Suddenly, the light in the room started coming on, second by second, and everything started sparkling, glittering, shining!

I was startled by what I had just experienced: It was a visceral reaction of fear, visual feast, and magic! When all the lights were fully on, I felt as if was inside the sun. That memory is the seed of my work, the nugget of my creative endeavors.

Later as an immigrant, with many “dents” and setbacks along the way, I held on to that “golden light.” This spark led me to study art and architecture and develop a practice that allows me to see the light in a simple jute sack.