Cynthia Korzekwa: Art begins at home
April 9th, 2007[-photo essay, art, alterations-]
images and words by featured artist, Cynthia Korzekwa
- Aesthetics are homemade -
- cynthia korzekwa © 2005-2006, all rights reserved
That is, the formation of taste comes from the home. From homemakers. From our mothers. The way they feed us, the way they dress us, the way they decorate our homes. The way they care for us. Housewives are our first trendsetters. Because our childhood follow us throughout our lifetime, like Proust’s madeleines.
The domestic arts, the so-called applied arts, were really the first arts.
beer can purse, © 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa
When art was based on everyday objects, art existed every day.
Domestic habits have changed and so have we. Art for housewives is an eulogy to the housewife and to the aesthetics she’s helped us create.
- Bricolage -
Bricolage is taking something old and, via context, turning it into something new.
Bricolage, a form of recycling, is thus about transformation.
Bricolage is a creative response to changing conditions which recycles elements to adapt to their new circumstances.
Thus bricolage is, in some ways, a form of evolution. It assembles and constructs that which is needed from that which is available.
ball point pen drawing with a paper bead frame
© 2004 - 2007 cynthia korzekwa
- Recycling is a form of respect -
all images copyright © 2004-2007 cynthia korzekwa - all rights reserved
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Cynthia on Colour
Cynthia says of herself:
I was born in Texas. My childhood was greatly influenced by our housekeeper. Her name was Fela. She was from Piedras Negras. I grew up speaking Spanish, eating bean tacos and listening to rancheras. Almost a Mexican. The first drawings I remember doing were done in my mother’s books. I did a series of scribbles in Webster’s dictionary. My mother wasn’t impressed. I think I got into trouble. But I kept drawing anyway. That is until I went to Catholic school. There they had rules about everything. Even about drawing. Stuff like: don’t draw to the margin of the page, don’t go out of the lines, don’t put pink next to red. All those rules made drawing a stress. Then I grew up and realized that those rules weren’t for me. They were for somebody else…..Some people were born to be foreigners. I’m one of them. I can’t be homogenized. |
Visit Cynthia’s sites,
korzekwa | flickr site: los ojos | art for housewives | blog: paros | blog: ikastikos | email: cynthiak at tin dot it
Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations
