THE FOCUS

My work explores the visual culture of cartography, occult imagery, game boards, geographical souvenirs, and other structures of information that is altered to examine the relationship of identity, space, and place. The disruption of these visual systems reveals a thin boundary between the known and unknown, between knowledge and superstition. Nick DeFord, Studio Visit, August 2017 Nick DeFord, Studio Visit, August 2017 The repetitive hand-mechanical process used in stitching, layering, piercing or accumulation gives the work an added inference of compulsivity, craft,...

"There has never been a free people, a free country, a real democracy on the face of this Earth. In a city of some 300,000 slaves and 90,000 so called free men, Plato sat down and praised freedom in exquisitely elegant phrases." - Lerone Bennett Jr. As a Chicano Artist, the recurrent themes are the subjugation of my community by the Dominant Culture and White Privilege. These works manifest themselves in the creation of counter-images and counter-definitions made in a self-determinant manner....

In my studio right now, I’m shifting gears into a new body of work. I had a solo show in March called Love Song at L Ross Gallery and all summer I’ve been thinking about how those paintings will be stepping stones into my new work. I’m in what I call ‘the in between time” when I build, stretch, and gesso a bunch of new canvases, draw a whole lot, make collages and little sculptures, sift, research, experiment...