THE FOCUS

Ariel Lavery graduated Magna Cum Laude with her BFA from the University of Colorado Boulder (2007) and received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. (2013). She is currently Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Watkins College of Art, Design, and Film. She has exhibited extensively nationally and has curated and juried exhibitions in Main, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. She is part of COOP, a Nashville based artist collective devoted to curating in artists to the Nashville scene. She is...

Denise Stewart-Sanabria: You grew up and got your bachelors in Bogotá, Colombia, your MFA in London, went back to Bogotá, but ended up in the United States? This is pretty exciting- how did you make it all happen? Nelson Gutierrez: After studying in London I went back to Colombia and I met my wife, who is from Miami. She was working in Bogotá at that time, and after a time we decided to come here. So we moved to Miami fro...

Cloud compositions deal with the idea of conflict and turbulence, both domestic and abroad.  These clouds also double as nebulas, contracting and expanding energy around the idea of conflict. These works deal with notions of political strife coexisting with environmental concerns, and create compositions of smaller troubled environments coexisting in larger yet equally troubled ones.  There are fragmented figurative elements existing in and outside of these clouds, as well as tools, weapons, and vices.  These fragments serve...