Sharon Carlos Vázquez, recipient of the 2022/23 Art Practice & University Library Printmaking Award, is a 2023 graduate of the Art Practice Department at the University of California Berkeley. Two of Sharon’s prints, Cuarto 3/4 and Cuarto 4/4, have been added to the Graphic Arts Loan Collection and can be borrowed by students at UC Berkeley starting this fall.
Below is an Artist Statement from Sharon about her work:
My recent body of work explores familial relationships, domestic space, location, the senses, and the abstract nature of memory as it dilutes through time. I view the physicality of my process in printmaking as a method of conversation. This layering allows me to translate, redact, and deconstruct dialogue into gestural imagery and color, which I often literally separate into smaller pieces. Through these techniques, I re-envision memories, blurring the line between concrete, mundane and intangible. My home, often featured abstractly in this work, is a literal container for these images, both public and private
My process revolves around the notion of developing a sense of ‘public privacy’. I accomplish this through the physical printing process, which involves overlayering and obscuring the underlying information. My approach allows for the information to be given a physical space while also challenging its comprehension. My concept takes inspiration from the architectural structure of my home, as well as the topography and land. These fundamentals serve as a foundation for building and layering imagery and textures. Through an additive method akin to redaction, the original and literal imagery is transformed into a distorted representation.