Juan Granados, MFA
All photos property of Juan
Granados and are not for public or private use, publication, display or otherwise
without written permission.
All photos Copyright 2004 Juan Granados. All Rights Reserved.
Artist Statement:
Art affects everyone differently but serves as a universal language. My work reflects a life of need, growth, and change. Through my work, I attempt to communicate experiences of my past and present environment.
I create art in order to share memories both past and present; visions of places I've been; concerns about the environment; and observations of the human condition as well. To do this, I use many different elements from my life and experiences. Subject mater may be difficult to separate and identify, but I try to create work that embodies an intuitive gestalt or the flow and response around an idea.
My reasons for using clay are simple and basic. Clay allows me the total freedom to create work that shares its connections to my background and my experiences of working with the land. I believe that our past, present, and future conditions and our environment exert considerable influence on our sense of being. In turn, our experiences also affect who we are. My language echoes the origins of the earth. I have worked the land in various parts of the country and have harvested many types of crops and produce. All of this is part of me, and I have enjoyed celebrating these experiences of cultivation. Now I enjoy cultivating clay as a means of expressing ideas connected with human sustainability.
When I first began working as an artist, I found myself struggling with some of the basic art materials; but luckily I began using clay, initially to relax by creating simple pots. As I continued to experiment with the versatility of this material, however, it lead me further and further into an exploration of clay as a means of expressing my experiences. And as I have developed as an artist, I have grown to accept my past and to rely on memories to help me in the present. I cannot deny, ignore, or forget who I am or where I have come from. My work is a mirror of a past that I constantly reconstruct for visions of the future.
Additional Information:
Interdependence is a reoccurring theme in my work whether it's a positive or negative in nature. The basic ideas surrounding the current body of work are merging the concepts of a pump-like form from previous work with organic subject matter such as seeds, roots, leaves, and general vegetation forms to create the current organic and mechanical wall forms.
Biography:
"I spent my early years traveling with my family as migrant farm workers as we worked the fields throughout the southern half of the United States. From these experiences, I learned the values of being observant of nature, and I learned to value the interdependence of nature. My educational experiences included Wellington High School, Clarendon College, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, post-graduate work at Corpus Christi State University, Sam Houston State University, and I completed my MFA studies at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 1991. From 1991-‘95, I taught at Eastern Washington University and I am currently an Associate Professor of Art teaching at Texas Tech University School of Art where I began since 1995.