Clarke, Elijah - Week 5

Carmen Lomas Garza is a phenomenal artist with a unique ability to capture dynamic and lifelike scenes without strictly subscribing to naturalism or realism aesthetics. Much of Garza's work focuses on large communal gatherings such as backyard barbecues, birthday parties, and block parties, and she uses vibrant colors and an abundance of detail to imbue the scenes with a sense of life. Many of Garza's pieces are extremely effective at evoking the feeling of summer for me. Pieces, not included below, such as Cama para Sueños, Hammerhead Shark on Padre Island, and Cakewalk are all examples of pieces that when I look at them I can almost smell the warm, dry and sweet summer air. In addition to her inclination to include human subjects in communal settings in many of her works, Garza also seems to focus on food in a lot of her pieces. Although many of her pieces are arguably more focused on the people in the scene Garza consistently includes references to food and cooking in her work. One of the more obvious examples of Garza's focus on food is in the piece titled Tamalada, in this piece Garza's family is pictured in the kitchen of her childhood home making tamales. Tamalada not only illustrates a consistent theme throughout Garza's work but also illustrates an important connection between family time and cooking time for Garza. I very much enjoyed looking through all of Carmen Lomas Garza's pieces. However, upon reviewing my favorites, one stood out the most, titled Sandia. This piece, pictured below, seems to be somewhat of a diversion from Garza's artistic focus on large gatherings. The image depicts a plated watermelon being cut into slices and presumably served, the entire scene is set against a vibrant yellow backdrop and red watermelon juice covers the plate. One of the interesting things about this piece in my mind is that it sort of resembles a still life painting however through the simple addition of two anonymous hands cutting through the watermelon the piece is transformed. Still, life pieces are, unsurprisingly, often stagnant in their presentation in that there is no movement in the scene but in my opinion, In her piece Sandia Garza sort of challenges, the notion of what a still life is or at least creates her own version.