Week 3 Artist- Carlee Fernandez

Born in Santa Ana, CA in 1973, Carlee Fernandez is a conceptual artist who defines herself as sculptor. She often uses photography as her medium of choice to accentuate her three-dimensional pieces. 

Self-portrait of Chicana Artist, Carlee Fernandez, made for the exhibit "Portraiture Now: Staging the Self" by the National Portrait Gallery and for a showing at Americas Society in New York City (2015) 

She earned her BFA from California State University, Fullerton in 1997 and a MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 1999, where she was later awarded in 2000 the Fulbright Fellowship. Later in 2008 she goes on to received the California Community Foundation Fellowship for her artist influence. Her work has been a part of various solo shows and exhibitions, such as the summer 2010 Inman Gallery exhibition. Solo exhibitions have taken place at Acuna-Hansen Gallery (for 2006, 2004, 2002 and 2001) in Los Angeles and ACME in 2010 and 2014. Her art has been shown in group shows at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC in 2014, Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City in 2008, Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2014, Orange County Museum of Art in 2010, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2008 and again in 2011.

From the "Arranging Family"
 Exhibition

Her work has been discussed by big magazines like The Los Angeles Times, LA weekly, and Art in America. Some of her pieces have even found their way into being part of permanent collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas.  

Fernandez work is often established as being autobiographical as seen in her solo exhibition "Arranging Family". This show perfectly highlights her style of art and a reveal into her current life. With three large-scale sculptures and three large sized photographs the works reveal the artist family history. One of her sculpture pieces is this spiral-calendar engraved with the birthdays of her family members. A hugely sized baptismal cup displays the artist's family genealogy. A handmade dress was another piece in her show. This dress contains images of her family and DNA patterns to display the patterns found across the different generations of her family. Two of the photographs show the artist and the family she made with her husband. The third shows the artist beside her father. Fernandez shows often appear as putting herself on display and she creates these milestones in life and self-discovery, she allows her audience to learn more about her by treating them to a story of her life. With so much currently known about her its time for her to get her own Wikipedia. 

References:

-link information on her collection and biography: Inman Gallery: Carlee Fernandez

-link to 2015 resume: C_Fernandez_resume_IG_2015 (inmangallery.com)

-link to articles that have discussed her art Fernandez, Carlee | Articles (mutualart.com)