Brenda Gonzalez, a mixed media artist, specializes in stitching-forward works in sculpture, collage, and animation. Gonzalez produces abstract shapes and textures, however the components and the fundamental stories behind her works are deliberate in their uncovering and magnification of humble domestic items into vessels of remarkable recollection. Growing up in East Los Angeles, Gonzalez regards it as her home. Her artistic creations reflect her concerns, recollections, and aspirations in relation to the concept of home, a concept based upon the years she spent in a financially challenged family.
Gonzalez applies a skill set of reconfiguration and de-and reconstruction to create new, expressive, architectural and biomorphic sculptures using objects she buys from dollar stores, thrift stores, and hardware stores, or repurposes from her own home. She tries to imbue mundane or forgotten objects with new life, exploring ideas such as “making do” or “getting by.” Gonzalez earned her MFA from UC Davis, and she underwent a post-graduate program in studio art at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Through her stitching, she delves into the concepts of home in a way that combines the current qualities and mistakes with those from the past.
As an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College, she majored in Japanese and Studio Art. She wanted to explore her interest in art by developing her skills in painting and drawing. Eventually, she discovered sculpture and printmaking and wanted to know more. Attending art school enabled her to ascertain what an art practice could potentially resemble and assisted her, being an introvert, to become acquainted with other artists such as instructors, visiting artists, and classmates in her program.
Gonzalez grew up in East L.A. and moved away for her studies. After graduating from UC Davis in 2020, she found a sense of stability moving back home. Although L.A. has always been her home, she is still getting to know some of the many art institutions and resources L.A. has to offer. She started volunteering at Craft Contemporary in the past year and it has been a highly gratifying experience thus far.
Gonzalez’s initial exhibition was when she was a student at Dartmouth College in 2015 for her final project, but she displayed her work for the first time on her own in 2016 at the Barrows Rotunda in the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. This rotunda is very special as it is situated at the entrance of the building and permits passersby to observe the sculptures from every angle as originally intended. She showed three sculptural pieces of varying scales made of steel armatures covered in metallic-looking triangular forms made of chipboard.
Gonzalez’s exhibition, Creature Comforts, will be displayed at Blue Roof Studios from May 5 to 31. This is the final show of her residency with Arts at Blue Roof labeled “A Room of One’s Own.” The first three months of the residency enabled her to express her work and create large sculptures again after a long break. Arts at Blue Roof has offered her with various outstanding resources and beneficial guidance. She will be exhibiting the sculptures she produced while being part of the residency.
Gonzalez is very interested in the artwork of Do Ho Suh and Heidi Bucher, since they both investigate the concepts of location and recollection. It would be amazing to have a dialogue with them. When she works, she often listens to pop music, usually K-pop, Latino pop, or whatever songs are on the radio. When she gets nostalgic, she listens to Mexican pop and pop-rock from the mid-2000s. She also listens to podcasts like “Hidden Brain” and “The Happiness Lab.”
