We have been so inspired by Iván Carmona and his creative practice. He is currently wrapping up a seven week residency on the property. More on Iván's sculpture:
Iván Carmona grew up in Luquillo, PR, on the edge of the El Yunque national rainforest. There the wild natural environment merged with his day-to-day, and spilled over into the provincial setting of his small town. Carmona mines his memories for specific moments that have been romanticized with the passage of time. Translated through a framework of form and hue, he is able to give tangible presence to each moment in clay. The texture of concrete, smooth and rough in varying degrees, consciously works its way into his surfaces and reminds the artist of helping his father build their family home as a child. The tranquility of each object, discrete yet inextricably connected to a personal narrative, references the quietude of Spanish colonial architecture in his native Puerto Rico as well as alluding to the mountains and rainforests that surrounded and inspired him early on.
These feelings of place factor heavily into the artist’s work, yet they push beyond his individual experience by using a language rooted in Modern Art. Each work, painted in flat monochrome, brings about an insistence on texture and space while also pulling discrete planes and shapes together into fully-realized objects. These evocative forms, at once alien and familiar, are physical maps of time and memory.