Today we’d like to introduce you to Aimee Perez.
Aimee, before we jump into specific questions about your art, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I was born in Habana Cuba in 1955. left for the United States when I was twelve with my family through the Freedom Flights and grew up in Miami in Cuban immigrant community. As a young adult, I won the Gold Key Award in painting and several honorable mentions as I continued my pursuit of the arts during my college years. In 1989 I moved to Mexico City and continued painting and exhibiting with Cuban and Mexican artists.
In 1997 I was invited to participate as a guest artist in the studio of Mexican sculptor Jose Sacal and it is here I began to work for the first time in 3D with clay. I returned to Miami in 2006 and continued my work winning several awards for figurative ceramics in the state of Florida. My strong points are the command of gestures making my sculptures expressionistic and powerful which combined with the juxtaposition to found objects creates an organic symbiosis. My work is my voice, a dialogue with the observer and simultaneously a self-exploration. My work can be found in many private collections in the United States and Mexico and in permanent collections including Florida International University Honors College Collection and Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The world of the Arts is a difficult one because the product, our work, is created with the most intimate part of oneself and therefore we are exposed constantly to the outside world which at times can feel to us as raw and unkind and at times takes us to the highest peaks, this rollercoaster of emotions need to be managed and this is a learning process. The process is also about always moving, always learning. It’s a constant competition with the person I was yesterday and no one else.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
If I were to equate what I do as an artist with a company I would say that I am in the traveling business, for my work is an exploration of myself and my observations of how I as an individual perceive the world. I could also say that I am in engineering because after the idea is conceived the pieces have to come together, stand on their own, using the materials, the colors and the shapes in a marriage of sorts.
My work brings two worlds together, I don’t want to let the audience forget that history, our history is important it is embedded in our DNA and therefore impossible to ignore and yet the future is what makes us struggle to be better. For example, in latest series Fragments I am using clay as the main material and added lights and plexiglass to bring a more spiritual dimension to the work. The sculptures some fragments of history like Will the Real Venus….uses torsos of the prehistoric Venus in many different positions to convey our current views of beauty and body dysmorphia.
What were you like growing up?
I was born in an island my home was very close to the ocean, in a very small community where everyone knew each other, I was surrounded by magical realism, as it was a place full of legends and storytellers. Art was everywhere and it was important to me, I was an introverted child and through my drawings connected to my surroundings. As I got older and moved to Miami my world changed in many ways, I was an immigrant now with a different language to learn, a different culture, I was transitioning from childhood to adulthood, having to deal with and a city full of strangers, all these factors made merely more and more on my inner world this is how the arts became my one outlet and safe place.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4706 SW 75th Avenue
Miami, Florida 33146 - Website: http://www.aimeeperez-sculptor.com
- Phone: 3059727766
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/aimeeperezstudio
- Facebook: http://www.instagram.com/aimeeperezstudio
Image Credit:
Cindy Farache Photography
Nestor Arenas Photography
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