The Goldmark Cultural Center’s Norman Brown Gallery is proud to present “Rebuilt from the Ground Up”, a solo exhibition featuring a ceramic sculptural installation by Karla Garcia.

“Rebuilt from the Ground Up” will be on display from May 13 to June 10, 2022. On Saturday, June 4, an opening reception will be held from 1.00 pm to 3.00 pm at the Norman Brown Gallery.

About the Exhibition
The borderland saw me grow and its landscape continues to teach me about who I am. I am part of the desert space at the edge of the Mexico/US border that is marked by a dotted line. In my installations, I create desert landscapes that become abstract self-portraits of experiences from my childhood in Mexico to adulthood in the U.S. For this installation, I created 500 “nopal” ears (prickly pear) that are stripped down from the details that make up the actual nopal. The process becomes meditative through the repetition that results in a reconstructed prickly pear tree.

The cactus-inspired sculptures refer to my Mexican cultural history and are made with terracotta clay. They are low-fired to cone 013 and stained with coffee to create a value scale of browns, oranges, and tan colors of the ground beneath. I pinched each piece to shape and I leave the memory of my fingertips as a way to express my presence as a MeXicana Americana rebuilt from the ground up.

-Karla Garcia

About the artist
Karla García is a Mexican-born, American-based artist that creates installations and sculptures with clay, found objects, and other symbolic materials to her Mexican heritage and migration. Her research-based artwork is a connecting point from her own history, ancient histories, and how these shape her identity, noting that “I hope that my work can be a catalyst for the public to experience a little bit of our human history in unexpected ways.” García is a Professor of Art at the Dallas College - Mountain View Campus. She completed an MFA degree in Ceramics and a Museum Education Certificate from the University of North Texas in 2019. García has exhibited in galleries in Dallas TX, Fort Worth, TX, and New York, NY. She was selected as a C3 artist at the Dallas, Museum of Art and has exhibited at the Nasher Sculpture Center Windows series.  García was a resident at Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency in 2021 and is currently working on a Binational installation at the border of Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.

Artist website: www.karlamichellgarcia.com
Instagram: @KarlaGarciaArt