Lovie Olivia is an artist living in, and hailing from, Houston, TX. I have visited this studio before, when I wrote about Olivia’s partner, Preetika Rajgariah.
Cast your brain on the ocean of pop culture references for “perpetual worker” and you may come up with workaholic TV dads, the Energizer Bunny, or even Sisyphus, doomed to an eternity of useless boulder-pushing.
In 2016, Claudia Vásquez Gómez, an artist from Chile, was especially struck by the way border police attached tires to the backs of their vehicles, dragging them across the desert.
Annette Lawrence reads me something she’s written about her work: “I’m tuned in to things that go unannounced and remain steady, continuous, and unremarkable on the surface, but hold magic over time.”
Both of my grandmothers were factory workers. Paw Paw, my Chinese grandmother, watched her family oppose the Communist party in China and lose everything. They left mainland China for British-controlled Hong Kong before arriving to the United States as refugees.
Once Texas’ summer torpor hits, escaping the heat may be priority No. 1. If you’re looking for a reason to flee to a higher, cooler altitude, Santa Fe Opera (June 28-Aug. 24) offers a world premiere, the company’s first staging of a 20th-century classic, and new productions of two perennial favorites.
“There are associations that come with the use of a sarape, especially now with recent political and economic border issues,” says Adrian Esparza, referring to the brightly colored, blanket-like shawls from Latin America that inform and compose much of his work as well as the constant issue of the Mexican-American border, in which Texas is often found at the center.