Peculiar Creature
A collaboration between mediums is a difficult task, particularly from a creative and technical standpoint. How does one translate an idea that exists in strokes of a paintbrush to woven fibers on a loom? How best to match the colors, from paint to dye, and to what extent does one simply replicate, and where does one decide to extrapolate and, indeed, push beyond the boundaries of the original?
It is this creative tide of push and pull that unites husband and wife team Wence and Sandra Martinez. Wence is a weaver from Oaxaca, Mexico, who first studied traditional weaving under the tutelage of his father and grandfather, Cosme and Manuel Martinez. Later in life he went to the National Institute of Weaving in Mexico City, where he learned from Master Pedro Preux and Edmundo Aquino. Sandra began her artistic career in making ceramics, before going to the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, where she made the transition to painting.
Somewhere along the path of life their trails intertwined. Sandra was seeking someone who could transpose her primeval paintings into a woven rug, and her search led her to Wence. A deep understanding connected the two, and from then on they have found a rich and fertile artistic relationship with each other.
Sandra's paintings are sourced from the same primeval well of inspiration that fed our ancestors. Her art dabbles in symbolism and metaphor, speaking a language that comes from the heart and not the head. It is from these renderings of the subconscious that Wence makes his tapestries. What was once small is now an ocean, a vast wall of colors, shades and shapes that communicates the same idea from a new perspective. The result is something ancient that nonetheless exists as part of our contemporary world.