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Sarah Gonzales Busse (La Sirena de La Techxicana Studio) is a Generation X artist, activist, Tejana futurist, advocate, and mother of three (not including pets and wannabe adoptees), whose work focuses on individuals as signifiers and paradoxes within the human condition. She is drawn specifically to how, individually and collectively, we color or distort our natural and cultural geographies, embody and inhabit narrative histories, internalize generational traumas, and recreate cosmological patterns. Her work often features women and children as primary messengers and receivers within spare or abstracted landscapes. Born and currently based with her family in San Antonio, TX, her work and practice is also influenced by time spent living in Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, and the Peloponnese. She studied at Pomona College and the Claremont Colleges (BA, Studio Art, Painting and Sculpture), the College Year in Athens program, and the Southwest School of Art.
Resume (PDF)
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Type: Multi-Disciplinary: Multiple Art Forms; Teaching Artist/Instructor; Visual Arts: Artisan, Constructions/Collage, Maker, Painter, Printmaker, Sculptor, Textiles
Artist Style: Teaching Artist/Instructor: Group Instruction, Guest Speaker, Instruction for Adults, Instruction for Children, Multi-Day Artist Residency, Private Lessons, Workshop Presenter; Visual Art: Assemblage, Collage, Decorative/Ornamental, Environmental, Experimental, Figurative, Functional, Nature/Wildlife, Photo-Based Painting, Pop, Portraiture, Representational, Site-Specific, Social Commentary
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
My textile narratives from small functional pieces to immersive experiences emerge slowly from foraging local plants and trees, collecting daily kitchen compost scraps for dye, extracting dye, preparing fabrics, letting dyes steep and set, combing my reuse threads, patterning, making stamps and screens, photographing “muses”, drawing, collaging, and sewing. Nature, seasonal cycles, stages of life, and myth, guide my textile practices of Tejana Futurism, as I call it, where we blend ancestral knowledge and fear missing fireflies. Mining both myth and personal memory on my journey from child to mother to crone, generational patterns, myth, modern trends, and cultural expectations print, paint, dye, and stitch together. I collect domestic textures, from single use things like fruit netting or bubble wrap to rusted washers, bike chain, and jar lids, these materials of everyday life and home, to pattern diurnal portraits or dystopian narratives about how we live right now, and what we accidentally or hopefully, both at once, pass along to future generations. Bed linens, furnishings, clothing, and gear, originally used in daily life, gathering, camping and storytelling settings, become re-contextualized nomadic elements sheltering within community and reference how mundane objects actively collect our collective narratives. We make it so.
