Over the past few years, I’ve felt optimistic about the turning tide in this country regarding the visibility of civil rights issues, such as marriage equality and civic engagement, and a younger, empowered generation. However, I am also afraid, angered and horrified by insurmountable insensitivity, dishonesty, gun violence, greed, police brutality, and political polarization. These quilts are my attempt at reconciling this internal conflict, as they offer protection, warmth, and comfort to those who seek respite from anger and despair.

Each piece contains images of paintings imbedded within the places of my life.

My time is spent in environments where I both work and play: my studio, the outdoors, and home. Photographs of these places have become commonplace in my work. Some include works-inprogress from my studio, wooden structures from trail-building projects, or pictures of birds.

I use inkjet prints, framing devices, and textures from various materials as tools to create images about painting, living with paintings, and being with paintings.

Using drawing as a starting point, my paintings construct the act of looking as both active and communal. Contained within the picture plane, this gaze is intimate instead of performative, absorptive instead of scopophilic: a tool for self-reflexivity and self-imaging. In turn, the high chroma of the work—rich magentas, deep blues, acidic greens—radiates outward. The optics are both enticing and shifting, demanding attention but refusing a singular read: color as illusion, color as fantasy, color as both ground and figure. The figures themselves—women in

Spontaneous, unpredictable, intuitive, layered, chaotic, yet measured. Creating for me is an ever-changing process that is often filled with agony, wonder, surprise, change, disappointment, and bliss.

When I am in the studio, the physicality of engagement with material stimulates my process. Throwing, pouring, scraping, slapping, deconstructing, and reconstructing excites and energizes me, propelling experimentation and the search for meaning in mark and form.

My paintings embrace the constraints of modest materials. Colorful, textured works comprised of paper pulp and wood serve as a shrug to the frenzy of new media. I use body language, personal anecdotes, and current events as catalysts for studio activity. My recent works explore enduring (common) technologies that teeter on the threshold of relevance. They also question the feasibility of maintaining a constant state of curated comfort.

My practice focuses on the analysis of graphic and pictorial vocabularies found in photocopies and photographs from my family archive. The content of this source material becomes the subject matter of my work.

Sign-painting is in my blood: I had a design-heavy upbringing, working in the family sign shop. Today, I consider myself as much an activist as an artist and I am doing my best to say what I think needs to be said. Art is a powerful tool in that regard. Art can be a weapon to protect our voices and freedoms and to point to injustices. This is where I live. My art is about giving voice to those who aren’t able to make these same statements . . . who don’t have the same rights or protections that I do.

My large-scale paintings are geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful images, deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. In my work, I strive to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations by exploring and uncovering factors that contributed to the unfortunate relationship breakdown between the two. Moreover, my layered, mixed-media painting examines parallels between present-day behaviors and attitudes that date back to African

I paint my thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the world as I see and go through it.

Marta Rodríguez Maleck is a performer, sculptor, painter, and installation artist. She employs music, disguise, and sarcasm to create alternate realities. Rodriguez Maleck’s background in education, construction, and fashion have led her to create art that challenges societal gender constructs and prescribed behaviors. With an interest in engaging a variety of audiences, Marta has exhibited her work in myriad spaces, from the Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans to DIY house shows, and everything in between.