T. Barrera-Scharaga: 25
Tessie Barrera-Scharaga is never sure how her next installation piece will begin. A sight, sound, bits of discarded clothing, or a handful of clay might be the creative spark. She’s used everything from baby bottles to bandages in her work. “I connect objects with emotions, memories, and dreams,” she says. Soundtracks, videos and photographs combine with physical objects in Tessie’s installations.
Though Tessie has made installations for the past fifteen years, her primary material is clay. She no longer fires her pieces, and the fragile nature of unfired clay is one of the major symbols in her work. “In using unfired clay objects I attempt to generate a sense of tenuousness, of finite physicality.” Both loss and transformation emanate from Tessie’s work, expressing the particular situation of the objects she’s chosen.
“I was an introverted, observant, and quiet child,” she says, “but I had an incredibly wild interior life.” As a child growing up in both Colombia and El Salvador, Tessie’s earliest exposure to art included images of a bleeding Christ, as well as saints and martyrs with visible wounds. These images so disturbed the young girl that her excuses to avoid bedtime became the stuff of family legend. However, as she grew older, Tessie created small altars on her nightstand made of meaningful objects; this impulse led to her later work as an installation artist.
Poetry has had a strong influence on Tessie, particularly the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda. As a child, she listened to her parents and their friends recite and discuss poetry as a normal part of socializing. Poetry “allows for associations corresponding to the inner life of objects, between the ordinary, the rational and the irrational,” according to Tessie. Another childhood influence came in the person of the artist Enrique Aberle, whose daughter was Tessie’s friend and neighbor. Don Quique patiently tolerated his daughter’s friend, allowed her to observe him at work, and answered her endless questions. “I made a total pest of myself!” she laughs.
At age nine, Tessie discovered a book of Edward Weston’s photography in her grandfather’s library. “I was totally entranced.” Even at such an early age, she was aware of the formal issues and rules that contributed to the overall effect of Weston’s work. “Before I saw Weston’s photographs, a pepper was just a pepper.” Later, she became obsessed with El Greco, then Dali and de Chirico.
The political situation in El Salvador became intolerable for Tessie’s family, and she returned to the United States (she was born in New York) to finish high school. It was the mid-Seventies, and the Feminist Movement was in full swing. The ideas behind feminism had a profound impact on Tessie, providing her with both intellectual stimulation and artistic expression. Other influences on Tessie’s work include ecology, post-modernism, Fluxus, and Arte Povera.
Though she started as a fine arts major, Tessie’s family pressured her to choose something more practical, and she switched to graphic arts. Her work in graphic design, combined with family responsibilities (she has two children) kept her away from finishing her fine arts degree for many years. Eventually, she enrolled at Mills College in Oakland, and completed the degree she had started long ago. Now she combines creating art with teaching art at two local schools; finding time to spend in the studio is often difficult. “I’m always thinking, reading, sketching or writing down ideas about art,” Tessie declares, “Creating is a different story. There’s never enough time.”
Tessie’s installation 25 started with a wedding dress rescued from the Goodwill ten years ago. Gradually she added the other elements of photography, video and sound. The dress itself was transformed through a process of covering the dress in a liquid form of clay. 25 symbolizes the journey through the emotional territory of a couple, and of their twenty-five years together.
For more information, see Tessie Barrera-Scharaga’s website. She can also be found on Myartspace, and is a member of Silicon Valley Artists Collaborative.
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