[raindrops] [gentle piano music]
- Cristina Córdova: I'm a figurative sculptor.
I feel I need to draw out of the clay a sense of presence.
You keep playing with the idea
of basic anatomical structures and trying to preserve symmetry,
and just keep slowly compounding that
until you feel something clicks in,
and it's a little bit inhabited.
[birds chirping]
This is definitely an exploration.
Staying open and just have a dialogue with the material.
I'm just playing and just reacting
and building from there.
[brush swishes]
Heads are this primal archetype of consciousness,
and it's just really what first hooked me with the figure,
and then I slowly worked my way down,
and I only really got to the legs,
like, maybe seven years ago.
[gentle music]
- Cristina has achieved a mastery.
She masters the material, the scale of her work,
the precision, but beyond that is very strong images
that are potent images.
They really hit you hard.
The work is very Latin American, it's very Caribbean,
but I think it can talk to everybody.
- So I'm originally from Puerto Rico; I grew up there,
but I've lived in Penland for the past 15 years.
I have two daughters,
12-year-old Eva, and Paloma, who's 17.
What?
Really? - Yeah.
- This place where we've decided to settle
that is somewhat foreign to me is wholly home for them.
Like, this is their home.
I kind of stipple, like, I just go like this.
In North Carolina, I feel I'm very separated in some ways
in terms of, you know, what my first language is
and what my history is.
[salsa music]
When I go back, it's almost like Puerto Rico
makes me feel invisible in a good way,
like I'm just part of the background.
Puerto Rican identity is at the core of everything
that I depart from to understand the world.
[waves crashing]
As far back as I can remember, my mom has always been
supporting her children's art-making.
- She was a very artistic girl.
When I noticed that she was really good at it,
I put it in to take some classes
when she was only two and a half years old.
- Even though art was so deeply appreciated in my house,
I didn't grow up with a model of how that could transform
into a viable profession.
I decided that engineering might be a route for me,
and so I started exploring that,
and pretty immediately realized that, "Oh, no."
[laughs]
[speaking Spanish]
- [speaking Spanish] - [speaking Spanish]
Church-going was part of our family tradition,
and my mom collected card saints.
- [speaking Spanish]
Coming from a Catholic home, I wanted them to be exposed
to that type of art because it's true folk art.
- I had always been surrounded
by these really dramatic, religious images
that were intended to draw someone
into this very receptive, emotional space,
and I think it's something that I was able to draw from
as I was developing my figurative practice.
[clay scraping]
Before I launch into these projects,
I do, like, a photographic research session.
This model in particular is my daughter, Eva.
- Very human, like, she studied a lot of, like, anatomy
and the things, like, there's, like, a bone here
and I was like, "Oh."
There's so many different attributes that play into
making the whole sculpture.
- I've thought about expression a lot.
Are they potentially experiencing joy,
torment, or sadness?
Oftentimes, I use maybe a sense of tension or movement
in the hands to hint at this emotional state
as opposed to holding it in the face.
I want the face to be the face you have
when all the activity's happening on the inside.
It's a very neutral gesture in the face.
[gentle piano music]
Most of the work breaks apart,
and I try to do those in alignment with the clothing,
and I will build a base so that she can fire upright
in the kiln.
Everything will be bisqued and then glazed
until she's like, "I'm done."
After I graduated from the University of Puerto Rico
in Mayagüez, I was just really in love
with this material, like, infatuated.
And, you know, the options were limited at the time,
but I came across a workshop owned by this woman,
Antonia Hambleton.
- When she got to my studio, I told her,
"You have magnificent hands, but let's start."
She started doing figures, small figures.
Her parents came and I said,
"You know, she might not make it yet economically,
"but she is one of those few people
that the world enriches us with."
- And so I decided to move to United States.
Went to Alfred University, did my masters in ceramics,
and then I went to study at the Florence Academy of Art
and eventually made my way to become
a permanent resident at Penland.
- At Penland, people come from all over the world
to engage in the creative practice.
We specialize in immersive craft workshops
and we are always looking for interesting people to invite.
Cristina said, "I'd like to invite Jaime Suarez.
"He was my teacher; he's a very important artist
in Puerto Rico."
I said, "Great, let's do it."
- I was born and live in Puerto Rico.
I studied architecture, but at some point in my life,
I became a ceramic artist.
That took me into other things,
but I've come to the conclusion after many years of work
that my medium is not the material.
That my medium of expression has always been texture.
And that I say everything through texture,
whether it's texture in paper, in clay, in concrete,
that's the medium.
- So we're building this texture on this face,
trying to just create
some sort of imaginary historical residue.
- [speaking Spanish]
We're spraying vinegar, which causes a chemical reaction
on the surface of the clay.
This is something Jaime does in his practice.
I'm taking the opportunity to collaborate
and understand the possibilities of this.
[speaking Spanish]
- One of my passions is teaching,
and I think the responsibility of the teacher
more than teaching is inspiring the students,
and she says that's what I gave her.
So I'm very proud when you see a student that tells you,
"You inspired me to reach the levels that she has reached."
[speaking Spanish]
[both laugh]
- I have a large family collection of art
that started in 1695, and it's been handed down
to only one person per generation.
I'm the seventh inheritor.
And when I saw her figures,
I decided to acquire some pieces,
and the one that I prized the most is called "The Getaway."
It's sort of surrealistic.
That's what attracted me to it.
These are the best contemporary ceramic pieces I've seen.
I have others that are from Puerto Rico
or from other Latin American countries,
but this is a top, certainly.
- Puerto Rico has given a lot of very good art and artists.
It's really refreshing to see that in this moment of crisis,
there's a whole new generation
of young artists really doing interesting things.
[gentle acoustic guitar music]
Hurricane Maria was devastating,
but even before Maria, we also have political hurricanes.
It's a lot of struggle; it's really hard time.
So we're losing a lot of people that are coming to the States,
but I think Cristina has been able
to maintain the connection.
Sometimes if you're away from where you should be
or where you wanna be,
it reinforces the search for that identity,
and I think it comes through in her work in many ways.
- In my work, the boat became the symbol
for passage and transition, and so she has this flag ready,
to maybe stake ground somewhere,
and this creature that I understand
as a part of herself, maybe this duality
between reason and instinct,
and I think in creating this piece, that was the spirit
that I was lining myself with.
It's this energy of wanting to push beyond what was known
and wanting to explore and discover and grow.
[gentle music] [waves crashing]