(soft music)
- For me it's important to let go of control.
While I'm working, I listen, because then something
interesting comes out.
Being an artist is not exactly your choice.
You just have this urgency to do it.
My name is Lina Puerta.
I am a mixed-media artist and I live in New York City.
Originally, my family is from Columbia,
but I was born here and grew up there.
I love mixed media because like the materials kind
of guide me.
It's in a way very intuitive.
I am very attracted to different kinds of materials
and especially textures and colors.
The last two years I've been working with paper pulp
has been a new medium for me that I have fully enjoyed
and really falling in love with.
First you lay down a layer of paper pulp,
and while it's still wet and fresh, I lay down different
textural and colorful fabrics onto the paper.
Then another sheet of paper pulp is laid on top.
Since the paper is still wet, it is very malleable,
and you can manipulate it in many ways.
One of the ways that I like to work with it,
is using stencils and removing part
of the layer of the paper,
to expose some of the textures of the fabrics
that are in the middle.
(spraying)
This series is a series of seven tapestries,
that honor Latino farm workers in the US.
I chose crops that were predominantly
in the South and also crops that need most manual labor.
I looked at many images of farm workers in the fields,
and before going into the work studio I already
had determined what scenes I was going to make
and I made stencils that represented those workers.
The strawberry crop is one of the crops that they call
la fruta el Diablo, which means the Devil's fruit.
They have to bend down all day.
So it's extremely hard and painful
and it's extremely hard on their bodies.
For the piece of the strawberry picker,
I show the figure in an arched form,
and that frame that goes around it,
I left it as just an arch also to emphasize
the arched body.
(spraying)
For me it was important to show them
with like integrity and respect,
in recognition of their hard work,
a work that is not recognized by our system.
For me it was also important to incorporate
the entire process of the plant.
For instance, for each tapestry there are leaves
of that plant.
There's the fruit.
There is also the flower, and there are insects
and birds that are the pollinators,
and I love the idea of the workers being also part
of this chain or process or dance.
I think there's something very poetic of that whole cycle,
or process that I wanted to highlight.
(soft music)
- Even me, I'm surprised I can have business.
So before I often, I sign a contract or anything,
oh I do.