Rodríguez Calero
Painter, Collagist and Photographer
Rodríguez Calero, affectionately known as “RoCa”, studied under many notable Puerto Rican Artists at the Instituto de Cultura, Escuela de Artes Plasticas. Her mentor and dear friend Master Artist and Printmaker, Lorenzo Homar, has been the main influence in her approach in developing her work ethics and signature style in painting, which she termed acrollage, a transcending evolution of a mixed media combination of acrylic paint, paper, and a form of printmaking.
Upon receiving her BFA in Puerto Rico, she returned to New York and continued her studies at the Art Students League of New York and focused in painting and collage under Master Artist, Leo Manso and held a National Endowment for the Arts residency at Taller Boricua which was located above El Museo, with fellow artists Marcos Dimas, Gilberto Hernandez, Nestor Otero, Jose Rodriguez, Fernando Salicrup, Jorge Soto and Manny Vega. While at The League, she was the recipient of several awards and scholarships including the prestigious Edward G. McDowell Travel Scholarship, which permitted her to journey abroad to Spain and France to pursue her interests in art.
Rodríguez Calero has received residencies from The New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, and others include Jerome Foundation Scholarship, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, NY, (1981-1982), Taller Boricua (1980-1982); Provincetown Art Association, MA (1985 -1986), Galeria Bonaire, Puerto Rico (1987-1988), Kenkeleba House, NY (1989-1990), Brandywine Workshop Center for the Visual Arts, PA (1999), and Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, NJ (2000).
In 2015 her survey exhibit, Rodriguez Calero | Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos, curated by Alejandro Anreus at El Museo del Barrio, New York, was highly received and reviewed and was given an honorable mention by Hyperallergic of the 20 best NYC exhibits. Her works are in many private and public collections.
Selected Artwork
Rodríguez Calero collages updates the never-ending critical work of surrealism and dada. The collages are bits of flat materials taken from the pages of advertising and are pasted together in an incongruous relationship for a symbolic or suggested effect. The blending of elements offers an open-ended means to construct ideas and feelings of an instinctual and emotional involvement and gives pursuit to her own personal expression and ideas.
Compositions of the human figure, breaking, decomposing and rearranging, creates a puzzle of sorts, which is complex and fascinating like human nature. These conceptual images transcend abstract poetry and humor to a social and political urban presence and evokes an image of familiarity and sentiment.
Rodríguez Calero has a language and reason, which is impelling and enables her to translate an area of imagination, creative inventiveness and intuition in visual form.