Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
Sandra C. Fernández draws from her personal life to touch on universal experiences of loss and memory as well as social issues. By combining different media (printmaking, photography, artist’s book, installation, and sculpture) she creates evocative works that feel poetic and ephemeral.
Fernández was born in Queens, New York but grew up in Quito, Ecuador. She traveled across the border, back and forth between her parents’ homes in the two locations. This trans-border movement had a lasting impact on her and, in turn, her art. Fernández’s grandfather, who was a bibliophile and bookseller, amassed a large collection of books from the 16th to 18th centuries. Fernández attended book fairs with him and took note of screenprinted political posters. She studied literature and sociology in college at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador.
In the 1980s, Fernández encountered persecution and lived through her friends’ enforced disappearances supported by the oppressive regime. She returned to the U.S. in 1987 when she was 22. Although born in this country, Fernández found herself a political exile and isolated.
Initially Fernández hoped to make movies; however, she began taking night classes in graphic design and was inspired to change direction. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison she developed a love of printmaking and book arts, not surprising with her love of literature. She received her B.S. in Art, M.A. in Photography and Printmaking, and an M.F.A. in Printmaking and Book Arts. Her book arts classes brought everything together–the ultimate combination of printmaking and photography.
In 2005, Fernández accepted a tenure track position to teach printmaking at the University of Texas at Austin. For the first time she felt a part of a community, connecting with the Mexican and Mexican-American people of Austin and the professional colleagues that she met through Consejo Grafico National and Sam Coronado’s Serie Project at Coronado Studio.
Dr. Gilberto Cárdenas founded Consejo Grafico Nacional in 2000 as a network of printmaking workshops supporting and promoting the capacity and legacy of Latinx printmakers (inclusive of all the Americas) in the U.S. They organize educational programs, conferences, exhibitions, and collaborative projects, such as portfolios of members. Fernández became a part of the coalition and now serves as their executive director.
Shortly after her move to Austin, Fernández applied to the Serie Project at Coronado Studio in Austin, a fine art collaborative print workshop specializing in screenprint. Sam Coronado immediately invited her to the studio and introduced her to the artists working in the area. She worked there in 2005, 2008, and 2013.
Fernández’s first print for the Serie Project was the 19-color screenprint entitled Enjaulada, which means jailed or caged. A young girl’s face peers through the bars of a brown skeletal frame. The artist intended the work to suggest her subject’s captivity as a child laborer in factories across the border.
Museum purchase with funds provided by the American Art Initiative Capital Campaign, 2013.54.12. Image courtesy of FWMoA.
Fernández works in layers of clear physical forms and those barely legible. A curtain of cream and tan colored shapes was made from both screenprinting and collaged paper. Handwriting imperceptibly bleeds through the translucent paper and in the blue background. The artist sewed the shapes together, suggesting it in ink and stitched with actual red thread.
The photo-based image of the young girl is in Prussian blue tones. For the artist, colors have different meanings and stimulate different reactions; she associates blue with the unconscious and our thoughts.
Museum purchase with funds provided by the American Art Initiative Capital Campaign, 2013.54.12. Image courtesy of FWMoA.
Fernández grew up seeing beautiful handmade crafts in Ecuador, including indigenous basketry, weaving, and woodwork. She learned to sew from her grandmother and aunt. The artist incorporates what she refers to as thread drawing that more times than not threatens to run off the sheet. Her stitches pierce the paper and defy printmaking’s respect for the integrity of the paper and maintaining clear margins.
Coming of Age (Transformations) is a 16-color screenprint that Fernández also made for the Serie Project. The scene is set against the panoramic backdrop of the program’s home city skyline in Austin. The number 15 appears near the tree trunk and shines in the sky, marking Serie Project’s 15th anniversary and alluding to the Quinceañera celebration for young 15-year-old girls transitioning into womanhood.
The pictured girl wears a dress made of sewn corn husks that Fernández fashioned and photographed. The face is taken from a baby doll, perhaps alluding to the last doll ceremonially given at the Quinceañera. She carries a scepter made of dried red chili peppers topped with a crown, signifying the logo/chop mark for Coronado Studio.
While the print appears to be celebratory, words in green ink fill the tree trunk and present darker societal problems facing immigrants, including “no jobs”, “coyotes”, and “haven’t seen my children in 5 years”. Fernández added hopeful thoughts of “respect”, “solidarity”, and “family” in black ink.
The faint blue script extending across the sheet is excerpted from the Codex Mendoza, an account of the Aztec civilization written in the 16th century. It is a text that Fernández uses repeatedly and Art historian Tatiana Reinoza suggests this is a reminder of the Spanish conquest. Reinoza also compares the Quinceañera figure with the Statue of Liberty, a national symbol that is the first impression seen by many immigrants.i
Immigration is a recurring subject that is close to the artist’s heart, as seen in Flores para la tumba de un imigrante (Flowers for the grave of an immigrant). This time Fernández takes actual excerpts from a text rather than writing. Stylized flower blossoms are given form by grainy lines of soft ground etching and sharp, clean lines of colorful thread that wends through the paper.
Fernández addressed immigration even more clearly in CAUTION: Dreamers in/on sight, made for the Serie Project. The viewer looks directly into a line of young people shadowed in Prussian blue. Their faces are superimposed on a 1982 El Paso Port of Entry map, made by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Customs. The official document is written in English and in typeface. The flowing handwritten script is in Spanish that pushes beyond the image. Again, Fernández used a passage from the Codex Mendoza.
Fernández included the iconic immigration caution sign illustrating silhouetted family members fleeing. In 1990, the California Department of Transportation began posting these warning road signs to drivers along corridors near the Mexico/U.S. border after about 100 pedestrian fatalities.
Fernández humanized the immigration debate by adding the individualized portraits of young adults who are in a line as if a part of a protest. She was a faculty member of the University of Texas at Austin and used students as models. Likely, some of her students were Dreamers, a term used to describe undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents. The Texas DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act) provides eligible undocumented students, including DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients, with access to in-state tuition and state financial aid. Fernández included another road sign in the upper right that shows three people running, but now they are wearing mortar board caps and graduation gowns and are carrying rolled diplomas.
An image of a bird charm was printed across the hair of the most prominent figure, as if in flight. The red bird was collaged and is tied with red stitches that escape and flow off the image into the borders. The bird takes the form of a Mexican folk charm known as a milagro, which was used for protection and good luck.
After the sudden death of Sam Coronado in 2013, Consejo Grafico Nacional put together a portfolio by 15 contributing artists entitled El Corazón: In Loving Memory of Sam Z. Coronado 1946-2013. He was a beloved teacher, mentor, founding member of Consejo Grafico Nacional, and supporter of hundreds of underrepresented artists through his artist-in-residency program.
Fernández’s contribution was Porque Sam fue todo corazón (Because Sam was all heart). A trembling etched red line resembles stitching and outlines a large heart that is filled with a handwritten personal tribute beginning in English and transitioning into Spanish. In the background she etched flower blossoms. Small embossed, heart shaped milagro charms float heavenward into the margins.
Fernández’s work can be found at the Blanton Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. In 2012, she was honored with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Casa de Cultura Ecuatoriana in Quito. She has taught at Hunter College, Monmouth University, and University of Texas at Austin.