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Claudia Alvarez (b. 1969, New York City) is a Mexican American painter and sculptor and has worked as an artist in residence in Mexico, Switzerland, France, and China. ^[1] Alvarez's solo exhibitions include Acercate at the National Arts Centre, Mexico City; Girls with Guns,Scott White Contemporary Art La Jolla, California, Falling , Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, Nebraska, Silence Water, Museum of Art contemporary Yucatan, Merida, American Heroes, Blue Leaf Gallery Dinublin; Things of a Child, The Latino Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; History of Immigration , Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska, and many more. Alvarez is based in New York City.^[2]

Early Life and Education

Claudia Alvarez was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico in 1969 and raised in California from the age of three.^[3] Alvarez attended Sacramento City College from 1987-1997, and the University of California Davis and the California College of Arts, Oakland from 2000-2003. She received a BA in Art Studio from the University of California, Davis in 1999 and an MFA in Ceramics from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2003.^[4]

During the time Alvarez was in High School, she worked as a patient escort at the UC Davis Medical Center encountering people with rare illnesses and diseases. Alvarez enjoyed developing relationships with her patients, “to make them laugh, for even five minutes, inspired me to think about life in different ways.” ^[5] While taking pre-med courses at Sacramento City College, Alvarez enrolled in a ceramics class that made her rethink her existing artistic practice. Alvarez says, “I felt an experience of touch that I hadn’t experienced with drawing or painting -- a physical reality.”^[6] Not long after Alvarez went from pre-med to art and applied to UC Davis, where she worked with Annabeth Rosen, the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair, and the painter Wayne Thiebaud.^[5]

Art

"The sculptures of Claudia Alvarez engages in subjects such as immigration, violence, youth/aging, and power struggles." ^[7] Alvarez creates child-sized figures made of fired ceramics and are painted in layers. Touch is considered to be a dominant feature in the modeling and painting of these life-sized figures. Alvarez's work modulates "between naive and wise, cute and threatening, adorable and pitiful. They enact relationships most associated with adults or young adults in thematic tableau or candid theater.” ^[8] Alvarez models and paints her sculptures with eastern and western traditions in mind; both of which she adopted from her teachers Arthur Gonzalez at California College of Art and Wayne Thiebaud at University of California, Davis. Alvarez's sculptures engage with the audience’s attention the same way that children tend to do. ^[8] “We feel the presence of the hand on the child’s body. The poking, pinching, smoothing and wiping of clay transports us instantly into the emotional body. Alvarez's environments encourage an intimate dialogue between the objects, their relationship to space, and the viewer."^[9]

Alvarez’s work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Mexico. Her work has also appeared in several journals, including the New American Paintings, The Irish Times, and Art Pulse.^[10] Her solo exhibitions include Girls with Guns at the Scott White Contemporary Art in La Jolla, California, Falling at the Museum of Nebraska Art, and Silencio de Agua at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Yucatan, Merida, Mexico.

Alvarez’s solo exhibition, Girls with Guns, includes a series of four oil paintings, a large watercolor depicting girls playing with guns, and 14 child-like sculptures of children role-playing. She represents children without clothing or barely clothed at all in rigorous stances creating a strong focus on the violence that shadows American culture.^[11] “They are smaller than life-sized or the sizes of infants, increasing the psychological sense that these are, in fact, defenseless little humans and their fighting or bullying each other demonstrates learned behavior."^[12]

Claudia Alvarez comments that audiences sometimes find her work challenging, but goes on to explain, “through the eyes, through the marks, they realize the subject matter is important and needs to be talked about. It sends a message about what’s happening in the world."^[11]