The Dr. Maxine Merlino Gallery on campus is providing a temporary home to sepia-toned photos of uninhabited dwellings framed in intricately woven fibers.
“Uprooted” is a senior solo exhibition by Sheila Ann Rodriguez, a second-year master of fine arts student at California State University, Long Beach; it features her original digital photography wrapped in hemp-like rope made of thread, wood, fiber and hair.
After moving in and out of many different homes, Rodriguez said that the struggles she faced in both her childhood and adult life, and her definition of the term “home” inspired “Uprooted.”
“I never really had a hometown, and that’s a question you’re always asked,” Rodriguez said. “It defines who you are and what your upbringing is. It’s always been something that’s always in transition for me [and] inspired the work [in] the gallery.”
With divorced parents, remarriages and socioeconomic challenges, Rodriguez said that her childhood proved how little of a say she had on these transitions. With such limitations, she never fully got to experience the emotional attachments that grew between most individuals and their homes.
At the age of eight, Rodriguez found herself constantly on the go, but she sought stability and comfort through crocheting, a skill she learned from both her mom and grandmother.
By utilizing pieces of wood, thread, fiber and human hair from both her and her daughters, Rodriguez intertwined the materials through traditional practices of weaving, crocheting and knitting.
“A lot of the materials I used are fiber and thread,” Rodriguez said. “Using that as the basis and also the idea of memory evokes loss and detachment as well as having a rooted system of being grounded in something.”
Her technique of utilizing each unique material complimented pictures of the disheveled and abandoned homes that rested above it.
“The pictures are all of houses in the neighborhoods I’ve lived in and the [current] neighborhood I’m raising my children in,” Rodriguez said. “I see these homes that need to be cared for, that could’ve been someone’s home but they’re abandoned and I think about the story behind it—what happened and transpired.
Debuting since Sunday night, the gallery attracted attendants like Lorraine Jacques from Pomona, whose personal story of purchasing a fixer-upper when she was married and a mother of one helped her relate to the artist’s work.
“I went into this home thinking it’d be perfect; [but] the reality is [that] there is no perfect home, there is no perfect house,” Jacques said as she noticed the blemishes of one of Rodriguez’s pieces. “I’m thinking, ‘wow, she could’ve made it look untouchable and perfect.’ There was a lot of deep emotion there.”
Eva Fraidany, an attendee from Whittier, said that she believed Rodriguez’s intricate designs symbolized unity and a connection that seemed to represent individuals, families and communities as a whole.
“Everyone just has a different interpretation [of good artwork] but I think a good sign that you’re a good artist is when you want to touch it,” Fraidany said. “The fiber gives a sense of home and togetherness. As a society, we’re all just connected together even by the thinnest string.”
Rodriguez, married and with three children, now feels that she can achieve the stability that she’s always wanted for her family which is now “residing in a city that they can call their own.”
Essentially Rodriguez said she hopes “Uprooted” can offer her viewers the same evocation that her art has given her in the road to self-identity.
“I think everyone has a story and everyone struggles with different things in their lives,” Rodriguez said. “Everyone has something that they’re trying to work through, and I definitely feel that transcends through everybody, making us all well-connected.”