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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. Alvarez is living in New York City.

Early Life and Education

Claudia Alvarez was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico in 1969 and raised in California from the age of three. Alvarez attended The Sacramento City College from 1987-1997. In 2000 Alvarez attended the University of California Davis and the California College of Arts, Oakland from 2000-2003. Claudia Alvarez 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.

Art

The sculptures of Claudia Alvarez engages in subjects such as immigration,violence, youth/aging, and power struggles. Alvarez creates straightforward sculptural installations of child-sized figures made of fired ceramics. These sculptures are painted in layers revealing levels of physicality of the maker and the made. Touch is prevalent in the modeling/painting of the life-like and life-sized characters she discovers through this process consisting of characteristics that modulate 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. These 2-4 year old's seem conjured from Alvarez’s Mayan/Spanish roots combined with her childhood immersed in American cartoon culture. Alvarez models and paints her sculpture, embracing both eastern and western traditions she absorbed in the bay area from her teachers Arthur Gonzalez at California College of Art and Wayne Thiebaud at University of California, Davis. Claudia Alvarez's sculptures ply for our sympathies and attention, as kids tend to do. There is no need to disguise quirky mannerisms or paradox, as kids act out all kinds of things without filters acquired through adulthood cares. Mediating between active modeling of the sculpture and painting is where the power of Alvarez's art lies. 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.

Alvarez’s work has been exhibited in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions include Girls with Guns at the Scott White Contemporary Art in La Jolla, California, Falling at the Museum of Nebraska Art, Silencio de Agua at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Yucatan, Merida, Mexico, and many more. Her work has also appeared in several journals, including the New American Paintings, The Irish Times, and Art Pulse. Alvarez’s exhibition, “Girls with Guns,” is a series of four oil paintings on canvas and a large watercolor depicting girls playing with guns, as well as 14 child-size ceramic sculptures of children role-playing. The exhibit touches on themes of bullying and violence overall. To show children without clothes or barely clothed fighting is to highlight the depth to which violence pervades the American culture. 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.

Claudia Alvarez says that people who visit her exhibitions find it difficult to understand her selective themes, but eventually are convinced that there is some innocence illuminating from the child-sized figures. Alvarez says, “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. I really like it, because it makes me want to do something for the world…it pushes the viewer to say what they believe in.”

Career

While still in high school, Claudia Alvarez began a job at the UC Davis Medical Center. As a patient escort, she encountered a diverse group of people, many of whom had very rare diseases and long-term illnesses. One of her first assignments, she recalls, was taking a body to the morgue. It was working with the living that caused Alvarez to look at life differently. “To make them laugh, for even five minutes, inspired me to think about life in different ways.” The patients were sometimes children who seemed old as they grappled with extreme infirmity, and sometimes older people who became more like children as they aged. Alvarez’s conception of age expanded; she saw maturity in children and vulnerability in grown adults.

As claudia Alvarez worked her way through Sacramento City College, taking pre-med courses, Alvarez enrolled in a ceramics class that made her rethink her existing artistic practice “I felt an experience of touch that I hadn’t experienced with drawing or painting -- a physical reality.” Soon thereafter she switched her major to art and applied to UC Davis, where she worked with Annabeth Rosen, the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair, and the distinguished painter Wayne Thiebaud.

Claudia Alvarez's recent solo exhibitions include Acercate, 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, Dublin; Things of a Child,The Latino Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; History of Immigration , Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska.

Selected Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

Claudia Alvarez Acércate, CENART, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, Mexico (2014)

Girls with Guns, Scott White Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California (2012)

History of Immigration, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska

Close Your Eyes, White Space, West Palm Beach, Florida (2 person show) (2011)

Claudia Alvarez, Falling, Museum of Nebraska Art, University of Nebraska, Kearney, Nebraska (2011)

Quemando Recuerdos, Da Burn Gallery, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico

La Tormenta, La Clinica Arte Contemporaneo, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico

Claudia Alvarez: El Silencio Del Agua, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan, Merida, Mexico (2008)

Cosas de Un Niño, El Museo Latino, Omaha, Nebraska (2005)

RED, Labrys Contemporary Arts, Long Beach, California (2004)

The Bruised Sky, Gallery W, Sacramento, California (2003)

Sojourn, FUTUR, Rapperswil, Switzerland (2002)

Azulear, Annex Gallery, Biola University, Los Angeles, California (2001)

Azulear, Puccinelli Gallery, Gutenberg College, Eugene, Oregon

Selected Group Exhibitions:

Your Making Me Uncomfortable: Perspectives on Controversial Art, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln Nebraska (2016)

Mujeres, Museum of Nebraska Art, Kearney, NE

New Ways of Seeing: Beyond Culture, Dorsky Gallery, New York (2015)

In Pursuit of Freedom, Corridor Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

Migrantes: Claudia Alvarez, Jose Bedia , Ilya y Emilia Kabakov, Nina Menocal, Mexico City MX

Pushing Boundaries, White Space, The Mordes Collection, West Palm Beach, Florida

Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE (2013)

The Figure, Keramik Museum, Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany

Stump, Hunter College Project Space, New York, NY

Brooklyn Museum GO Open Studios, Brooklyn, New York (2012)

Separation Anxiety, Pelham Art Center, Pelham, New York

Better Half, Better Twelfth: Women Artists in the Collection, Sheldon Museum of Art, NE (2010)

Provisions, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York, NY

Separation Anxiety, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chaffey College, CA

Wildly Different Things, The Observatory, Dublin, Ireland

Vida Breve, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois

Panopticon, Lied Art Gallery, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska (2009)

Resident Artists, Galerie Aqui Siam Ben, Vallauris, France

Tiempo Y Espacio, Museo de la Ciudad, Merida, Mexico (2008)

Salty: Three Tales of Sorrow, El Camino College Art Gallery, Torrance, CA (2007)

Line by Line, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska

Awards and Residencies

Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, New York

SASAMA, Shizuoka, Japan (2015)

Art Matters Foundation, New York, New York

The McKnight Foundation, Artist in Residence, Northern Clay Center, MN

Artista en Residencia, SOMA, Mexico City, Mexico (2014)

Vytlacil Artist in Residence, Arts Student League of New York, New York (2011)

PV Art, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (2009)

Gruber Jez Foundation, Cholul, Mexico (2008)

Visiting Artist, China Century Entertainment Inc., Shanghai, China (2006)

Artist in Residence, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska (2005)

Artist in Residency, FUTUR, Rapperswil, Switzerland, Jan-July (2002)