This Touchstone Blog article is written by Touchstone’s current Bloomberg Arts Interns” Charlene, Kai, and Mahogany. These DC high school seniors interviewed both Tory Cowles and Rosa Inés Vera about their work to write the piece.
Tory Cowles solo exhibition Serendipity: A Dance between Painting and Sculpture combines sculpture, painting, and hybrid sculptural works created from paintings. Tory attended college as a sociology major, but with her college’s diverse curriculum requirements, she was placed in a drawing class where she began working with pastels and discovered her love for art. When asked about her artistic practice, Cowles explained that she doesn't necessarily have a routine when it comes to starting an artwork. When creating a new work, she starts by collecting found objects and scraps, combining them to make something bigger. She also uses thrift stores as a place to source fabrics made of various materials and with different patterns.
Tory’s solo show focuses on abstract art and sculptures. She enjoys evoking reactions from viewers with her artwork and aims for the audience to focus on the piece to discover what it means to them. Tory prefers to use numbers instead of words as titles for her pieces. She does this to ensure that the audience’s opinions of and experiences with her art remain independent of her as the artist.
One of Tory’s greatest inspirations is the American artist, Robert Rauschenberg. An experience she had viewing his combines broadened her horizons and drove her to expand her practice by incorporating 3D elements.
Rosa Ines Vera’s solo show, Resilencia, focuses on the communities impoverished women in Latin America create when faced with adversity. Her paintings aim to show the resilience of these Latin American women as they live their lives. In an interview, Rosa answered a few questions in regard to her as an artist and her process.
Rosa began her art career at 40, taking night classes for her birthday. Rosa mentioned that she would have started earlier had she realized her love for art sooner. If given the chance, she would also tell her younger self to take initiative and find information on different grants, residency, and other opportunities. She also mentions how some of her greatest weaknesses are procrastinating and being too analytical of her work. In three words, Rosa would describe her art as colorful, thoughtful, and full of patterns.
When starting a piece, she begins with an underpainting and builds on it by using strong colors on stencil and tracing paper. Rosa mentioned that when it comes to painting she uses acrylics more often than oil, not because she doesn’t like oil, but because acrylics have a sort of richness to them that she enjoys. A medium of art Rosa recently tried is encaustic—a form of painting that involves a heated wax medium. Encaustic has a high barrier to entry, requiring lots of equipment and prior knowledge to start, including real natural fibre brushes, a grill to heat the wax, wooden boards, and more. She recommends finding a friend or art studio that has the materials necessary to use encaustics effectively.
Rosa admires the work of her fellow Touchstone artists, specifically Linda Bankerd and Lesley Clarke. Her biggest artistic challenge was her first solo show. She mentioned how hard it was for her to navigate discussions, purchases, etc. When asked if she is excited for her December show, Rosa responded with a resounding “Yes!” Her favorite piece in the show is Las Comadres #4.