Detail, Sandy Rodriguez, De los Child Detention Centers Map, Family Separations and other Atrocities 2018. Collection of the artist
About The COLA
The City of Los Angeles designates a fellowship for artists and writers. The COLA, an endowment of $10,000, is awarded to exceptional mid-career artists with connection to Los Angeles to create a new body of work. The Los Angeles Press Questionnaire is a simple prompt sent to the awardees to inspire responses around their work and process. The Los Angeles Press hopes to interview all of the COLA artists in this grants cycle (2018 2019), to report on artwork being made and how each artist is processing. These artistic renderings/posters accompanying the Questionnaire are intended as amuse bouches heralding further interviews and updates.
The Los Angeles Press Questionnaire for Sandy Rodriguez
Why do you make things?
I make things to share history, experiences, and take action.
What impact do you hope your work makes on an audience?
I want my audience to slow down, make meaning, experience material and narratives. I want the work to prompt questions.
What subjects most draw your interest?
Land, culture, power, history, art, botany, chemistry, and politics.
Does solitude impact your work?
I take monthly or quarterly field study trips off the grid. I find clarity when I’m off the paved road, hours from the urban sprawl, and neighbors. I am from Southern Califas and have spent the last 43 years with 23 million neighbors, solitude is critical to my work. I savor the smell, taste, feel and views of the wilderness; it allows me to look again at studio work with fresh eyes.
I am transformed by the sound of the wind in trees, footsteps of foraging animals in the distance, howling of coyotes, the sound of rushing rivers and birds. There is comfort in watching the moonlight trek across the night sky creating a shadow theater on the rock facades with clouds concealing and revealing the celestial bodies above.
Does art matter?
Art is life
What do you want to make as a COLA fellow?
I want to make something enduring that will connect communities to our history – present, and future.
The Los Angeles Press 