Human Flower Project


Orrington, MAINE USA

flag flower bed
Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA

parker basket thumb
Princeton, MAINE USA

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Roel Flores: Bouquet with Cotton


A self-taught artist from the Rio Grande Valley bunches work and pleasure.


image

Roel Flores with a piece from his exhibit

“La Labor” at Texas Folklife, Austin

Photo: Human Flower Project



We came upon a startling bouquet this afternoon: yellow roses, a pink carnation and a stem of ripe cotton. From the the roots of all three, bound together, dangled a tiny accordion, guitar and heart. 

An untitled painting by Roel Flores of Westlaco, it hung among two dozen other works at Texas Folklife in Austin. The exhibit “La Labor” opened today, with conjunto music in the yard, refreshments and a good crowd, eager to hear Flores discuss his art. “Most of our history is not written,” Flores said, speaking of Tejano (Texas-Mexican) culture; he stood before a painting in which trucks drive though open books in the desert, under a radiant pink sky.

imageUntitled, by Roel Flores

from “La Labor”

Photo: Human Flower Project

At age 6, Flores began traveling with his family to California to pick grapes and lettuce, then back to South Texas for the cotton harvest. He dropped out of school in the 7th grade. “We were always trying to get out of the field work with the music,” he explains. But in fact his life has been a balancing of la labor y la musica. For thirty years, he played bajo sexto with various conjunto bands after the work days were over. The current exhibit includes portraits of his musical heroes Flaco Jimenez, Gilberto Perez, Don Antonio de la Rosa and the abuelo of conjunto music, accordion player Valerio Longoria.

Flores says his paintings are meant to show “the good side of hard times,” and they do. Furrows sprout accordions and violins. And in this remarkable still life, Texas’ yellow rose is gathered with an image of stoop labor—dreadful cotton (Flores says the pink carnation is a nod to Marty Robbins’s hit song from 1957). Work and play, the violin and the cotton sack, “I can’t separate them,” he says.

“La Labor” will be on view at Texas Folklife in Austin until Dec. 21 and then tours to Houston and Brownsville.


Posted by Julie on 09/09 at 05:43 PM
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