Franco Mondini Ruiz by Jenelle Esparza 9-18-09

9/18/09 Franco Ruiz
Today in Leslie Raymond’s contemporary studio class, we met Franco Ruiz who is a local San Antonio artist. We went to his studio on the west side and I was surprised to see that his studio was his great grandmother’s house (which he refurbished with beautiful furniture and paint) along side another house next door. He uses the large yard to paint and create other works of art. He had several small canvases prepped with different designs of acrylic paint all ready for us to use at our disposal. He had us all pick color palettes, brushes, and a canvas each and paint our own images on them. He later “collaborated” with us all and added his own images to ours and signed, dated, and titled each of them. Interesting huh? It was a day I won’t forget because he welcomed the entire class (20 or so people) into his domain and fed us Mexican food, and pan dulce (sweet bread) and cookies with coffee and things, so it was nice. Both houses were little galleries. Each one has pieces of art from other established artists (such as Jeff Koons) and other S.A. artists as well. Anyone can look him up on google to see his work, but since I don’t have one particular piece to talk about, I’ll talk about the paintings we all collaborated on. The one above was titled “girl in a swirl” and he added the girl figure to the center of my swirl design. I’m not a painter but it was a great spontaneous exercise that made the visit to his studio one that I won’t forget. If you all get a chance to look at his work online, he works with fake food that he sculpts himself and uses them with other small sculptures of people. His work involves the Mexican American theme and the Hispanic culture that evolved here in S.A. Food items are a big part of his work because of the cultural difference in food and how it differentiates from culture to culture. He published a book on his work filled with fictional short stories along side his sculptures entitled “High Pink: Tex Mex Fairy Tales.” He adds humor to his art, which attracts more people from all cultures to his shows. He did this cake series that narrate someone’s life. Each layer is a round canvas with a scene from an individual’s life. They’re called culture cakes. They are functional because the viewer has to pick up each layer to see the next so his work is very interactive, colorful and humorous yet conceptual.