Rita Crocker Obelleiro
Artist-Teacher-Researcher
A 20 Year Gap: Dialogues with Past Works
This body of works is a rewriting of the narrative of my past art education. Through editing, sorting, and cropping moments from works made 15 to 20 years ago—works damaged, partially destroyed, given away, or discarded after harmful critiques— I aim to recover moments that I still value through visual gestures of recognition and recomposition. The purpose is to link past and present artistic impulses as a form of what Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944) calls value creation.
Being and Becoming more Fully Human
This series features vibrant hues and draws on the experience of becoming human as Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) describes it. He says, “Being born human does not make one a human being. Don’t we really only become human when we make tenacious efforts to live as human beings?” Being human is an action rather than a fixed state. These works depict how figures are interconnected with one another in a process of mutual growth and transformation.
Third Space Family Archives
The history of my family in Texas spans six generations, from the time Texas was part of Mexico. Written and photographic records of that history, however, are limited as a result of cultural erasure of Mexican-American heritage. To better understand my origins, I interviewed my grandparents before they passed in 2023 about stories of their ancestors and their own childhoods. I discovered that the three past generations also held ties to South Korea: my grandfather in the 50s, my uncle in the 70s, and my own experience from 2009-2013. Using Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of Third Space, I try to reconstruct images of these histories and international and intergenerational links: from the great-great-great grandmother who had 23 children, one of which was eaten by an alligator, to the experience of being adopted into a Korean family.
Aesthetic Influences of Paisa Art
As part of a Painting Fulbright research grant in Medellín, Colombia, I used governmental archives and family albums to highlight and incorporate local iconographic images into my work. These sources grounded subjects in collective visual memories that are constitutive parts of Colombia’s cultural identity. This body of work features paintings, drawings, and analog photography intervened with paint to push subjects into different temporal, even mythical, spaces furnished with contemporary imagery.
Who Am I Without Her, Who is She Without Us?
From the Press Release at Finlandia University Gallery: Rita Obelleiro’s timely work reflects upon our current societal upheavals through the profoundly personal lens of a new mother. “When my daughter was born I tracked her growth using drawings and paintings to mark the new warped experience of time. I saw few people, only leaving my home once a day for a walk,” says Obelleiro. “Ten months later I again find myself socially isolated, but now the outside world feels like a shifting backdrop to my baby’s developmental leaps. When the first COVID-19 cases were reported she began to climb, at the start of the state-wide lockdown she began to point, and when the Black Lives Matter protests began she stood unaided for the first time. Her development as a person and as part of a new generation is entangled with America’s cultural shifts, and so is my life with hers.”
Daily Documentations
In the many moves I made during my adulthood, drawing and painting on a small scale became the easiest way to respond to my shifting surroundings. In these works I focus on capturing the experience of the quotidian, marking the time distortions, repetitions, my perception of self and other, and the ebb and flow of joys and sorrows.