Stories: a Collaboration between Curtis Stewardson and Sandra Trujillo

This collaboration was in response to an invitation to work within the Portuguese tradition of storytelling: bonecos. Bonecos are popular figurative clay vignettes describing rural activities from the Alentejo region, specifically Estremoz, Portugal. Our stateside collaboration began with the idea of this tradition, but quickly ran headlong into the path of parody with the undoing and reworking of familiar stories.

Our ceramic vignettes are intended to be small stage sets. We populated each scene with gestural studies in black, miniature theatrical props and severe architectural elements. Corners, planes, edges and a soup of myth, magic, and inter-generational figures function to tell stories of how Art reflects experiences and inspires imagination.