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bjbj My name is Marela Zacarias, and I am the seventh artist in the Brooklyn Museum's
Raw/Cooked series. For Supple Beat, I made four different sculptures. Three of them are
in the lobby and they are interacting with the architecture. One of them is part of an
installation in the Great Hall. These pieces are inspired by the Williamsburg Murals, which
are on permanent loan at the Brooklyn Museum. My works are three dimensional paintings.
The process is really long. You have to create the shapes, the armature. I build the layers
really slowly, which might take about two weeks before the first sanding is done. Then
there are a couple of sanding coats. It's about a month to get a really nice sculptural
part, and then you have to paint it. The colors and the patterns that I use in my sculpture
usually relate to theme or the space that I m working with. So in this case, I definitely
looked closely at the colors that were used in the Williamsburg Murals; however, the patterns
are my original design. I wanted to make them look like they were climbing on walls, like
paintings that have come alive. I was inspired by the concept of resilience in the murals.
The murals were commissioned by the WPA in the 1930s. Most of the art that was being
painted then was representational, but there were a couple of people who were in the avant
garde who saw the talent of Ilya Bolotowsky, Greene, Kelpe, and Swinden as important enough
to give them the walls to create these works. It wasn't until the 1980s that there was a
big movement to bring them back to life and restore them. They were created during the
Depression, and the country was giving money to artists to create art in public spaces.
All these public housings were built then. Workers were thought important enough to create
housing for them and to bring art to them. I think it's important to remember this, in
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