In the summer of 2011 i was hired to work with the Milwaukee Public Theatre and their annual All-City-Peoples Parade. Working with other talented artists this is what we made.
After days Of thinking how to make hundreds of feathers for this huge puppet. I did some researching on indigenous materials such as corn husks, corn, banana leaf, things i was familiar with. I dyed some corn husks and the store bought dye held well on the corn husks. It was bright enough. Then I layered on acrylic paints and gold spray paint.
Check out this video I made of the collection of fotos taken while i was making a 60+Ft. long Quetzalcoatl
Celeste Contreras is a Xicana - Indigenous artist who works in mixed mediums to share stories of ceremony, culture and tradition. Her work includes illustrations, print, book arts and animation. Her research includes storytelling through images and objects, exploring the condition of the book and book form and recalling the palimpsests of intergenerational trauma from migration and genocide of ancestors to relearning and decolonizing through ceremony. Currently enrolled as an MFA student at UW-Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts, focused in Print and Narrative Form and holds a BFA from Alverno College. Contreras was the 2019 Gathering Art, Stories and Place Artist-in-Resident with the Milwaukee Public Library where she published a 200 edition box set of artists’ books, Artist in the Library, that will be distributed throughout libraries in Milwaukee and libraries around the country. Contreras is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she lives with her husband and cats in the Riverwest neighborhood.
www.celestecontreras.com
Email: celestazuchitl@gmail.com
Instagram: celestazuchitl.arte
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