Angel Vilanueva

I ruined a wood door with crayon drawings when I was about 3 years old. I don't remember doing it, but I do remember my young mother being furious about it, because the door was untreated and could not be cleaned.

We took that door with us when we moved out of my little hometown in Baja California, to the house we built in an undeveloped area of the desert. It would be years before electricity or running water could reach us again.

I watched those drawings fade over time as the town's suburban sprawl slowly surrounded us. The poorly written letters A, E, and O, (the E was written backwards: Ǝ), stick figures going about their stick lives, the Sun, a dog, and a butterfly, became evanescing presences on their increasingly deteriorating wooden landscape. In time, we'd abandon that house, and it would be demolished years after anyone lived in it. That was the door through which I began the journey that led to my understanding of art as a force that emerges along with human consciousness.

I was 17 years old when I found myself walking along the historic center of the city of Guadalajara, late at night. In those days, people went to bed early, and the streets were deserted. A low-lying fog would move in after midnight, and the old buildings and monuments would be shrouded by a gossamer blanket as if emerging from the underworld. I ran my fingers along the stone walls, wondering how many voices had echoed off them in the five centuries since their construction. I will always miss that, in a way that I won't miss anything else, because that intersection of time, space, and me, could only take place once. To have a colonial city all to myself, to see it as if I were the only human alive, will never occur again. It was then that I understood the meaning of age: I was born into the human timeline, surrounded by five hundred years of colonial history that sat squarely on thousands of years of Native life, which in turn unfolded in geologic time; time on a scale that boggles the mind.

In my work, I explore and express the interconnections between the cognitive territories of knowledge, experience, memory, and imagination; all factors informing our identity. The things I create today, be it paintings, photographs, illustrations, poems, short stories, or even entries from my dream journal, are all interlocking pieces of a cognitive puzzle. They are expressed by an inherited impulse, something powerful, humbling, and unimaginably ancient. The picture plane, the page, the object; they are the membranes through which meaning in its various forms permeates into the world.

Navigating the challenges of a polarized world requires more than wisdom: it requires creativity. I believe the nature of art is evidenced in its ability to traverse ages, cultural domains, and typological worldviews. In art we can find the uniting thread that weaves itself, seamlessly, across the vast tapestry of time, space, natural forces, and social constructs that makes up the human world.

I have traveled a lengthy journey across the disciplines, both independently and in academia. It began in my youth with an empirical core underpinned by the works of thinkers like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. My imagination was colored by the prose of writers like Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco. Eventually my interests honed into earning a double baccalaureate in Art and Art History, my loves, and reason for being.

I can be reached at: studio@angelvillanueva.com

Or via social media on:

Thank you for your visit,

	About the Artist
	I ruined a wood door with crayon drawings when I was about 3 years old. I don't remember doing it, but I do remember my young mother being furious about it, because the door was untreated and could not be cleaned. We took that door with us when we moved out of my little hometown in Baja California, to the house we built in an undeveloped area of the desert. It would be years before electricity or running water could reach us again. I watched those drawings fade over time as the town's suburban sprawl slowly surrounded us. The poorly written letters A, E, and O, (the E was written backwards: Ǝ), stick figures going about their stick lives, the Sun, a dog, and a butterfly, became evanescing presences on their increasingly deteriorating wooden landscape. In time, we'd abandon that house, and it would be demolished years after anyone lived in it. That was the door through which I began the journey that led to my understanding of art as a force that emerges along with human consciousness. I was 17 years old when I found myself walking along the historic center of the city of Guadalajara, late at night. In those days, people went to bed early, and the streets were deserted. A low-lying fog would move in after midnight, and the old buildings and monuments would be shrouded by a gossamer blanket as if emerging from the underworld. I ran my fingers along the stone walls, wondering how many voices had echoed off them in the five centuries since their construction. I will always miss that, in a way that I won't miss anything else, because that intersection of time, space, and me, could only take place once. To have a colonial city all to myself, to see it as if I were the only human alive, will never occur again. It was then that I understood the meaning of age: I was born into the human timeline, surrounded by five hundred years of colonial history that sat squarely on thousands of years of Native life, which in turn unfolded in geologic time; time on a scale that boggles the mind. In my work, I explore and express the interconnections between the cognitive territories of knowledge, experience, memory, and imagination; all factors informing our identity. The things I create today, be it paintings, photographs, illustrations, poems, short stories, or even entries from my dream journal, are all interlocking pieces of a cognitive puzzle. They are expressed by an inherited impulse, something powerful, humbling, and unimaginably ancient. The picture plane, the page, the object; they are the membranes through which meaning in its various forms permeates into the world. Navigating the challenges of a polarized world requires more than wisdom: it requires creativity. I believe the nature of art is evidenced in its ability to traverse ages, cultural domains, and typological worldviews. In art we can find the uniting thread that weaves itself, seamlessly, across the vast tapestry of time, space, natural forces, and social constructs that makes up the human world. I have traveled a lengthy journey across the disciplines, both independently and in academia. It began in my youth with an empirical core underpinned by the works of thinkers like Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. My imagination was colored by the prose of writers like Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco. Eventually my interests honed into earning a double baccalaureate in Art and Art History, my loves, and reason for being. I can be reached at: studio@angelvillanueva.com Or via social media on: Thank you for your visit,		ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS THE GETTY INSTITUTE Multicultural Internship in Curatorial and Development Departments through the Claremont Museum of Art, Claremont, CA THE CLAREMONT COLLEGES Dual Bachelor's Degree in Art and Art History Claremont, CA MT. SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE Digital Design/Photography Transfer Courses in Fine Art Walnut, CA COLEGIO DE BACHILLERES DE BAJA CALIFORNIA H.S. Accreditation, Emphasis on Physics and Mathematics Ciudad Morelos, Baja California, Mexico CV provided upon request at studio@angelvillanueva.com A SPECIAL NOTE The knowledge and experience I have garnered over the course of a lifetime owes much to the generosity, kindness, insight, and patience of those who have encouraged and contributed to my growth, and who have been companions along the way. I am also grateful for those who have shown me the darker side of human nature—no story is complete without both sides. A list of names would be far too long and inevitably guilty of omission in this space at this time. So, quite simply (for now): Thank you. More to come. ~A

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