“Apodaca’s body of work weaves a shamanic thread of light through nature and spirit. He transcends from artist to a mystical link between ancient custom and modern expression.”
– Michael McGinnis
President, Phillips

“He’s all-around, refuses to be pigeonholed, works with every medium there is. Line drawings with hair to stitching up leather bodices…everything is very organic. I think the only reason he hasn’t made a name for himself in the art world is that he holds the art world in contention…I think the fact he has a high respect for us is a high compliment.”
– Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam
Rolling Stone Magazine

Artist’s Statement

Ideas are fragile beings. You have to work hard for them, and nurture them. As human beings, we are creatures of comfort. It is easier to turn the water on in the bathtub and flush a spider down the drain, than it is to take the time to reach down, pick it up, and place it safely outside. Sometimes the stranger an idea is, the more extraordinary the effort is to bring it to life. The more exotic the idea, the more endangered it becomes.

I create layers within my sculptures by clashing and fusing world cultures, mythologies, folklore, and my experiences. I experiment with the dynamics of the human figure. There is something very musical about the body and the way it is orchestrated in motion and at rest. The one thing that the human body cannot do is stay still. Even when you die, your body is in motion: it is always shifting and dancing. My creations have more depth when stories are interwoven, collaged, and stitched, like layers of a calcifying rock. As an artist, I examine themes that are much bigger than I can imagine, such as obsolescence, growth, reproduction, sexuality, and the human condition. Curiosity drives me, and my art explores the myriad of life’s experiences.

Whether I am drawing a plant in the Amazon or molding a difficult bronze work, it is the impossibility of the task that inspires me. You have to bubble up this eccentricity from the plateau of the mundane. On deciding which ideas to make, I try not to edit too much. I let the winding road take me there – always changing materials, formulas, processes, even the length of time to create a piece. When I look at the artists I have admired throughout history, such as Mozart, Dalí, Toulouse-Lautrec, Hieronymus Bosch, and even the Great Houdini, I notice that they handcuff themselves to the bottom of the sea, and the art springs to life as they surface. Each piece is a “great escape.”

Fernando Apodaca
October 12, 2015

Gallery of Selected Works

Ode 3

Hand-carved from watercolor blocks, these paper sculptures are inspired by the fierce winds scattering the surfaces of Lake Turkana, Kenya. Complex geometric forms are intricately interwoven to portray the movement of wind and water. The Ode series started while Fernando worked as an artist in residence at artist/photographer Peter Beard’s Hog Ranch and in the Lake Turkana Region of Kenya.

Matatu

This distinctive form was created in Kenya by stretching a skin over a dilapidated ladder. After molding a camel hide into this triangular shape, the branches of the ladder were formed into the leather. During the process of drying, Fernando utilized a tool to engrave these markings on the surface. Matatu is the Swahili word for “bus,” generally a ten to thirty passenger vehicle which operates on East African roads. Most matatus are richly decorated with lights and music to attract customers. The industry transports over a million commuters everyday, but reckless driving and profiteering are responsible for many accidents and fatalities. A dense pattern of icons carved into the skin were painted with gold and silver and illuminates the fleshy surface of Matatu. These curvilinear forms are analogous to people on an overcrowded bus. The carcass and facade reflect the ambiguous and volatile relationship between passenger and vehicle, customer and vendor. Title: Matatu Year: 2004 Medium: Leather, Oil, Fiberglass Size: 74” x 40” x 9”

Bronze Bodice

Fernando’s bronze bodices, made in Kenya, were featured in a dream vignette in his experimental art and film creation, Majini. These sculptures were formed by taking a mold, carving the final form in wax, and pouring the bronze into a mold. Claire wore the bodice as a costume during a moment of metamorphosis and rebirth in the film. She transforms from an innocent girl into a devouring and insatiable beast. The bodices, complete with goose bumps and wrinkles, restricted her movements and created the illusion of a snake shedding its skin. Title: Bronze Bodice Year: 2015 Medium: Bronze Size: 32” x 16” x 12”

Bronze Claire 2

Fernando’s bronze bodices, made in Kenya, were featured in a dream vignette in his experimental art and film creation, Majini. These sculptures were formed by taking a mold, carving the final form in wax, and pouring the bronze into a mold. Claire wore the bodice as a costume during a moment of metamorphosis and rebirth in the film. She transforms from an innocent girl into a devouring and insatiable beast. The bodices, complete with goose bumps and wrinkles, restricted her movements and created the illusion of a snake shedding its skin. Title: Bronze Claire 2 Year: 2004 Medium: Bronze Size: 21” x 14”

Leather Majini

Fernando’s experimental art and film project, Majini, examines themes and relationships in culture such as reproduction, obsolescence, growth, consumerism, and the interaction of ancient and modern worlds. The Leather Majini was composed by hand, molding raw leather hides over a multitude of forms, including plaster body parts of two models, and a variety of objects that form the stomach. Her mouth was cast using both human and baboon jaws and teeth. The upper stomach holds newer objects from history, such as a computer keyboard, electrical equipment, a light bulb and a shoe. The devoured items that are in the lower stomach are much older, such as an antelope horn, a shell, cow vertebrate, and a rock. A relationship exists between the new and the old; a computer keyboard and primitive animal horn can be used to both protect and attack. The spine of the cow, found on a lakeshore in Kenya, is similar to the function and form of a modern, yet obsolete, cordlike electronic component. The light bulb with its spiraling coils and fragile glass form is analogous to the antique sea shell. The layering of objects brings light to themes such as extinction, modernization, and habitat destruction. These forms impregnate her stomach, and give the impression that she is either ready to pop from her gluttonous feeding, or about to give birth to an unexpected anomaly. The art and film production for Majini took place at Lake Turkana, home to some of the largest crocodiles in the world. The Majini has many parallels to the crocodile, a Swahili word for a spiritual being that exists near water. A quote by Topsell from Peter Beard’s book The Mingled Destinies of Crocodiles and Men describes the crocodile. “The crocodile is a devouring, insatiable beast, killing all that he layeth his mouth on, without all mercy or exorable quality.” Modern technology, growth, and overpopulation are causing the extinction of crocodiles, other exotic wildlife, and the mythical and monstrous Majini. Stories and mythologies handed down from ancient cultures, including folklore such as vampires and other mythical beasts, are becoming obsolete in the modern age of reason. Title: Leather Majini Year: 2004 Medium: Leather Size: 67” x 22” x 16”

Amazon 1

In the spring of 2003, Fernando traveled to the Ecuadorian coast where he took a fifty-two hour bus ride into the Peruvian Amazon. As mysterious as it is essential to the very ethos of South America, the Amazon River has captivated artists, writers, and adventurers with its infinite sensory experiences. Fernando immersed himself in the unique environment, examined the shapes and colors that caught his eye during one of his many excursions, and created these highly textured paintings. “There are places that make you more aware...vulnerable. While a leopard and an anaconda roamed close by, I ate bananas more delicious than ice cream, observed brilliant green vipers slithering in peace, played music and danced with the most beautiful tribe of families, took canoe rides above piranhas, bathed at night with curious crocodiles, discovered tarantulas nestled in their homes, felt ants that stung like bullets, listened to chirping frogs, while mesmerized by the most otherworldly and surreal plant formations.” - Fernando Apodaca Name: Amazon Series 1-4 Year: 2003 Medium: Pastel, Ink, Pencil, Chalk, Charcoal on Paper Size: 9” x 7”

Amazon 2

Amazon 3

Amazon 4

Jeff Ament Bronze

Majini and the efforts of the film crew, caught the eye of Pearl Jam, who then approached Fernando to direct a visual interpretation of their music. For the “Life Wasted” video, he and the crew spent ten months creating improvisational film vignettes in the mountains of Romania to the Columbia River Gorge of Seattle, Washington. Life casts were created of the musicians, depicting a world both fragile and transitory, and exposed to various forms of deterioration. These pieces were then brought to life by projection techniques, and combined with traditional modes of sculpture in bronze, wax, stone, and leather. Instead of using “state of the art” techniques, Apodaca chose retrograde and resourceful methods such as projection, puppeteering, and the use of natural objects. These processes, which featured the projected band members and their “lifecasts” in a landscape of unexpected elements, were inspired by Pearl Jam’s extraordinary music. Pearl Jam included the still frames from the video in a booklet within the album packaging, and featured Fernando’s drawing on the final CD cover.

Blood

Held in a fitted leather lace, these blown glass bottles are filled with milk and wine. Their significance examines the rapidly eroding customs and traditions of the Maasai and Samburu of Kenya, who live off their herds with a simple diet of blood and milk. These substances are considered sacred, and are used in ceremonial blessings. Live cattle are bled by opening a vein in the neck with the point of an arrow. The blood is collected in a gourd, and the wound closed with ashes. The blood is either drunk immediately while fresh or mixed with milk. Name: Blood Year: 2004 Medium: Glass, Leather Size: 9” x 12” x 7”

Milk

The glass sculpture, Milk, fuses ancient traditions in the Samburu culture with themes such as mass production and the packaging for consumption of modern goods. Milk reduces the human body into a fragile container holding precious liquid. The spherical forms are wrapped delicately in sculpted leather. Both Milk and Blood were blown from molten glass into the shape of human posteriors complete with flowery openings. These anthropomorphic bottles unite the sacred tribal rituals of the Samburu people’s daily sustenance with the secular world of the food and beverage industry. Name: Milk Year: 2004 Medium: Glass, Leather Size: 9” x 12” x 7”

Sleep

This carving was built on memories of a mother’s comfort. As a child, Fernando would lay under the piano bench, listening to his mother play. The safety he felt there allowed his imagination to run free to the colorful backdrop of songs such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee,” Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” and Mozart’s “Rondo Alla Turca.” His mother Maria would candidly joke that when she died she wanted to be buried naked in the soil, without makeup and adornment, in order to let the worms and bugs eat her as quickly as possible. After his parents’ sudden death, circumstances prevented the burial of his mother’s choice, and instead they were buried in gold and silver colored coffins. The wooden piano bench form, with worm-like carvings layered in gold leaf, portrays the irony of not being able to fulfill those wishes. Sleep expresses gratitude and the eternal sleep of his mother and father. The curvilinear and dream-like hieroglyphs that adorn the surface of Sleep, such as simplified sea dragons, crocodiles, jellyfish, and cryptids, are an ode by Fernando to ancient seafaring cultures around the world and their intimate relationship with the creatures of the sea. Title: Sleep Year: 2003 Medium: Oil, and Gold Leaf on Wood Size: 21” x 60”

Anorexic Horny Girl

After returning from Hog Ranch in Kenya, Peter Beard gave Fernando photographs of this model suggesting he sketch her and preemptively naming the piece. Working on linoleum that Fernando brought back from Africa, he sketched her with a razor blade, charcoal, and a golf tee. Her elongated form echoes that of a giraffe. “The giraffe is so much a lady that one refrains from thinking of her legs, but remembers her so floating over the plains in long garbs, draperies of morning mist and mirage.” “Karen Blixen” Isak Dinesen Written in Peter Beard’s Journal Title: Anorexic Horny Girl Year: 2003 Medium: Charcoal on Linoleum Size: 15” x 11”

Fighting Zebras

In 2002, Fernando was invited to Africa to work on a series of paintings. One evening, he ventured into a field and sat amongst two zebras with his canvas, conditioner, and a bag of his own hair. Covered in flies and dangerously close to the animals, he realized the imprudence of his plan. Fernando returned to the safety of his home; and a year later he completed this monumental work, exhausting his entire supply of hair. Title: Fighting Zebras Year: 2003 Medium: Hair on Italian Plaster Size: 48” x 70”

Florence Nudes

While studying figure painting, lithography, and etching in Florence, Italy, Fernando focused on anchoring and simplifying the human form by exaggerating vulnerable parts of the body and letting other details fade away. He sees these gestures as melting ice sculptures. “When an ice swan melts, the first things to dissolve away are the appendages. Beaks, wings, and feathers will fade away, leaving you with water in its most basic form.” - Fernando Apodaca

Vera

Tape Dream 1 and Tape Dream 2

Eddie Vedder Leather Bodice for Pearl Jam's

Fine Art