Last Supper Food Art 2009- Francis Estrada

Food Artist Francis Estrada

Title: Sacred Sangria

Ingredients: Oil and gold leaf on bottle, local red wine, local fruits

At a time of crisis (personal, societal, or global), it is easy for people to seek comfort in various vices.  Over the last few years, it has interested me how, when people go to a bar (including myself) and sit on a barstool, they seem to look for redemption or enlightenment while (literally) looking up to bottles of alcohol for support, as one would sit on a pew and look up to saints in a church.  This body of work, titled Spirits, is a response to this observation and interprets the theme of the exhibition through the process of how I transform my consumption into a means of creating new work.  I have specifically chosen to use whisky bottles (Maker’s Mark and Jack Daniel’s) as the primary materials for this group.  And my “spirits” of choice.  By consuming the liquid and transforming the bottles to deities/spirits, I am then able to create “intermediaries” of my ideas, desires, hopes, and emotions.  Consumption directly leads to my means of creating work.

Bio

Francis Estrada works in painting and drawing media and resides in Brooklyn, NY.  He received his BFA in California and has exhibited in California, Chicago, and New York City.  Estrada works with appropriating images from paintings, archival photography, his own photographs, and sketches.  He finds images within various said sources and places them in new, imaginary, or absent settings to explore the effects of the displacement and replacement of figures in various situations and environments.  Often omitting, blurring, or fading some features, he encourages the viewer to closely investigate and interact with the figures in his work, which in turn get a “new life” of their own in their new environments.  In rendering his chosen characters in new environments, he creates spaces for people and places to co-exist regardless of time.