Echo Scholarship Auction – Angeles Cossio
ANGELES COSSIO
– Echo Scholarship Auction –
Basement Experiments (Blue), 2012
Digital Print mounted on Aluminum
13″ x 20″
Estimated Value: $800
Angeles’ Echo Scholarship is intended to support an artist enrolled in an undergraduate program.
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“Undoubtable Art”
Angeles Cossio has a true passion for the creation of art, and this impetus has been a life-long compulsion. Although creation has been central to her life, becoming an artist was something she initially fought, held back by self-doubt. This doubt weighed on her through her twenties until she awoke one morning with the realization that she “was the sort of person who had to make things in order to exist properly in the world and that was something that was not going to change.” This marked a turning point in her life, and from that day onward she began to consider herself a true artist.
For Angeles it is the process of art creation that holds the greatest meaning. “I see art as a way of creating an internal state or activating a dormant state of concentration and responsiveness to my environment. Creating is a way of accessing that state.” Due to this focus on the experiential depths of art creation, her resulting works are sometimes “beside the point.” In addition to the process of creation, critical investigations of ideas and materials are central to Angeles’ work. ACRE, she says, impacted how she conceived of her art and challenged her push her work further. One resonant memory for Angeles was a studio visit with a visiting artist. The visiting artist viewed Angeles’ work and they spent some time discussing it; through this conversation, the visiting artist helped awaken in Angeles the realization that, in some ways, she was “dancing around ideas in her work without fully committing to them.” As a result of this new understanding she has become more rigorous in her creation, committing to the ideas she is exploring and ensuring that they unfold in their entirety or beyond.
Exploration and manipulation of materials is also a key facet of Angeles’ work. This fascination is apparent in the piece she has donated to the Echo Scholarship program. As an avid camper, Angeles became interested in the ways that tarps interact with the elements, particularly light and wind. Through careful manipulation in the studio she was able to explore the material properties of a tarp and capture her observations of this material in a photograph.
For Angeles, ACRE offers a community of emerging artists who support one another and exchange ideas. Angeles describes ACRE as having, “an incredibly positive feel, while also maintaining a feeling of critical engagement and rigorousness.” She notes that ACRE’s committed staff foster a residency experience that builds this community and offers emerging artists the best possible environment for creating art. In essence, she feels that ACRE differentiates itself from other art organizations by offering emerging artists what they need to make their work while initiating them into a vibrant, supportive community of artists and creatives.
Ashlan Falletta-Cowden