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• 1 2022-11-30T22:05:38+00:00 What Makes a House a Home - Bella DeFeo 22 plain 2022-12-10T03:32:52+00:00 What Makes a House a Home
  A sculpture inspired by the work of Ana Serrano. 
  

  The Escalette collection here at Chapman owns five works by Ana Serrano, which are all cohesive in theme and material. Serrano is a first-generation Mexican American, which influences her artwork. She mainly works with the medium of cardboard, creating miniature houses and environments from urban life in Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles. One house in the Escalette collection, titled “Mustard House,” is made from cardboard, inkjet print copies on paper, glue, string, and acrylic. It was made in 2012 and is only 12 1/4 × 13 × 11 1/4 inches big. A golden yellow coats the sides of the home while hanging plants adorn the front, with a warm wooden door as well. Serrano’s inspiration for creating these miniature houses is looking at the socioeconomic status of those in urban LA and how Latino customs and cultures influence the look of architecture. Her models are vibrant and intensely colored, being hyper-realistic miniature versions to what you would see driving through these neighborhoods. She has made individual houses, like the ones we see in the Escalette collection, but has also pieced them together and layered on top of each other in an original piece titled “Cartonlandia.” Here she shows Chicanx urban life with miniature buildings that involve the culture. It’s a beautiful piece to look at and dissect. There’s such vibrancy and detail that makes you feel a part of the culture and brings you into the life of others. Homes reflect many things about who you are and where you come from. 
  I learned more about Serrano’s world of color and culture in an interview and article from Artsy.net. Her cardboard houses aim to “capture a little bit of the spirit of an unplanned city,” she says. While she lived in Downey, CA as a child, having moved there from South LA, she noticed the contrast between the Latino barrio and the middle-class developments with white and clean-looking houses. This socioeconomic theme is explored in her work, as mentioned briefly before. You get insights into the family living in the home by looking at the exterior, from exotic plants to barred windows and doors to the home's color. I think we’re quick to judge someone based on their living environment. It’s wrong to assume what they are like based on what they can afford, and we criticize communities that look run down in our minds. But this community in the Southside of Los Angeles is making the best of what they have. The colors feel so inviting and exciting, and the house models make you smile and want to experience them in person. Serrano does an impressive job at representing where she grew up and the feeling of home in her miniatures. 
  An interesting reflection on the cardboard material she uses to make her sculptures came up in my last informative source from HipLATINA. In an interview, Serrano commented that “it’s not a typical art material or seen as this long longevity. Its seen as disposable material, and I get that perception a lot from people that it’s like, ‘Oh why are you working with this, its not going to last very long?’ or ‘it’s not a traditional art material,’ but it’s a material that’s very accessible and when I started working with it, it was what I could afford.” It’s so interesting because I think this idea that the material is disposable works well with houses and homes. The places we live in change constantly. Serrano is solidifying what the culture looked like for a period of time. Made in 2012, this “Mustard House'' must look very different today, ten years later. We do different things to houses based on who we are and the time in society.
  
  As a white American born and raised in a small Vermont town, it’s hard for me to connect with this idea and assumption that a house’s exterior is influenced by culture. Around me, there’s always been cookie-cutter middle-class and white suburbia. I’ve never connected with my heritage strongly nor experienced many cultures surrounding me. Serrano mentions in the HipLATINA article that she creates her work for Latinos even though a predominantly white audience interacts with her work in museums and such. But what has drawn me to her work and what is so accessible for all of us to recognize is the feeling of home and memories. We all come from different backgrounds and live in drastically different environments, but we can all picture a home. It may not even be a house, but a place's customizations, based on who your family is, help create this warm and comforting feeling.
  
  
  
  Taking inspiration from Serrano’s miniature houses, I made my own model house out of my childhood home, using similar materials, including cardboard, construction and cardstock paper, tape, and pen marks. Her themes include how your culture and heritage influence your house, especially from the exterior. I wanted to make this message accessible to all and depict the feeling of home and the memories you make inside it. My own home isn’t as vibrant as the Latina neighborhoods Serrano grew up in, but we both have the same warm emotions when thinking about the place that we were raised in. In addition to my miniature, I incorporated photographs from my childhood. This extra element, which Serrano has never done, gives concrete evidence of the nostalgic and sappy emotions I want viewers to feel. It will also adds my own twist to her original models and makes it more relevant to my 1999 built colonial-style childhood home. Similarly to Serrano’s models that feature unique details, specific to each family home, my own includes “flaws” or what makes my house a home. We have a purple front door which has been there since my parents bought the house in 2000, something my Mom has always loved and was attracted to first. A welcome sign hangs in our front lawn, being switched out per season, a feature of making the house feel lived in. On the right side of my home, you can view a window shutter missing and an overgrown bush in our front yard that shows a slight deterioration from a perfect or new home. I’ve called this place my home for over twenty years, and soon it won’t be. That was a hard fact to face, but now I’m okay with it, knowing that another family will move in and make similar memories, turning the house into their own home. A house doesn’t define you, you define a home and Ana Serrano is making impactful art that encapsulates this feeling that inspired me to make my own sentimental model. 
  

  
  Works Cited

  "Ana Serrano: Salon of Beauty.” Rice Gallery, http://www.ricegallery.org/ana-serrano. 

  "Cellebrating Latinx Heritage Month.” Escalate Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University Blog, 25 Sept. 2019, https://blogs.chapman.edu/collections/2019/09/25/national-hispanic-heritage-month/. 

  "Escalette Collection of Art.” EMuseum, https://chapman.emuseum.com/collections. 

  Montoya, Yvette. “Ana Serrano's Artwork Pays Homage to Latinos in L.A.” HipLatina, 9 Oct. 2020, https://hiplatina.com/ana-serranos-artwork-pays-homage-latinos-la/. 

  Projects, Bermudez. “Ana Serrano: A Sense of Place.” Artsy, 28 Mar. 2021, https://www.artsy.net/article/bermudez-projects-ana-serrano-sense. 

  Soto, Melody. “Cardboard Crafting: Ana Serrano's Paper Worlds.” KCET, 26 May 2022, https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/ana-serrano-creates-worlds-of-cardboard-and-paper