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Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.198.1, Connecticut Historical S ...
Works by Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez
Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.198.1, Connecticut Historical Society, Copyright Undetermined

Works by Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez

Subject (Puerto Rican)
Date1990-2001
MediumPhotography; color slides on plastic in cardboard mount
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.198.1-.3
DescriptionSlides of work created by Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez.

(.1) Puerto Rican gourd carving inscribed “higuera - Eva Rana-Sencilla."

(.2) Front of the cuatro Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez made with a gourd base.

(.3) "Tiple Doliente" made during Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez's Year 3 Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship with William Cumpiano in 2000-2001.
NotesBiographical Note: Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, artist, and luthier who apprenticed with William Cumpiano (Easthampton, MA) and has built cuatros, tiples, and bordonuas. Graciela is also a cuatrista and higüera (gourd) and santos carver. She served as an advisory committee and exhibiting artist and workshop leader for CCHAP’s three Puerto Rican projects, starting as a community scholar with Herencia Taina, CCHAP’s 1998 Taino exhibit project, researching the techniques of higüera preparation and decoration for use as household utensils, ornaments with Taino or political iconography, or musical instruments. She also worked as an artist-presenter for the Massachusetts Cultural Council summer institute on Puerto Rican cultural heritage for Springfield, Massachusetts teachers. Graciela is a highly respected arts educator, woodcarver, and singer with the Connecticut Latin music group Tierra Mestiza. She is a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Master Teaching Artist and Artists Fellowship winner. As part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, she worked with master luthier Bill Cumpiano. Together they built cuatros, tiples, and bordonuas, older forms of Puerto Rican stringed instruments. As part of the apprenticeship they built a cuatro on the basis of a photograph of an unusual form from the early 1900's, which has a bent wood body rather than a hollowed-out base. They demonstrated their partnership work at the Lowell Folk Festival in 2000.


Subject Note: The Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is a CCHAP initiative since 1997 that fosters the sharing of community-based traditional (folk) artistic skills through the apprenticeship learning model of regular, intensive, one-on-one teaching by a skilled mentor artist to a student/apprentice. The program pairs master artists from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Connecticut with apprentices from one of the other states, as a way to knit together members of the same community or group across state lines. Teaching and learning traditional arts help to sustain cultural expressions that are central to a community, while also strengthening festivals, arts activities and events when master/apprentice artists perform or demonstrate results of their cooperative learning to public audiences. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Connecticut Historical Society manages the program in collaboration with the Folk Arts Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and independent folklorist Winifred Lambrecht who has a deep knowledge of the folk arts landscape of Rhode Island. Primary funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, with support also from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Community Research, and the Connecticut Historical Society.


Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for these artists.


Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
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