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SNEAP Year 19 Presentation: Conversation between Lydia Pérez & Lynne Williamson

Subject Lydia Pérez (Puerto Rican)

Subject Lynne Williamson

Date2017 June 16

Mediumborn digital video

DimensionsDuration: 31 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.322.2

DescriptionVideo of a required public presentation of the Southern New England Apprenticeship Program Year 19 team in Puerto Rican Santos carving (second year) with teaching artist Carlos Santiago Arroyo and apprentices Lydia Pérez and Yidell Pérez Rivera.

Lynne Williamson and apprentice Lydia Pérez are discussing what Pérez enjoyed about the process and what she will do with her finished santos.

NotesSubject Note: Carlos Santiago Arroyo (MA) taught Puerto Rican Santos carving to Lydia Perez and Yidell Rivera (RI) for a second year, concentrating on carving new saints and developing painting skills. In addition to carving techniques, they learned the names and qualities of the saints, their history and contexts, and how to incorporate them into family shrines. Each apprentice carved and painted two tableaux. They displayed their work at La Galleria del Puebla in Cranston, Rhode Island organized by Rhode Island Latino Arts. The apprentices honored the new santos with plena songs they composed for the occasion.

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.

Biographical Note: Lydia Pérez has been a teacher herself in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 1999-2000 to student Maria Perez Colon, and Menen Osorio in 1998-1999, both in Puerto Rican bomba dance. Lydia has been an apprentice in the program three times: with mentor Angel Ortiz in vejigante making in 2006-2007, and 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 with mentor Carlos Santiago Arroyo in santos carving. Lydia is a longtime arts activist and practitioner of Puerto Rican bomba and plena dance and music with her family joining her in the group Yoruba II. She has developed the Puerto Rican Institute for Arts and Advocacy, an organization for education, performance, and advocacy for Puerto Rican arts and culture, and gives performances and teachings all over New England. Yidell Rivera Perez is Lydia’s daughter and a performer in Yoruba II.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to 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