Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.633.1, Connecticut Historical S ...

SNEAP Year 3: Puerto Rican Instrument Building

Subject Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez (Puerto Rican)

Date2000-2001

Mediumprint photograph

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.633.1

DescriptionThis image of a publication was part of a required public presentation of the Southern New England Apprenticeship Program Year 3 team in Puerto Rican instrument building with teaching artist William Cumpiano and apprentice Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez.

The image shows a photo collage of the cuatro-making project by Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez at William Cumpiano’s shop. This shows six steps in the process, including making a template, joining wood plates, measuring fret intervals, and preparing the assembly workboard.

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.

Biographical Note: William Cumpiano has been a renowned luthier since the 1970s, crafting guitars as well as his specialty, Puerto Rican stringed instruments such as the cuatro and the older forms tiple doliente and bordonua. He is one of the founders of the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project, an initiative that stimulated interest in, study of, and production of the cuatro, the iconic instrument of Puerto Rican musica tipica and the beloved music that the instrument expresses. In addition to creating sought-after instruments of the highest quality, he has organized workshops, festivals, performances, and lecture demonstrations that have brought Puerto Rican folk music to increased attention and new audiences. He taught apprentice Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez to build cuatros, tiples, and bordonuas under the Southern New England Traditional Arts Program. During that apprenticeship, they built cuatros together, along with 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. Based in the Northampton, Massachusetts area, Bill has given several workshops in Greater Hartford, including an Instrument-making workshop given at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut under the auspices of the Trinity College Fine Arts Department and Hartford Center Church, and in 2016 again at Trinity College.

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 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