While most artists are considered somewhat introverted — spending hours alone creating work — connection to fellow artists through community and collaboration is a necessity to create new and interesting work and find opportunities for exhibitions. With a combination of traditional schooling and residencies, Puerto Rican installation artist Sheryl Anaya has sought such connections throughout her career as an artist.
Raised in the heart of the Concho Valley in San Angelo, Anaya eventually made her way to San Antonio, where she would graduate from high school and gained an interest in photography. Anaya then began her higher education at UNT while dabbling in sculpture and printmaking at Dallas College Brookhaven Campus. Open to new mediums, she began working with fibers, creating massive crocheted site-specific installations for The Foundry office and the first Art Tooth (a local nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities for local artists) exhibit, Amuse Bouche. After receiving a BFA from Texas Woman’s University in 2013, Anaya applied for membership into the 500X Gallery in Dallas, where she would immerse herself in a community of North Texas artists.
“500X was great because it was a lot of different artists working toward the same goal, which was putting together exhibitions and collaborating with other artists … getting the community involved,” Anaya says. “It just felt like a really special time. We would meet and be up late putting together our exhibitions and installing shows, and everyone would come out for the openings. Especially with an institution that’s been around for so long, it just felt really special to be a part of that.”
While in Dallas, Anaya was also part of The Cedars Union’s first cohort and a residency in Iceland, where she spent three months with fellow photographer Dannie Liebergot at the end of 2018.
In 2019, Anaya moved to Fort Worth to live with her wife, photographer and professor Dr. Diane Durant, and began the MFA program at TCU. Outside of the standard academic and career benefits of a master’s program, Anaya says she learned about delegating and collaborating with other artists.
“I think transitioning from working in the studio on my own — especially my first year of grad school — was hard because you’re expected to be making work consistently and kind of working through ideas pretty quickly, which I was not used to doing,” Anaya says. “I tend to do tedious work that takes a long time or more elaborate projects that I can’t necessarily complete quickly or on my own.”
The experience also changed her approach to creating work. “I am more open to maybe starting to make work without really knowing where it’s going yet and then trusting that process, whereas I think before, it was like, ‘Okay, here’s this idea. It has to look like this, and this is how it has to happen.’”
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This unique combination of experiences led to her recent thesis exhibition, “Let Things Taste of What They Are,” at the Moudy Gallery. The installation piece is a massive table setting that serves as an allegory for women’s bodies and gender roles. The work includes work shirt table settings and tablecloths and pears wearing crocheted aprons and Minne di Sant’Agata (an adorable cake with a bizarre origin we’ll let you investigate on your own). The piece asks the viewer to consider the consumption of women’s bodies through media and labor division where women are expected to constantly nourish and provide. After an intense and fast-paced three years, the exhibition is her last step to completing this part of her academic journey.
Anaya’s next step is to create a studio with her wife and hopefully succeed at constructing that all-important balance between work and family. And, despite closing this particular chapter in her career as an artist, Anaya looks to continue connecting with the art community.
“I think that’s the thing that I’m gonna miss the most about grad school is constantly being surrounded by people. I feel like I’ve been lucky enough going from undergrad to 500X to Cedars Union to grad school. I’ve always been surrounded by a community. I think that’s something that I’ve realized is really important to me as an artist. We’ll see what that looks like after grad school.”
