Alfredo Gutierrez was instantly suspicious. "I was afraid it was a scam," he admits. Luis wasn't. She was a living link to the mother he'd lost. Her name was Carmen. She came to visit Gutierrez and Wilks in Phoenix. They immediately fell in love with her.
"She was really warm," he says. "We connected instantly. I could tell that she really was my sister." As they became closer, Gutierrez says, she told them that she was married to a man who abused her. They began to plot how to get her out of her relationship — and failed. In June of this year, Carmen died. Acccording to local news accounts in Pennsylvania, her husband admitted he hit her with his car.
Jamie Peachey
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Jamie Peachey
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Jamie Peachey
Virgin Mermaid Skate Deck
Jamie Peachey
Voodoo Lives for Sins
Jamie Peachey
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Jamie Peachey
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Jamie Peachey
Stylos Award for Best Artist of the Year 2009.
Jamie Peachey
Luis Gutierrez with his girlfriend, Anna June Wilkes.
Details
Luis Daniel Gutierrez's solo show opens Friday, January 15, 2010, from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., and will be open for viewing at the same hours on Friday, February 22, and Friday, February 29, at Bragg's Pie Factory, 1301 Grand Avenue. Admission is free.
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The news hit Gutierrez hard. He dealt with it the only way he could — through an art piece, created in the studio of his friend, Alexander Krump, and exhibited at "Chaos Theory," a group exhibit featuring local artists, and later at Arizona State University's Dia de los Muertos festival exhibit.
Unlike much of Gutierrez's other work, the sculpture is devoid of humor. It's eight feet tall — a massive, black strip of road divided in half by a broken yellow line, tapered at the top to provide perspective. In the distance, a green papier-mâché car races toward a woman. Dressed cheerily in a blue sleeveless dress, she emanates four layers of brightly colored auras, and clutches a bag labeled "last chance."
Though she seems unaware of the car, death has already cast its pallor. Her head is a gleaming white skull. On the ground, behind a kneeler from a church pew, the artist placed five squares of ragged canvas, inscribing them with a simple, brutally direct narrative.
"My sister was killed by her abusive husband. He ran her over with a car. Carmen had predicted her death. She said that if she ended up dead, we would know what happened to her. She said that. Her husband would kill her."
Krump says he'd never before seen Gutierrez work with such intensity.
"It was as though I wasn't in the room," he says. "When I saw the piece fully assembled I thought, 'Wow.' It was about family — it was about life. It was real."
The sculpture helped launch Gutierrez into the next phase of his career.
Bragg's Pie Factory on Grand Avenue in Phoenix is a yawning cavern of space with vaulted ceilings interlaced with thick, wooden eaves. It's the 5,000-foot blank canvas on which he plans to showcase his next artistic movement.
In mid-January, it will be filled with paintings from every stage in Gutierrez's career. Large and small pieces from the multiple sclerosis series will hang on the walls alongside larger paintings from the series in which Gutierrez re-imagines a Europe discovered by Native Americans.
But the artist is already looking beyond the two-dimensional paintings of his past, to installation sculpture and public art. In the middle of the room, he wants to put a car with two desks in the backseat — a nod to the "car school" of his childhood.
He wants to work in three dimensions — he's moving toward public art. He wants to create a community sculpture garden where local artists can showcase their work. He wants to make gigantic prayer flags and put them on permanent display in downtown Phoenix. He wants to make his mark, and he knows he doesn't have unlimited time. So he's busy.
"For a long time I've been focusing on getting my own voice," Gutierrez says. "Now that I know who I am, I want to see what I can do three dimensionally. I want to take it to the next level."
