JEWEL CASTRO

Bio  & artist’s statement

Jewel Castro is a Samoan/Danish/American visual artist who creates paintings and multimedia installations about Samoan identity.  Her work was recently exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum as part of the Pacific Art Association International Symposium, and at NYU as part of the “Coming of Age in Amelika,” exhibition held in conjunction with their Pacific Islands/Atlantic Worlds symposium.  Castro has a keen interest in iconography and looks for ways to manipulate that form into celebrations of Samoan ancestors, living elders, indigenous history and its gender aspects, and to give voice to Samoan contemporary issues.  She is interested in blending aspects of Pacific art forms with her Western European art education.  “The texture and appearance of my paintings is influenced by the texture of siapo and the application and patterning of tattoo images.  I like the unevenness of siapo and how wet media resists and absorbs on that sort of surface.  And considering the application of pigment to siapo and skin, I am interested in staining an image deep into the fibers of fabric rather than painting them on top of it.  My installations are environments that simulate architecture and landscape, with the notion of being inside and outside at the same time.  I use objects, sound, lights, and scent to communicate a story visually and by way of the other senses.”  Her research includes Pacific history, contemporary issues, and migration as it relates to cultural identification.  She was born in Chicago, raised in San Diego, and has worked as a commercial artist in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Seattle.  She has a BA in Drawing and Painting from San Diego State University and an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego, where she was a San Diego Fellow.  She currently teaches studio art courses at Mesa College and MiraCosta in San Diego county; and she is co-organizer for the 2006 ASAO (Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania) session, Gender in Contemporary Oceania Art; and she is curator of the exhibition, TURNING TIDES: Gender in Oceania Art which runs Feb. 7-10, 2006 at the University of California San Diego.