Life Outside the Classroom: Ms. Salazar

Ms. Salazar and a group of willing volunteers set up For Closure (Outdoors, The Bronx) an outdoor art installation. “People were yelling at me,” she told me, “‘Why are you building this in front of the school?’” This instillation is a multicolored pyramid of used doors, a “house of cards”, as Ms. Salazar describes. The significance of this piece lay in the recent foreclosures across the country. Ms. Salazar says, “I intended the piece as a way to bring attention to, and also personalize, the foreclosure crisis…” Putting together the piece was dangerous, as the doors had to be lifted three stories up in the air.  This was her first public art installation. Fortunately, the rough comments did not deter her. The majority of the reactions were positive, and people were intrigued about this piece being set up. Ms. Salazar says, “It just felt like a turning point, it felt like finally my work was out there.”

Gabriela Salazar, known as Ms. Salazar to students, is a visual arts teacher at the High School. Although we do not always imagine teachers having a life outside of the classroom, the talent and experience that many of our own teachers have shows the diversity and mix of interests in the GCS community. She attended Yale University and studied art as an undergraduate, and attended Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) for graduate school. Ms. Salazar says, “I didn’t feel any hesitation about just doing the thing that was bringing me the most joy.”

At RISD, Ms. Salazar had the opportunity to curate shows and write proposals for exhibits. In her second year, she curated a show with a group in New York City where she was able to display her work. Ms. Salazar says that in graduate school, one has more time to create a habit of making art within your life.

Much of her artwork focuses on what supposedly needs to be adjusted or repaired in the built environment. For some of her pieces, she uses the six simple machines as inspiration, which includes: lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. Ms. Salazar says that a great deal of her work is focused on the “shift and change that happens with use” and how this relates to “the original intention of a building or space”. The tension involved in architectural structure and the influence of simple machines are clear in her work.

The wedge is a reappearing component in her pieces. She turns the scraps of earlier works or unfinished projects into wedges. Who knew wedges could be composed of such a variety of materials–from felt to rope to contact paper. The diversity of mediums used in her pieces is extensive.

In Advance of a Storm is a recent (2014) exhibit of hers at The Lighthouse Works, a residency on Fishers Island, NY. Both of her parents are architects, and Ms. Salazar always had an interest in the process of architecture. This piece was based on “The Cube Game” where one is asked a series of questions that leads to a description of a room. These answers supposedly reveal one’s inner self. Ms. Salazar created these two rooms, that each of her parents described, as 10x10x10 cubes. Using the information her parents had given her, she created their description of a room and a series of objects. She used materials they had mentioned (fresh
flowers, a ladder, a horse) in her exhibit. It was an unconventional way of incorporating their practice into her work. As Ms. Salazar explains, it made them think about their profession in a different manner. This exhibition dealt with “what you inherit from the people who influence you”, such as the influence of architecture on her art. Ms. Salazar’s passion as an artist is clear in her exhibits and her character, and we are lucky to have her as a part of our community. Her next group exhibit where she is showing work is called Cartography of Ghosts opening at The Drawing Center on November 17.