El Barrio

Dear Shellyne Rodriguez,

 During my visit in Museo De Barrio, I had found your sculpture “Calling the spirit of the garbage offensive”. It was truly an outstanding piece. The composition of the broom stick, chain with a hanging azabache fist charm, is extremely powerful. The concept of the hanging hand with the chain not only was representational of human labor. The endurance of the people in what they had to deal with as a whole community was frustrated not just physically but emotionally. I feel that this piece was not meant to have a light emotion brought with it. The “calling the spirit of the garbage offensive” is very heavy in personal temperament and that is what I appreciate. What had struck me the most is the mouth of the broom is interpreting the bristles of the broom.  I question, why not as well use pieces of garbage to make the statement clearer to the viewer? Did you feel that when you were creating this sculpture that it was blunt enough? As well as why did you use the interpretation of human teethe for cleaning the streets? Was it that the people, in their grit and hard work was to be portrayed as the broom itself? Speaking for the materials itself, when making the mouth of the lower broom stick, did you use ceramics? A dense material, or simply paper mache?  In all, how difficult or easy did you find this art work to be created? Was the process itself simple compared to other works that you have created?

I can see your motivation upon this art piece. Reading of the Young Lords in El Barrio, I found it very striking and brave of the individuals whom wanted to step up for themselves and their community. Mimicking the black panthers, instead of it being gang affiliated it was an activist movement. In East Harlem the whole neighborhood within El Barrio had went to the sanitation department, but the sanitation department themselves had not made no effort to clean. So the locals and the Young Lords had barged into the department, stole their cleaning equipment and started cleaning their own streets. To show their own frustration they swept every spec of dirt into the middle of the road and had set it on fire. This act had represented their rage and dis-pleasant with the sanitation department. The hard work that the community in El barrio had I can see was the teethe of the black broom, along with the chained hand in a fist.  I am in awe and shock of your intent, message and construction of this art piece. Like none other have I seen before in a museum. Your communication to the modern world today was very clear to me. Your intent for sure was to tell people today how Hispanic communities had lived in a poverty state, and that they had enough of mistreatment and neglect of their current home. The grit and hard work was purely emphasized in your work. This art piece was for those who in this time and activist movement had fought for their rights.