Veronica Orozco

Bio

Veronica Orozco is a printmaker and collage artist native to San Francisco. Some of the subjects and themes she deals with are community issues and self-exploration. She transforms ideas into formats that work best, from creating 3-D work to completing works on paper. She has shown at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, Artspace, Live Worms Gallery, Southern Exposure and is currently working at the Hunter's Point Shipyards Studios in their Artist-in-Residence program.

Statement

Architectural structure, advertisements and available resources contribute greatly to the structure and activities of community life as a whole as well as in the structure of family life. When we see liquor store after liquor adjacent to dirty sidewalks and patches of dying grass, it is not hard to see broken homes and damaged dreams. How can compassion foster in our community when its literal surroundings lack the positive representation of it? The disconnection that can occur within family is affected by ones living environment and vise versa. When every ghetto is enclosed by freeways, pollution plants or other barriers from fresh air and common necessities, positive influences must come from each other. We must help each other see beyond the literal downfalls outside our streets to help re-establish a positive community life at home first. We must re-enforce basic mental and nutritional health daily to our growing people so that they can help change the exterior outside their windows. This installation deals with the notion of family members being involved with generations after them. If family members will not take up that responsibility, children's developing self will be influenced by the identity of the common mishaps that is reflected in ghetto neighborhoods. Their identities will be structured by the identity that the streets convey: violence, stereotyping, and most that will influence, the lack of education. The realization that their lives can be different if they promote positive change within themselves and their communities. Frustration is hard but moving forward is harder.