Chandra Méndez-Ortiz
Solo Monk, 2014, Collaged papers, acrylic, spray paint, album cover, tape, and oil pastel on canvas, 40x60”
Chandra Dieppa Méndez-Ortiz is a Boston-based artist who engages with historical and personal narratives, discarded materials, paint and mark making through a series of inter-related works on paper, canvas, and wood in order to illustrate and connect nonlinear histories, memories, and places. She explores personal histories of labor, migration, colorism, protest, culture and love set against the backdrop of evolving civil, voting and housing rights policy in the U.S., in order to make direct connections to our society’s progress and struggles.
Méndez-Ortiz is in conversation with a history of mark making, drawing, painting and found objects while combining the historical and the contemporary in order to honor, learn from and reimagine the ways in which people of color, particularly Black people have navigated and contributed to American life.
Méndez-Ortiz was born in 1972 in Paterson, New Jersey and was raised in Tampa, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida State University, a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a Master of Science in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In October 2011, she was awarded the prestigious Brother Thomas Fellowship for artistic excellence and vision by The Boston Foundation, and in 2018 she received the State Universities of Massachusetts Education Alumni Award for excellence in education.
Méndez-Ortiz is the Executive Director of Artward Bound at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt). Artward Bound is a free four year college access and success program in the arts for first generation Boston area students of color. She is also Co-Director of Boston’s Radical Imagination for Racial Justice Grant Program, a partnership between The Surdna Foundation, MassArt and The City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, with the goal of supporting artists of color to imagine and advance racial justice through collaborative projects in their communities.
Brown Series
Brown references the many shades of my family; the connection to the land; and the browning of America. Brown is a series of large scale paintings on paper, where I visualize often told stories of my family's migration from Cuba in the early 1900’s and each generation's subsequent pursuit of the American dream. Themes include: identity, colorism, work, migration, scarcity and abundance and what it means to be an American citizen.
Patch Work Series
To patch, to mend, to repair, to bring together and strengthen. The Patch Work Series are mixed-media collage works on paper and canvas where I engage with discarded/found materials, narratives and memories in order to construct new meanings, spaces, and possibilities.
Record Player Project
The Record Player Project is a series of large scale mixed media paintings on canvas that use original black music – blues, jazz and hip hop – as the compositional focus of seeing community through improvisation, rhythm, history, and storytelling.
