Ismael de Anda III : JEDI

December 12, 2015

Inspired by the glider-swing that his grandparents had on their farm in Presidio, Texas, Jedi is a glider-swing sculpture by Ismael de Anda III that the viewer can touch and ride on with a partner. De Anda considers this style of swing as his first childhood example of “sculpture.” The combination of the swing sculpture’s title Jedi (knights from Star Wars) with fragmented images of Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise, painted on the swing’s surfaces, is a mutation of science fiction universes. Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek was born in El Paso, Texas, the same place as de Anda. De Anda is interested in how Roddenberry and artists create fantastical worlds that don’t yet exist to inspire future generations to make them into real technology. Jedi is also an homage to retiring fabricator Jedidia Dyer, who assisted De Anda in the development and creation of his glider-swing sculptures.

BIO

(b. El Paso, Texas) lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Ismael de Anda III received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Using mutant practices including digital photo-collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and interactive, site-specific projects, de Anda’s work is inspired by his pluralistic upbringing on the U.S./Mexico border and living in Los Angeles.

De Anda’s personal concept of the mutant, a condition of unexpected evolution, was born from his adolescent reading of X-Men comics that featured mutant outsiders/anti-heroes whose special abilities set them apart, as well as de Anda’s own Mexican-American ethnicity. The mutant refers to the mixing of artistic processes and the potential of the multi-ethnic existence of those living in the U.S. in exchange with diverse world cultures as a blend of developing culture not yet forecasted.

De Anda’s works are often site-specific, inspired by the communities in which they are created, using locally sourced materials.

De Anda was awarded the 2010 Japan-United States Arts Program Fellowship by the Asian Cultural Council and the 2017 Ryla T. & John F. Lott Endowment for Excellence in the Visual  Arts Artist in Residence. Texas Tech University School of Art/Department of Human Sciences. He received a 2019 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.