GALLERY FIVE20

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Raymond Padrón: Call and Response

Raymond Padrón is a sculptor and performance based artist, working in a broad diversity of processes and materials. He uses traditional craft and its relationship to improvisation to explore how we form our identity and beliefs. Born in 1983, he grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. In 2005 after receiving his B.A. in sculpture and graphic design from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, he moved south to the city of Chattanooga, TN. In 2011 he received his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has since returned to Chattanooga where he now makes art, exhibits nationally, and teaches.

"I describe my studio practice as an epistemology through craft. Using both traditional and contemporary crafting techniques as a platform for the improvisational act. It is the relationship I see between improvisation and tradition that interests me, in how both work together to help us form our identity and shape; how we view and experience the world. My most recent work comes through reflecting on the many roles I inhabit and how they both shape my identity and relate to my surroundings. Each work references specific relationships, places and cultural icons that have deeply impacted my interpretation of these roles."