Ramona Martinez and Sri Kodakalla
Sri Kodakalla and Ramona Martinez are both artists, arts organizers, and co-directors of the Feminist Union of Charlottesville Creatives (FUCC), whose mission serves to support a community of women, gender-queer, and non-binary artists in Central Virginia. Primarily a printmaker, Ramona uses the medium as an act of resistance, against commodification and towards collective ownership, collaboration, and spirituality. Sri is a mixed media artist whose sculptural and fiber works are often inspired by her love of storytelling.
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Sri Kodakala for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Sri shared a bit about how artists stayed connected to consumers and fellow artists during the pandemic.
SRI KODAKALA: Those were some of the big questions in all of the arts organizations that I've been kind of circulating through in the past year is how do we keep engagement up while also making it worthwhile and valuable for the people who attend, as well as worthwhile for the artists who participate and give their time and energy toward it. And I think another really big thing that has been really hard for artists during the pandemic is selling work and having people see your work, especially because galleries weren't doing First Fridays and you weren't getting a lot of people who were actively engaging with your work other than on social media. And so you definitely had to promote yourself more and advertise your work more. And it takes that physical experience of seeing someone's artwork in person and making a connection with it and then conversing with the artist.
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Sri Kodakala for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Sri spoke with us about which practices the artistic community in Charlottesville would hold onto in the later days of the pandemic.
SRI KODAKALA: Definitely as we start to come out of the pandemic and start to do more in-person activities, there are certain aspects of doing things virtually hat I feel like are gonna stay with us, especially in the arts world. And some of those things being that people love the ability to like be able to sit at home on the couch and still be able to attend an event. And I can't imagine that going away anytime soon. So I like, I see a lot of arts organizations, especially the ones that I'm a part of in Charlottesville, continuing to do this online virtual artists talks or virtual workshops just to create the opportunity for people who might not have the accessibility to physically be there in person to still be able to participate in the arts world in some way.
As the pandemic brought society’s injustices into stark relief, Sri and Ramona sought a collective response from their artist communities. As co-directors of FUCC, they launched Mala Leche, a quarterly radical art zine. Ramona says the stories in the zine represent the most uniquely positioned people to shape a more radically inclusive and supportive world. Through these voices, creating and living authentically becomes a radical act: “Artists are some of the most important people to creating the world that we want to see. Because artists have the freedom and the ability to imagine what that world might look like.”
Mala Leche: a Zine for a New World
RAMONA MARTINEZ: Kori Price, who's actually editing our next issue, opens “Fever Dreams Mother Earth” with an incredible piece called Mama Earth Finds Herself in a Black Woman's Body. I will read a little bit:
“Mama Earth finds herself in a Black woman's body freaky friday body swap style. Silk scarf wrapped around her head, she wipes away sleep feeling the scramble, the churn, the never steady state tour de force that is a Black woman's spirit. As she moves in her new body she feels "I woke up like this" Beyonce fabulous and Cardi B "wet-ass pussy" frisky.
She touches her brown skin.
Basking in early morning light, she invites the sun's rays to crest her curves, to cast shadows on the valleys of her new blackness. She is awake and aware. Awakened by her regality. Aware that her sovereignty is tainted with struggle and strife. She quakes in the imbalance. She is only a Queen when she is not an inconvenience for others.
Mama Earth finds herself enraged. Diary of a Mad Black Woman "I'm not bitter, I'm mad as hell" enraged. Fannie Lou Hamer "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired" enraged because though she is no longer nature's keeper, she still shoulders genera- tions of defilement. A history of disrespect. She has been told she has no worth for the last time…”
RAMONA MARTINEZ: The other piece in Mala Leche 2, or one that I adore, is called Things Nobody Told Me About Motherhood by Allison Profeta. And it is stitched, you can't really tell in the zine, but it is stitched onto a cloth diaper with cotton thread. She embroidered all of the words in this piece. Just to give you a taste:
“There are things nobody told me about motherhood. Like that I can’t escape from the trauma of my childhood into a trauma-free childhood of my own making. Nobody told me about the pieces of myself I’d lose. That I’d watch as they fell away and how I’d stand in silence, a smile plastered on my face, pretending I’m fine.”
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Ramona Martinez for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Ramona talks about making art amidst the summer of protests and how the zine she helped curate, Mala Leche, centers artists' imagination and envisioning a better world.
RAMONA MARTINEZ: I did make a piece that I'm really proud of and it's three skeletons with police hats on, and skeletons are a big part of Mexican printmaking and they're standing behind a set of tombstones that say death to the badge. And it's interesting because when you make work that's in response to a political situation, especially violence, you have to think about how am going to depict this? And then Malo Leche 2, we wrote a manifesto that was sort of explaining why we were creating it. And in a way, we wanted to have a publication where we could envision what the new world would be like and present all of the different possibilities. Not only critique of what our world is like now, but envisioning of what it might be.
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Ramona Martinez for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” As a printmaker, Ramona reflects on what makes the medium so revolutionary.
RAMONA MARTINEZ: To be honest, I don't sell a lot of work. Like mostly I'm posting it on Instagram. And I think that's because like for me, especially like when I finish a work, it doesn't really belong to me anymore. And maybe that is based in the medium because I'm not a painter, you know, it's not like someone's going to buy my one painting. What's cool about printmaking too is it has a lot of history of being used in public, reprinted many, many times so that it can kind of change hearts and minds. So I think in printmaking there's a kind of freedom. I could recreate this image like a hundred times or more.
Transcript
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Sri Kodakala for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Sri shared a bit about how her artistic practice changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and what it came to mean to her in such trying times.
SRI KODAKALA: I had a studio space at McGuffey Art Center and I had moved a significant portion of my studio supplies back home and was kind of just working at my kitchen table. And I know this story is like so similar to so many other artists in this area. You couldn't go into all the places that you normally would, or you didn't feel safe going to shared studio spaces. And so working at home kind of changed the scale at which I worked in. And I started to make really small artwork and I started to make a lot of it. I personally went the route of like doing art and creating art, helped me keep my mind off of what was happening in the world. And it was this perfect escape that let me work with my hands and get out of my head.
Inside the Artist’s Studio
During lockdown, many artists relocated their studios to the confines of their homes. Each setting up shop at their kitchen tables, Sri and Ramona found a sense of freedom in being able to create on their own timeline, when the mood strikes them. Ramona treasured the freedom in her time at home, allowing her to create whenever the mood struck. Working largely in vinyl printmaking, her act of carving embodied both a soothing and addictive quality. For Sri, working from home changed the scale she worked at, making smaller artworks and in larger quantities. It provided a salve from the stress of the pandemic, providing an escape that let her work with her hands, and out of the confusion of the outside world.
Finding Community Online
A major challenge of creating art and preserving vital artist communities was the sudden shift into virtual spaces. Both Sri and Ramona are involved in artist collectives and organizations. Adapting to unprecedented conditions provided an opportunity to slow down and discover collaboration in surprising ways. Working in arts outreach, Sri invested time into bridging communities – from working on racial equity initiatives at McGuffey Art Center to her new position as Public Programs Coordinator at Second Street Gallery. Online exhibitions, classes, and workshops became more accessible to audiences, allowing a greater range of participation. Ramona actually made a lot of connections through these online communities, speaking with people from all over the country through a political printmaking class she took during quarantine, and even meeting her now-fiancé through exchanges on Instagram.
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Sri Kodakala for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Sri spoke with us about what they learned about making art during a global pandemic.
SRI KODAKALA: I think that I have learned a lot in terms of how I want to use my time better, especially when it comes to spending more time creating work rather than putting it out on social media or sharing it on my website. I kind of have become a little bit more internal with it. I kind of want to take more time to create work as opposed to sharing it, at least until I can like create a body of work that I feel proud of or connected to in some way.
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Sri Kodakala for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Sri shared a bit about how she managed to continue making art during the pandemic and what this practice meant to her.
SRI KODAKALA: I feel like I have been making art during the pandemic because it's kind of all that I've known. It's the soothing thing you do, at least for me. It's the thing I come to at the end of every day. It's something that creates space for me to focus on what I can do with my hands and get out of my head. And that is truly like all I ask for from being able to create art is just the opportunity to put myself into a creative headspace, to be able to like reflect on what I see around me and put it onto a page or onto a canvas or like build something.
Transcript
WTJU: You're listening to WTJU Charlottesville. We talked to Ramona Martinez for our COVID-19 arts exhibition titled, “Hope This Art Finds You Well.” Ramona shares how she was able to expand her communities during the pandemic.
SRI KODAKALA: I actually made so many friends during the pandemic and a lot of that was actually from online communities. Not only like all of the artists that I hadn't actually met yet making Mala Leche, but I also took an online political printmaking class and I met all kinds of people from all over the country in that class and we were sharing our art. So it was like very soul bearing, like bonding. And I also like randomly made friends through this other podcast community. I met my fiance on Instagram. It's been just like this beautiful explosion of all these new people that I never would have met if not for having all this free time. Also access to the internet.