As Hispanic Heritage Month gets underway, a Miami-raised artist is gaining recognition for work that commands attention from galleries throughout South Florida to museums and exhibitions in New York City.<\/p>\n
Kandy G. Lopez is creating striking portraits, but not with traditional paint and brushes. Her medium is yarn.<\/p>\n
For Lopez, the work represents far more than an artistic expression. Each piece is an opportunity to tell a story, rooted in heritage.<\/p>\n
When asked how she identifies, Lopez doesn’t hesitate. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfro-latina is fine, too,” she tells NBC6. “I think that the ‘afro’ part is important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her family is from the Dominican Republic and eventually settled in South Florida. Lopez’s artistic journey began in middle school in Opa-locka.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
“It was also low funded because it was in an inner city of Miami in Opa-locka, so they had to find creative ways for us to share materials and how to make something look fine art with like cardboard and oil pastels,” she remembered. <\/p>\n
Those early experiences helped shape the artist she would become. Today, her large-scale fiber portraits can be found in museums and galleries across the country. And Lopez wants her work to make people feel something \u2014 especially when they encounter it inside a museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want them to feel warm in the space. A lot of times when people think about art museums, it’s like \u2014 oh, it’s only for the educated, uppity. And I’m like, no, it’s for us. These spaces are built for us,” she said. <\/p>\n
For her, there is something powerful about walking into a gallery and seeing yourself, your culture or your community reflected on the wall. Strand by strand, face by face, Lopez is weaving her community, her culture and her heritage into something the world can see.<\/p>\n
She currently has a solo exhibition at ACA Galleries in Chelsea, New York, and will be featured at The Armory Show for the third time.<\/p>\n
South Florida audiences can see her work at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale in the exhibition \u201cClose to Home,” which is on display through November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Hispanic Heritage Month gets underway, a Miami-raised artist is gaining recognition for work that commands attention from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[40869,159350,225,227,226,2229],"class_list":["post-400563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-art-and-culture","tag-celebrating-hispanic-heritage","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-hispanic-heritage-month"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}