Michelle Cortez Gonzales is a Fort Worth based multidisciplinary artist who creates sewn-textile paintings, and installations. She earned her BFA in painting from the University of Texas at Arlington, and her MA and MFA in painting from the University of Dallas. Her work has been featured in Maake Magazine and exhibited in various galleries throughout Texas including Anya Tish Gallery (Houston, TX), Talley Dunn Gallery, and Presa House Gallery (San Antonio, TX). Cortez Gonzales was showcased in Visit Fort Worth’s 2021 series of “Women Worth Meeting”, and awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, VT (2024), Cuttyhunk Artist Residency, MA (2021), and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art as a 2021 Community Artist. She was a recipient of the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts: Challenge America Grant from the Dallas District Colleges. In addition to her studio practice, Cortez Gonzales is a public art project manager with Arts Fort Worth and adjunct professor with Tarrant County College.

Statement

My work is rooted in personal narratives about assimilation, and the aftermath of cultural loss. It exists in the space between two and three dimensions, fine art and craft, private and public, loss and reclamation. In this crucial midpoint, I create within the tension of opposing ideas, reflecting a liminal state of not fully belonging to one thing or another. I often combine painting, collage, and found materials with embroidery, sewing and hand-building. Working with my hands allows me to communicate a message of tenderness to my ancestors and my present self. Through found materials and hidden painted imagery, I make absence visible and reweave them into something that holds both pain and beauty as a way of honoring what was lost, and also reclaiming it in my own voice.