Michelle Cortez Gonzales is a Fort Worth based interdisciplinary artist who creates sewn-textile paintings, and installations. She earned her BFA in painting from the University of Texas at Arlington, and her 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), 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 works as a public art project manager with Arts Fort Worth.

Statement

I am a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, found materials, video, and installation. My work explores the space between two and three dimensions, fine art and craft, private and public, loss and recovery. In this crucial midpoint, I create within the tension of opposing ideas to reference the liminal state of not completely belonging to one thing or another. As a Mexican American raised in Texas, my cultural experiences were portrayed through objects, and silent gestures within the home. Working with my hands allows me to preserve the actions of labor that draw me back to family and culture. This symbolic gesture of mending communicates a message of tenderness and comfort to my present self. My work is concerned with themes that relate to identity, fragmented memory, and the lasting consequences of cultural loss due to assimilation.

I combine painting with found materials associated with home life including textiles, furniture, and picture frames. By doing so, I honor the memories they harbor and the ideas of comfort, home, and connectivity attached to them. Domestic practices associated with tradition, such as sewing, braiding, and hand building hold significant importance in my process, as they too can become lost histories. Within my painting, fragmented imagery, and transparent elements allude to voids that exist within my memory and history. Using these materials and contrasting techniques together serves as a metaphor for the complexities present within a reconstructed environment, highlighting a tension of experiences and repurposing in an effort to heal.