Artist Ana Flores is fascinated by the stories the land holds. It’s one of the reasons she likes to start her days by going for a walk in the forest, next to her home in Charlestown – a stretch of southern Rhode Island with a complicated history.
“It’s the land of the Narragansett’s and they’re still very present,” she said. “It’s also a place that’s had a history that is very connected to the Caribbean because Rhode Island was part of the slave trade, the New England slave trade in this area. Charlestown had one of the largest slave plantations in the area.”
For Flores, the land isn’t simply a muse. It’s also an extension of her studio.
She’s constantly searching for materials she can incorporate into her artwork, like wood and stones.
Flores describes herself as an ecological and interdisciplinary artist because she uses numerous media.
She’s a sculptor, painter and writer. Her work, which she says is rooted in identity, place and discovery of place, has been featured in exhibits around the world. It’s been described as evocative and, at times, provocative.
“One of the first larger pieces that I made was a piece called ‘Gaia.’ And it was made out of a root system that kind of became almost like an earth womb. It was like the Earth giving birth,” Flores said.
Flores recalls the piece being censored in the late 1990s at a university library when it was moved to a less visible gallery.
“I had a discussion eventually with the dean of the library and it was quite clear it was – it was censorship,” said Flores. “He just didn’t want it in there. He said too many people are stopping and talking.”
She ended up removing the sculpture and it went on to be displayed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. For Flores, “Gaia” represented how humans have abused the environment. She’s not afraid to make a statement through her work. It’s a privilege she doesn’t take for granted.
She was six when she left Cuba with her family in the early 1960s as a political refugee. Fidel Castro’s promise of a free nation had vanished.
Flores’ family settled in Connecticut. She later graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she met her husband.
She returned to Cuba in 2002 – joining a group of British bicyclists on a three-week tour of her homeland. It was her first time back in 40 years.
“It was a wonderful way to be in the landscape and really meeting Cubans because you were coming in on bicycles. You weren’t just these fancy tourists.
“And I just – I felt so Cuban. It’s a funny thing to say,” Flores said. “It was like this whole suitcase of my life and my memories had been put away for a long time. And that trip brought it out.”
It inspired Flores to create “The Cuba Journal,” a multi-media installation featuring her homeland. It was displayed throughout the United States for several years. It included toy-sized sculptures made from driftwood and recycled materials of Cubans dancing. She also designed a larger-than-life puppet of Castro made from papier mâché and mosquito netting. Its presence gave the illusion that it was threatening the small wooden figurines of locals below it. Flores used theatrical lights to create shadows.
“Cuba is this small island, but it’s had such a large political history in the story of, you know, the western world in the last a hundred plus years,” Flores said. “The shadow of something can be much larger than the thing itself.”
The artist said traveling to Cuba made her feel more rooted in Rhode Island.
She’s spent much of the last two decades devoted to creating work that helps communities connect with their landscapes.
“We do have an environmental … problem where we’re not taking care of the planet and of the places we live in, partly because of ignorance. We don’t understand how our behavior can affect it,” she said. “You can’t just give people data about that. They have to live and care in a kind of tactile, immersive way to understand how what they do matters.”
When Flores became the first artist in residence at the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, she was tasked with teaching people about watersheds. She soon found herself carrying around garbage bags and cleaning up the trails.
“As I did that, I would keep saying, ‘God, how do you make people out here thoughtful’ and, you know, ‘how do you turn slobs into poets?’” she said.
She went on to create her “Poetry of the Wild” project. She designs boxes that look like bird houses. Each one contains a poem and a journal where visitors can jot down their thoughts.
“Every time I go and do a workshop to make these boxes, I tell them what a watershed is. I bring in an example of this 3D … watershed where they can sprinkle water and see that the water falls into certain gullies and it flows down in that direction. So it became a tactile way to explore what a watershed was.”
It’s a project she’s launched across the country. She hopes it motivates people to slow down and appreciate their environment.
“You can tell people there’s gonna be bird watch walks or this or that, and a lot of people won’t go hiking. But if you tell them there’s a poetry box, a writer they might know wrote something for the box, their children might have been involved in making some of the boxes – all of a sudden, you get this new audience going out walking,” Flores said.
During an afternoon in April, Flores took a stroll through the Canonchet Brook Preserve in Hopkinton to search for a spot to place a poetry box.
For Flores, there’s nothing quite like seeing her work out in the natural world.
“You become more aware by doing more walking, more careful observation of what you’re doing, you begin to care more. And then maybe you act in a different way,” she said.
Flores has a deep appreciation for the place she calls home, after being uprooted from her own as a little girl.
“I’m not just one type of artist. I’m only happy if I’m working in a sort of broad spectrum of medium,” she said. “I never planned to be this kind of artist. It was really this place that made me this kind of artist.”
