ARTS & EVENTS

from The Argonaut Newspaper - December 1, 2022

COVER STORY

Royalty in Glass

Mexican celebrity painter collaborates with Venetian glass sculptor

By Bridgette M. Redman

Gilda Garza knows there are many ways to be a queen. Dubbed the most influential living Mexican artist, Garza wears many crowns. She’s a queen of hearts, a queen of fashion, a queen of glass, and a queen of art. A resident of Los Angeles, Mexico and Arizona, the celebrity-favorite artist and selftaught painter and sculptor debuted her work in a new and unique way on Sept. 28 in Venice, Italy. Painting in oils and acrylics, Garza’s original expressionist style is tinged with elements of pop art, a style that has made her famous among celebrities, museums and other artists. She was the first artist cover in Playboy Mexico history, and only the second artist to have her painting grace the cover of Playboy Magazine—second only to Andy Warhol. Her recent painting, “Queen Kamala Harris,” sold for $80,000 in a charity sale to benefit women and girls around the world. In September, her “Kings and Queens” collection was recreated in Venetian glass by world-renowned sculptural artist Mario Furlan. Even after raising the prices, the gallery had to delay the sales of the work because they were concerned they wouldn’t have enough for the exhibition. Then on Sept. 28, Furlan created one of the sculptures of her paintings live before an audience. Garza, who says she has no formal art education but has been around art all her life, has been a fan of Murano Glass and their sculptural work since childhood. Her mom had some of their glasses and sculptures. Then seven years ago, she went to visit Murano Glass and was awed by their sculptures. After her visit, they started following her on Instagram and later contacted her saying they wanted to make her “Queens and Kings” series in glass. “I didn’t believe this was true and now I can see them,” Garza said. “They have 12 of my pieces. This is impressive Celebrity artist Gilda Garza is a self-taught painter and sculptor who is known as “the most influential artist in Mexico.” because they started doing this six months ago and started with the price of 20,000 Euros. Right now, it is 25,000 Euros and the owners told me that once they put the piece out, it sells. Now they don’t want to sell any piece because we need business for the exhibition.” Furlan is considered the master of the Murano sculptural art and the exhibition is at New Murano, Atelier Muranese, a studio that is more than 1,500 years old. The finished works will remain on display. The gallery has its own furnaces, which is where the paintings are transformed into three-dimensional sculptures, Garza’s colors becoming transparent lights in the sculpture. The event showed Furlan selecting and preparing the color palette and executing the sold glass work following the ancient Murano traditions. This collection of Garza’s is designed to bring out the royalty in even ordinary people. The series was originally inspired by her grandparents and she is now thrilled to see them in glass. “It’s so beautiful—I can’t believe how beautiful it is in the sculptures,” Garza said. “I want you to see yourself as a queen or a king. You are a queen or a king and you deserve people to treat you like that and not less. The collection of kings and queens inspires you to be the best you can be in your work and in everything.” She explained that every piece of art she paints has a story behind it. She has to be really inspired to paint something. For this series, it was remembering the loving way that her grandparents interacted with each other. “My grandfather, he’d spoil her,” Garza said. “He’d always say, ‘Oh, you’re the most beautiful woman, you’re my reina (the Spanish word for queen).’ I wanted to capture that beautiful love and that’s where my Kings and Queens come from.” It was also her love for them and fear she had to deal with as a child that inspired the series. She grew up in Sinaloa, Mexico where her grandmother taught her to paint. The state is known as Mexico’s breadbasket, but it is also home to the country’s largest and most dangerous cartel, making Garza’s homeland a place of violence. During her childhood, her grandfather was kidnapped for seven days, an event which frightened the whole family. The event sparked her to paint a portrait of him, something she said took only two hours. Thankfully, the police rescued him and they got him back. “You don’t know what is behind me,” Garza said. “I think every woman has a story behind her. I have my story behind me like in Sinaloa. I have a beautiful family—my parents, everything. But it’s a dangerous place in Sinaloa. My grandfather was kidnapped and I suffered because of that. Everybody has their own story. Sometimes I can explain why in a painting she looked like a queen, but you see on the other side and she’s crying because something happened to her.” Her success has sometimes brought her to tears of joy. She hadn’t applied to be an artist for Playboy. Rather, she had done a painting of a Playboy bunny for one of her exhibitions and the owner of Playboy fell in love with the piece and chose it to grace their cover. “When I saw my artwork on the cover of ‘Playboy,’ I remembered that I cried because I couldn’t believe it. It was at the start of my career,” Garza said. “At the same time,

Garza recently debuted her “Kings and Queens” collected recreated in Venetian glass by world-renowned sculptural artist Mario Durlan.

Roberto Cavalli had my Queen artwork in his dresses and it was another—wow, I need to cry.” She would go on to become the first artist to exhibit on the Las Vegas strip and later her work would show at Caesar’s Palace. The House of Bijan displays her artwork on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. She created a sculpture for the Phoenix Suns when they were celebrating their 50th anniversary. Her work has been featured at events like Drop It Like It’s Yacht in Marina del Rey. Garza also wants to make the world a better place and does this through frequent donations of her art work. She works with World Woman Foundation to help empower women. “In every one of my exhibitions, I always look for a foundation and I donate one of my pieces,” Garza said. During the pandemic, she painted now-Vice President Harris as a queen. “I said I’m not going to ask for any price—I sold it on my Instagram for $80,000 and I went to my foundation and I gave the check to them. I was really happy to give a little of what I’m doing to the world.” She chose Harris because she is inspired by what she is doing—and considers her a queen like the others in her series. She describes Harris as being a big inspiration for a lot of women. In addition to her painting, she has also opened her own jewelry line, Bella Regina. Her goal is to make every woman feel like a queen when they wear the beautiful pieces in the line. Garza said she has always loved fashion. She started painting her own jeans and jackets because she wanted to add color to them. Then her friends asked her to paint their handbags and clothes, which she found fun and eventually gave birth to the Roberto Cavalli fashion line. Meanwhile, Garza paints because it is the way that she expresses her emotions and her feelings. She continues to prepare for other exhibitions, including one in Brazil and another possibly in Dubai. She paints because she wants to lift other people’s spirits. “I want to inspire people to be better persons through my art,” Garza said. “I don’t want to just decorate a space. I’m going to inspire you when you see my kings and queens in the living room and people can show their love to all the family and friends that are in their house.”

Gilda Garza

gildagarza.com Instagram: gildagarza007

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