The memories of my childhood in Ponce, Puerto Rico where I was born and lived my early years, served as a motivation for the creation of my first pieces in clay. It happened unintentionally, as if waiting for the starting gun to signal the clay to bring out shapes of boys and girls sailing their paper boats, playing hopscotch, or skillfully throwing spinning tops and marbles.
And they have not stopped. They keep coming, like the memories I enjoyed with my siblings in our yard, which was very unique, or in the Plaza of Delights next to the Fountain of Lions, in a time when children still played in the Plazas.
Other aspects of our cultural web were interwoven to these experiences. Therefore, vejigantes (carnival costumed revelers), snow-cone vendors, ice cream vendors, jibaritos (country-folk) and a myriad of characters that represent and define us as Puerto Ricans began to emerge.
Working in clay has allowed me to have a rewarding experience, with which I have been able to scrutinize the intimate and particular, and explore from a sociological standpoint, those aspects that distinguish us as a people.
It is an activity that I enjoy, which allows me to intertwine stories and create new ones, some of which I present to you through this medium.
Lizzette Aponte
