Lisette’s Take: “I think about art and creativity, and artists having exclamation points in a lot of our lives. When I was introduced to her, it was an exclamation point. And when I saw her work, I knew I had to know her. I took tons of people to the gallery to see her work: it is inspiring, it moves me on a deep personal level, and I also feel it's a recognition of a lot of the underrepresented, ignored pieces of us, for me as a Puerto Rican woman.” To hear all episodes and learn more about Lisette Nieves, visit Lisette-Nieves.com
Kandy G Lopez is a multidisciplinary portrait artist exploring cultural identity, representation, and power through fiber, painting, glass, and mixed media. Born to Dominican parents, she draws from her experience navigating multiple cultural landscapes. Kandy holds a BFA in Painting and a BS in Marketing/Management from the University of South Florida and earned her MFA in Painting from Florida Atlantic University. Her background in both fine arts and business informs her meticulous material investigations and strategic engagement with art institutions. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and Arts at Nova Southeastern University, where she integrates critical theory with hands-on material practice.
Lisette Nieves: Welcome to The Junction. This is Lisette Nieves. I'm so excited to have a wonderful guest today, and we have Kandy G. Lopez. And let me tell you just a little bit about her. Kandy Lopez is a multidisciplinary portrait artist. She explores cultural identity, representation, and power through fiber, painting, glass, and mixed media. Born to Dominican parents, she draws from her experience navigating multicultural landscapes, has a BFA in painting and BS in marketing and management. Her background is both fine arts and business. It informs her meticulous material investigations and strategic engagement. I could go on and on. What it is is Kandy's a badass-
Kandy G. Lopez: Aw, thank you.
Nieves: …when it comes to art. And for someone, she's just really inspiring, and I'm super excited to talk to her about how her art process happens, what brought her to this route. And welcome, Kandy.
Lopez: Thank you. That was so sweet, that was a fantastic intro.
Nieves: Oh.
Lopez: Thank you for taking all the time to talk to me.
Nieves: Oh, it's super exciting for me. So, let's just start, I'll warm you up a little bit.
Lopez: Okay.
Nieves: So, what were you doing right before we started this podcast?
Lopez: So, I have my senior exhibition that's happening, and they're all going crazy, so they're coming to look for me. And I'm in my studio. So, this is my studio session time, so I'm in there making work at the moment.
Nieves: In your studio, are you alone working or... Let's go right into that, in that process. Are you-
Lopez: Yes. So, I am on campus, so my studio's at Nova Southeastern University, they provide a studio space for me. Right now, I'm in the framing shop, which is a nice box that's attached to the wood shop. So, if I need any tools, it's right there, which is extremely convenient. And they have lots of tables that move on wheels, so if I need to wheel things around, specifically my molds for my frames, it's easy. It's just set up nicely.
And I'm in there by myself, unless there's students that pop in. Right now, they're also putting a theater show together, so there's the theater crew that are assembling a set. He's making a whole apartment downstairs. But I'm blasting music, so I don't hear any of that anyway.
Nieves: Kandy, when I put this podcast together, I thought about what were pivot points or juncture points in people's lives that put them in a direction that I call the exclamation points in their lives. And I think about art and creativity and artists having exclamation points in a lot of our lives. And so, when I was introduced to you, it was an exclamation point, and that was done through Dr. Noel Anderson, who introduced me to you, and he said, "I want you to know about this woman artist," and when I saw your work, I knew I had to know you.
Lopez: Aww.
Nieves: I took tons of people to the gallery to see your work, and I just have to tell you that it is inspiring, it moves me on a deep personal level, and I also feel it's a recognition of... Well, how can I say it? A lot of the underrepresented, ignored pieces of it, for me as a Puerto Rican woman. So, thank you. So, I just want to say that.
Lopez: Thank you. So sweet.
Nieves: So, Kandy, I would love to hear from you, right? When did you know you were an artist? When did that happen?
Lopez: I would say middle school. So, I was born in Jersey, from Dominican parents. I came down to Hialeah, Florida when I was eight or nine. I made a friend with a Puerto Rican Dominican girl who loved to dance, and our teachers told us about a Magnet program for elementary school, specifically dance. So, I wanted to be with my friend, so we did the dance program, and then ballet was introduced, and my body isn't set up for that. So, I needed to pick another arts form, and it wasn't dance, and music, I was tired of playing the recorder because it's the instrument that you're focused on in music, especially in elementary school, and it wasn't theater because you could read my face.
So, literally the last resort was art. And I got into the program after I auditioned, not knowing how to draw. I think that by the seventh grade, the ways that our teachers taught us how to see really pushed me to the curiosity of, oh, I'm getting better at this thing, how much better can I be? So, I would say by seventh, eighth grade, I felt like this was a challenge that I am into.
Nieves: Yeah, I get that. And I love it because there's this notion, sometimes we romanticize artists that, oh, they were born with it, and that's it.
Lopez: No.
Nieves: You came out of the room with that. That's not your story.
Lopez: Definitely not.
Nieves: That's not your story. It's one where it was cultivated and encouraged, right?
Lopez: Mm-hmm.
Nieves: And I remember hearing that you wanted to be a dancer at first, is that correct?
Lopez: Yeah. I went into it in dance, but my body wasn't for it. I'm very curvy, and I'm short, and thick, and the idea of that doesn't still fit in what you would consider a prima ballerina.
Nieves: I'm sure we're going to challenge those notions soon too, but your art actually looks at that, right? You look at art, and who you decide to do portraits of, and how you use materials, walk us through that because that's the piece that's so powerful.
Lopez: It's usually family members or friends of friends. It's easier to tell those kinds of stories, but sometimes it's people that come into exhibition spaces, that have on the swaggiest outfit, or they take the air out of the room, which is usually the person in the swaggiest outfit.
Nieves: Yes.
Lopez: Sometimes it's just walking down the street after dinner or something. There's just certain people that stop me in my tracks visually. And it's not like a sexual thing, it's more of an attraction to energy that I find really interesting. So, then I have to build up the courage to be like, "Oh, I'm Kandy, I'm an artist, are you interested in being one of my pieces?" And then I show them some examples of my work, and if they're interested, then they give me their information, and then we start building a relationship there.
Nieves: Do people ever say no?
Lopez: Yeah, people have said no, or they'll say, "Oh yeah, I'm interested," and they give me their information, but then when I reach out, they don't respond. But yeah, it's happened.
Nieves: Yeah. Well, I think that's going to happen less and less.
Lopez: I don't know.
Nieves: I think so, I get that sense. And so, you do these large-scale fiber paintings, right? And beautiful portraiture, right? Tell me about that process.
Lopez: So, I'm a portrait painter is what I consider myself, I'm just painting with different mediums. So, sometimes I'm painting with ink for printmaking, sometimes I am painting my watercolors and cutting them out and then they turn into collages. Even within the fiber work, I feel like I'm still painting because it's the way that my brain understands color, shape, form, and texture, and also transparency. So, one day a piece of string fell on one of my collages, and I liked the three-dimensionality of that. And also the connection to my grandmother was a seamstress in Dominican Republic, so there's a generational connection there. And also the strands together are more powerful than the strands by themselves. So, there's this idea of power through the physical thread, and the history of who had the ability to have leisure time to create work that's supposed to wrap you and make you feel warm.
So, there's a lot of those things that happen while I'm choosing my material because it's as important as the messaging. So, usually I start with a picture of the person, and then I print it out, and I figure out the proportions, and then I draw it on this backing called hook rug mesh, which is like the backing of a rug.
Lopez: So, initially they were supposed to be on the floor when I created black and white versions of black and brown bodies, it was more of a political social statement. So, people in the gallery had to literally step on this rug of this person, who was slowly fading away because of the footprints. And then, eventually, when I incorporated color in 2021 is when I was like, oh, these things are different. They're powerful, they feel like paintings, but they're not paintings. And I love the reaction to the, when people go up and they see that, oh no, this is yarn, this is not even paint. Their initial thought, which is how people view others as well in this country. So, there's a lot.
Nieves: Yeah. Oh no, there's so many levels... I kind of say, walking into a gallery and seeing your work, it's very meta, right? So, there's this one level, you see it from afar, and you go, ‘wow, that's beautiful,’ and then you get up close, and then you're like, whoa, first of all, how you're able to get color, right?
Lopez: Yeah.
Nieves: And the nuances of color is extraordinary.
Lopez: Thank you.
Nieves: And so, I love that, when you see that up close. So, there is this piece of AfroLatinidad that's very much a part of your work. Talk a little bit about that.
Lopez: So, when I was younger, we did a lot of self-portraits, that is the simplest way of getting to understand the anatomy of a person. You are your own model, you know what you look like, you know if the drawing doesn't look like you, which is why they give us so many assignments of self-portraiture, but it's also to get to know the inner demons that you have of what you think you look like, that you have to deal with.
So, when I converted into using thread within the work, I haven't done a self-portrait. Even though these are each individually a portrait of me, it's not me, like my rendering. When I wanted to depict myself, I know that I wanted it to be based off identity. So, the first one that I did, I knew that I wanted to use Frida Kahlo, just because she is also other and female, and was a powerful force on her own, even through all of the things that she went through in her life.
So, I knew I wanted to use an image of hers. So, I used “Las Dos Fridas,” where she has the two different views and identity of herself holding onto each other. So, I knew that I wanted to have the "American" version of me and my cultural background, and being Dominican and what that means and not really fitting into Las Americas and America. So, that was the first time that I used that dress. I was also reading a lot about the history of the island, so Haiti and Dominican Republic, and the revolutions and the colorism and the classes.
Lopez: Right? So, I wanted to make a statement of like, I'm still developing that side. So, if you look at that piece, you'll notice that the dress is slowly falling down like drips of paint, where it's not complete, and the hair is also not done because I'm still working through that part of my identity. But I also wanted to talk about colorism within that island too, and just in general, because it's not just there, it's throughout the world. And I started an Espanola series. So, there's five of them, and with each one of them, it's a different stance, or a difference in color, or a difference in completion. So, there's some where they're not complete on purpose, again, because I want the viewers to question why, and also because we're still dealing with the history, right? Things change all the time.
Nieves: They do, they do change all the time, and yet this question or the part of our history of assault on our bodies, on our color, on our political voice, it's all represented in your work, right?
Lopez: Right.
Nieves: And that I... When you talked about how you started out with the black and white pieces, where it would disappear as it was walked over on the ground, right?
Lopez: Yeah.
Nieves: And then moved to... And yeah, I feel that, making us much more visible, and placing us on the wall in color, right?
Lopez: Mm-hmm.
Nieves: This was, que rebelde, right?
Lopez: Yeah.
Nieves: This was a bit of a rebellion, right? And doing that, which is what I love, and then you... I always joke that I get to have a little piece of Kandy Lopez, and the one about your cousin, Luis.
Lopez: Yes.
Nieves: And tell me a little bit about your cousin, and why you started doing some of the smaller pieces-
Lopez: That's funny.
Nieves: ... and why you might be going back to that.
Lopez: So, I do a lot of my cousins. I think it's... Just like me, it's easy to have a model because they're always willing to be drawn or whatever.
Nieves: They're not going to say no.
Lopez: They're like, okay, Kandy wants to do one of me. So, when I was first doing these swagger watercolor pieces, I started them before I was pregnant, and then while I was pregnant, I reverted back to them because it was the only material that I was using that I can use. I couldn't paint, and I couldn't print make, so I was like, well, I have these watercolors, so I'll just create these little images of people who I think have swagger.
And my cousin from the beginning, Luis, and his sister, Marlene, have been asking me, "When are you going to do me? When are you going to do me? When?" I'm just like, "You guys don't have swagger. When you build that confidence, I will do one."
And then, in 2021, I remember when I started putting color into this, and they took a picture of themselves as a grouping, like a couple, I was like, "Oh my God, they have grown into their swagger." So, then I reached out to him, and Luis was so happy, ecstatic to... And he also takes photographs, which I think is one of the things that I was attracted to within that image that he posted on his Instagram, because he understands light and color and texture and cropping. He has it, and I don't think he knows he has it, and I've been telling him, you need to be pushing out those photographs because they talk about us as a people. Everything you have in that photo feels like us.
Nieves: Absolutely.
Lopez: So, I wanted to commemorate him multiple times, I have more of him, and his sister too.
Nieves: I love it. I love it. Well, clearly your cousin Luis looks like my brother, Jason, because when they saw it at my house, they were like, "Oh, you got Jason on the wall?" I was like, "That's not Jason, that's Luis."
Lopez: There's a lot of those connections, which I like.
Nieves: Yeah. And so, speak to that, about people seeing themselves in your work and why that matters.
Lopez: Oh my God, I love it. So, as an artist, I like just making the work and showing it, I don't need to be there for the opening, I don't need the praise of it, I just like when people go in and they have a connection. That's all I'm looking for. But the artist has to show up. So, when there is an exhibition, and there are different models, they are aware that there's an exhibition. I let them know, ‘Hey, by the way, your piece is in the show, if you want to come, the exhibition opening.’ And then, it becomes about the models instead of me. So, it's also a way for me to be like, I'm out in the cut, and they become the central figure.
They're the ones where people take pictures of them, and they're the ones that tell their story about how they were picked to be a piece. And I love that, because then the models get to know each other, and then you're building a family around that specific thing. And then, friends, they have friends, and family, and there ends up being some kind of connection in that space, which I like.
Nieves: Yeah. And which is, I'd say quite revolutionary in the space because often models don't get to talk to each other, right?
Lopez: Yeah. And it's like, why not?
Nieves: I actually, I was thinking about this question of the juncture and you hinted at that, that for a period of time while you were pregnant, you could only use watercolor, right? So, that to me is powerful, I didn't know that story, which is-
Lopez: That was a very difficult time for me as an artist.
Nieves: Yeah. Very difficult, right? So, how has parenting and that transition changed your art?
Lopez: A lot. I feel like I wouldn't be in fiber if it wasn't for my daughter, because I was so wrapped up in the idea of painting, and not things that felt warm and soft, and how do you make something feel like you can wrap somebody in it? I wasn't even thinking about any of that stuff until I had to, because I couldn't do what it is that I wanted to do.
So, it'll start off with watercolors and turn into collages, and then that turned into thread, and then I went back to painting, and then I couldn't do the things, and I was like, what else can I do besides the watercolor as well? Can I make people out of these little threads, and what would that look like? And she also pushed me to not stay... To not lose my identity as a mom.
I think that that was one of the things that I was really skeptical of, to have a family, because you don't really see... Or the moms aren't out, or there's not that much... I don't know. Promo or research regarding like a mother artist, what does that look like?
Nieves: Right. Or the trope of the mother artist being never had time for the child, only for the art, right?
Lopez: Right.
Nieves: So, there-
Lopez: Because my mom was so present, and not that she didn't have an identity, but I don't know what she would have chosen if we weren't here. I didn't want to have that issue. I still wanted to make, and I know that I'm very militant with the way that I handle scheduling, so that also helps to like, okay, I'm going to wake up at this time, and I'm going to breastfeed during this time, and eat breakfast, and do the things, and then by the time she has a nap, at least I get an hour in, and in that hour, I'm going to watercolor. Or while I'm breastfeeding, I have 15 minutes on one breast, I should be done with this drawing so that I could switch her over and draw with my other hand. It was just part of making the things.
And I didn't want to give up both. But it's always been a struggle, it's still a struggle. Even with help, I don't know how people do it without help. I wouldn't be able to do all of the things I do if it wasn't for, “Kandy, you want me to take care of your kids while you go to New York?” Or, me and my husband going, I don't know, to someplace, an exhibition, while his parents take care of the kids, or, “I have to go to an opening tonight, can you stay with the kids?” It's just like a constant balancing act. And then, bringing the kids to some exhibitions too, because I want them to see their mom in this space of not giving up your dream just because you decided to have a family.
Nieves: Yeah, I love that. And I would say the richness of your work has only increased, right? So, thanks for being so open about talking about parenting, because it's true. My favorite role model, or one of them said to me, she was like, "Lisette, the end of the day it's about integration."
Lopez: Yep.
Nieves: Literally, when you describe that, that's it. It's like, yeah, it's part of that. But it comes out, reflects this depth I think also, a greater depth happened with your work as well too.
Lopez: Thank you.
Nieves: So, I know we're going to have to wrap up pretty soon, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about why... Not why, but what's the next juncture for you? What do you see for yourself next?
Lopez: So, when I get bored with a particular material, I like to challenge myself with another material that'll drive me crazy. So, I've been playing with stained glass since 2023.
Nieves: Oh.
Lopez: And I've gone to residencies to understand all the possibilities that you can do with glass. I haven't gotten all of them, but I've been playing a lot with it. I just received the Gibbs Prize, so an 1858 prize for the Southern artists.
Nieves: Congratulations.
Lopez: Thank you. And that came with a grant. So, I bought a fusing kiln that is now at the university, next to the ceramic shop. So, it's like trying to integrate what I do with yarn as a painting with glass. So, people have told me, "Kandy, it's not possible," and I am like, that's not in my vocabulary. So, trying to figure out a way where I can do those two things together because I just love transparency so much. And I also like the idea of the fragility of the glass, and the fragility of the fiber, but them together makes it stronger. I like that duality of strength versus weaknesses and confrontation versus vulnerability in the eyes, I like the play of those things together.
Nieves: And isn't that what we're struggling with, with humanity, right?
Lopez: Yeah. Definitely.
Nieves: Literally all those pieces. Oh, I'm so excited to see what that looks like, thinking about this notion of transparency, and... Wow. When you think about... It's funny, you say bored, and I've heard you say bored a few times in other podcasts, "I get bored, I'm going to try something new." I just find you more of a restless spirit, I don't find it bored.
Lopez: Yeah. I feel like I'm always trying to find the excitement of the thing. If I know how to do the thing, I don't want to keep doing the same thing. I want to learn how to do something new, and how that changes the messaging. It's like a constant need for education.
Nieves: I love it. Well, this relentless drive, what a way to end this. Talk about a metaphor for life. Shouldn't we all have that, right?
Lopez: Yeah.
Nieves: Shouldn't we all have that? What would you say to young artists as we close out now, what do you want to say to a young artist today?
Lopez: I would tell them to work.
Nieves: Yeah, that's important. Make a wage, right? There we go.
Lopez: There we go. You have to find a job that it can fund what you really want to do, but also work in the studio, find time, at least an hour a day, where you're doing the thing that you really want to do, and not letting a no stop you from your next yes. I think a lot of the times they're really scared of rejection, and I tell people, I tell my students, I still get rejection letters, I still get... Unfortunately, and that's okay because it's not the right time, or I didn't fit that particular group of artists. Maybe it's a gift for the next thing that I'm going to get. It's not seen as something negative, it's seen as a way of pushing forward.
Nieves: I love it. Well, you are truly bendecina, I thank you.
Lopez: Aw, thank you.
Nieves: I thank you for your work, I thank you for what you'll continue to do for us, I thank you for keeping politics and visibility central, and I'm excited about your next step. Thank you, Kandy.
Lopez: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Credits: Thank you for listening!
At The Junction, we reflect on the moments that make us — with today’s most impactful leaders. The show was created and hosted by me, Lisette Nieves, and produced by LWC Studios.
This show is available everywhere you listen to podcasts, and on YouTube. I encourage you to share video and audio episodes by linking to them on social media, websites, and by sharing them in your online affinity groups. Our executive editor is Juleyka Lantigua. Michelle Baker is our senior producer. Alyson Rich and Cesar Ventura provided administrative support. CDM Studios is our live recording location. Our theme song is “La Juntura Cultural,” arranged by Randy Seriguchi, Jr. and D'Artanian Woodard, produced by Randy Seriguchi, Jr., and recorded by Farmacy Studio.
For more information and episode transcripts, visit Lisette-Nieves.com. If you’d like to reach out, please email us at Hello@LWCStudios.com.