E. VINCENT MARTINEZ
E. Vincent Martinez is a Cuban-born, Atlanta-based mixed-media artist and filmmaker. He has a BFA from Barry University in Miami, where he grew up, and studied ceramics and photography. After college, he spent two years on a core student fellowship at the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina studying weaving, textiles, book-making, and photography with a focus on in-camera multiple exposures. He continued to explore photography and earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). In 2001 he completed the Masters in Art Education (MaEd) program at Georgia State University and gained his teaching certification in art for grades k-12. The following year he took a teaching position at Grady High School where he started the fashion design program, the only one of its kind in the state. After 10 years at the high school level, Martinez moved on to teach at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He now serves on the Board of Trustees at Penland School of Craft.
Martinez is the creative force and founder behind the brands, fashionado.net, a fashion and lifestyle website and Doggies on the Catwalk, DOTC Foundation - a nonprofit organization with a dual mission - it supports both pet-based causes and art education via the S.E.A.M. Fund.
Through Fashionado, Martinez runs EVM Films, a video production house which produces the popular FashionadoTV channel. He’s currently in post-production of his documentary film, BRINGLE: A Tale of Two Makers. During the pandemic, as educational institutions nationwide adopted online learning, Martinez served as the anchor of AiLive, the system-wide digital TV platform for The Art Institutes.
With 40 years of experiences in life and art, Martinez draws on his personal triumphs and challenges as the inspiration for his abstract-expressionist paintings. His use of photo collage, scribblings, drawings through multiple layers of paint, paired with other materials and objects such as gold dust, sequins and costume jewelry, create visually compelling works that are loaded with symbolism and hidden meanings. While his work is self-referential, Martinez purposely leaves room for interpretation allowing the viewer to make their own personal connections or conclusions.
A RETROSPECTIVE
Acrylic on canvas with hand-placed sequins i
nspired by Bauhaus textile weaver, Gunta Stolz. 30x48x3.5
EXHIBITION GSU ATLANTA: 2001
1994|Recovering Popular Culture Artist Talk Back: Visual conversations with El Museo
Recovering popular culture, the second segment of El Museo’s 25th anniversary exhibition, Artist Talk Back: visual conversations with El Museo, explores traditional and popular arts as carriers of meaning from the past to the present. This portion of the second exhibition embraces the theme of dialogue. El Museo invited 18 contemporary Artist to choose a work from its permanent collection to establish a dialogue between it and a work of their own.
“E. Vincent Martinez challenges traditional concepts of masculinity in his work, Guayabera, a statement about machismo. Martinez transforms the shirt by decorating it with sequins, spangles and feathers to “camouflage and distort the masculine power that it exudes.”He expands on this concept of metamorphosis by choosing a Mexican mask depicting the body of a woman with butterfly wings. Martinez utilizes his work to inherited, cultural ideas and icons. His work proposes the realization that cultural traditions need not to be static and rigid but rather a vehicle for change and transformation.” Susana Torruella Leval, Curator, El Museo
1993 | Quinceañera, Art Installation, Center at High Falls Exhibit, Rochester, New York
“In a corner of the gallery, flanked by decorated columns with fake lilies, is a 3 foot high sculptural cake by E Vincent Martinez, in honor of the extravagant celebrations associated with a Hispanic girls 15th birthday. Quinceañera is nestled on a platform base that is decorated like a huge, finally wrapped present; the cake itself contains several tears. On the top of the cake is a red heart in which stands a prettily dressed female figurine. With its bright decorations and lacy frills, the sculpture is equal parts loving tribute and gaudy overstatement. The piece, the most successful of the show, works well as a reflection on an overbearing tradition that retains its capacity to evoke strong emotions.”
Review by John Worden, HIGH FALLS EXHIBIT, Democrat and Chronicle, October 6, 1993 Rochester, New York
1993 |The 52nd Annual Finger Lakes Exhibition, Memorial Arts Gallery Rochester, New York
”Cuban Chest” | 48 x 75
“Some of the show’s most compelling works are those that question our own nature’s. E. Vincent Martinez of Rochester combined fake fur, spray paint, and color photograph to make a large flag whose “star” is a photograph of his headless torso. The image waivers beautifully between the tyranny of hubris and the democracy of anonymity, where everything is equal and thus the same.”
Review by John Worden, Democrat and Chronicle, May 1993, Rochester, New York