Bio

Dana Caldera is an artist based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, whose pieces combine found collage material, handmade paper, textiles, painting, and printmaking. She earned her MFA at Houston Christian University and BS in Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, an interdisciplinary foundation that informs her process driven art-making. 

Caldera has had recent group shows at Artlink (Fort Wayne), Flatland Gallery (Houston), Weingarten Art Group (Houston), and a solo show at Box13 Art Space (Houston). She is a recipient of grants from the Wendy Wagner Foundation, the City of Houston, and the Indiana Arts Commission. Residencies include Atelierhaus Hilmsen and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s CAMHLAB. Her work has been published in Photo Trouvée Magazine and books: Collage Care: Transforming Emotions and Life Experiences with Collage and Echoes of Yesterday. Her artwork can be found in public and corporate collections including Sweetgreen and The Doug and Laurie Kanyer Art Collection.

Through her art, Caldera embraces the slow and unpredictable process of working with water and time, blending eerie beauty with layered stories of the shared human experience. Her practice offers a unique multidisciplinary approach to combining materials to create a new object, baring the layers of the past into a contemporary form.

Artist Statement

I collect, I unmake, then I make.

My family was in the memory business, as many families are, cherishing our every-year traditions and rituals. I came from a family of carers. A seamstress is a carer. A cook is a carer. I was a collector, an observer. I gathered the memories, the recipes, the quilt blocks of my life and took them with me as I grew up, stacking them and layering them, even deconstructing them, as I formed. Now I find myself as the one to give care and make memories, life moves in this repetitive way.

In my practice, I collect ephemera and physically deconstruct and remake it into a new object. Each combination is a study of sentimentality and materiality. Sentimentally, I’m drawn to the stories in the found objects. Materially, I consider how both fabric and paper are fibers. These found fiber objects seem linked in the way that they record our lives, how they are impermanent, and in their physical properties. 

Referencing the visual inspiration of an oft-repainted wall, quilting patterns, dish towels, correspondence, vessels, and other objects of the domestic realm, my work investigates the storied layers of a life deeply-lived. Water, time, value, domestic labor, craft, memory keeping, storytelling, and community are additional themes that run through the work.