Dana Caldera is a mixed-media visual artist. Her pieces combine found collage material, handmade paper, textiles, painting, and drawing into intricately layered compositions.
Caldera has had recent group shows at Flatland Gallery (Houston) and Site:Brooklyn Gallery (Online) with an upcoming solo show at Box13 Art Space (Houston). She is a recipient of grants from the Wendy Wagner Foundation and the City of Houston. 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.
Contact Caldera directly if you would like to arrange for a studio visit, request a commission, or inquire about her work. You can also follow along with her process and thoughts on Instagram or read her newsletter, An Artist Writing.
Each work is a study of sentimentality and materiality.
I create contemporary combinations made with found paper, found fabric, and handmade paper. Each work 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.
As I work, I layer and combine the found fibers into a new object. The resulting piece is a physical stretching and remaking of the found material, which gives new energy to the discarded records of a life lived. Water, time, value, domestic labor, craft, memory keeping, and community are additional themes that run through the work.