Conversations between objects elevate a space with a special sense of place
Beyond the canvas
My installations are like conversations between objects that I make in the studio and interventions to the exhibition space executed in that same media.
A painting installation typically contains paintings set in a space with related elements painted directly on the walls, floor and other exhibition areas. Painted sculptures extend elements in the paintings to the 3-D space, accenting the exhibition space while inviting the viewer into a dialogue with objects.
Immersive experience
I design these interventions to extend the works beyond the container of their substrate into real space so viewers can literally walk into a painting, drawing or collage.
Being immersed in this conversation creates a unique, destination experience for my work while also psychically injecting the space with the kind of meaning that elevates any given space with a special sense of place.
HOW TO BUILD A FOGHORN
Paintings and sculptural installation serve as a new lens for the viewer to see and navigate the layered sociopolitical narratives of our built environments. Parra draws attention to the dangers of blindly accepting a manufactured environment produced by the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and consumerism.
Make Space: A Rug Really Ties the Room Together
Site specific installation utilizing the language of painting to create an immersive environment similar to the interiors depicted within the paintings that were part of the installation. Created with acrylic paint, paper, upcycled shipping pallets, tape combined with acrylic and spray paint painting created in the studio.
Capturing the Void
Combining framed collage works with collage-based installation Capturing the Void was an experimental visual art exhibition and installation.
Watch Capturing the Void come to life
Parra’s prevailing motif, utilizes visually appealing images and styles from the world of bygone American advertising to create a thought experiment, opening up vital space for critical reflection of self through this immersive and productive environment.
Sculptors who influence my installation practice
Richard Serra
Alexander Calder
Heightening of vitality
Cleas Oldenberg
Everyday objects
High Rise
Sharing experiences of a built environment colored by personal, political and practical realities that often feel simultaneously antagonistic and comforting.
An immersive, painting-based and site responsive installation based on the JG Ballard novel of the same name.
This: A Contemporary Situation
A large, room sized painting of an “image” that contained a stadium in an urban landscape and that landscape viewed from within a modern apartment. Viewers could literally and figuratively enter into this immersive image in numerous ways. Central to the installation was the stadium, created out of ‘up-cycled’ shipping pallets, cardboard, paper, masking tape and acrylic paint surrounded by mural scale painting that wrapped around the entire gallery. Throughout the duration of the exhibition visitors were encouraged to construct effigies of themselves, or “selfies” out of recycled paper, tape, wire and acrylic paint and to add them to the stadium in order to help populate the stadium.
Tony Smith is a favorite American sculptor, visual artist and architectural designer. From his architecture influenced by his apprenticeship to Frank Lloyd Wright to his teaching at leading institutions in New York to his minimalist sculpture, all inspire my artistic practice.
I admire his mid-century modern architecture that blends into its natural environment. I love his use of simple geometrical modules combined on a three-dimensional grid. My 3-D sculptures are a nod to a master of drama through simplicity and scale.
Like to visit an artist’s studio? Come on in.
Completion Signals
“Work from big to small”
Studio distraction or inspiration?
Measure of progress