(upbeat music) Ana: People that don't know about my art, then they ask me, say, "Oh, you're an artist?"

and it's difficult.

I try to keep it concise.

First I say, well, I paint and I know people can relate to that.

And then I say, I love flowers so I paint a lot of flowers and I love words and I write some poetry.

I also do installation work.

And there, they go a little bit, "Oh."

And then I say, well, for installation work, I work with different groups of women and one group is a group of cloistered nuns in Argentina, and there I get all of their attention, and that they embroider pieces for me.

And then I work with, also, a group of women in the Andes and I use their wares.

And then they are like, "Is this art?

"What are you talking about?"

I use these pieces to make these big constructions in spaces and I love spaces, and I love to transform them with all these objects and I make some kind of sculptures with them.

But I try to stay away of the word sculpture because then people think stone or people think metal, and what I do is so far away from that.

I first saw her work at the Robischon Gallery a number of years ago.

And I was taken by the kind of dynamic between the kind of fragile materials and the very... It felt like her work had a lot to say.

It was like deceptive.

She, in many ways, is this kind of like post-modern artist where there is no sense of being a painter or being a sculptor or being a multi-media artist, she's everything.

Those are all a piece of her holistic practice.

I think that my experience of the work was first just visual, walking into the room and just kind of, oh, just delight at the colors and the shape and the forms.

And then I think I probably wandered over to read more about it, and that's when I found out that they were actually made by somebody other than the artists, that she'd obtained the petticoats from women that she'd met in Peru and I think that's one of the really, really powerful things about Ana's work is that there's all these layers.

There's no boundary between her and her work.

It almost seems like she's constantly losing herself in the objects and paintings that she creates.

It's recognizing the value and the worth of sort of traditional, feminine crafts and holding that up and saying this is important, you know, this is valuable.

She has that kind of far reaching idea of how to talk about this one community.

You do it by featuring them, but you also do it by honoring the traditions that they were a part of.

She is a feminist, but not in the way that we understand feminism in the United States.

This feminism of Ana Maria is grounded in very old traditions.

She sees this feminism as a quiet, powerful, psychic sense of self.

She's a highly spiritual person.

She feels everyone around her, she's so compassionate.

Her motivation, the intent of her work is a rare combination of things.

Not only is she adventurous in her use of materials, but also in this real mission about love and joy.

(hammer tapping) Ana: My family has been a family of a lot of women.

Grew up in Buenos Aires, my parents were also born in Buenos Aries, but my four grandparents were immigrants from Spain.

And they began their life like many Spaniards did, so I have a lot of that background in me and it shows in my art.

My grandparents on my mother's side began a textile company.

In the summers I could go, when I was a teenager, work there and sew and... You know, I realized it's such an obvious thing, but I realized not too long ago, what an influence that has had in my life.

The cold textile, the cold fabric, the sewing.

A lot of women were working there.

I was always very impressed by these women.

Women, also, all of my grandparents coming from Spain when they were very young, 13, 15, early 20s, and I always felt how courageous that was.

When I was 12, I went with my maternal grandparents to Spain for two or three months.

And in the afternoon, my grandmother's sisters would come to the house.

Everybody would be talking and gossiping and you know, these women would always be doing things, it wouldn't be just talking, but the making of things was important.

This coming together of women, I have always been touched by that.

Then after that, would look for that.

There is this melting of the ego and all the voices come in like one song and that's what comes forward, and that is something I want in my work.

So I came back yesterday so I'm still really fresh and I smell like Peru and the bag smells like Peru.

And always when I go through customs, so I come, everything is fine, but the moment I'm approaching customs, I'm always a little nervous and trying to think what I'll say.

When they see me with these big bags they ask me all these questions, so.

When we are there, we stay in a house called La Casa no Domesticada.

that means the Undomesticated House.

And in the mornings, the women come to the courtyard and they do their market, and I would buy one petticoat from each of them.

So this is the first time I look at them since there.

Yeah, so.

The first time I went to Peru in 2005, the community came to dance.

They shared their dances, and the women, they have colorful tops and colorful hats and all these beads like this.

And then their skirts are usually black with an edge of color, but peaking from below, there were all of these scalloped, bright colors.

And I remember, I'm seeing them dancing and I'm thinking wow, I wonder what are those?

These are very private women so I wasn't sure how to address this.

And once I saw a petticoat, I loved it.

And the significance is, it's a woman's clothes, they make it.

Like this is a very well worn one.

And I like, also, when they have all the mending and I leave that.

They are made out of acrylic wool.

They crochet by hand.

And you see them going up and down the mountain and they have the child on back, little children here and they are carrying things, and they are crocheting or they are spinning or you know, these are really multitaskers.

They petticoat is, for me, the image of being a woman in the Andes.

Maruca: Museo's mission is to preserve and share the Latino art and culture of the Americas.

They have coming an exhibition and it's called Las Artist.

The purpose for this exhibit is to provide a space for five Latinas to create work around the concept of the magic of being a woman.

All of the women in this exhibit are creating their own installations that have never been shown before.

Ana: I think all artists are always trying to find a new territory.

It might be in the composition, it might be the materials.

You know, there's always this newness that keeps you alive, and I think keeps the work alive.

You know, as artists, we are translators.

And we translate a combination of feelings and emotions and ideas and so much in one object.

In Peru, the people relate to the spirits of the river and the wind and the moon, and mountains are a very important spirit.

And mountains have the feminine spirit and masculine spirit.

So the feminine spirit of the mountain is called the ñusta and it's very related to the Mother Earth.

It's the highest expression of Mother Earth.

So I began to do the ñustas because I want to know more about them and I began to make these dresses for the ñustas to dress them with the skirts of the women of Peru.

So for this project, first, I had the idea I was going to make a red ñusta and I had this idea.

And then I was in Peru by this lagoon called the White Pool Lagoon and I'm standing there looking, and I see this, it's the lagoon, and then behind there's this beautiful short mountain.

The Andes are so majestic and this was a very simple, way shorter mountain, and I decided then that was going to be the ñusta I was going to work with.

(gentle singing) So once I have the idea and the idea comes to me more like a visual image, my whole process is to walk towards that image.

So then I had the meetings with the Museo, with Maruca and then I look at what fabrics I have here already, what pieces and what fabric I needed to complete this part.

Each time I go to Buenos Aires, where I grew up, I go to this store in the heart of Buenos Aires where they have amazing fabrics.

Marcello helps me choosing the fabrics, he brings different kinds out, and I choose fabric as if I'm choosing paint.

After that, I make the patterns.

In the patterns, I put very specific instructions like what kind of thread to use, combinations of fabrics, all of that is very specific.

And I put it together in a box and I send it back to Buenos Aires.

My family, they contact the nuns.

They are the Carmelitas Descalzos from a monastery called The Santa Teresa de Jesus.

These are cloistered nuns, so they don't come out.

This is their choice in life.

Their vocation is to pray.

My niece, she lives by this window and they pick it up and they begin to work, and months after, I get my pieces back.

My niece picks them up and they come to me by mail and I'm ready to open my package.

I don't know how they are going to look and I'm very, super excited, and I combine it with pieces I had from before and that's when I begin the design of the piece that, in this case, will go on the wall.

(hammer tapping) Yesterday, I began doing the pattern on the wall and I loved what happened.

I had an idea, and this always happens, I make different sketches with pencil, and then when I come to the wall, the fabric begins to do it's own thing and it did, it changed the pattern in ways that feels, to me, fresh.

I'm excited about it and also I added to the colors.

I'm very happy with what's happening.

Patterns are very calming to me.

The repetition is very calming.

A pattern has always been a little bit discarded as high art and the whole craft conversation.

So I went into it full-body, because I am interested in that part of art and people's lives that has been rendered invisible.

(sweet piano music) Jennifer: Ana Maria's work is a lot about what's in between.

We can call it unseen and familiar and unfamiliar, but I think it's that in between-ness and the potentiality of the territory that's in between worlds, in between cultures, in between male and female, in between generations, and nature and humanity.

That is really the promise, and there's a great deal of trust that she conveys in her work.

So she's magical.

It is about the unknown, but she trusts the unknown.

Nora: Ana Maria is singular in so many ways.

She's so deeply thoughtful about everything that she's involved in.

She doesn't do anything casually or half heartedly.

She really gives everything her all.

She seems to be very in touch with who she is which makes you want to be really in touch with yourself.

It's inspiring, I think.

(smooth guitar music) Sandra: Ana Maria's use of poetry and language is beautiful.

She often uses bilingual titles to refer to her work.

So A River of White Songs is a gorgeous title, but also it is so evocative.

It's another way for people to enter the work.

Nora: There is, deliberate or not, a kind of back and forth between what she writes and how she writes and how decides what she's gonna write, and what she makes.

And I think that fluidity between the two is a real strength.

Ana: I always loved poetry.

I think it's the part of language that has so much space, that opens new doors.

I went to Peru in 2005.

Americo is a poet and then Kenneth Robinson, I met him there and he's a poet.

And I was the translator in that group so I was going from one language to the other constantly.

And I was translating all of these poets and one day when I was there in this beautiful garden that has eagles and hummingbirds that are big like this and flowers, I'm sitting there and I began to write poetry.

And I was surprised, I didn't know that it was something I could do or that I wanted to do, but it was like finding a room in my home that had always been there and I didn't have the key for it.

(upbeat Spanish guitars) I love the part when I'm making the thing and suddenly, I discover something that it was outside my initial idea.

I love the freedom of just working with all different kinds of materials.

And I love, at the end, when it's done.

And all of these different pieces, they come together and hopefully they work.

But they're working... The coming together is more than the individual piece and they talk to each other and they help each other and they make each other better.

Kind of like the circles of women I'm attracted to, together we make a better thing.

It's exhilarating.

It's also scary.

Each step, I don't know if the translation from the idea to the object will happen.

Sometimes I think, oh my god, this is great.

And then when I put it together it's like, oh, forget it, no.

(laughing) What was I thinking?

I just love the process of it.

It feels very alive, yeah.

(soothing guitar music) It's a good omen.

My hope with this pieces is that, I hope people can feel embraced.

I hope that it opens questions for people, questions about their way of living and other people's ways of being in the world.

Mostly, I want it to be very exuberant and full and abundant.

I want people to fall in love when they see this piece.

I want people to remember that we can be in love with ourselves, with each other, with the possibility of how the world can be.

(gentle guitar music)