Leticia Bajuyo

Leticia Bajuyo will create an interactive sculpture for the New Albany Bicentennial Public Art Project. The history of taverns and breweries in New Albany dates back to 1830 with stories of homespun attitudes and community support. In recognition of this, the primary material of the sculpture will be locally collected used beer bottles. Influenced by the Lite-Brite toy, these bottles will serve as pegs on the front wall of the sculpture. Unlike a Lite-Brite, these pegs do not move. Here, images of New Albany’s brewery logos, projected from the inside the sculpture, will change through viewer participation. Furthermore, the sides of the sculpture will be constructed of bottles between plexi-glass walls. Sitting on shelves, these rows of bottles reference both the song “99 Bottles of Beer” and Tom Marioni’s social sculpture from 1970 titled The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art.

Leticia creates, lives, and teaches in Hanover, Indiana where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Hanover College. After earning an MFA in 2001 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a BFA in 1998 from the University of Notre Dame, she came to Hanover College to join the Art and Art History Department.

Growing up and living in the Midwest, specifically in areas that often feel in-between places of interest, Bajuyo’s aesthetic was influenced by the landscape and the pace of rural communities. Additionally, growing up in a biracial, bicultural, and bilingual household helped generate her interest in blending dissimilar materials. Furthermore, Bajuyo thrives on learning or inventing new ways to make. Her approach to technique has a do-it-yourself, problem-solving attitude that is guided by concept and yields combinations such as 6,000 donated CD’s and salvaged doors or Styrofoam peanuts and Happy Meals.

Recent solo exhibitions include pre-fab(ulous) environments at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, divertissement at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington, and forces of nature: hurricanes and slinkys at Vanderbilt University’s Space 204 in Nashville, Tennessee. Recent group exhibitions include New Values, The Cressman Center in Louisville, Kentucky and 3x3 at Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Previous work samples

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