Today, we’re going In the Studio with artist Aynex Mercado. Mercado’s artwork will be on display in the Chesapeake Arts Center’s Voices of Hispanic & Latinx Artists gallery exhibit, September 7 - October 17.

Aynex was born in 1978 in Puerto Rico and now lives in USA. She came to the US in 1996 to go to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 1997 had a car accident and suffered a spinal cord injury. Before the accident, Aynex was right-handed and after the accident, she couldn't control her right hand very well so she learned to be left-handed. Some people say that that left-handed people are more artistic. Aynex was creative before the accident but now she is very interested in art. She has been self-taught in her art and works intuitively.

Aynex moved to Frederick, MD in 2008 to start a new stage in her life and re-invented herself. Went back to school obtained a degree in Digital Design. Now she is a web designer and developer at the National Institutes of Health.

She is a true believer that everything happens for a reason. At the moment we might not understand why something is happening to us but with time we see that without that event in our life, we would have missed out on something better or we would not had learn something important. Aynex is young but she sees a long chain of events that led her to where she is today. Even though many people would think that she has had many troubles in her life and she cannot be happy, she has never been happier than right now.

What’s in a name; how do you title your artworks?

Naming artwork is one of the hardest things about creating art. That’s why you see so many “Untitled” or “Composition #234”. Sometimes you get lucky and the title just comes to you and it is obvious like it happened to me with “Uniting States of America”. “Chillin’ June” is part of a new series I’m starting now and knowing how hard it is to name artwork, I have made it like a game. All of the quilts are going to have a female figure. Her name is June. I’m going in alphabetical order giving them an adjective that describes them. The first one was Awakening June, then Bygone June and so on... Then I’ll know exactly how many I have made and have a clear place to stop. Unless I get tired of them and want to do something else before getting to “Z”.

How has your art/style evolved over time?

I think like any artist, when you start you want to try everything and have so many ideas. It was a real struggle to focus on one thing. I knew that to advance in the artwork and getting more serious attention, I had to concentrate and develop one style and subject. I forced myself to do it and not get distracted with other styles and it has paid off. My quilts used to be more traditional. What you typically think of when you think of a quilt. Now they are more original and artistic. Also as my sewing skills have improved, I know that there isn’t a design I think of that I can’t sew so it has given me more freedom to just go for it!

What artist(s), past or present, have influenced your work the most?

The quilter Ruth McDowell was one of my big influences. Her quilts were one of the first quilts I saw that straddle that line between realism and abstraction and that is where I always try to take my work. I also love her use of fabrics. Looking at her quilts from a distance everything looks like it is meant to be there but once you get up close you can see the strangest and ugliest fabrics that you would never think of using but they work. I will always remember one day visiting the New England Quilt Museum and turning into a room and my heart skipped a beat when I saw her Waterlilies quilt. It was hung in the middle of the room so you could see the front and the back. Both sides where a work of art.

How long have you been creating art? How did you begin?

I started quilting in 1998. I had a serious car accident and suffered a spinal cord injury. I learned to quilt from a book and it was my therapy. After a spinal cord injury your body shuts down and you have to learn to do everything again. I was in a wheelchair for a long time and there were many things I couldn’t do after my accident but I could take some scraps of fabric and make something beautiful and useful.

Do your works comment on contemporary social or political issues; how?

Not usually but sometimes there are things that I just need to get off my chest and they come out in a quilt. That is what happened when I made “Uniting States of America”. I made that quilt after the 2020 election. There was so much fighting in the country and I wanted it to stop. I didn’t know how or what to do so I made a quilt about it. The quilt is meant to look like an old quilt made during the Civil War because that is how it feels right now. Each of the quilt blocks represent a battleground state. The map of the US has embroidered the divisions between red and blue states and some faint hands are sewing them together so they don’t break apart. Just like the quilt is falling apart, I feel like this country is falling apart. I wish I knew what we could do to keep it together.