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Steven Nuno Nunez

NunoNunez
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Steven Nuno Nunez | Media List


Statement

Steven Nuno Nunez
El Ardor de Santa Cecilia, 2009
Woodblock Steamroller Print 50" x 103"

"On my recent visit home (one that had been long overdue) my father took me for a drive around the neighborhood I grew up in. We stopped at Aunt Stella's and had a snow cone. It seemed all the same families lived on our old block. Plaques made by a local artisan displayed the names of the families who still lived there: Alcaraz, Perez, Martinez, etc. Not much had changed in the neighborhood. There were no new stores, no new homes, just the same old Laundromats and panaderias. The poverty that infected those streets seemed to pause time, preserving the innocence of the genuine and hardworking people who lived there. This made the absence starker; as we drove along Davis I realized that Santa Cecilia, the local Catholic Church, was gone.

This was the first church we ever attended as a family. I won my first pet-a goldfish-at a carnival in the parking lot. When I started school, I instantly had many friends from the kids I had met in the cafeteria after Sunday Mass. The Catholic Church is at the center of any Hispanic community, but on August 17th, 2007 the sanctuary of Santa Cecilia burned down. The adjacent Catholic school has since absorbed Masses. The community there is as strong as it ever has been in the 75 years since the church was built, but the edifice that represented so much to me is gone. I carved this block to honor the memories that burned with the church, to champion a community that perseveres despite hardships, and to pay tribute to her namesake, Santa Cecilia, the Patron Saint of Musicians, who never let go of her faith."