Gallery Reserve
For Viewing Only
About Dexta Jean Rodriguez
Dexta Jean Rodriguez (Jeannie) moved from Puerto Rico to Arkansas in 1964, when she was 3 years old. She was raised in Little Rock Catholic Schools and graduated from Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock. She attended several colleges and received her BFA at ATU followed by a MLA (Master in Liberal Arts), and is now a doctoral candidate in Leadership at UCA. She is studying the nexus of public art and cultural institutions to build resilience in communities. She is also a college professor and has taught art history as well as leadership classes. Jeannie is Puerto Rican and a descendant of the Taino–the indigenous people of the Caribbean. She utilizes various art forms to generate discussions about our modern struggles to relate to each other and to the land.
I was three years old when my family moved to Little Rock in 1964, so I have lived in Arkansas a very long time and speak with a southern accent. I did not always consider myself Latina because my annual visits were just two weeks long, and my Spanish was stunted. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t authentic. My words are spilling out of me because when my father forbade my mother to speak my birth language to me, I lost my identity. Nevertheless, I am part of the Puerto Rican diaspora, and I am a descendant of the Taino people. Yo soy Boricua. Years ago, the chairman of Nestlé tried to justify his company’s thievery of water resources across the continent of Africa by declaring access to clean water was not a birthright but a privilege. Who is it that decides we are not worthy to access our own water? Who robs us of that agency? People of color have long been at the bottom of the barrel in this consumer classification hierarchy, and so our natural resources are constantly at risk of being commodified by others.
Puerto Rico, an island surrounded by water, has been raped, plundered, and polluted through the industrialization brought on by an unchecked American greed when the petrochemical industry left enormous rusting oil storage tanks and crumbling stack chimneys along our scenic coastlines, when a 1994 oil spill dumped 750,000 gallons of crude oil at the San Juan port that blackened the white beaches, when the U.S. military bombarded the waters and lands of our tiny islands of Vieques and Culebra, when our lovely bioluminescent bay dulled because rampant hotel construction sent toxic sludge into the blue waters, and when our sacred mangroves that protect the land from erosion and tropical storms and which sustain our marine life were cleared out to make room for the enormous cruise ships that crushed our coral reefs. And what have we learned from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017? During those terrible days, we lost 3,059 souls because of the lack of resources, including water. My paintings celebrate the rich water resources we have in Arkansas and somehow I have to believe that we will all become better stewards of our waterways and each other.
About the art
Dexta Jean Rodriguez (Jeannie) moved from Puerto Rico to Arkansas in 1964, when she was 3 years old. She was raised in Little Rock Catholic Schools and graduated from Mount St. Mary Academy in Little Rock. She attended several colleges and received her BFA at ATU followed by a MLA (Master in Liberal Arts), and is now a doctoral candidate in Leadership at UCA. She is studying the nexus of public art and cultural institutions to build resilience in communities. She is also a college professor and has taught art history as well as leadership classes. Jeannie is Puerto Rican and a descendant of the Taino–the indigenous people of the Caribbean. She utilizes various art forms to generate discussions about our modern struggles to relate to each other and to the land.
I was three years old when my family moved to Little Rock in 1964, so I have lived in Arkansas a very long time and speak with a southern accent. I did not always consider myself Latina because my annual visits were just two weeks long, and my Spanish was stunted. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t authentic. My words are spilling out of me because when my father forbade my mother to speak my birth language to me, I lost my identity. Nevertheless, I am part of the Puerto Rican diaspora, and I am a descendant of the Taino people. Yo soy Boricua. Years ago, the chairman of Nestlé tried to justify his company’s thievery of water resources across the continent of Africa by declaring access to clean water was not a birthright but a privilege. Who is it that decides we are not worthy to access our own water? Who robs us of that agency? People of color have long been at the bottom of the barrel in this consumer classification hierarchy, and so our natural resources are constantly at risk of being commodified by others.
Puerto Rico, an island surrounded by water, has been raped, plundered, and polluted through the industrialization brought on by an unchecked American greed when the petrochemical industry left enormous rusting oil storage tanks and crumbling stack chimneys along our scenic coastlines, when a 1994 oil spill dumped 750,000 gallons of crude oil at the San Juan port that blackened the white beaches, when the U.S. military bombarded the waters and lands of our tiny islands of Vieques and Culebra, when our lovely bioluminescent bay dulled because rampant hotel construction sent toxic sludge into the blue waters, and when our sacred mangroves that protect the land from erosion and tropical storms and which sustain our marine life were cleared out to make room for the enormous cruise ships that crushed our coral reefs. And what have we learned from the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017? During those terrible days, we lost 3,059 souls because of the lack of resources, including water. My paintings celebrate the rich water resources we have in Arkansas and somehow I have to believe that we will all become better stewards of our waterways and each other.