Sonia Neira Matthews

Sonia Neira Matthews

ssaurez1@gmail.com

Website: justgreenarts.com

   1110 weeping willow way, Hollywood, Florida, 33019-4816

 I love cutting paper, always have always will... I am a collage artist. I create from paper cutouts photorealistic landscapes and gardens. My graduation thesis at Barry University was a series of garden collages made from recycled magazines. I also created a series of ceramic organic sculptures from high fire recycled clay, metallic glazes, hand burnished. My Collage and Sculpture series were on display at the ”Andy Gato Gallery” for a month. After the graduation exhibition, the gallery asked if I would let my body of work on exhibition for a few months, which I happily agreed to. Some of my works were actually purchased after the show. Two years later, I entered my very first competition at Artserve in Fort Lauderdale. I submitted two large Photorealistic Landscape Paper Cutouts Collages to the art competition, and they were accepted. As I walked into the gallery on the opening night my two collages were in the front of the exhibition at the main entrance and one of them had a purple ribbon on it. I never imagined at the first time I submitted one of my works of art I would be awarded “Best in Show” for the year ribbon. This spurned my creative possibilities for a while.

After the Artserve exhibition, I began volunteering and teaching art classes for them. Over the summer they asked me to become an art instructor for the “Eco Art Education Program” Sunset School Sumer Camp Program, designed to help rehabilitate the children with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. I designed a series of Hand-made Paper Mask workshops using color paper cutouts, glue, and decorative elements to build masks depicting some of the endangered species living in the South Florida Everglades-Ecosystem. Today I am working on a series of six large Photorealistic Collages of Tropical Gardens;and learning how to weld different metals to create a series of Large Interactive Metal Art Installations for Public spaces.