Visiting Guatemalan artist, Veronica Giracca, will be at Graffiti, a Hill City art joint, Friday from 5-9 p.m. as a multitude of her marionettes "populate" the gallery at 505 Cherokee Blvd. in North Chattanooga. Ms. Giracca's marionettes will be sharing the gallery with new and existing works by Graffiti's resident artists Ellyn Bivin, Fennel Blythe, Eddie Graham, James McKissic, Renel Plouffe, Tony Russo, Jim Tucker, Derek Williams and Larry Young.
Also on hand will be paintings by guest artists Miki Boni and Tommy Payne, collages by Amy Britt, and the wood sculptures of Jim Madden.
Ms. Giracca resides in Guatemala where she was born in 1960. As an architect with a Master’s degree in Conservation of Monuments, she is an admirer of the different manifestations of the plastic arts and the preservation of cultural patrimony.
She began to collect marionettes when, in a trip to Mexico, she met one of the best makers of marionettes in the world, Alberto Mejia Barón, “Alfin”. A friendship began between Ms. Giracca and Alfin in 2004 when, by commission of an art gallery in Antigua Guatemala, she installed an exhibition of more than 650 marionettes handcrafted by Mejia Barón. She turned into an pupil and frequently traveled to Mexico to attend workshops and learned tips and secrets from her “maestro” which today she cherishes as an invaluable treasure. She has participated in individual and collective exhibitions in Guatemala and workshops for writing scripts for marionettes and their expressions.