Darlene Charneco

Born in 1971 in NYC of parents from Mayaguez and Moca, Puerto Rico, Darlene Charneco’s works explore and navigate the hybrid spaces we live in, often presenting them as part of a growing organism. Developing her own ritual process and tactile language the artist creates three-dimensional, mixed-media ‘touchmaps’ to orient, sense, and express within a world that is rapidly being reconfigured by the evolution of communication networks.
Charneco received her BFA Magna Cum Laude from Southampton College of Long Island University and attended SUNY Stony Brook for MFA studies. She has exhibited and guest-lectured at numerous museums and galleries, including the Parrish, Katonah, Islip, and Hunterdon Museums and was awarded the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2017.

She currently lives on the East End of Long Island, working at her Studio at the William Steeple Davis Trust Residency in Orient, New York.

Regarding her work, Charneco notes: “My hammered nail pieces are an ongoing series of artwork inspired by the common thread of ritual found in nearly all cultures and religions. Each wall-piece is a tactile ‘page’ containing hopes, wishes and aspirations. Created in the spirit of the European monastic scribe illuminating manuscripts or a Tibetan monk creating a sand mandala, these works encompass both the pursuit of an evolved self and hopes for a more enlightened humanity. They are objects of tangible human optimism literally hammered out, in a personal code of nails. When I first began ‘writing’ with nails in my artwork, I wanted to create a language that could be felt as well as seen. The labor-intensive process clicked strongly with me, inducing a near- meditative state. I now see the nails as tangible units of my intentions which shift in identity from language as we know it, into the weave of the physical world.”