Blue Flower | 2014

In 2014, UNESCO awarded Castillo a commission to complete a permanent public work installed in the Seolbong International Sculpture Park in Incheon, South Korea. Castillo’s”Blue Flower” was a testimonial to the kinship between the sister cities of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Incheon, South Korea.

This piece, inspired by the Chicano/Mexican practice of handmaking tissue paper flowers for gravesites, was created to honor the Korean and New Mexico Korean War dead.

Through symbolic iteration, this sculpture quietly leads to a sense of the expansion and transformation inherent in a flower. This piece is constructed out of 66 slightly varied water jet cut steel plates.