Dario Robleto (American, born 1972)
Demonstrations of Sailor’s Valentines, 2009

Run Time: 2:58
Recorded by Mia Farrell, Museum Educator / April 2020

Dario Robleto’s piece Demonstrations of Sailor’s Valentines arrived to the Des Moines Art Center’s Collection the same year it was created in 2009. Alter like in shape, this 5-foot-tall mixed media piece is affectionally ornately adorned covered in an overgrowth of 1000 red, white and pink handmade paper flowers. It is richly detailed, traditionally sentimental and does not shy away from appearing as a laborious act of love. While viewing we are offered tokens of endearment, intricate elements made of ribbon, silk, seashells, photographs, wax and literal poetry. Inspired by a group of women who started their own orphanage, pain and loss seem as material as paper on this densely layered object, Robleto adhering the entire piece on foam core with glue and tender empathy for traumas that are not his. It echoes the rippling impact of individual heartbreaks on our collective human history.

The artwork is topped in text written by Robleto, who identifies as a materialist poet, and not so much an artist. In the lower center of the sculpture he writes “Demonstrations of unique craft techniques and topics that only solitude near the sea can inspire. These Sailors Valentines will be sold to raise funds for the well-being of the widows and orphans in waiting for the hopeful return of their lost sailors and for the upkeep of the lighthouses that could bring them home.” Robleto creates fictional documentation, manufactured artifacts for grief and real-life emotions. The piece reads in text “Open your Chest to the Wind, Broken Heartedness is a philosophy.” In an interview about the work Robleto states it’s fiction “Historically it was the lost sailors who would create a something to be left behind to prove to their loved ones that they had not forgotten them.” But through his interest and study of 19th century folk morning traditions, and awareness to the way meaning attaches itself to human made objects, Robleto makes a sincere piece speaking through another’s lifetime.

Born and working in Texas Dario Robleto uses his work to elicit empathy in its viewers. His work explores humanity, history, science the connection of it all, and the toll living takes on our individual spirits and hearts. Working with super charged and unbelievable materials, such as dinosaur bones, human tears, audio recordings of extinct animals and heartbeats. There is underlying reverence to faith, eroding memory and healing. Robleto asks “How do humans in the face of extreme loss or trauma, how do they find some creative response to this loss. How do we find ways to cope and survive?”