Pictured: Julia Rivera's sculptures reflect her Puerto Rican roots. Photo by Phil Lederer.

The MARA Art Studio + Gallery is celebrating the work of Puerto Rican artist Julia Rivera through a special exhibition of paintings and sculpture, currently on display in the Palm Avenue gallery. Entitled Small Talk, the show highlights both the warm and whimsical side of the New York-based artist, as well as the pointedly political, where art meets activism and Rivera clearly has more to say than small talk.

“I tell a story in each painting,” Rivera says of her latest series of paintings, an unabashedly feminist response to modern politics and an appeal for the restoration of women’s rights. “It’s not just decoration.”

Wooden-framed and of varying sizes, each painting in Rivera’s latest is a portrait of sorts, featuring a central female figure clad in a black that straddles the line between mournful and official. Few stare back at the viewer; most have their eyes and faces obscured by pigment, plant matter, or superimposed silhouettes of the good ol’ U.S. of A. One wears boxing gloves. All bear titles like, There Is No Limit To What We As Women Can Accomplish and Behind Every Successful Woman Is Herself and I Am Speaking. “I come from a family of strong women,” Rivera says by way of pithy explanation.

And while her compositions can be straightforward to the point of bluntness—“I like simple,” she says—her process is anything but. Composed on canvases of resin-coated wood, each portrait is a layered creation of papers and paints, piled one atop the other to build texture and depth.

Also on display in Small Talk is a selection of sculpture from the artist. And where the paintings are fiercely political, the sculptural work comes across as welcoming and playful, even childlike in its innocent joy. “When you walk into your house, you don’t want something that scares you!” laughs Rivera. “You want something that makes you smile.” Handmade and lightweight, Rivera sees them as the opposite of those serious bronzes she would see as a child. “Little happy pieces,” she says of the plump little forms.

Some wear bananas on their heads. She says it’s because they look like smiles.

Currently on display at MARA Art Studio + Gallery, Small Talk runs through Nov. 22.

Pictured: Julia Rivera's sculptures reflect her Puerto Rican roots. Photo by Phil Lederer.