page_title: Edel Rodriguez
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Edel Rodriguez / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: A boat crowded with Cuban refugees arrives in Key West, Florida, during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift.
context_page_description: Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist, illustrator, and children's book author. He uses a variety of materials, his work ranges from conceptual to portraiture and landscape. Socialist propaganda and western advertising, island culture and contemporary city life, are all aspects of his life that inform his work.
context_section_description: Until the age of 9, Rodriguez lived in the Cuban countryside town of El Gabriel. In an interview conducted by Yuko Shimizu, Rodriguez described his earliest visual influences as military, revolutionary and nationalist imagery. In 1980 Rodriguez emigrated to the United States with his father, Cesareo Rodriguez mother, Coralia Rodriguez and sister Irma as one of the thousands of Cubans who took part in the Mariel boatlift. His family of four arrived in Key West and as the Cuban government had taken possession of the families home, car, furniture and even clothes, the Rodriguez family had little to start a new life with. The family moved in with relatives in Miami, Florida where Edel's father established a trucking business. Within a couple of years of arriving in the United States, Rodriguez had mastered the language to the point that he became a Spelling Bee champion. Rodriguez graduated from Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School in 1990.
  After graduation from High School, Rodriguez declined a full scholarship to The University of Miami and instead attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. While a student at Pratt, Rodriguez interned at Spy magazine, MTV and Penguin Books. After graduating from Pratt with honors and earning a BFA on a full scholarship in painting. Rodriguez went on to earn a M.F.A. from Hunter College in 1998.
  In 1991, Rodriguez met Jennifer Roth;the two married in 1997.
caption: Rodriguez arrived in the United States during the Mariel boatlift crisis, 1980.
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