The Big Filter

[Click image to enlarge. Photo by Jesús Garza. Delilah Montoya and Ann Marie Leimer at a Santa Monica gallery.]

In the world of American art and photography, there is one center. New York. Here, careers are made or destroyed.

This metropolis touts their power. What happens in New York according to sycophants reverberates worldwide. Artists must submit to the Big Filter.

Chicanas and Chicanos are not a concern to the Big Filter. In fact, Raza does not exist in their myopic eyes. Other cultures and groups supersede Raza. The Big Filter doesn’t hate Raza; they are just ignorant and arrogant.

They are ignorant of a growing Chicano/Chicana arts community. Also arrogant to assume that only their pain, love and creations are manifest. Raza has to be content to sit on the sideline.

A New Yorker will pass through the Big Filter’s sieve easily. Apparently they have the appropriate ethnic or religious qualifications. What are Raza to do?

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What I Want For the Holidays - Nikkor AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 EC VR II

[Click on image to enlarge. Yes, I want this lens. Who wouldn't. I think, I am in love. Article by DPReview.com]

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, December 10, 2009 – Nikon Europe today announces a new super telephoto lens to replace the AF-S VR NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G IF-ED. The AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G ED VR II features the new generation of Vibration Reduction technology (VR II) and a new A/M focus mode, making it an ideal choice for sports, action and wildlife photographers. This lens is designed for those who are serious about photography.

Zurab Kiknadze, Product Manager Lenses, Accessories & Software, Nikon Europe says: "The AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G ED VR II comparatively light weight and compact dimensions make it a perfect choice for hand held super telephoto photography, particularly when used with a teleconverter. The new VRII system offers four or more stops of compensation, and makes this a really practical solution for the news and wildlife photographer". The evolution of the NIKKOR lens reflects a commitment to developing a range of products tailored to photographers’ needs, and it strengthens the line-up of high-performance NIKKOR lenses.

Sharper action images

The AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G ED VR II features the second generation built in Vibration Reduction (VRII), providing the ability to shoot at shutter speeds up to four stops slower so sharper images can be achieved when using the camera for hand-held shooting. In addition, the new A/M mode added to existing M/A and M modes enables autofocus priority even if the focus ring is being handled during shooting. Weighing in at 2,900g this is a lens that ticks every box for those who are serious about action photography.

Built for any environment

This super telephoto lens is designed with the photographer in mind and has the same excellent optical system as its predecessor. Those who need extreme speed and quiet to capture wildlife, can rely on the autofocus with a built-in silent wave motor to ensure you won’t disrupt the action. To top off the extensive features,, this lens is also sealed to withstand the affects of dust and moisture, allowing photographers to keep shooting whatever the conditions. Finally, the lens construction features eleven elements in eight groups, including three ED glass elements and Nano Crystal Coat.

Article courtesy of DPReview.com and photo by Nikon USA

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Time For A Massage?

Christmas is just around the corner and I have found the perfect gift. Give your partner a Swedish massage. Here are some G rated videos that offer great instruction. Massage is a great way to destress after a hectic 2009.

Here is the link to the page and below is a sample video:

http://givebestmassageever.com/tag/effleurage/



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Culture Clash is proposed to help spur an LA theater's revival

[Click image to enlarge. Photo by Don Bartletti of the Los Angeles Times]

The LA Times is reporting that Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles is undertaking an initiative to revamp the Westlake Theatre. The Agency plans to make the space into a performance and multimedia center, with facilities for stage and music performances, film, and community and social events. In addition, the Latino performance ensemble, Culture Clash, is set to become the resident theatre company of the space.

"They're very popular; they attract a big audience," said CRA Administrator Leslie Lambert speaking to the LA Times. "Ethnically, they fit perfectly with that community. They're very much in touch with that community. [And] they'll bring in audiences from elsewhere."

A historic MacArthur Park theater could become the permanent new home of the performance trio Culture Clash under an ambitious city plan to bring more cultural amenities to the heavily Latino urban neighborhood.

Under a proposal spearheaded by the Community Redevelopment Agency of the city of Los Angeles (CRA/LA), the Westlake Theatre, which was built in 1926 and currently is used for a swap meet, would be converted into a multi-use entertainment space for live theater, film screenings, musical performances and community and social events. The project also would include the creation of 49 units of affordable housing and a 300-space parking garage.

According to CRA officials, the Music Box@Fonda, which runs the Music Box theater in Hollywood, would operate and program the revamped Westlake Theatre, and Culture Clash, the popular and respected Latino performance ensemble that is marking its 25th anniversary this year, would become the facility's resident theater company. In addition to performing at the theater for a minimum of 30 days per year, Culture Clash would provide youth-oriented programming and instruction in writing and acting, said Leslie Lambert, the CRA's administrator for its Hollywood and Central region.

Richard Montoya of Culture Clash, who with colleagues Herbert Siguenza and Ric Salinas has operated as a gypsy ensemble since the group moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, praised the Westlake Theatre as "a grand old faded lady" and said the trio was excited about finally acquiring a "bricks and mortar" home of its own.

"Thank God there's angels in bureaucracy -- there are -- that have said, 'You guys deserve a home,' " Montoya said in a recent interview. "We're, like, two Salvadorans, one Chicano, there's a need in the area."

However, he emphasized, MacArthur Park is "not an area devoid of culture. No, it's a very, actually, sophisticated place."

Indeed, the new facility is intended to enhance the revitalization of one of the city's most culturally rich neighborhoods, following a long period in which soaring crime rates and economic decline marred the area's image. The 633-acre Westlake Recovery Redevelopment Project Area was conceived in 1999 with the aims of stimulating economic development, rehabilitating existing housing and businesses, creating new housing, and improving public infrastructure and services. Other neighborhood projects include buffing up building facades.

Last week, the CRA's board of commissioners voted to begin negotiations with the project's developers, Millennium Partners, which will have up to 15 months to produce a formal plan to convert the 18,000-square-foot structure and the 1.2-acre site, which is bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, 6th and Alvarado streets and Westlake Avenue.

Plans call for the facility's ground floor to be used for retail; and there has been discussion of adding a central courtyard and a rooftop restaurant. The city will help the swap meet vendors operating in the building to find new quarters.

Lambert estimated that the total cost of the project would be between $20 million and $25 million. She said it is likely that a not-for-profit entity would be formed to assume ownership of the building or else lease it from CRA, which purchased the structure in 2008.

The project would be funded by "largely if not entirely public money," she said, and historic tax credits could be applied, given the building's landmark stature.

Millennium -- which, Lambert said, was chosen as the project's overall developer after a lengthy process of competitive application and soliciting community input -- has developed mixed-use properties, including apartment complexes, hotels and office space.

Neither Music Box nor Millennium representatives could be reached for comment.

Lambert said the theater's old proscenium stage will have to be rebuilt, and retractable seats will be installed. Reduced ticket prices for Culture Clash performances will be offered to area residents, she added.

Montoya said that having a permanent space would enable Culture Clash to extend its creative endeavors and share its resources and knowledge with emerging artists.

"At least turn the keys over to some young people and say, 'We're done, we're just over here if you need us, but here's the keys to the asylum.' "

reed.johnson@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

-30-

Professors receive awards for Hispanic cultural contribution

Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and Paul Espinosa, professors in ASU's Department of Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are recipients of awards from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. The awards recognize energy, expertise and remarkable contributions to the Hispanic community.

Vélez-Ibáñez is the recipient of the Outstanding Support of Hispanic Issues in Higher Education Award. The award distinguishes someone who demonstrates exceptional accomplishment in the academic community and support of Hispanic issues.

Vélez-Ibáñez, who chairs the Department of Transborder Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies, conducts transnational field research in two rural valleys in California and New Mexico and their sending communities in Mexico. His area of study focuses on applied anthropology, complex social organizations, culture and education, ethno-class relations in complex social systems, migration and adaptation of human populations, political ecology, qualitative methodology and urban anthropology. Vélez-Ibáñez has written five books, three of which are based in original field research.

Espinosa is the recipient of the Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Fine or Performing Arts Award. The award recognizes Latinos/as who have contributed significantly to understanding of the Hispanic community and culture through a medium in the arts.

Espinosa is the winner of seven Emmy awards. He has written, directed and produced numerous dramatic and documentary films focused on the U.S.-Mexico border region. His work includes "Taco Shop Poets" (2002), "The Border" (1999), "... And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him" (1996) and "The Hunt for Pancho Villa" (1993).

Vélez-Ibáñez and Espinosa will be honored in March at the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education National Conference, "Raíces y Alas/Roots and Wings: A Mal Tiempo/Buena Cara."

The association each year honors people in six categories concerning the improvement of the conditions of Latinos/as pursuing a degree in higher education. The recipients are selected from open nominations by a subcommittee of the association.

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Jesse Treviño's evolution shown at Museo Alameda in San Antonio

[Click photo to enlarge. Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Express-News.]

By Elda Silva - San Antonio Express-News

In a sense, Jesse Treviño became a Chicano artist in Vietnam.

Hit by the blast of a booby trap and a sniper's bullet, the 19-year-old Treviño lay bleeding in a rice paddy, his body peppered with shrapnel. A medic injected him with morphine, he recalls, and as the drug began to kick in, he reflected on his life.

"I was thinking about my mother, my brothers, the barrio where I grew up and all those images — 'I want to paint them'," says Treviño, 62. "That's what I was thinking: 'If there's any way I can come out of this alive, I'm going to paint those places and those people.' "

He did, of course, survive, but ultimately Treviño lost his right arm to his injuries. He was right-handed, and he had to work through physical pain and depression to train himself to paint with his left. More than 40 years later, Treviño can look back on a battlefield promise to himself fulfilled.

The artist, best-known for his photorealist paintings of the West Side and murals such as the nine-story "Spirit of Healing" downtown, is having his first retrospective. "Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida" opens Thursday at the Museo Alameda.

"A retrospective is something that when you work hard, there's something there at the end for you that makes it worthwhile," Treviño says.

Curated by Ruben C. Cordova, the exhibit takes viewers through what Treviño calls his "journey of art," from a painting he made as a Christmas gift for a teacher in 1957 to his 2008 homage to Earl Abel's diner. The evolution of Treviño's content and style become apparent along the way.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is "Mi Vida," a mural Treviño painted on his bedroom wall in the early 1970s. Never exhibited publicly before, it is the first painting he attempted after his right arm was amputated.

Not only is the retrospective the first for Treviño, it is also the first for the Museo Alameda, which celebrated its second anniversary in April. In a way, it is fitting that the artist and Smithsonian affiliate share the milestone, given that Treviño was instrumental in early efforts to create the Latino arts and culture museum. It's also fitting given the artist's stature in the community.

"I'd say he's the best-known artist in San Antonio," says Cordova, an art historian whose book "Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas" was recently published by UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press. "Is there anybody else that you would even say is nearly as well known as he is?"

A convincing argument can be made on the basis of Treviño's mural work alone. Across Milam Park from the Museo Alameda, "Spirit of Healing" towers high above the trees on the faÁade of the Christus Santa Rosa Children's Hospital. Since it was completed in 1997, the ceramic tile mural of a guardian angel comforting a child has become one of the city's best known landmarks. On the West Side, a few blocks from where Treviño lives, his "Our Lady of Guadalupe Veladora" sculptural mosaic adorns the Guadalupe Theater.

"My whole career as an artist is in terms of what kind of things I can do here in San Antonio to make it a much more beautiful place," Treviño says.

Even though Treviño's work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art and included in catalogs for high-profile traveling exhibits such as collector Cheech Marin's "Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge," the artist remains relatively unknown outside of his hometown, Cordova says.

"I hope we'll have a catalog or at least a book at some point, because I think that's what's really going to be necessary for Jesse to enter into art history," he says. "I think one of the problems is that even when his work has appeared in catalogs . . . (it hasn't been) discussed at all; that there isn't really an art historical literature, but that is the norm for Chicano artists."

Treviño's artistic legacy has also been, at times, overshadowed by his dramatic life story, Cordova says. With this retrospective, he's hoping to change that.

When Treviño was a student at Fox Tech High School, he won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York. There, he studied with William F. Draper, a portrait painter and former combat artist. From Draper, Treviño learned to paint in broad, loose strokes, using patches of color to compose instead of outlines, Cordova says.

To earn money while going to school, Treviño got a job at a Greenwich Village portrait shop, earning up to $200 a night. Among the works from Treviño's New York period, the exhibit includes a portrait of Ringo Starr he made to attract customers. There's a look of concentration in Starr's eyes, and his lips are slightly parted as if caught mid-sentence. The musician's portrait is one of the examples of pop culture and Americana in the show.

"I wanted to not simply look at (Treviño's work) through a Chicano lens, taking everything else out," Cordova says. "He's part of the American experience. The Chicano identity didn't come up until subsequently."

Treviño was happy in New York. But he had only been there a year when he was drafted into the army.

"I just had enough time to go from New York to San Antonio to see my mom, and then I went into training for Vietnam," he says.

Treviño arrived in Vietnam in December 1966. About two months later, he was wounded.

"When I got out, I didn't get out the same," he says. "What happened to me, I felt had ruined — completely taken — my career as an artist."

While Treviño was recuperating, fellow veteran Armando Albarran persuaded him to try drawing and painting with his left hand. The artist resisted at first but ultimately relented. A portrait of Albarran is included in the exhibit.

In spite of some initial success, Treviño didn't believe he could become a professional artist. He enrolled at San Antonio College to become a teacher. One of his instructors was artist Mel Casas, known for his "Humanscape" paintings such as "Brownies of the Southwest."

While Draper is the teacher that is usually referenced in regard to Treviño, "he took nothing from the way of painting" he learned in New York when he came back to San Antonio," Cordova says. "He was painting in a very painterly style, kind of like John Singer Sargent, so it's the antithesis of what he's known for. I think it was an interesting experience, but I think it's really Mel Casas that made him an artist."

Casas, however, doesn't necessarily see it that way.

"Oh, I don't know about that," says the artist, 79. "I was one of the teachers. That's about it. One thing I'll say though, I think (the retrospective) is an honor that he should have had a long time ago. He's a very talented artist."

Treviño made the pop surrealist painting "Zapata" in 1969 for one of Casas' class assignments. The piece, painted with spray paint, combines images of the revolutionary leader, a Spiro Agnew watch and a food stamp coupon.

"It looks like a painting that could be done today," Cordova says.

Cordova also sees Casas' influence in "Mi Vida." Painted on a black background, like Casas' "Humanscapes," it is pop surrealist meditation on Treviño's life. At the center of the 8-by-14-foot mural is a Purple Heart dangling from a prosthetic hand. Other images surface from the inky depths of the painting: a spectral self-portrait of the artist in combat gear; the face of a young woman Treviño knew in high school; the Ford Mustang he purchased with his disability pay; a capsule of the painkiller Darvocet. Treviño painted it over the course of a year.

"That was one of my first pieces — which wasn't bad — I did with my left hand ," he says. "I remember that as almost the beginning of my whole career."

"I think what's most amazing to me is how strong his works were immediately after losing his arm," Cordova says. "The paintings he did in the very late '60s and early '70s, they're pretty astonishing. I'm maybe most amazed by those because I would just assume that he'd need a long time to retrain. But it's just like he reloaded and came right out and painted better than ever."

With "Los Camaradas del Barrio," a portrait of a group of friends leaning against a '57 Chevy, Treviño began moving toward his signature photorealist style, Cordova says. These are the paintings that Treviño is known for, works such as "Guadalupe y Calaveras," "Mis Hermanos," and "Progreso" that show the people and places of the West Side.

"There isn't a bad painting he did in the '70s," Cordova says.

By the early '80s, however, Treviño had begun to move away from that type of hyper-realism. Paintings such as "Rosita," his portrait of legendary singer Rosita Fernandez from 2006, show looser, more painterly touches. In the painting, Fernandez stands on the River Walk at night. The strings of Christmas lights that hang from the trees behind her are haloed by soft blurs of color. Cordova points out the singer's jewelry and the details of her dress are rendered in thick daubs of paint.

Though Treviño continues to paint on canvas, his focus in recent years has been on public art.

"The public pieces, you don't have to go inside a building to see (them)," he says. "They're part of the landscape."

Currently, he is working on a Hispanic Veterans Memorial he designed with Gabriel Quintero Velasquez. Plans are to install the 130-foot steel sculpture on an island in the middle of Lake Elmendorf on the West Side. Treviño imagines it as a place where families will gather on holidays such as Veterans Day and the Mexican celebration of DÌa de los Muertos to honor family members.

"I'm always trying in some way to do things that bring honor to the veteran, because I'm a veteran," he says.

Treviño doesn't often talk about his experience in Vietnam, though he says it's impossible to separate what happened to him in the war and his art.

"Sometimes I look back and I think, 'Wow! How did I get that done?' Because I've done so much more now — this way — then when I had my right hand," he says. "And it all started with those paintings that I had run across my mind."

"Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida" continues through Feb. 28 at Museo Alameda, 101 S. Santa Rosa Ave. (210) 229-4300 or www.thealameda.org.

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California cuts clip classes, futures

[Click photo to enlarge. Photo by Dean Musgrove/Staff Photographer/LA Daily News]

Some of the 250 Los Angeles Vallege college students respond to a speakers question during a noon time campus rally on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, about growing concerns over the budget crisis. (Dean Musgrove/Staff Photographer/LA Daily News)

Hammered by state budget cuts, Los Angeles community colleges are being forced to jettison up to one-third of their classes this year even as campuses swell with laid-off workers from the recession.

Despite some $2.2 billion in voter-approved construction and modernization projects, the nine campuses in the Los Angeles Community College District must cut hundreds of classes this spring.

The reductions mean students must wait longer to get the classes they need in order to graduate from the two-year community colleges or transfer to a four-year school.

"It bites," Ryan Grella, 19, of Sylmar, a chemistry major at Valley College who couldn't get his required courses, said during a demonstration held this week to protest the state budget cuts. "I could have been applying for transfers right now.
"Instead, I'm stuck here another year."

Faced with a $48 million cut in state funding, the LACCD was forced to scrap half of its summer classes and up to 9 percent of its offerings in the fall. Winter inter-session courses are also expected to be cut by half or eliminated altogether.

But the major impact may be this spring, when classes will likely vanish by the hundreds, leaving thousands more students — and instructors — in the lurch.

"It's a nightmare, an absolute budgetary nightmare," said Art Gillis, director of the Program for Accelerated College Education at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. "Spring is one thing, but our big worry is what other classes will be cut in the next 12 months.

"We cannot fulfill our mission — to educate everyone who applies."

What worries college administrators are the thousands of students slated to be turned away by four-year universities.

California State University Northridge, which also has fewer and larger classes this year because of a $41 million budget reduction, plans to shed 2,800 students next year.

Those students are expected to line up at community colleges already ballooning from a record number of students — many of them older students laid off during the recession — seeking job training, certificates or degrees.

This year saw a nearly 5 percent rise in enrollment in community colleges across the state, including campuses throughout Los Angeles, where the average class size has swelled to 40 students.

Enrollment could have jumped

But if the college classes hadn't been eliminated, local administrators say enrollment would have jumped by 10 percent instead.
"We're maximizing all available space in the classrooms," said Tyree Wieder, interim chancellor for the Los Angeles Community College District and the former president of Valley College. "We're all suffering reduction in services. We're told in the next two years, we may see some turnaround, but we don't know for sure."

"We're all working together to weather the storm."

As community college campuses grow - with fuller classes in new buildings made possible by $6 billion in taxpayer-approved bonds — their services to students will be fewer.

That means less access to faculty and counselors. Fewer campus services. Higher student fees. More crowded classrooms. And more student hurdles getting the classes they need to graduate.

"The people in the San Fernando Valley have all benefited from having a quality higher education system," said Patrick McCallum, a legislative advocate for the California Community College District. "And we are now dismantling what made California great."

This spring, community colleges across the Valley will offer 5 percent to 10 percent fewer classes than a year earlier. Mission College in Sylmar will cut 51 class sections, Valley College in Valley Glen will cut 160 sections and Pierce College in Woodland Hills will cut another 225.

Administrators say they are trying to preserve core courses required for student graduations or university transfers.

"We're taking a really hard hit," said Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh, vice president of academic affairs at Pierce College, which has reduced course offerings by 17 percent. "We're trying to minimize the damage.

"The idea is to concentrate on what students need."

At Mission College, administrators are cutting its five-week winter session of 66 classes. The classes are among nearly 200 class sections eliminated this year.

"Those specific classes for the completion of a degree, or a transfer to another university, may not be available," Alma Johnson-Hawkins, its vice president of academic affairs, said. "It's a struggle."

At Valley College, class sections are being whittled 30 percent this year because of a $7 million cut to its budget. But while last year's classes packed 34 students, this year's now push 40.

"I'm looking into my crystal ball and seeing more people losing their homes, more people losing their jobs, more people who are coming to us for opportunities to learn - and they're not here, because California has cut the budget," Sandra Mayo, its vice president of academic affairs, said.

"The money is not there. We still need to serve the people. I don't know what to do."

Protesting the budget squeeze

On the Valley College quad this week, about 250 students held a town hall meeting. Wielding such banners as "Bail us out," and "Why us?", they protested the budget squeeze on services.
Students complained that during the 1980s, 17 percent of state money was spent on higher education and 3 percent on prison. Today, it's 9 percent to universities and 10 percent on convicts.

Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, was expected to answer questions but didn't show after an all-night legislative session.

Students said they felt trapped, their dreams of graduating put on hold.

Nancy Pineda has studied at Valley College two years and had hoped to transfer to the University of California, majoring in Chicano studies and French.

But the political science class she needed to take this summer was canceled, and an English class this semester was full.

"I'm very worried," said Pineda, 19, of North Hollywood, the only member of her family to attend college. "I'm at my last year at Valley College. I need five classes to transfer out.

"If I don't finish the classes in the spring, the University of California won't take me."

---

Mission College

Enrollment: 10,000
Spring semester classes cut: 51
School-year classes cut: 15 percent

Pierce College

Enrollment: 24,000
Spring semester classes cut: 225
School-year classes cut: 17 percent

Valley College

Enrollment: 20,000
Spring semester classes cut: 160
School-year classes cut: 30 percent

Article courtesy of the LA Daily News

-30-

Off target

A new show at the Colorado Springs, Colorado Sangre de Cristo Arts Center unveils the importance of fact-checking ... or not

by Edie Adelstein

Maria Lopez's upcoming exhibit at the Sangre de Cristo Arts & Conference Center features colorful, abstract works depicting Christian scenes. But the most eye-catching aspect of the Pueblo artist's self-titled show came within a press release.

"Her works," the Sangre wrote of Lopez, "are currently in the art collections of celebrities such as: Barack Obama, Dane Cook, Cheech Marin, George Lopez, Carlos Mencia, Chris Rock, David Letterman, Martha Stewart, Conan O'Brein [sic], Wanda Sykes, Tracy Morgan, John Leguizamo and others."

Sure enough, Lopez's Web site, lopezme.com, listed more than 20 celebrities who have one of her works in their "estate collections," and recently, the Pueblo Chieftain published an article that mentioned some of those names.

Asked her secret, Lopez happily shares: She goes to concerts, stand-up shows and other public appearances — and gives the works to famous people's handlers and representatives. She admits she doesn't know whether any of her works actually make it into celebrities' homes at all.

The Indy contacted several celebrity representatives about Lopez's paintings. While most inquiries were not returned, Melissa Richardson Banks, a representative of Cheech Marin, says she has no record of Lopez's work, despite Marin being an avid collector of Chicano art.

"I manage the collection, and I don't know who she is," says Banks, who adds that she'll ask Lopez to remove Marin's mention from her site.

A representative from Martha Stewart's publicity firm didn't know where to begin to look, but shares Banks' view that Lopez's paintings were probably classified as simple fan gifts, which generally reside well outside of estate collections.

When asked about the discrepancies, Lopez says she didn't know that her self-promotion — which she sees as both business plan and fan hobby — might have been seen as misleading.

Slim standard

At best, Lopez may be faulted for aggressive idealism or reckless naïveté. Either way, her claims didn't set off alarms at the Sangre.

Its curator of visual arts, Karin Larkin, approved Lopez's works hanging in the museum. She says she did not fact-check Lopez's credentials, and in fact is unapologetic about it. (Disclosure: Larkin is an ex-professor of mine.)

"Basically, we print the information that she gives us," says Larkin, adding, "To be quite honest, whose collections she's in doesn't really factor into my decision as to whether or not I display her. And the information that goes out into the press releases, I don't necessarily put together."

Plus, Larkin adds, "She's a foyer show. It's not like one of the big galleries that we're putting together."

Sangre's marketing specialist Nicki Hart, who assembled the press release, says taking information straight from the artist is good enough: "I take it in good faith that that information coming from the source is correct."

If that sounds strange, what's stranger is that few people in the arts sector seem bothered by it.

Dewey Blanton, an American Association of Museums media representative, says that in public relations, doing background research is a given, even if there's no standard for fact-checking exhibit information. And yet minutes later, Blanton calls back to confess that if he himself were an overextended, underpaid employee in a "small museum," he may be apt to overlook such things.

Kimberley Sherwood, a board member for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and a local nonprofit consultant, puts it this way: "I think there's a lot of room for innocent mistakes ... when we have fairly slim resources and people wearing many hats doing lots of different kinds of tasks ... there's a lot of room for understanding.

"I don't know that there's anything really there," says Sherwood of the situation, "other than perhaps a slim staff working hard to get their programming schedule out there so that they can encourage people to come and look at cool art."

In nearly a half-dozen calls, no one was willing to comment on the record about any dangers inherent to the Sangre's sloppiness.

Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center curator Tariana Navas-Nieves is careful to say that all institutions are different, but that FAC releases and gallery text are fact-checked.

"I would say that every museum has their own processes on selecting artists to exhibit, or art into their collection," she says. "And obviously all museums generally fact-check the information, the biographical and support information for each artist."

Official approval
The irony here? Lopez probably doesn't need to embellish her biography. Recently, Lopez submitted a group of works to Navas-Nieves for consideration to become part of the FAC's permanent collection as a gift. And Lopez's art was accepted, receiving Navas-Nieves' formal recommendation as well as museum committee approval.

"My presentation of the works has to do with the works," says Navas-Nieves. "In her case, I found interesting how she takes religious subject matter and gives it kind of a modern take. ... So my selection of those works was based on that."

Meanwhile, at the Sangre, Hart says the staff is working on a plan for future situations like this one, but is not yet giving specifics. As of press time, Sangre had not released any clarification or statement. However, Lopez has changed her Web site, writing now that celebrities' paintings "were gifted."

— edie@csindy.com

Photography Studio Flash Choice

[Click photo of Profoto D1 Air kit to enlarge]

Recently I have been researching various brands of portable studio strobes for purchase. I need something that is rugged and easily transportable from location to location. The units I've been looking at vary in price from $99 to thousands.

I need a strobe that gives me plenty of bang for my buck. Here is what I am looking for; repeatable color temperature, high quality build, radio and/or light synchronization, low weight, medium power output, fast recycle time, quality accessories and of course a great price. In the past I have used Norman, Speedotron and Broncolor units. All of these brands are excellent for professional work.

There are some very affordable brands offered online by companies like Adorama. Adorama has been around for decades and sell the complete range of photographic equipment and supplies. The Adorama $99 Flashpoint system with free shipping and no tax is a great example of an affordable studio light.

What stops me and others from purchasing a Flashpoint strobe is that you can't examine them before purchasing. You have to be content looking at the website, pictures and specifications before you purchase. In the end, if the product doesn't make the grade, you have to ship them back. Yes, you will have to find the receipt, repackage the product, go to the post office and sadly pay for return shipping. Such is life in the Internet age. By the way, do you know what age is next?

One brand that really impresses me is Profoto. Along with being fully digital and a rental house workhorse, the Profoto D1 Air system allows you to trigger your flash from as far as 1,000 feet. Yes, the fact they are also a status symbol hasn't diminished their value in my eyes. These Swiss made gems can make any studio photographer more productive.

If you enter a budget studio you may find cheap brands like White Lightning or Alien Bees. Yes, they work okay. I am considering Alien Bees as an affordable option.

Higher-end studios usually can afford (see tax write off) Profoto and Broncolor. These reliable and accurate brands are designed for professional photographer’s with plenty of commercial clients. Only a busy pro can rationalize spending thousands on these workhorses.

Middle of the row brands include Calumet Travelite and Photoflex Starflash. Low-power two-light kits from these manufacturers are in the $800 to $1,300 price range. I have had my grimy little fingers on these flash units and they are well made. In the end (they say) you get what you pay for, but with the advent of affordable Chinese labor, new products can now be offered at a much lower price without sacrificing too much quality. What is your budget?

UFW Photographer George E. Ballis Fights Cancer

George Elfie Ballis has been dealing with jaundice from a blocked liver and gall bladder from pancreatic cancer the past month and a half and may not live much longer.

MAIA’s REQUEST

Please do not call here to ask questions, express love or sympathy as we need to focus on caring for George. E-mails are preferable.
If you are in the Bay Area, please let us know if you are available to help Maia get back and forth from Oakland (Montclair district) at her sister’s home to the Veteran’s Hospital in SF in the AM and home in the PM Mon. and Tues. Oakland phone: 510-339-3587

For those of you who want more details:

He just learned his prostate cancer was in remission in early September. A few weeks later he had severe jaundice. We thought is was a stone, but it was cancer. Things are happening quickly. They tried in Fresno VA unsuccessfully then successfully at SF Veteran’s Hospital to place a tube (stent)t in his common bile duct,
He has lost weight and is a lovely fluorescent yellow. He is feeling weak, tired and disoriented from liver toxicity. He is not in pain, but his skin itches badly and that keeps him awake at night. Yesterday he was very lucid and stronger than he has been since his release from San Francisco VA a week ago. We had some concerns about his platelet count being very low.

History:

The Fresno VA found and tried an endoscope-down-the-throat procedure to remove a blockage that they suspected was cancer in the pancreas blocking his common bile duct; but sent him to SF VA the following week for their superior equipment.
I took him to the San Francisco VA Emergency when his symptoms got worse. He had a procedure there the next day where the docs placed a tube through his blocked common bile duct (for gall bladder and liver) to open it to his intestine. His CT scan showed he still has large deposits of bilirubin in his liver, but it had a place to exit for 2 days. When he was released 4 days late, we got a flat driving home on I5. We ended up having the tow truck drive us home. The 5 hour trip lasted 8 ½ hours and we got home in the dark. He was feeling badly 2 days after they placed the stent and his bilirubin count went down 1 point from 31 to 30. This week bilirubin was up to 36. Normal is 1, so it indicates the duct Is clogged again for some reason - either the bilirubin is very dirty, or the stent got pressed by pancreatic cancer. So his continued liver toxicity is causing brain fog, disorientation and weakness.

During the MRI diagnostics, they found a mass in his pancreas and a small mass in his liver. We just got a PET scan (will pinpoint all his cancer) but do not have the results. We will then know if has spread to his liver.

We leave for Oakland today, he is in SF VA tomorrow AM and the procedure to place a stronger metal stent is Mon., which will allow his bilirubin levels to go down if it works. That may return his brain function and allow him a possible 3 months of life.

Smiling Seriously,

Maia Ballis for George Elfie Ballis
SunMt
559.855.3710
Box 314
Prather, CA 93651

Information from a Daniel del Solar email

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Steve Anchell's Route 66 Photography Exhibition

[Click photo of Steve Anchell to enlarge. Photo and text copyright 2009 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved.]

By Jesús Manuel Mena Garza

Wearing a Leica M7 named “Sonny” around his neck; Steven Anchell strolled into the Gallery at the Creative Center for Photography in Los Angeles for the opening of his exhibition titled, Route 66. The photographer and author, noticeably late, was cordial and available to discuss his work with the modest gathering. Anchell is a photographer with an international reputation. He leads numerous photography workshops including one scheduled for Cuba in 2010. He is the author of several books on photography including The Darkroom Cookbook. His portfolios include; documentary, landscape, food, fine art, commercial and architectural photography.

The exhibition consisted of forty black and white photographs typical of documentary photography. Documentary photography is a couple steps removed from family snapshots taken with a Kodak Brownie, but those steps are crucial and hard-fought. They allow his work to ascend into the realm of fine art.

A fine art photographer needs a keen eye, an advanced sense of composition and mastery over current technology. Anchell is facile in both digital and analog photography. Anchell, as his publication credits indicate, has mastered the darkroom. The 57-year-old photographer noted, “My favorite developer is D76H. I make it from scratch. It is much better than the stuff that is already prepared.” Having feet firmly planted in both camps is typical of photographers of his generation.

In this series, the photographer used a variety of film formats to capture his images. They included 6x7 roll film, 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 inch sheet film. The photographer said, “Though I use both, I prefer film over digital. Film is more personal.” He added, “The photographs for this series were taken over several years. Sometimes I would go out for a couple weeks, sometimes a month, to take pictures.”

The 16x20 inch silver gelatin prints explore the remnants of Route 66, the iconic American highway as it meanders from Chicago to Santa Monica. Shot under natural light, the auteur has captured retro diners, vintage cars and quaint restaurants. Witnessing the state of decay of the infrastructure within various communities was paramount in this production. Roland Barthes, in his classic essay, Rhetoric of the Image explains, “What we have is a new space-time category: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority, the photograph being an illogical conjunction between here-now and the there-then.”

In Sting Spot of the West, New Mexico, Anchell captures a dusty car from the forties parked for what seems decades in front of an Indian trading post. This image illustrates excellent gradation of tones limited only by the variable contrast Ilford paper. If the negative were printed on a graded fiber based paper like Ilfobrom Galerie, the final product would have been improved. I feel his paper choice was one of convenience.

Another print that I found compelling was Wigwams, Rialto California. The quirky faux Plains Indian residences were definitely out of place and kitsch. A small pathway leads the eye towards the three pyramid-shaped dwellings. The closest tipi was darker offering a contrast to the brighter row of tipis arcing gracefully behind.

The fact that the images were not framed in a traditional manner but simply nail mounted by the staff of Freestyle Photographic Supplies limited the aesthetics of the exhibition. The use of Plexiglas sheets also caused annoying glare to interfere with viewership. Overall the show was well produced, though poorly attended. I counted only a dozen people that were not staff at the event. The silver gelatin prints were for sale at $650 each. Other sizes were available starting at 8x10 inch prints mounted on 14x18 inch, 4-ply museum board for $224. Additionally, digital prints mounted on a similar board were being offered at a lower price.

Having exhibited my documentary photographs at venues across the nation, I find a certain kinship with his work. Anchell, like me, apparently enjoys capturing the subtle textures and cultural symbols that mark a fading American landscape. With the encroachment of cheap foreign products, the epoch of the Pontiac and tipi are fading, only to be captured as mementos by adventurous documentary photographers.

Derrick Price, referring to Martha Rosler, an influential Rutgers University author and artist states,

“To understand it [documentary photography] we need look at history, and she characterizes documentary as a ‘practice with a past’. A past, we might add, which, despite changing technologies, practices and fashions, was always concerned to claim for documentary a special relationship to real life and a singular status with regard to notion of truth and authenticity.”

In the digital age, the photograph is subject to artistic compliance. Can a documentary photographer capture “real life or truth”? This “claim” is invariably tainted by subjective analysis and invariably exposed in production. Yes, documentary is not as contrived as studio photography and there can be an “authentic” and “special relationship.”

The photographs from the Route 66 series could be retroactively published in Life or Look magazines. These two magazines were popular in the mid-20th century and were filled with lavish photographic essays. They consistently presented the documentary works of talented photographers ranging from Margaret Bourke-White to W. Eugene Smith to Robert Capa. Anchell is of a generation that would have been exposed to these magazines. They may have influenced his work. These coffee table staples have long disappeared like the malt shops on Route 66. Their remnants or facsimiles are now only accessible as curiosities.

The role played by Anchell and other documentary photographers is comparable to that of a hunter. Their goal is to travel to an exotic or even banal location and “shoot” their quarry. They return home triumphant with the desiccated representation and proudly nail it to the wall. In the city or ‘burbs, far removed from the original context of the image, locals leer at the circumstances presented in two-dimensions. The photographer’s purpose is to entertain a largely disconnected audience with great stories and brilliant images, all claiming a parallel reality. The “show” is the successful culmination of a long and tedious photographic odyssey. In her essay in Public Information Desire, Disaster, Document, Abigail Solomon-Godeau wrote, “There is a risk that irrespective of the photographer’s intentions the subject becomes an object and spectacle.”

Anchell’s Route 66 exhibition does not explore more explicit forms of documentary photography popular today. In the genre, the presentation of the image of a starving African or Asian against a sterile museum wall is typical. The juxtaposition and its effect on viewership are intentional and profitable. Eminent photography historian Naomi Rosenblum wrote, “Efforts to focus on ‘real life’ with all its grittiness, as opposed to the idealized world visible in print ads and on television, increased the voyeuristic tendencies that had always been inherent in photography.” As potential photographic subjects, at what point does our reality transition to grittiness and becomes condescending?

We are bombarded by information every day. Photographers have been given a unique opportunity, a chance to explore the corners of a ground glass and gain intimate knowledge of a select subject. For an instant in time a photographer can ignore the harassing confusion surrounding them and focus on a scene others may have dismissed.

The process of photographic production, especially documentary photography, is an opportunity to inject yourself into discussions about our transitioning world. According to Minor White, in Susan Sontag’s seminal book, On Photography, “the photographer projects himself [herself] with everything in order to know it and feel it better.”

Some may find the decaying infrastructure photographed in Route 66 not worthy of exhibition. While others would relish the opportunity to capture a scene headed towards oblivion, to witness and preserve it for future generations. A great documentary photographer can facilitate the transfer of valuable information from one generation to another. The photographs in this show have given me additional impetus to continue taking pictures in my sphere and to expand my role as messenger and voyeur.

Bibliography

Anchell, Steve "," Route 66 (Email response, October 19, 2009).

Anchell, Steve, interview by Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. Route 66 Hollywood, CA, (November 15, 2009).

Barthes, Roland. "Rhetoric of the Image." In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 269-286. New Haven, CN: Leete's Island Books, 1980.

Price, Derrick. "Surveyors and Surveyed: Photography out and about." In Photography: A Critical Introduction, edited by Liz Wells, 65-112. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.

Rosenblum, Naomi. "Documentary Photography: Past and Present." In Photography's Multiple Roles, 84-119. Chicago, IL: The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College of Chicago, 1998.

Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. "Inside/Out." In Basic Critical Theory for Photographers, 125-132. Oxford, England: Focal Press, 2007.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York, NY: Picador, 1977.

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I Wish More Colleges Offered These Courses

[Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales by Jesus Manuel Mena Garza]

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UCSB Chicano Studies Courses


LOWER DIVISION


1A-B-C. Introduction to Chicano Studies (4-4-4) Staff

An introduction to the historical and contemporary development of the Chicano community, interdisciplinary in nature, and focusing upon such components as the educational, sociological, and political. The course will critically analyze the societal context in which La Raza has sought to maintain and develop its culture.


10. Introduction to Chicano History (4) Garcia

Prerequisite: lower-division standing. Same course as History 10. Students who have received credit for Chicano Studies 9 may not take this course for credit.
The historical heritage of the Chicano from Indian and Spanish origins to the contemporary period. Particular stress will be placed on the interpretation and analysis between key periods in world and U.S. history to the experience of Chicanos.

11. Introduction to Race and Ethnicity in American History(4) Staff

Prerequisite: lower-division standing. Same course as History 11.
An introduction to the issues of race and ethnicity as they have affected the course of United States history from the colonial era to the present. Race and ethnicity will be dealt with as ideological issues as well as the history of particular race and ethnic groups in a pluralistic America.

12. Introduction to Chicano Spanish (4) Lomeli

Prerequisites: consent of instructor and some basic knowledge of Spanish.
The course will introduce students to tne Spanish language and help them to acquire oral and written skills, distinguish between standard speech of popular variants, and learn the Chicano Spanish lexicon.

UPPER DIVISION

102A-B. Quantitative Research and Issues in Chicano Studies (4-4) Staff
This two-quarter course sequence examines quantitative research problems in Chicano Studies. The emphasis is on the effective use of social survey data in formulating public and private policy. Students also receive an introduction to the computer as a research tool.

106. Introduction to Latin American Studies (4) Staff

Prerequisite: any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A, 18, or 1C, or History 8, or upper-division standing.
The Latin American heritage of Chicanos will be explored from various interdisciplinary perspectives: history, culture, literature, politics, and education. Stress will be placed on major past and contemporary cultural, political, and I social movements from the pre-Columbian past to the twentieth century.

110. Research Methods in Chicano Studies (4) Staff

Prerequisites: Chicano Studies 1A-B-C.
Using Chicano studies topics, the course will introduce students to: (1) the epistemology of scientific inquiry (its history and contemporarv movements); (2) the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative methodologies; and (3) the mechanisms of research design (transforming an idea into a research plan).

115. Psychological Issues and the Chicano Child (4) Staff

To give the student an understanding of the fundamentals of psychology; to introduce tne fundamentals of child psychology; and to analyze and discuss pertinent psychological principles and research related to the Chicano child.

120. Bilingualism and the Chicano (4) Staff

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
An introduction to the study of bilingualism and the Chicano. The course will focus on tne sociolinguistic and educational implications of bilingualism.

121. Writing Experience for Bilinguals (4) Staff

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
A comparative analysis between Chicano Spanish, standard Spanish, and vocabulary building.

130B. The Chicano Quest for Educational Equality (4) San Miguel

Prerequisite: Chicano Studies 1A or 1B or 130A or upper-division standing.
This lecture course traces the legal, administrative, and political efforts made by Chicanos to secure more and better education for their children. It also assesses its impact and influ- ence on the public schools.

131. An Introduction to Issues in Chicano Bilingual Education (4) San Miguel

This is an introduction to bilingual education and its effect on Chicanos. Specific issues include the evolution and development of policy at the federal and state levels, theory and practice of bilingual education pertaining to Chicanos, the status and future of this program.

137. Chicano/Mexican Oral Traditions (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisites.. upper-division standing and knowledge of Spanish and English.
The course will introduce students to the ancient roots of Chicano oral traditions. Contemporary forms of Chicano oral poetry, oral narrative, and drama will be examined, in addition to more ephemeral forms such as cabula, choteo, joke-telling, or dichos.

138. Barrio Poplar Culture (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisite. upper-division standing
The course will explore various manifestations of popular and mass culture in Chicano urban and semi-rural communities throughout the southwest. Both secular and religious cultural phenomena will be analyzed (lowriders, saints, music, etc.). Relationships to mainstream culture will be examined.

139. Native American Heritage and Chicano Cultural Renaissance (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisite: upper-division standing or Chicano Studies 1A, 1B, or 1C.
The course will explore the intense recourse to the Native American heritage during the Chicano cultural renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s. The rediscovery of the native ancestral cultures will be analyzed in poetry, prose, drama, the graphic arts.

140. The Mexican Cultural Heritage of the Chicano (4) Staff

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
A panoramic view of present-day Chicano traditions analyzed from a Mexican cultural heritage perspective in order to comprehend and appreciate the uniqueness and difference of present-day Chicano culture, its achievements, and contribution to the overall American culture.

141. Roots of Chicano Culture in Interdisciplinary Perspective (4) Staff

Prerequisites: upper-division standing, two or more upper-division courses in sociology, religious studies, or anthropology.
This course will give students a general understanding of the origins, development, and contemporary variation in Chicano culture from an interdisciplinary approach.

142. An Introduction to Chicano and Barrio Art (4) Staff

An introduction to Chicano and barrio art and their major exponents. This course will emphasize Mexican mural painting as forerunner of Chicano mural art.

143. Chicano/Mexican Film Studies (4) Lomeli, Fregoso

Study of Chicano and Mexican cinema to view film as an art form and projection of the film-maker. Techniques, messages, and ideology stressed as instruments which propose film truth within the context of Chicano and Mexican social experiences.


144. The Chicano Community (4) Segura

Prerequisite: upper-division standing, or Chicano Studies 1A, 1B, or 1C, or a prior course in sociology. This course is the same as Sociology 144.
Origins of the Chicano in rural Mexico; context of contact; patterns of settlement in the United States; the Chicano community, social structure, and social change; acculturation and generational patterns; community leadership and change.

145. Chicano Art: Symbol and Meaning (4) Favela

Prerequisite: any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A, 1B, or 1C, Chicano Studies 142 or Art History 1 or 7E, Art His tory 161C, 161D, or 161E, or upper-division standing.
This course traces the sources and historical development of symbols and forms that originated in the art of New Spain and Mexico and became crucial for the development of a contemporary Chicano art. Emphasis is given to artistic conceptions of America and Aztlan by Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicano artists.

146. Contemporary Chicano Art (4) Favela

Prerequisite: any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A-B-C, 142, or Art History 1, 7E, 161C, 161D, or 161E, or Chicano Studies 145, or upper-division standing.
The Chicano art movement is examined and appraised within the context of contemporary American art and the contemporary art of Mexico. This course provides a survey of major Chicano artists and developments in Chicano painting, sculpture, graphic, and conceptual art from the late 1960s to the present.

147. Chicanos and the Film Media: A Comparative History (4) Fregoso

This course examines the various ways Chicanos have been portrayed in Hollywood films. Their characterizations are contrasted with the portrayals of women, Blacks, Jews, gays, and lesbians. The content is chronological and thematic in its examination of recurrent minority images.

154F. The Chicano Family (4) Segura

Prerequisites: upper-division standing or Chicano Studies 1A-B-C or consent of instructor or prior course in sociology. Same course as Socioloy 154F.
This course provides an overview of historical and contemporary research on Chicano families in the United States. Changing viewpoints on the character of Chicano families and their implications with respect to policy issues are examined.

155R. Chicana Research Issues (4) Segura

Prerequisites: upper-division standing or Chicano Studies 1A-B-C or consent of instructor or prior course in sociology. Same course as Sociology 155R.
This course is designed to enable students to develop and implement a research project that explores in depth one or more facets of the Chicana experience. Students will select and gather information in one area of interest such as: family, health, education, or employment.

155W. La Chicana: Mexican Women in the U.S. (4) Segura

Prerequisites: upper-division standing or Chicano Studies 1A-B-C or consent of instructor or prior course in sociology. Same course as Sociology 155W. Not open for credit to students who have received credit for Chicano Studies 150A, 150B, or 150C.
Examines existing research on native-born and immigrant Mexican women in the United States with emphasis on family, education, employment, and politics. Analysis of the Chicana experience organized by considering how interplay between class, race, and gender affects access to opportunity and equality.

164. Chicanos and the Administration of Justice (4) Staff

A survey of police-barrio community relations including the role of police, police department theories and tactics, and the unique police problems of the Chicano community. In addition, the course will examine the organization of courts and the procedural issues and suggested reforms involved in the adversary system, from arrest to penal institutions.

168A-B. History of the Chicano (4-4) Garcia, Vargas

Prerequisite: any quarter of History 17A-B-C or any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A -B-C or upper-divion standing. Same course as History 168A-B.
The history of the Chicanos, 1821 to the present; traces the sociocultural lifeline, of the Mexicans who have lived north of Mexico.

168E. History of the Chicano Movement (4) Staff

Prerequisite: Any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A-B- or History 10 or Chicano Studies 10 or History 168B or Chicano Studies 168B or upper-division standing. Same course as History 168E.
An examination of the Chicano movement in the United States from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Topics will include the student movement, the farmworker movement, the Plan de Aztlan, the Raza Unida Party, Chicana feminists, the anti-war movement, and Chicano studies.

168F. Racism In American History (4) Staff

Prerequisite: any quarter of History 17A-B-C or any lower-division course in Asian American studies, Black studies, Chicano studies or upper-division standing. Same course as History 168F.
This course will examine racism as a major ideological force in defining American society from the colonial era to the 1980s. Major focus will be in the changing nature of racism as ideology as well as the relationship of racism to specific minority groups such as Afro-American, Native American, Chicanos, and Asian American.

168G-H. United States-Latin American Relations (4-4) Staff

Prerequisite: any quarter of History 17A-B-C or any quarter of Chicano Studies 1A-B-C or 101.
Covers the history of United States-Latin American relations from the colonial period to the present. Topics to be covered include the Monroe Doctrine, the United States-Mexican War, Manifest Destiny, the Spanish-American War, Dollar Diplomacy, the Good Neighbor Policy, the Alliance for Progress, and the United States role in Central America.

168P. Proseminar in Chicano History (4) Staff

Prerequisite: History 168A or 168B, or Chicano Studies 168A or 168B, and consent of instructor. Same course as History 168P.
Studies in selected aspects of Chicano history with an emphasis on social and economic history.

169. Comparative Local History (4) Garcia, Vargas

This course analyzes local and regional history of Chicanos. Theories and methodologies of social, urban, and oral history will be examined. Public history programs for Chicano communities will be discussed. Students will develop a research prospectus for their research projects.

170A. Chicano Community Organizations (4) Segura

The day-to-day operations and success of contemporary Chicano community organizations is socio-historically analyzed. Emphasis is placed on whether particular organizations meet the actual or perceived needs of the Chicano community or of special interest groups within the community.

170B. Chicano Community Organizations (4) Segura

Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.
The theory of organizing within the Chicano community will be analyzed through field observations of currently operating Chicano community organizations.

171. The Chicano Urban Experience (4) Staff

Prerequisite: upper-division standing.
This course traces the transition of Chicanos from a rural to urban population and examines trends in family size, language usage, segregation, and social inequality among Chicanos residing in cities. Issues of urban decay and community conflict are also examined.

172. Legal Issues in the Chicano Community (4) Staff

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Survey of recent state and federal laws and court decisions affecting the Chicano community. Special consideration will be given to landmark cases and decisions. Analysis will be made of opposing views on each case in a historical context.

174. Chicano Politics (4) Staff

Prerequisite: upper-division standing. Same course as PoliticalScience 174.
Political life in the barrio, political behavior of the Chicano community, andrepresentation of Chicanos by elected officials and interest groups.

175. Comparative Ethnic Movements (4) Segura

The purpose of this course is to examine the structural forces which strengthen ethnic identification and promote ethnic politics within the United States and other nations. Although the Chicano movement will be the central focus, various ethnic movements will be examined.

178. Theories of Social Changes and Chicano Society (4) Segura

This course will examine the dynamics of social change and its impact on the chicano community. Students will acquire a general understanding of basic theories and an introduction to the social structure and processes of change (urbanization, social mobility, etc.).

180. Survey of Chicano Literature (4) Lomeli

The purpose of this course is to provide the student with a general overview of all the literature written by Chicanos by covering all genres: poetry, novel, theatre, short story, and essay. The course aims to portray a people's experience through literature and show how that experience is manifested in a given work.

181. The Chicano Novel (4) Lomeli

Reading, analysis and critique of the contemporary Chicano novel as it pertains to the Chicano experience.

186A-B. Music/Dance of the Chicanos (4-4) Staff

A historical perspective of Mexican and Chicano music and dance with emphasis on the indigenous cultures and other contributing cultural elements which combine to form traditional and contemporary Chicano music and dance.

187. Introduction to Chicano Theater and Performance (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisite:. upper-division standing.
A survey of the major Chicano theater and performance forms ranging from the traditional to the avant-garde contemporary. The diverse forms of performance will be studied as art forms and with regard to their respective social functions within Chicano communities.

188A. Chicano Theater: Origins to 1970 (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisites: upper-division standing or ChicanoStudies 1A, 1B, or 1C, or any lower-division drama course such as Dramatic Art 60 or 60S.
Survey of the origins and development of borderlands theater, from native ritual and Indian-Hispano antecedents to today's Chicano forms. The genesis of Chicano theater will also be studied in relationship to Chicano culture and history.


188B. Contemporary Chicano Theatrer (4) Broyles-Gonzalez

Prerequisite: upper-division standing or ChicanoStudies 1A, 1B, or 1C, Chicano Studies 188A, or any lower-division drama course such as Dramatic Art 60 or 60S.
An analysis of conemporary Chicano forms of theatrical expression, ranging from barrio performances to mainstream commercial productions. The creation and presentation of Chicano dramatic forms will be analyzed in relationship to economic and historical realities affecting them.

188C. Chicano Theater Workshop (4) Staff

Prerequisites: Chicano Studies 188A or 188B or consent of instructor, knowledge of Spanish and English.
Reading and analysis of contemporary bilingual Chicano plays, in conjunction with acting and technical training. A dramatic piece will be rehearsed and performed.

189. Immigration and the U.S. Border (4) Garcia, Vargas

Prerequisite: upper-division standing or consent of instructor.
An analysis of the socioeconomic and political factors which have determined and continue to form the basis for the development of United States immigration policies and practices toward Mexico and the U.S-Mexican border.

190. Introduction to Chicano Poetry and Short Story (4) Lomeli

Reading and appreciation of Chicano poetry and poets. Analysis and critique of the Chicano short story with discussions on the realities and values presented on the Chicano experience and universe by the author.

191AA-ZZ. Special Topics in Chicano Studies (4) Staff

Corse may be taken up to three times (12 units) providing the letter designations are different. Designed to allow courses of varying topics in areas of expertise of visiting professors to broaden opportuniies for students. Examples might be: immigration, Native American, Mexican, or Latin American influences on the Chicano, legal issues, the migrants.

192. Field Research (4-8) Staff

Prerequisites: lower-level ethnic studies, sociology and/or anthropology course work, open only to juniors and seniors, consent of instructor. Eight units maximum may be applied to major.
Internship in contemporary urban problems and decision-making processes as they affect the Chicano. Internship based on directed research through observation, participation, and relevant readings. Student individually assigned, instructed, and supervised in field-work involving practical experience in decision making unit of local governmental social service agencies, or of community liaison agencies.

193. Seminar (4) Prerequisites,. two courses in Chicano Studies, consent of instrucor prior to enrollment and upper-division standing. To be offered intermittentiy, Special topics in Chicano Studies.

194. The Chicano Worker (4)

Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
A comparative analysis of the economic status of Chicanos. Special attention is given to the employment situation of chicanas, Chicano youths, and Mexican immigrants. Key topics are job and industry concentration, income, unemployment, and under-employment.

195. Seminar: Problems in the History of Chicano Art (4) Favela

Prerequisites: either Chicano Studies 145 or 146; upper-division standing and consent of instructor.
A definition of Chicano art will form the focus of this seminar. Students will conduct primary research and analyze pluralistic facets of Chicano art, artists, and art criticism within the context of mainstream American art and culture.

196. Practicum: Analysis of Chicano Survey Data (4) Staff

Prerequisite: upper-division standing.
The course allows students an opportunity to conduct their own research project. With instructor supervision, students will formulate and exercute (through use of the computer) an analysis of data from an existing Chicano survey.

197. Topics Seminar: Education of the Chicano (4) San Miguel

Survey of the relationship between the schools and the Chicano child. Also included will be information on theories, methods, and resources necessary for developing and evaluating effective teaching strategies in meeting the educational needs.

198. Readings in Chicano Studies (1-4) Staff

Prerequisites: students must 1) have attained upper-division, standing, 2) have a minimum 3.0 grade-point average for the preceding three quarters; 3) have completed at least two upper-division courses in Chicano Studies. Students are limited to five units per quarter and 30 units total in all 198/199 courses combined.
Readings in Chicano studies under the guidance of a faculty member in the department, Students must prepare a short plan of study and have it approved by the sponsoring faculty member.

199. Independent Studies (1-5) Staff

Prerequisites: students must 1) have attained upper-division standing, 2) have a minimum 3.0 grade-point average for the preceding three quarters, 3) have completed at least two upper-division courses in ChicanoStudies. Students are limited to five units per quarter and 30 units total in all 198/ 199 courses combined.

596. Directed Reading and Research (2-6) Staff

Prerequisite. Graduate standing and consent of instructor.
Independent research involving advanced study on a particular Chicano studies topic. A written proposal must be approved by the department chair. Number of units depends on nature of the proposal.

University of California at Santa Barbara

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Obama Gets His, Bush Doesn't

American Story With Latin Roots and Beats

[Photo: Ritchie Valens by Gil Rocha]

By LARRY ROHTER
NY Times

In the mid-1990s the documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Deane and Adriana Bosch would sometimes meet in the cafeteria and offices of WGBH in Boston to talk about programs they might make together. Ms. Deane had just finished producing the 10-part “Rock & Roll” series for PBS and wanted to do more about music. Ms. Bosch, a Cuban-American, was interested in making mainstream audiences more aware of Latin culture.

After more than a decade, during which they struggled to raise production money and worked on several other projects, the outcome of those brainstorming sessions is about to go on the air. “Latin Music USA,” a four-part series that most PBS stations will begin broadcasting on Monday, is an effort to bring those two different perspectives together, in much the way that Latin music itself is a fusion and hybrid.

“Our twin objectives were to engage the widest possible audience while also doing justice to the music for a more knowledgeable Latino viewership,” Ms. Deane said. “For people like me, this was a wonderful discovery. But for Latinos, this is the music they live and breathe, with artists they have known all their lives.”

Each hourlong segment in the series, produced in association with the BBC, focuses on a particular style, place or time. The first two programs concentrate on Latin jazz and salsa, genres that developed mainly in New York. Part 3, “Chicano Wave,” looks at forms of Mexican-American music that have emerged in the Southwest. The final episode, “Divas and Superstars,” features recent pop-oriented singers and producers mostly out of Miami or New York.

“We make documentaries about American history, and what we wanted to do was place this music as part of a history that we all share,” Ms. Bosch said. “We were trying to find the connections, find uniting factors, so that anybody anywhere in America can look at and identify with this story.”

Often, the series demonstrates, those linkages are almost subterranean. At one point in the first program, “Bridges,” snippets of hits by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Young Rascals and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, including “Satisfaction” and “Day Tripper,” are juxtaposed with identical cha-cha or mambo riffs recorded years earlier and all but forgotten.

But the series shows that the influences don’t flow in just one direction. The accordionist Flaco Jimenez, for example, explains how German polka bands in Texas influenced his Tex-Mex style, playing riffs that illustrate his point. And the Tejano star Little Joe recalls a childhood picking cotton in Texas alongside African-Americans, who gave him a love for the blues.

“Latin Music USA” also includes rare and unusual archival footage. There are home movies of Ritchie Valens with his mother shortly before he died in the 1959 plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly; of a young Celia Cruz singing with a full orchestra in Cuba; and of musical performances tied to Cesar Chavez’s farmworkers’ union rallies.

Even stories familiar through movies and other parts of mainstream culture take on a new coloration thanks to the filmmakers’ efforts to track down supporting players. In one particularly moving vignette, Bob Keane, Valens’s producer and manager, remembers driving a Thunderbird to San Francisco from Los Angeles with Valens in the back seat playing his guitar and stumbling across the riff that powered the rock classic “La Bamba.”

In another, the producer Huey Meaux tells how he rescued the future country-music star Freddy Fender from a job in a Houston carwash that Mr. Fender, born Baldemar Huerta, got after serving a prison term in Louisiana on a questionable drug charge. That name change and Mr. Fender’s troubles with the law underscore some broader points the filmmakers wanted to make about the role of music in defining identity and enduring prejudice.

“It was hard to find original footage” of Mr. Fender, Valens and Little Joe “because we Mexican-Americans are almost like phantoms of history,” said John Valadez, who directed the “Chicano Wave” episode. “This film doesn’t pull any punches in terms of racism and struggle, but it’s not a bitter or angry film.”

All four programs are narrated by the actor Jimmy Smits, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in New York and Puerto Rico. For him too, the project’s appeal was as much emotional and personal as intellectual: his parents, he said, met at the Palladium Ballroom, the hub of the Latin music dance scene in Manhattan during the 1950s, and he has vivid memories of hearing the boogaloo sound as a teenager.

In four hours “Latin Music USA” cannot possibly be comprehensive, and does not pretend to be. Mr. Smits said he was “already getting e-mail messages from friends asking why so-and-so was left out,” and each director and producer expressed regret about some favorite artist who did not make the final cut.

“We know there is so much more than one could do,” Ms. Deane said. “This is such a universe of great music, and we hope this series and the DVD and CD that go along with it will spur more thinking about programming in this area.”

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Apply for Chicana Chicano Studies Ph.D. Program at UCSB

[Click photo/poster to enlarge]

DEPARTMENT OF CHICAN@ STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

The University of California at Santa Barbara is now accepting applications from students for its Ph.D. program in Chicana and Chicano Studies. The application deadline is December 15 for financial aid consideration, and January 1 without financial aid consideration.

Please feel free to forward this information and the attached copy of our Ph.D. informational poster to your students who are interested in applying to graduate school.

M.A./Ph.D. Program
http://www.chicst.ucsb.edu/phd/index.shtml

The M.A./Ph.D. program engages students in the interdisciplinary study of Chicana and Chicano history, culture, and politics. Our students explore Chican@ experiences in their most broad, comprehensive sense, informed by several philosophical and theoretical schools, historical and political scholarship, literary and religious traditions, artistic movements, mass media, and video and film. The M.A./Ph.D. in Chicana and Chicano Studies challenges students to understand social justice issues by linking theory, teaching, and scholarship in the academy and larger community.

UCSB Graduate Division
https://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu/

The Graduate Division is committed to excellence in research, diversity, and intellectual innovation in UCSB graduate education.

Those interested in applying to the program should visit the UCSB Graduate Division web site https://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu/programs/index.cfm?event=showProgramDetail&majorID=109 for information about the required application materials. Information about the on-line application process is available at https://www.graddiv.ucsb.edu/eapp/index.cfm.

Department of Chican@ Studies
http://www.chicst.ucsb.edu/

For more information contact Katherine Morales, Staff Graduate Program Advisor, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, (805-893-5269)or kmorales@chicst.ucsb.edu.

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About Landscape Photography

[Photo copyright 2009 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved. Click image to enlarge.]

Some photographers like to take landscape photos. I do too. But the simple fact remains, any landscape image won't even come close to actually being there. No camera can capture the subtle tones and textures resplendent in the natural world. Even the nature in your backyard (if you have a nice one) can be more vibrant than any print by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston or Imogen Cunningham.

That is why I don't take many landscapes. Obviously the seasons at Yosemite, Yellowstone and other natural venues repeat annually. If you go at the right time of year you can enjoy the real thing. The snowy river, the bright blue sky and the eroded canyons have not moved anywhere, yet.

Sometimes I will take a picture during a trip to remember the moment. But nature has to be seen smelled, touched, etc., up close and personal. Not experienced flat and impersonal. Photos of nature are just hollow remembrances, mementos. When you are in a gallery inspecting the desiccated remains of a landscape hanging on a sterile wall, do you ask yourself, I would rather be there than here?

When I walk (not drive) down the street, I am in awe (yes, I get giddy) of nature and architecture. I see art and sometimes history in subtle cracks, textures, shapes and hues.

What do I like

Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area I became familiar with the works of photographic legends Adams, Weston and Cunningham. If you are going to a gallery, I would suggest also investigating the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Minor White (earlier). They offer unique abstract images of the ocean. I consider their work more valuable and entertaining.

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Covert Memories from Miami

23 September 2009

By Saul Landau

In Miami, several retired U.S. officials remembered the early 1960s, when the CIA sent hundreds of employees to join other government bureaucrats to process and recruit thousands of Cuban exiles to destroy the Cuban revolution. Assassination plans abounded, from poisoned cigars and wetsuits for Fidel Castro, to a sniper rifle smuggled in by his comrade to a sophisticated poison pill. The capsule’s designer imagined the pills dissolving in Fidel’s chocolate milkshake, which he drank regularly at the former Havana Hilton Hotel’s ice cream bar. These Hollywoodesque creations came from the CIA laboratory of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the Agency’s ghoulish technology maven. Most of the plotters and erstwhile assassins of that era, like Gottlieb, have died.

One long-retired Air Force officer told me of his plan to undermine Fidel among Cuba’s guajiros (peasants). Given the shortages of consumer goods, it made sense to clandestinely drop tens of thousands of rolls of toilet paper on the island. On each leaf the guajiro would see a photo of Castro and Khrushchev together. “That would have given the guajiros a good laugh,” the perpetrator told me. “But the White House nixed it.” Perhaps Kennedy might have thought that if he approved such a prank, some joker in the U.S. could put the President’s and Bobby’s faces on toilet paper and sell the product throughout the United States; legal under the First Amendment.

Most Cubans who arrived in the days preceding what became the April 1961 Bay of Pigs “fiasco” assumed the U.S. government would deal with Fidel and his communists. Washington had never allowed such flagrant disobedience to go unpunished. By the summer of 1960, the Cuban revolution had the gall to seize property belonging to the mighty oil companies (the Cuban government nationalized Texaco and Esso after they refused to refine Soviet crude oil on orders from Washington). Such defiant behavior challenged the essence of the Monroe Doctrine: “Latin America is ours.”

Few inside the hub of operations questioned the premises. “It was the height of the Cold War, after all,” several retired officials explained as if this statement summarized the justification for everything. The West faced a relentless enemy of great power and U.S. agencies had to stop its expansion. Indeed, most of the world would have agreed, at least, that Cuba informally belonged to the United States, no matter what most Cubans thought of that assessment.

The secret plots to overthrow the revolutionary government had become the world’s most open secret. Miami became Planning and Operations Center for the CIA’s largest station (JMWAVE). One man, now in his late 50s, told me how a CIA official -- a Mr. Bishop -- had recruited his father in 1959. Their family moved to Miami along with hundreds of thousands of Cuba’s rich, professional and propertied middle classes. His father worked from a two story building in Miami Beach, one of hundreds of CIA properties in the area. Nearby, ships from the CIA’s navy would dock, load up with provisions (arms and bombs) and set off to the Cuban coast to wreak havoc or just drop or pick-up agents whose job was to subvert the new government. “It was routine, every day and sometimes twice a day.”

“I thought the invasion would come in October of 1960,” he told me, “or at least that would be the start of some intense guerrilla war. Everyone speculated if a full-scale invasion would occur or if men would be sent to the Cuban mountains to do what Fidel did to Batista.”

Eisenhower had obvious misgivings about the plan and passed the ball to Kennedy, who then suffered the ignominious defeat. Publicly, he accepted responsibility (“Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.”). Privately, however, he sought revenge: the overthrow of the Castro government. His brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, directed a war of terror against Cuba; assassination attempts and sabotage, propaganda and economic war against an island of 6 million people.

In December 1960, I was on a tour with a group of students going to Cuba. Arriving at the Miami airport, we learned the pilots of our Cubana plane (each hour Pan Am and Cubana flew to Havana) had defected. While waiting for a new crew to fly over from Havana, a “spontaneous demonstration” erupted. Angry Cuban exiles screamed at the college students; some protestors threw punches and began to spit at the students. One asked a demonstrator: If Cuba is so terrible, you should want us to go. Then we’ll return and tell lots of people how awful things are.” The protestor looked puzzled. He turned to the team leader and asked for instructions. “Don’t talk, just spit,” he sneered. It appropriately summed up U.S. policy for fifty years.

Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and filmmaker (DVDs available through roundworldproductions.com)

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