When I get really bored, I scan old negatives and slides. Recently I found a series on César Estrada Chávez. I remember printing, publishing and exhibiting many of them. This one in particular, I never reproduced. I felt it was about time.
This series of photographs were taken in San José, California in the early 70s. It was at a benefit concert for the United Farmworkers Union. Chavez was in attentendance. I have seen the UFW leader many times before. He was not a stranger in San José.
I have two examples of the photo. One is full frame and the other is cropped. Since I shot the black and white photograph with my Hasselblad medium format camera. The pictures are quite sharp. Feel free to contact me should you have any questions about this and any of my photographs. My website is www.JMMGarza.com.
Copyright 2022 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved. JMMGarza@Gmail.com
Yes, I am enjoying retired life. Along with taking a lot of pix, I am also painting again. In this video, I construct a panel for painting. This panel is suitable for acrylic and oil painting. Please like, subscribe and share my JMM Garza YouTube Channel. My YouTube channel is a hobby. I get to use some of my media production skills so I won't get too rusty.
I am not getting any younger or richer. Currently, I am able to complete a few projects despite monetary obstacles, but your donation to Patreon can help me realize more and better projects. Feel free to contact me about any of my past, current and planned projects. Be one of the first to donate to my Patreon page. Thank you for your financial support! http://www.patreon.com/jmmgarza
One exciting project Jesús Garza has undertaken is photographing Chicana and Chicano artists and academics. Since 1967, Jesús Garza has made it his mission to photograph the Chicana and Chicano experience. He focuses his camera on activists, workers, academics and artists in communities as diverse as Los Angeles, San Antonio, Tucson, Albuquerque, Fort Worth and San José.
From experience Garza understands that the incredible accomplishments of Latinos are often dismissed by the dominant culture. So for 50 years, he has taken on the role of outside observer and chronicler of Chicana/o history.
Feel free to contact Jesús Garza. Send your suggestions, questions or comments by calling or texting (682) 365-8702. Please understand that these are documentary photographs. Not glamour shots. The photographs have not been retouched.
Renowned Texas sculptor Jesús Moroles died in a vehicle crash late Monday night. He was 64.
Jesús Moroles
Jesús Moroles and Professor Ann Marie Leimer
Jesús Moroles and Professor Ann Marie Leimer
Jesús Moroles
Click photos to enlarge
Photos taken March 26, 2015 in Houston, TX (studio visit)
by Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. All rights reserved.
Moroles, who was born in Corpus Christi in 1950 and lived and worked in Rockport, was driving on Interstate 35 when he was involved in a crash north of Georgetown, according to the Rockport Pilot, which spoke to the artist’s sister Susanna Moroles. Other details were unavailable.
A representative of Moroles’ gallery, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, confirmed the report. “He was going to be our featured artist in August,” said gallery director Bradley Sabin. “Now it’s totally up in the air.”
Moroles created both monumental and smaller scale works in granite. He received the 2008 National Medal of Arts and was the 2011 Texas State Artist for three-dimensional work.
“I knew Jesús for many years,” said San Antonio sculptor Bill Fitzgibbons. “I always found him very generous of spirit and supportive of other sculptors. He was one of a kind, and I will greatly miss his friendship.
“In terms of granite, I don’t know anybody who could sculpt and create pieces out of that material the way that Jesús could,” Fitzgibbons added. “I would say that he was not only one of the best sculptors in Texas, but in the United States.”
Moroles has a public piece at the Southwest School of Art, as well as “River Stelae,” a sculpture consisting of three monumental slabs of granite near the San Antonio Museum of Art.
“Working with Jesus on the sculptural fountain of Texas pink granite that graces our historic campus was a remarkable experience for me because of his personal warmth, wit and passion,” said Paula Owen, president of the Southwest School of Art. “And it was incredible to visit his studio and workshop in Rockport where he created major pieces for locations around the world. Texas has lost a significant artist, and I mourn his passing.”
Moroles once said of his sculpture: “My work is a discussion of how man exists in nature and touches nature and uses nature. Each of my pieces has about 50 percent of its surfaces untouched and raw — those are parts of the stone that were torn. The rest of the work is smoothed and polished. The effect, which I want people to not only look at but touch, is a harmonious coexistence of the two.”
According to the Rockport Pilot, the artist was at home last week finalizing transport of a sculpture to Dallas. He and his crew made the delivery Thursday and assembled the sculpture for the downtown Dallas area.
Susanna Moroles told the paper that her brother returned to Rockport from Dallas on Sunday because he had a jury duty notice for Monday. Then he then left town Monday evening, heading north to Oklahoma, to begin work on his next commissioned piece.
Performance, Art and Activism, a panel discussion on the legacy of El Centro Cultural de la Gente, will be held Sept. 25 at 6 pm at San José State University. The event is free and open to the public at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Room 225/229. A reception will follow in the Cultural Heritage Center (Fifth Floor).
In 1973, El Centro Cultural de la Gente came to life in an abandoned storefront near First and San Carlos Streets — where the Federal Building now stands. The cultural center became the epicenter for Chicana and Chicano artistic and political activism during the turbulent 1970s. The panelists will elaborate how “El Centro” informed arts production in San José and beyond.
The panel members include:
Teresa Castellanos - Moderator: Teresa currently serves as the coordinator of Immigrant Relations and Integration Services for Santa Clara County’s Office of Human Relations. She has a 25-year history of working on immigration issues through government, labor and community based organizations such as Justice for Janitors and the Health Workers Union and Catholic Charities.
Mary Jane Solis: Mary Jane has been involved in arts organizations that promote social justice and continues to support Latino art and artists in our community. She is a founding member of MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americano) and is the former vice chair of the City of San José Arts Commission where she championed multicultural arts development.
Felipe Rodríguez: Felipe has performed for more than 50 years. Coming from an amazing family of activists and performers, it was natural for Felipe to sing and play his guitar in church, on stage and on the picket line.
Adrian Tepehua Vargas: Active in Silicon Valley’s artistic and cultural movement for over 35 years as a theatre and film director, playwright, actor, musician, and producer. For 10 years he directed San José’s former Teatro de la Gente and was co- founder of El Centro Cultural de la Gente.
Elisa Marina Alvarado: Elisa is the founding member and Artistic Director of the 29-year-old Teatro Visión. She has been active in the Chicano movement for over 40 years as an actress, director and community organizer. Elisa has taught theater for Teatro Visión, San José State University, San Francisco State University and many community organizations.
The panel discussion will take place in conjunction with Jesús Manuel Mena Garza’s exhibition, A Chicano Photographer’s Journey: 1970 to the Present. Garza will give a presentation at 3 pm of his documentary images in the same room.
Location and Time:
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, SJSU
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, Room 225/229, Second Floor
150 East San Fernando Street, San José, CA 95112
6 to 7:30 pm with reception to follow
Free and open to the Public
Sponsored by the MLK Library; SJSU School of Journalism and Mass Communication; the Cesar E. Chavez Community Action Center – SJSU Associated Students; Department of Mexican American Studies; and SJSU’s Chicano/Latino Faculty & Staff Association
A Benefit for the Preservation of a Legacy August 13 –30, 2011 252 South Main Street, Pomona, CA 91767
Opening Reception: Saturday August 13, 2011 at 3:00–10:00 p.m. Closing Reception: Saturday August 27, 2011 at 6:00–10:00 p.m.
The dA CENTER FOR THE ARTS is honored to host a benefit art exhibition for one of the most influential figures in the Chicano Art movement, Gilbert “Magu” Luján who recently passed away. The exhibition will open to the public during Pomona’s Second Saturday Art Walk on August 13. Items will be offered at many price levels, so everyone can “take home a Magu.” Please join us in celebrating and preserving his legacy.
We cordially invite collectors to attend a special preview reception on Friday August 12, 2011 at 7:00-9:00 p.m. to get early access to some of Magu’s never before shown original artworks. Enjoy wine and hors d’oeuvres to the mellow music of Maria Elena Gaitan aka “Chola con Cello.” Reserve your tickets now.
Come back on August 27 for an afternoon of music in celebration of an amazing man and his expansive collection of work. The closing reception will feature musical performances by Conjunto Los Pochos, singer/songwriter/artist Eloy Torrez and more!
All proceeds from the events will go to support the preservation of Gilbert “Magu” Luján’s artistic legacy.
Any donations toward the benefit exhibition are tax deductible through the dA CENTER FOR THE ARTS, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. For more information, please contact: Marcella Swett at (909) 397-9716.
El Mac's graffiti art — spray-painted on walls across the globe — sometimes stretches multiple stories high and half a city block long. His larger-than-life portraits are inspired by Mexican and Chicano art, religious iconography, local personalities in the neighborhoods where he paints, and the classical artists he has studied since childhood, such as Vermeer and Caravaggio.
Jesus Garza says, "I have included two excellent artist video interviews on my blog, all courtesy of USA Today. There are more interviews on the USA Today website. Click the article header to go there."
But on Facebook, his massive murals look more like postage stamps. Though the Web allows for slightly larger images, seeing his work online can't compare with the real thing. And without the context of a location, his cultural or political message is sometimes diminished or lost.
For the Los Angeles-born artist, now based in Phoenix, figuring out how to best use social media and other virtual platforms has been a conundrum.
"I think I'm still trying to figure it all out," says El Mac, 30, whose real name is Miles MacGregor. "It's got to be a sign of the future, but it's a devilish sort."
El Mac is like a lot of visual artists wondering how much weight a Web presence carries. Artists — like scores of others in less visual fields — are struggling with how to use the potential of the new media for marketing,networking, selling their wares and, for some, making their solitary workday a little less lonely.
Many artists say they value the beauty of Web surfing and discovering a gem of a painting, the pleasure of meeting other creative souls they might otherwise never have known, and debating critics and bloggers. But they also see the limitations of the virtual world and grapple with how much time to spend online away from their studios.
For many visual artists online, one of the biggest hurdles is that the aesthetic experience is lost on the viewer. A picture online doesn't translate size, as El Mac discovered. The thickness of paint, the way sunlight plays on a surface and changes throughout the day, the texture of a sculpture or woven fabric against your hand — diminished or nil.
Some fields, though, such as photography, are less affected. Photographer Marco Di Lauro says he got on Facebook "about two or three years ago without having a specific aim in mind."
"As I was adding people, I realized that most of the photo editors at magazines and newspapers are on Facebook. I have about 3,900 'friends' now — most involved in the photo industry," says Di Lauro, who's based in Rome and shoots for Getty Images around the world.
While jobs come through his agency, Di Lauro uses Facebook to show his photos and network. For instance, last month he posted a link to a photo that earned him an international award. He says colleagues and friends also use Facebook to send him messages now. "Facebook is becoming like an e-mail service, plus a lot of other things," he says.
And while he uses it mostly professionally, Di Lauro admits to a little non-work surftime. "It's fun to look at the women," he says with a laugh.
Soho painter and photographer Laura Levine says she jumped on Facebook a few years ago to reconnect with musicians she hung out with 20-some years ago. Levine, 52, one of New York's prolific rock 'n' roll photographers in the 1980s, shot for Rolling Stone, among others.
'On and off Facebook all day'
"I think there's something about this age, our midlife, when people start to appreciate the friends they had back then," Levine says. "I'm on and off Facebook all day — it's terrible." She also curates a professional page, where she promotes shows and sells her now-vintage rock photo prints, but she keeps a tight leash on who sees her personal page.
Others are more open to the masses. Collage artist Michael Anderson, whose studio is in Harlem, N.Y., has more than 2,800 Facebook friends. He says social media have been great for networking with other artists, but he's concerned that the whole concept of "artist" is getting watered down.
"The arts community is definitely very expanded because of sites like Facebook. There are so many more artists today than there ever were. There is so much more crap out there, too."
He doesn't believe it's the place to sell. "I don't feel that the people who are my real collectors are really looking for my work on Facebook."
Museums are catching on, though, says Tyler Greene, a Washington art blogger. While some contemporary museums such as The Getty, in Malibu, Calif., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art "get" the importance of social media, many others aren't there yet. "The days of putting out a press release in the local paper to share what they're doing in the community are long gone," he says.
Much of the Phillips Collection in Washington is online, and the museum is on Twitter. "We want people to visit. But when they can't, our goal is to meet people where they live," says Ann Greer, director of communications and marketing.
A recent National Endowment for the Arts study showed that more than half of Americans participate in the arts via electronic media, says Sunil Iyengar, NEA director of research and analysis. Last fall, NEA published a report based on a 2008 survey of more than 18,000 adults. Last month, it released additional research showing that people aren't just pleasure-viewing art online. They're also using it for educational enrichment and creating art, Iyengar says.
Sheila Pepe, 51, an installation artist and a professor in the School of Art and Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., says she finds the cult of personality in the Facebook art world fascinating, and notes that some artists and art critics have so many "friends" that they have to reject new requests because they've hit the 5,000-friend limit.
Seattle art blogger and painter Joey Veltkamp believes virtual-world popularity comes down to how successful a self-promoter you are. "Social media lets you say, 'Hey look at me,' " he says. If you're good at that, you become a Facebook celeb, which he says annoys those who don't have that skill set. Still, he doesn't think anybody's ever going to reach stardom in the art world by being popular on Facebook.
Connecting with a job
But being a good self-promoter helped Elyce Abrams, a painter from Philadelphia with 1,932 Facebook "friends," land a show in New York last year. "One of my friends on Facebook was showing at their gallery, and he had commented on my work and his gallery saw his comment. That's how we connected," she says.
But even while savvy social media use can help an artist's career, those who seem to sit on Facebook and post all day long may not be taken seriously, says painter Amanda Church of New York."I sometimes think 'Get to work' when I see people posting and commenting a lot."
Artists and critics agree that social media sites have expanded opportunities for artists in smaller fields and unified them.
Typeface designer Chris Lozos of Falls Church, Va., says the font design world consists of about 500 professionals, many based in Europe. He uses Facebook and Twitter daily to keep up with colleagues and clients.
"Most of us are one-person shops and can't afford blitz media. This is the poor man's marketing," he says.
Animators like it for the same reasons. "We are like moles sitting in separate holes," says New York animator Signe Baumane, who shares works in progress on Facebook. "I get to see a lot of very fresh movies."
Artists who move far from home, such as Victor Ekpuk, a Nigerian-born painter who has lived in Washington, D.C., for the past 12 years, says his website and Facebook page help keep his Nigerian family, friends and fellow artists up to date on his blossoming career, including a recent sale to the Smithsonian. It also has helped him reach out to young people.
"There's a group of artists I connected with on Facebook called Take Me to the River. We're collaborating with artists from around the world — professional poets and visual artists — to help at-risk youth who are poets and artists," Ekpuk says.
Social media sites also are spurring vibrant conversations about the arts. The recent Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery controversy over the museum's decision to pull a video excerpt of an ant-covered Jesus on a Crucifix generated a heated debate on Facebook and Twitter, Greene says.
Ironically, those same social media sites sometimes censor art. Earlier this year, Facebook pulled down a drawing of a nude female torso — mistaken for a photo — posted on a page by the New York Academy of Arts.
"It happens on YouTube all the time, too. Classic works of video art have been posted that contain nudity and they've been taken down — these are works by well-known artists who are in museum collections, and they end up getting booted," says Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight.
"Social networking sites create the illusion of being public spaces, but they are corporate and they're owned. Any freedom is an illusion," he says.
Though the free-for-all sharing of art on the Web can draw positive attention and unite artists worldwide, it can work against an artist, too, says Paddy Johnson, a popular New York-based art critic and blogger.
An 'interesting' downside
"It raises a lot of interesting questions," she says. "Sometimes an artist will discover a YouTube video of their work — something someone else shot and posted — and it wouldn't have been something they'd wanted up there. ... All of a sudden you have people evaluating work that you didn't want out there."
How artists define themselves online and how they interact with others can be important in terms of future success, says John Sisson, assistant director of Career Services and Alumni Relations at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which offered its first social media course this semester.
"You have to be concerned about how you're presenting yourself — although that's open for debate. But things stick around," he says.
El Mac says he wonders whether he should be spending more time honing his professional image and being available online, but "if I spend a couple days just doing computer stuff, I start to feel bad, depressed.
"I have to be painting," he says. "I'm not going to be a happy person when I'm not creating and making art."
Theater arts program reaches 10-year anniversary; comes full circle to where the program first began.
By Gloria Angelina Castillo, EGP Staff Writer
Eighteen year-old Diana Ortega wasn’t even born when high school students spilled out into the streets of East Los Angeles to demand quality education at the height of the Chicano Movement and the history-making 1968 “Walk Outs.”
But last week she was one of several local high school students who took to the stage for the reading of three short plays focused on the lives of three of the movements’ activists.
Professional actors interpreted the majority of the play’s roles, but students also performed and told the audience about their experiences in the program. EGP photo by Valerie Mia Juarez
Students at Monterey High School, a continuation school in East Los Angeles, wrote the plays during a semester-long playwriting class. Seven students, handpicked by their principal, wrote “2011 Meets 1968,” a series of one-act plays based on interviews with participants in the 1968 Walk Outs. For many of them, the experience was eye-opening if not cathartic.
“I didn’t think I was going to get anything out of this. I though it would be like talking to old people about things I didn’t care about, but the truth is I don’t want this to end,” Ortega told the audience at Plaza de la Raza’s Margo Albert Theater on March 3.
The young playwrights were assigned to interview journalist Luis Torres, artist Ofelia Esparza and educator Paula Crisostomo —three individuals whose lives were transformed as they fought discrimination and for parity in education for East Los Angeles students.
The “Through the Ages” class is a dialogue between different generations but it is also a literacy program. “The goal is to make them better readers, writers, communicators and collaborators, while engaging them in their own history,” Theresa Chavez, artistic director of “About Productions” told EGP. The “Through The Ages” class is part of About Productions’ Young Theaterworks program.
Chavez notes that the program has only been executed at continuation high schools where the students are struggling in some fashion. The schools’ schedule lends itself perfectly to the program while helping students who need it the most, and have little access to art.
“It engages them, keeps them in school, it increases their reenrollment, the days they are in school. And because it’s their storytelling… They feel connected to it, they feel engaged, and committed to it,” she said. “It’s a transformation in terms of their own academic work but also in terms of their voicing, both literally and figuratively.”
Eneida Ortega, 16, agrees that the class takes commitment. She said students had to meet writing deadlines “so that our mentors could check it and revise it.”
Nineteen-year-old Oscar Lechuga said students did not want to miss the class because “we only get to see each other twice a week for four hours,” and missing meant they were letting down their team.
“2011 Meets 1968” was inspired by their previous play, “By the Hand of the Father,” which explored the writers’ personal histories, according Chavez.
“We asked the students to go back to their own families or whoever they might be who could tell them where they came from, what their history might be, how they came to the states or how they specifically got to L.A.,” Chavez told EGP.
The theater company’s next project “Evangeline, The Queen of Make-Believe,” also relates to “2011 Meets 1968.”
“Each [high school] session is slightly different, it just depends partially on what we are working on professionally because we like to make a bridge between what we are doing content wise and what they are going to explore. So that when they come to the theater to see our work that we are doing, there’s even a deeper connection and we can engage them in that work as well,” Chavez said.
Students said that writing about the activists really affected them.
“Ofelia [Esparza] has inspired me to never give up and be proud of who I am because that’s what is important in life,” sixteen-year-old Melissa Sanchez told the audience.
The short play “About…Ofelia Esparza” recounts the artist’s experience with discrimination in the years leading up to the walk outs, which she participated in with her children.
“I’m 77 and I have had a good life. At times it has been hard being a Chicana. Some times you have to speak out and you have to stand your ground to be who you are,” the students wrote.
Click on this photo to view the videos.
Sanchez, Lechuga and Ortega wrote “About..Paula Crisostomo,” an honor student who helped organize the 1968 Walk Outs.
“What are you worried about Paula? The only pi you should be worried about is the pie you’re going to cook…You’re not going to graduate, you’ll be pregnant by summer,” the students wrote that Crisostomo’s geometry teacher told her.
“I expected to have a boring conversation I didn’t expect her story to be so interesting, she had many challenges that shows how much of a strong person she is,” Sanchez said.
“The truth is she is one of my role models because she really helped la Raza and just looking into her eyes I could tell that she has experienced what I have in my life,” added Lechuga.
It was a new experience for the students to have their work displayed publicly.
“We do our assignment and no one ever notices us except the teacher,” Ortega told EGP. “It’s a great experience to go through something I would never have courage to do on our own.”
Virginia Garcia, 16, described the entire experience as simply “inspiring.”
Learning about the past is empowering because “that’s the only way to know where to go from there,” Esparza said, noting that it was a little strange to see her character portrayed.
“Where we are today is great, but there’s more to do” she said, noting that many of the original walk out participants went on to become doctors and lawyers, and “they’re the main part of change.”
The “desprecio” (disdain) and discrimination of Mexican-American and Latinos continues to happen but “…you need to be strong to know what your history and respect your own background, not be ashamed,” Esparza said.
Journalist Luis Torres, a writer for his school newspaper at the time of the walk outs said the 1960s was an exciting but turbulent time for his generation.
“It was very moving for me to see these students translate those experiences into a different context for a contemporary audience. I enjoyed talking to them; enjoyed meeting them… appreciated the spark in their eyes,” Torres told EGP.
The students confessed that they didn’t know anything about the walk outs before they began the class—they hadn’t even watched the 2006 film Walkout, directed by Edward James Olmos. Their own parents are immigrants, so they did not have first-hand experience with the Chicano Movement in Los Angeles. However, some of them did have experience protesting in pro-immigration reform marches in recent years and say the “Through the Ages” program has helped them feel more confident and capable.
While the program had its first run at Monterey in 2001, the program travels to different schools, said Rose Portillo, program director of “Through the Ages” Young Theaterworks.
“2011 Meets 1968” was written by Eneida Ortega, Benjamin Villareal, Virginia Garcia, Jorge Leal, Oscar Lechuga, Diana Ortega, and Michelle Sanchez; under the guidance of mentors Marco Rodriguez, Tomás Benítez and Daniel Chacón; the scripts were performed by Marissa Herrera, Xavi Moreno, Roberto Alcaraz, Laurel Ollestein, Daniel Chacón, Tomás Benítez and Rose Portillo.
Through the Ages” is a non-profit program that is currently funded by the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. ‘About…Productions’ is supported in part by the California Community Foundation, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles County Commission, The Pasadena Cultural Affairs Department, and private donations.
Pioneering Chicano artist Malaquias Montoya is still doing political art. That comes through loud and clear from the title of his show, “Globalization and War: The Aftermath,” through March 4 at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, 2004 Park Boulevard in Balboa Park, San Diego, CA. But when he appeared for the opening reception January 22 and was invited to speak for 45 minutes, he talked as much about the past — the heady days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when Hispanics first started calling themselves Chicanos and the Chicano art movement that gave rise to the Centro Cultural was getting under way — as about Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the other modern-day inspirations for the art he was showing.
Montoya’s art blends a brutal toughness and a desperate compassion in dealing directly with political themes — torture as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy (plus the denials that we engage in torture — one piece uses the actual words of someone accused of torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib who said “we’re just softening them up for interrogation”), the growing gap between rich and poor in the U.S. itself and the brutality and viciousness with which Americans, especially the military, throw their weight around the world and demand other countries bend to their will. Among the influences he cited were Mexican muralists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros (two of the three great painters of the Mexican revolution who were called Los Tres Grandes — the third was Diego Rivera), along with newer artists Elizabeth Catlett and Kathe Kollwitz.
One name he didn’t mention as an influence, but whose stylistic footprints were obvious in Montoya’s work, was Ben Shahn, who in the 1930’s and 1940’s pioneered a style of political art relying on bold, often deliberately ugly imagery, rendered in stark monochromes. The monochrome pieces in Montoya’s show especially resemble Shahn’s work, and he acknowledged the influence when he took audience questions. “Ben Shahn is someone I’ve always admired,” said Montoya, who studied him towards the end of his career in the 1960’s and read his 1960 art book, The Shape of Content.
Montoya was introduced by the pioneering Chicano poet Alurista, who paid tribute to the RCAF — “Radical Chicano Artists’ Front” — a group of radical Chicano artists which started in Sacramento and San Francisco, and which Montoya helped organize. In 1970 Alurista and some of his fellow activists staged the takeover of the small strip of land under the freeway in Barrio Logan that is today known as Chicano Park. He was also instrumental in starting the Centro Cultural. In his introduction, Alurista recalled that the inspiration for the Chicano Park takeover came from, of all sources, the California Highway Patrol.
“They wanted to put a station in the middle of the barrio, where Chicano Park is now,” Alurista recalled. “We took over Chicano Park, but had it not been for the RCAF and Los Elas Dunstas of Los Angeles, Chicano Park would not be what it is today.” He paid tribute not only to Montoya but to Victor Ochoa and Mario Torero, local San Diego artists who were part of the original Chicano movement and helped paint the famous murals on the pillars holding up the freeways over Chicano Park. At first the authorities wanted to whitewash the murals; today San Diego regularly promotes them as a tourist attraction.
“I was here many years ago in the 1970’s and met several people, including Victor Ochoa and Alurista,” Montoya recalled. Though he was committed to the RCAF because his brother held the title of “general” in it, Montoya explained, his principal affiliation back then was with an Oakland-based group called MALAF. The initials stood for “Mexican-American Liberation Art Front,” Montoya said, but when he pronounced them it sounded like the Spanish words “mala jefe” — “bad chief.” According to Montoya, most of the members of MALAF had grown up as farmworkers but had moved to the urban barrios and had ultimately put themselves through college.
Montoya said MALAF organized one major exhibition, called “A New Symbol for La Nueva Raza,” but its major influence was through the long dialogues and rap sessions its members had with each other. “We would talk about ourselves, how we grew up, how we weren’t allowed to speak Spanish, and how we hated ourselves for looking ‘different’,” Montoya recalled. “But in this fellowship we talked and found the humor in our situation.” He recalled that MALAF’s members weren’t immune to their own internal racism; one member was “castigated for looking ‘too Indian,’” he said.
“We were proud of who we were, the food we ate, our work in the fields and how our parents contributed to the wealth of the country,” Montoya said. “We started to take pride in who we were. We were looking for something we could use as a symbol, and [we took it from] Miguel Gomez, a young man with a brown beret and a bomber jacket, someone who a few years before that we would have called ‘cabrón Indio.’ He had a face that looked like it could have been the subject of a Mayan sculpture. We looked at him and he became the symbol. All five of us in MALAF went and did portraits of him for ‘A New Symbol for La Nueva Raza.’ It was a successful show.”
Today Montoya teaches at the University of California at Davis, near Sacramento. It’s a career he fell into almost by accident. “In 1970, when I started teaching at UC Berkeley, I had no idea I’d end up teaching,” he acknowledged. He had come to Oakland from San José in 1968 and found that his reputation and some of his work had preceded him when he started organizing on the Berkeley campus in support of the boycott against grapes called by César Chávez and the United Farm Workers union. Berkeley hired him, he recalled, “because they wanted to develop a Chicano arts program,” and he launched an oral history project in which he interviewed Chicano and Latino artists not only in the Southwestern U.S. but in Mexico as well.
Alas, Montoya said in response to a question from the audience, many of the tapes of his interviews and the slides he shot of the artists’ works disappeared into the maw of academe. “Professor Juan Martinez was an historian who got interested in art and wanted to do a book about it, and ended up with the tapes and the slides,” Montoya recalled. “Some of the tapes and slides were eventually returned, but others were lost, and I had to write the people I’d interviewed that the material had been taken out of my hands. Fortunately, no one sued.” Montoya said that one of the people he interviewed, Nino Padilla, had just returned from Viet Nam and had done a series called The People of Viet Nam in Black and White, which he recalled as “very powerful work,” but he hasn’t heard of it since and doesn’t know what happened to it.
One audience member asked Montoya how he felt about UC Berkeley, where he started his academic career and which still has a reputation as a progressive institution, hiring John Yoo from the George W. Bush administration as a law professor. Yoo’s memos to Bush, outlining a theory of executive power that basically said that during a time of war the President is above the law and can order virtually anything, including torture, that he feels is needed to save the country or win the war, made his name a flash point for the controversy over the harsh interrogation methods used at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. “I know about him,” said Montoya, “but I look at my work as a collaboration with the people of the community and people who influenced me. I pretty much work in my studio alone. That’s what gives me solitude and allows me to think beyond what I hear in the news.”
Not that Montoya is — or would ever want to be — an ivory-tower artist living and working in lordly isolation from political and social movements and events. “We live in a society that on a daily basis for the things we will commit later, without realizing that’s the direction we are being taken in,” he said in a statement that sums up the theme of his show. “Without an understanding of the progressive side, we will participate in that training and even be involved in that slaughter. That’s how young men can join the military and do those horrible things.” Referring to the assault on Congressmember Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of Judge John Roll and five others in Tucson January 8, Montoya added, “The Right says they can’t have caused what happened in Tucson, but when you say those things often enough — when you call your political adversaries ‘enemies’ and say they should be ‘eliminated’ — crimes like that will happen.”
A benefit for the family of Art Cadilli will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at Raytown Roadhouse, 522 Sixth St. in Racine, Wisconsin.
Cadilli, 58, died March 22. He received a bachelor of arts degree from San Jose State University and was a free-lance artist who was known for his window art and murals around town. Cadilli loved music and played his harmonica with local bands. He was also a member of the FOE Eagles Aerie No. 281.
The benefit will feature music by Melvin Barker and the Blues Cruise Band, food, a 50/50 raffle and a cash bar.
Tickets cost $5 in advance and at the door. They are available at Chiefs, Corner Stone, Eagles Club, Rhino Bar, George’s Tavern and Raytown Roadhouse.
Arthur “Art” Cadilli, age 58, passed away Monday, March 22, 2010. at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital, Milwaukee, WI. Art was born in Los Angeles, CA, May 19, 1951, son of Arthur Cadilli Sr. and Amelia Marquez.
Arthur received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from San Jose State University. He was a freelance artist who created window art and murals all around town. He was a member of F.O.E. Eagles Aerie #281. He loved music and played his harmonica with local bands.
Art was a prominent member of El Centro Cultural de la Gente in San Jose, California during the mid-70s. The artist produced numerous works in support of the Chicano Movement and other progressive causes during this period.
Survivors include his children, Antonio E. Cadilli (fiancee, Tokunbo Akinbodunges) and his mother, Christine Colby; Apolonia R. Cruz-Cadilli, Diego F. Cruz-Cadilli and their mother, Magdalena Cruz; his mother, Amelia Marquez of Los Angeles, CA; sisters and brothers, Mercedes Cadilli, Francisco (Regina) Cadilli, Herlinda Vasquez, Joseph Mosqueda, Yolanda (Joe) Duenas, Vicky Rodriguez, Amelia Nunez; best friends, Felix Pacheco, Danny Mangabat, Houston Pmon; other relatives and many dear friends. He was preceded in death by his father, Arthur Cadilli Sr.; two sisters, Patricia Pemebeton, and Rosalinda Ohm; and good friend, Rudy Madrid.
[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?
[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.
