SACNAS Recognizes the Contributions of Five Leaders

Santa Cruz, CA —The Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) announced today the names of the five individuals to receive 2008 SACNAS Distinguished Awards, which recognize scientific achievement, teaching, and mentorship of underrepresented minority students.

The individuals to be recognized represent the highest caliber of mentoring and an established record of encouraging minority students to pursue advanced degrees in science, mathematics, and engineering. The awards will be presented by SACNAS president Aaron Velasco, Ph.D., during the opening ceremony of the organization’s annual national conference on Thursday, October 9, 2008, at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

2008 SACNAS Distinguished Scientist Award

Juan Meza, Ph.D., is the department head and senior scientist of the High Performance Computing Research Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he leads a group conducting cutting-edge research involving the marriage of new algorithmic techniques and advanced computing platforms. Dr. Meza has also worked on various scientific and engineering applications including scalable methods for nanoscience and power grid reliability. In addition, Dr. Meza is extremely active nationally in addressing the underrepresentation of minorities in mathematics. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the upcoming honor of the 2008 Blackwell-Tapia Prize.

2008 SACNAS Distinguished Undergraduate Institution Mentor Award

R. Deborah Overath, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of biology in the College of Science and Technology at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (TAMUCC). Dr. Overath has been instrumental in creating an active research presentation program at TAMUCC; as a result of her mentorship, her students have won recognitions at regional, national, and SACNAS meetings. She is the TAMUCC faculty advisor for the campus’ chapter of American Women in Science.

2008 SACNAS Distinguished Community/Tribal College Mentor Award

Christine Case, Ed.D., is a microbiologist and a professor of microbiology at Skyline College in San Bruno , where she has taught for 38 years. Dr. Case founded and co-chairs Expanding Your Horizons in Math and Science, an annual conference for 6th through 12th grade girls held at Skyline College . As a student research project advisor, Dr. Case’s students have published their research, presented posters, and received research awards at many scientific meetings. Since 2002, she has sent 27 student research projects to SACNAS.

2008 SACNAS Distinguished Professional Mentor Award

Sonia Ortega, Ph.D., has been involved in many committees and organizations aimed at increasing the representation of women and minorities in the sciences, including two terms on the SACNAS Board of Directors. Currently, she is a member of the Diversity Committee of Sigma-Xi, a member of the Education and Human Resources Committee of the Ecological Society of America, and a member of the Diversity Committee of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. Dr. Ortega is a program director for the Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) Program at the National Science Foundation, which supports STEM graduate students in bringing their scientific research to K-12 classrooms and in developing communication skills for sharing science with lay audiences.

2008 SACNAS Distinguished K-12 Educator Award

Wendell Gehman, M.S., is a high school science educator at Red Cloud High School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota . He has taught for over 12 years at the school and served as chair of the science department for the last 10. Throughout his tenure, Gehman has been dedicated to the success of his students and the advancement of the science program at the school. As a result, five of Gehman’s female science students—two last summer and three this year—have participated in internships through the National Institutes of Health. Since 1997 when the SACNAS Distinguished Awards program began, the organization has recognized 42 scientists, educators, and program directors. Each of these individuals embody the spirit of the organization’s mission to encourage Chicano/Latino and Native American students to pursue graduate education and obtain the advanced degrees necessary for science research, leadership, and teaching careers at all levels.

Contacts

Judit Camacho, Executive Director, 831-459-0171, ext 444 juditcamacho@sacnas.org

Related Websites

SACNAS Distinguished Awards program: http://www.sacnas.org/distinguishedAwards.cfm
SACNAS National Conference: http://www.sacnas.org/confnew/confclient/

SACNAS was named the “premier organization that promotes diversity in science careers (especially for underrepresented Latinos and Native Americans)” by the National Science Board and was awarded a 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM).

The mission of SACNAS is to encourage Chicano/Latino and Native American students to pursue graduate education and obtain the advanced degrees necessary for science research, leadership, and teaching careers at all levels

-30-.

Alfred Arteaga 1950-2008

INSPIRACION

Alfred Arteaga

En el film, es ella, la extranjera,

ella que conmueve al protagonista

fingido en la blancura de la luz

y en el negro del infinito también

simplemente a causa de hablar francés.

En la escena que recuerdo, ella para,

espera a las lluvias de guerra, bueno,

metáforas de conflicto y de sangre

pero lluvias todavía, tal como

lluvias son al momento de encontrarse

con un acto de belleza violenta:

el mármol de una mano de una diosa

se compromete bajo la redacción

como la memoria aún persistente.

Es, según el guión improvisado,

la belleza que demora y no la actriz,

es la raza de olas y la de mareas

que simplemente son sus familares,

es el paisaje que es sexo para ella

más que la respiración de las lomas,

los sueños de los impasibles robles.

Pero en la tarde, afuera en la plaza,

ella está sola y fuera de la imagen,

fuera del montaje y de la historia

envuelta en una sintaxis helada

como si fueran piedras las palabras.

Con eso, la figura de la mujer

conoce ambos la escultura y las lluvias

pero algo de las palabras francesas

ella no sabe nada:

porque reproducida el habla falla

y la respiración da vida a nadie.

Al reconocer el nombre de la actriz

y de la figura que ella simula,

Veronica Karina,

ves por fin las letras F-I-N

que ilusionan el impulso del guión,

allí, lejos en la larga distancia

donde negra está la pantalla gris

y cierras a la vez la última blanca

página del libro, F-I-N .

¿Apagar la luz en ese momento

o esperar un poquito?

Cierras los ojos tal como el libro

y después de haber librado la vista

de todos los trozos blancos y negros

de pantalla y página, luz y papel,

mueves la cabeza a la derecha y ves

el azul cielo desde el avion azul

desde las alturas por la ventana

ves la azulada sangre que flota

encima lo de abajo, casa y plaza,

encima memorias desvanecidas.

A la vez que ves, al mismo instante

dos mariposas llegan a tu cama

por fin llegan a las manos que apenas

dejan caer un libro desde el cielo.

Respiras sobre las frágiles alas,

a la cama te caes y se te ocurre

que los sueños no han sido los efectos

de muerte ni las causas de belleza.

Traes en la mano, musa,

las alas azules de haber vivido

bajo un cielo que no está hecho de imagen

cuando respiras tu respiro encima.

Arizona May Ban Chicana/o Studies If Senator Has His Way

by Rodolfo F. Acuña
Ph.D. Chicana/o Studies
California State University at Northridge

Unlike many of the present day squatters in Arizona, I have deep feelings for Arizona. My mother’s family, the Elíases lived there for centuries.

But recently I have been swimming in a sea of emails alerting me to Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, amendments to Senate Bill 1108 that would permit Arizona to confiscate books, ban Chicano studies and exclude the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanos de Aztlan (MEChA) from Arizona’s campuses.

I am 75-years young and have lived through the McCarthy era and read about similar thought control crusades which history has exposed as idiotic. In the 1920s the words to the pledge of alliance were changed from “my flag” to the “flag of the United States” so aliens would not cross their fingers and salute a foreign flag. The present proposal ranks along side these kinds of idiocies.

If Pearce has his way, Arizona schools would ban courses “denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization” and would teaching practices that “overtly encourage dissent” from those values, including democracy, capitalism, pluralism and religious tolerance. Rep. Pearce who is not the sharpest knife in the box then would then be allowed to define patriotism and bar public schools, community colleges and universities from allowing organizations to operate on campus if they are “based in whole or in part on race-based criteria.” Among the books designated for burning is my book Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, a recipient of the Gustavus Myers Award for an Outstanding Book on Race Relations in North America.

I am personally offended by Pearce’s labeling my book as seditious. Unlike Pearce, I served in the armed forces and did not claim deferments. I was a full time student in good standing at the University of Southern California during the Korean War but I volunteered for the draft. Pearce and many of the thought control cadets took a more opportunistic route. Moreover, many of the statements Pearce attributes to Occupied America were in quotation marks. Having taught well prepared students from the University of Phoenix, I know that Phoenix teaches its students what quotation marks mean.

For Pearce’s information, history is probative. It builds. That is why the content of U.S. history courses changes from elementary through high school. University courses which Pearce should are much more complex.

What I am more concerned about are Pearce’s attempts to smear MEChA. Adolph Hitler was a proponent of the use of the Big Lie as a viable propaganda technique. Hitler said that the bigger the lie the more adapt people were to believe it.

Pearce implies that MEChA excludes other races and promotes racism, which is just not true. For Pearce’s information, MEChA organizations on every campus are chartered by student affairs. In order to be chartered, the organization has to be open to all students regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion. Every campus differs. I have visited hundreds of campuses throughout the country and have found that on some campuses the majority of the members were non-Mexican American.

I entered education because I wanted to give gang kids an alternative – I loved the kids but hated gangs. Many former gang members are today lawyers, medical doctors and teachers because of Chicano studies and MEChA. Indeed, in California 85 to 95 percent of all Latino elected officials are alumni of this organization. Frankly, people like Pearce relish in the portrayal of Mexican Americans as gang members rather than university graduates because they can step on us.

The Big Lie strategy of Pearce and company is effective because most people become paralyzed in the face of the Big Lie. During World War II, most Americans turned a deaf ear to the herding of over 100,000 Japanese Americans into concentration camps. As a Mexican American I am proud of 16-year old Ralph Lazo from Belmont High in Los Angeles who said that this is not right and declared himself of Japanese decent and went to Manzanar with his friends. That story is documented in Occupied America.

Mexican Americans should realize that these attacks are today directed at them because Pearce looks at us as weak. He has not yet taken on the Hillel or the Newman Clubs on college campuses who like MEChA do fine work and incidentally have Jewish Americans and Catholics as their core members.

Hopefully, Arizonians will wake up and people like Pearce will suffer the same fate as the Pete Wilsons did in California. His attacks are race specific and based on the Big Lie. And history will unfortunately judge Arizonians who do not speak out.

-30-

Brown Berets de Aztlan Recruiting

by Ernesto Cienfuegos

La Voz de Aztlan

"The Brown Berets de Aztlan have undertaken an active campaign to recruit more soldiers and form new chapters throughout Aztlan," said Chairman David Rico yesterday. "We will be having a series of presentations throughout the Southwest starting in San Diego on May 8, 2008," he added.

David Rico is one of the original founders of the Brown Berets in California and was one of the Brown Beret soldiers that seized and took over land in Barrio Logan in San Diego that later became, the now world famous, "Chicano Park".

In the first presentation in San Diego, David Rico and other Brown Berets will be speaking on what it takes to be a Brown Beret de Aztlan, what the organization believes in and on future plans. They will also be answering questions.

The first presentation is scheduled for May 8, 2008 from 6:30-9:00 p.m. at the Centro Cultural de La Raza located in Balboa Park at 2125 Park Blvd, San Diego.

After the recruitment campaign, the Brown Berets de Aztlan will be organizing caravans to the state of Arizona where our community is presently under siege by racists and other anti-immigrant elements.

-30-

Photographer's Close View of Cultura

By Monica Rhor, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON - With his Nikon D2X camera balanced on a tripod and natural light glinting through an open doorway, Chuy Benitez stood inside the waiting room of the Auto Chrome Plating Company.

He waited for nearly four hours: for the shot he had envisioned since first stumbling upon the shop tucked in an industrial pocket of southeast Houston months earlier; for the scene that would encapsulate the juncture of work and family life in this business owned by a Mexican-American family.

As the minutes passed on that Friday afternoon, Benitez waited for the instant when children would tumble into the space already brimming with workers in blue jumpsuits, wheels of polished chrome and stuffed deer heads mounted on the walls.

Suddenly, the shop owner's children spilled into the room and a dark-haired, ponytailed girl waved a doll with tresses just like her own, beguiling her grandfather who still wore his rumpled mechanic's uniform.

"This is what I've been looking for," Benitez recalls thinking.

Over the next eight minutes, the young photographer fired off the frames that would be melded together to create "Family Chrome Shop," an oversized panoramic photograph that is part of a series called "Houston Cultura."

That series, and Benitez's collection of portraits of Houston's Mexican-American community leaders, offer an intimate view of an often marginalized population through tableaux of events plucked from the daily life of Mexican-Americans. Both are currently on exhibit through April 12 at the Lawndale Art Gallery in Houston.

"It's a really great look into an important part of the Houston community," said Dennis Nance, the gallery's director of exhibitions and programming. "It's focusing on one community, but accessible to everyone. It says, 'This is who we are,' but it is not exclusive."

Like "Family Chrome Shop," in which a multitude of images, actions and story lines fill a 110-inch-by-36-inch frame, Benitez's work captures the juxtaposition of young and old, modern and mythic, ordinary and unusual, Mexican and American.

In one piece from "Houston Cultura," a group of charros, or Mexican cowboys, riding horseback and wielding lassos converge on a downtown intersection. In another, a mariachi band in finely embroidered costumes entertains shoppers inside a Fiesta supermarket.

"I went through all these transformations of finding those things in the community and I'm just trying to pass that along," says Benitez, a 24-year-old with a sharply trimmed goatee and amber eyes. "If you know nothing about it, look, I knew nothing. Let me show you what there is."
Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, Benitez grew up living in a place where the two cultures existed side-by-side, but separately.

As a child, he was taught the lessons of the Chicano civil rights movement, which emphasized the search for identity and independence. He fed his artistic hunger by studying the work of 

Chicano photographers and Mexican muralists.
It wasn't until he went to the University of Notre Dame that he realized the mix of cultures within him.

"I thought I was American. From growing up in El Paso, living on one side of border, I thought that made you American," says Benitez, who is of Mexican descent. "But I realized I'm so not purely American. I'm such a hybrid."

After he graduated from college, Benitez began to look for other examples of hybridity. He found the perfect muse in Houston, a city where Mexican and American cultures are fused on an almost molecular level.

"There's no border, so it's all just mashing up and doing whatever it wants to do. No holds barred. It's just free," he says about Houston.

Benitez began to document "Houston Cultura" three years ago, after he entered graduate school at the University of Houston and a fellowship at the UH Center for Mexican-American Studies.

For that series, Benitez chose to use a digital panoramic technique in which multiple shots of the same scene are layered together, creating a richly textured canvas that reflects the influence of Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera and Saturnino Herran.

In "Leaders of Houston Cultura," Benitez's portraits of community leaders, he used a fisheyed, wide-angle lens to create 360-degree diptychs, which serve as metaphors for the subjects' dual cultural identity. So far, Benitez has shot more than 40 portraits.

In Benitez's panoramic photographs, as in Mexican murals, the wide frame encompasses a profusion of details and activities. The main subjects - ordinary people whose lives often go unheralded - loom large in the foreground. But every crevice and corner contains an additional nugget of information about the subject's lives.

"I wanted to get physically close to everyone and everything," he notes. "If I'm getting close, if I'm getting more in-depth than anyone else is, then my photographs are going to communicate that to other people and people will hopefully get feeling of having a connection with the community. "The focus may be the Mexican-American community, but the themes, he says, are simple and universal: work, family, music, religion.

"La Virgen de la Baking Pan" shows a family on a pilgrimage to a makeshift shrine where they pay homage to an incarnation of the Virgin Mary on a piece of cookware. Protected by umbrellas, the family seems to move toward the icon with both reverence and fear.

The baking pan itself is draped with rosaries and flanked by candles bearing the likeness of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the "brown-skinned virgin" who is said to have appeared before Mexican peasant Juan Diego in 1531. In the far corner, a neighbour sits on his porch, undisturbed by the otherworldly occurrence.

In many of the works, tiny markers of Houston (often Houston Astros paraphernalia) pop up amid the chaos - a reminder that the photographs are not only portraits of people but also of a city in transformation.

"These are simply things worth sharing because I want there to be better understanding of where I come from and where Houston is going. Houston is officially a Hispanic city," Benitez says.

"It goes along with what the future is going to hold, which is a browner America."

-30-

Chicano art, beyond rebellion

'Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement' provides a rare showcase at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By Agustin Gurza, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Visitors to the sprawling Chicano art show opening today at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are greeted by a display of photos depicting a group of daring guerrilla street artists known as ASCO, Spanish for "nausea." The photographs are from the early 1970s -- which seems to defy the show's title, "Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement."

In one famous photo from 1972, in the midst of the movement, the museum itself was the target of these Dadaesque subversives protesting the exclusion of Chicano art from its galleries. In "Spray Paint LACMA," ASCO member Patssi Valdez is seen posing outside the museum's walls, which had been tagged overnight by her rebellious cohorts, Gronk, Willie Herron III and Harry Gamboa Jr. This act of creative defiance -- turning the building into a Chicano canvas -- is now enshrined in the very place that sparked the protest by treating Chicanos as the phantoms of the art world. So does this mean that Chicano artists have finally found the acceptance they sought? That they can now put down their spray cans and pursue careers as equals in a harmonious "post-ethnic" art world?

"I have a feeling if I was a young person today, I don't think I would spray paint the museum," Gamboa, 56, an author and college lecturer, answers slyly. "Because now, [tagging] has been felonized, and to put three signatures on a county building might result in three strikes. Who knows if we would all wind up in prison for life and never have the chance to pursue careers as artists?"

Half the artists in the current exhibition weren't even born when Gamboa and company tagged the museum, but they carry on the ASCO conceptual tradition by expressing their own set of social concerns in bold, albeit at times oblique, ways. Thus, the choice of ASCO as preamble is an intriguing invitation to rethink Chicano art, past and present.

"Phantom Sightings" (a phrase adapted from Gamboa's writings) features more than 120 works, including 10 commissioned specifically for the occasion, by 31 artists from across the country, some of whom don't call themselves Chicano. Most came of age in the 1990s and several have just recently started to draw international attention. Three -- Ruben Ochoa, Eduardo Sarabia and Mario Ybarra Jr. -- are currently represented in the sometimes reputation-making Whitney Biennial in New York.

Curated by Rita Gonzalez, Howard Fox and Chon Noriega, this is the first major Chicano group exhibition presented at LACMA since 1987's "Hispanic Art in the United States," which was organized by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. And it is the first such show organized for LACMA itself in more than three decades, since its ground-breaking "Chicanismo en el Arte" in 1975 and "Los Four" the year before.

Unlike past Chicano art shows that focused heavily on paintings, the new collection highlights work in an array of styles and formats, including sculpture, mixed-media installations, photo-based pieces and so-called interventions, art that interjects itself in public spaces or social settings. Since much of the work is conceptual, "Phantom Sightings" is likely to leave some viewers scratching their heads, needing help deciphering what artists had in mind with animated blobs that change shape (Rubén Ortiz Torres) or droopy replicas of kitchen appliances made of vinyl (Margarita Cabrera). Essays and artist bios are included in a 240-page companion catalog that is bound to become a reference work.

Variety, not ethnicity, is the show's hallmark. Artist Ken Gonzales-Day deals with the lynching of Mexican Americans in California by digitally erasing the victims from historic photos. Sandra de la Loza, meanwhile, fills in the gaps that history erased by placing plaques (that are quickly removed) in places such as the whitewashed Siqueiros mural at Olvera Street. And Julio Cesar Morales reveals the resourcefulness of immigrants trying to cross the border illegally by exposing them in their hiding places, such as the little girl inside a piñata, through transparent water-color illustrations based on real cases.

The art is by turns provocative, fanciful, stunning, strange and even noisy, in the case of one audio installation titled "Migrant Dubs." Fox calls the show "a visually cacophonous and unruly thing." To some extent, it reflects the hardscrabble barrios where some of these artists were nurtured. That street aesthetic is reflected in the design for the exhibition, with rough-hewn plywood structures, and in signage and promotions using old-fashioned wheat paste posters.

Big expectations

The show is generating intense expectations, partly due to how rarely the museum turns its attention to Chicano art in its own backyard, as opposed to Mexican or Latin American art. Galleries from Santa Monica to East L.A. are staging shows to ride the coattails of "Phantom Sightings."

Even for the few midcareer artists in the show, participation can mean validation. "It's wonderful that I'm showing with a lot of up-and-coming or emerging artists," says Delilah Montoya, 52, a Texas-based photographer. "It makes me feel as though I've been going down the right track."

But the show is also stirring debate, starting with the subtitle, which draws its own line of partition: "Art After the Chicano Movement." It suggests not only a generational but an aesthetic break with Chicano artists who emerged during the civil rights struggle, known for illustrative paintings and murals, political content and traditional iconography, such as revolutionaries, lowriders and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

With its emphasis on younger artists who don't wear their ethnicities on their canvases, "Phantom Sightings" seems to be inaugurating a "post-ethnic" Chicano era. Coming at the height of a presidential campaign in which some hail Sen. Barack Obama as the first "post racial" candidate, the timing seems propitious.

Yet some worry that implication is demeaning. "The inherited plight and struggle and history of the Chicano art movement is not one you can toy with, not without expecting any sort of questioning," says Reyes Rodriguez, director of Tropico de Nopal, a gallery near downtown that has exhibited several of the artists in the show. "Do we just keep quiet and allow LACMA to declare that Chicano art is dead? What does that really mean? That you want to be more European or more a part of, let's call it the Anglo world, or whatever it is that validates you? Is that really success? Do we not have a voice of our own?"

The notion of ethnic identity as passé is pervasive in contemporary American society, not only in the arts but in pop music, politics, journalism and literature. At some art schools, being post-ethnic is almost an admission requirement. Yet some young artists still question the burden that the post-racial ethos places exclusively on racial minorities.

"People say multiculturalism is dead and we're, like, 'OK, when's the post-white show?' " says Eamon Ore-Giron, who holds an MFA from UCLA and collaborated on the "Migrant Dubs" exhibit. "Nowadays, it's almost as if your identity is erased, in a lot of ways. But at the same time, you are who you are, and that's what you're going to represent."

"Phantom Sightings" emerged from LACMA's Latino Arts Initiative, launched in 2004 under former director Andrea Rich and designed as a collaboration between the museum and UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center. Noriega was named an adjunct curator and put in charge of the five-year plan to develop exhibitions, publications and other projects.

One of the projects already on the books then was a plan to exhibit highlights from the Chicano art collection of actor and comedian Cheech Marin. That show, a spinoff of Marin's larger exhibition called "Chicano Visions," is now scheduled to open at LACMA in June under the title "Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections From the Cheech Marin Collection."

What the news release about the initiative did not mention was the contentious, behind-the-scenes negotiations between Marin and the museum, which originally turned down his show outright. The actor threatened to go public with the issue before museum officials agreed to the scaled-down version of "Chicano Visions," which has since toured the country to sold-out and sometimes record crowds.

The museum's initial resistance, explains Noriega, was based on its reluctance to showcase private collections.

But Marin scoffs at the rationale, pointing to LACMA's gleaming new wing named after billionaire developer Eli Broad, who lent his collection for display. "It was ironic to me," says Marin. "You would think L.A. would be the first museum to sign up for the show. But, in fact, it was the last."

The very timing of these back-to-back shows raises some questions. Is the museum again signaling a generational split? Is it drawing a line between the young artists of "Phantom Sightings" and the older ones in the "Marin Collection"?

"I would hope not," says Noriega. "I would hope that people would attend both shows and come out and go, 'Wow, these are some pretty big bookends for a category called Chicano art! I would like to see some of the stuff that comes in between.' "

"Phantom Sightings" does not attempt to present a survey of Chicano art from the last show to the present, as if the museum were trying to pick up where it left off in 1975. "We thought it would be a disservice to the field to do that kind of show because in some ways it would sanction the idea that institutions can kind of catch up every one to three decades," says Noriega. "Besides, it's an impossible task, in many ways doomed to failure like the Whitney Biennial. No, we do much better if we accept the institution's commitment to ongoing activity in this area."

Changing times

Contemporary Chicano artists are working in a social environment vastly different from the days of the Chicano movement. In Los Angeles, to begin with, the Latino population has boomed, putting demographic pressure on cultural institutions to respond. Recurrent waves of immigrants constantly revive the issues of marginalization and social acceptance, even as the offspring of previous generations progress up the social ladder, taking leadership roles as politicians, academics and curators, which were practically nonexistent 30 years ago.

Most of the artists in "Phantom Sightings" were born in the 1970s and live and work in Los Angeles. The oldest is 52 (not counting ASCO); the youngest 27. All have advanced degrees, 20 with masters of fine arts, most from California schools. Only two were born in Mexico.

Whether they call themselves Chicano or not, several artists explore issues of class and culture inherent in their backgrounds. In many cases, artists transform mundane objects from their everyday experience to make imaginative or pointed statements with the byproduct.

El Paso artist Adrian Esparza, for example, unspools the threads of a multicolored Mexican serape to create an abstract geometric pattern, thereby "taking artisanal traditions and using them in a postmodern way," as Fox puts it. Margarita Cabrera, also from El Paso, uses fabric from U.S. Border Patrol uniforms to create realistic cactus sculptures that conjures "a conceptual link between an unforgiving landscape and the relatively recent criminalization of border crossing," as Noriega explains in the catalog.

Perhaps the most obvious example of the mundane exalted as art is Ochoa's use of his family's tortilla delivery truck as a mobile art gallery. The L.A.-based artist emptied the interior of the slab-sided 1985 Chevy van and "just tricked it out" with white walls, track lighting and linoleum flooring and invited his friends to create projects for the road.

He called it "Class C," for the DMV's commercial license category, and did 75 shows from 2001 to 2005, "bringing contemporary art to the neighborhood and not dumbing it down." "I was the collaborator, curator, driver, installer and mechanic," says Ochoa, one of five artists in the exhibition who attended Otis College of Art and Design and one of six with MFAs from UC Irvine. "I'd move it around as far as my Triple-A miles would take me because it would break down and I had to tow it back."

Ochoa, born in Oceanside to Mexican immigrants, was practically raised inside that van, recruited like so many of his first-generation peers to work in their parents' business. Yet he represents a new generation of Chicanos who want to be identified primarily by their work, not their background, even though their barrio shapes their art.

"It's laid in the work, but it doesn't have to be highlighted," he says. "A lot of my work deals with different class tensions, boundaries and barriers, but it doesn't have to be solely the Mexican American experience."

For Gamboa, the former ASCO tagger, it doesn't matter what you call it as long as you give it a chance. "It's always been my contention that Chicanos are a co-equal culture and capable of participating and sharing and contributing," he says. "At some level, [the show] just gives people hope that it's possible to actually create work and have it recognized as being art."

-30-

Download Free César E. Chávez Wallpaper 1024x768

Download a FREE César E. Chávez wallpaper for your computer. The size of the wallpaper is 1024x768. Start by clicking on the image of Chavez. Drag the larger photograph to your desktop or folder. 

FYI: The image is offered at no cost to the general public for non-commercial use. The photograph (wallpaper) of César E. Chávez is copyright 2008 Jesús Manuel Mena Garza. 

The photograph of Chavez reminds us of the struggles of the United Farm Workers of America Union (UFW). It was through their determination that many of us enjoy the freedoms we take for granted today. As the leader from San José's Sal Si Puede barrio would say, "Si se puede!"

-30-

Shopping Anxiety

While shopping at Von’s today, I felt inundated and eventually overwhelmed by the sheer number of messages vying for my attention. Yes, I experienced marketing overload. Welcome to the 2008 shopping experience. 

While shopping at Von's, I was constantly bombarded by advertising; even while stuck in the checkout line. Madison Avenue and Von's executives are lining their pockets with cash because of my poor choices.

Getting Fat

Americans are getting fatter because they have been programmed to love Big Macs and Ding Dongs. Do we really need that sugary cereal and pizza? In retrospect, we probably could all save money and our health by choosing healthier fare. Do we really need to be part of this programmed lifestyle? Can we avoid being the victims of the massive marketing onslaught?

Checkout Isle Tabloids

If you need behavioral confirmation of just how susceptible Americans are to marketing, just ask the party girls that populate the tabloids at the grocery store checkout isle. These bimbos are ubiquitous and offer America an image of bliss and despair. 

Again, this train of thought came to me while shopping at Von’s. I wonder what goes through the minds of impressionable children when they are in the throws of shopping at Safeway, HEB, Ralph's, etc. What information have they internalized?

Albertson's Knows What’s Best

Albertson's has taken marketing to a new level. They have televisions blaring commercials while you’re perusing vegetables, meat and other fare. Is nothing sacred anymore? More information (crap) is televised while you’re in the checkout line. Some customers seem to like the obnoxious noise. I continue to avoid Albertson’s and the anxiety. By the way, do you care?

-30-

Nikon D3: Sucha' Great Camera

Yes, I already own a Hasselblad, a 4x5, various Nikon, Canon and Minolta SLRs but what I really want is a new Nikon D3. What a great camera.

---

I have been taking pictures since the mid-60s and this is by far the most exciting and useful camera I have ever laid my eyes upon. Now all I have to do is ante up about $20,000. No easy feat.

Here is my proposed shopping (wish) list:

• Nikon D3
  
• SB-800 AF Speedlight
  
• AF NIKKOR 20mm f/2.8D
  
• AF NIKKOR 35mm f/2D
  
• AF-S Micro-NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8G ED
  
• AF NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8D
  
• AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8G ED VR
  
• AF-S NIKKOR 24-70 f/2.8G ED
  
• AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED
  

My primary setup would be the D3 matched with a Nikkor 35mm prime lens. That combination would be great for documentary work. The Nikon can shoot at 1,600 ASA without a problem. In the early 70s, I and other photojournalists had to resort to special processing to get that ASA. Now all you have to do is flip a switch. How about 3,200… Wow!



I figure in two years I will spend the dough required to at least get the latest Nikon and one quality lens. In the interim, I will have to be content to scan my Hassy negs. So far, this hasn’t been a problem. My prints from my scans have been good enough for exhibitions and books.

Tell me what you think about my proposed setup. Yes, it is a lot of stuff to lug around, but the equipment would fit nicely in a hard case. I estimate 80 percent of my shooting would be with the 35mm lens. Now that would be sweet. I just can't wait.

-30-

Porky Pig Pundits

The pigs are wallowing in the mud again. Oink oink! It is election season and the right-wing are up to their usual dirty tricks. Then, what would you expect from a pig? Are you tired of these rude and obnoxious personalities? I feel they have a monopoly on the airwaves. Again, what do you think?

Pundits more often than not have guests that reflect their narrow agenda. Nothing makes these conservative right-wing hate mongers happier than to be on the boob tube spouting their vitriolic message. They are pros at spreading half-truths and slinging mud (they are pigs after all).

What can we do to decrease the influence of these misinformation miscreants? Well, to start off, we should not watch their programs. Instead we should choose fare that is more diverse. America needs to recognize the difference between the self-absorbed right and mainstream America. Lets make the "right" choices, if you know what I mean.

-30-

Public Forum on Lynching at the University of Redlands

The Department of Art and the Department of Art History at the University of Redlands invite participation in a public forum, Lynched: Reflection and Resistance at the Peppers Art Gallery, Thursday, Mar. 6, 2008, 7 to 9 p.m. A reception with the artists follows at the University’s Alumni House.

The public forum responds to the exhibition, The Edge of Conscience: The Long Shadow of Lynching that runs Feb. 19 to Mar. 16, 2008 at the Peppers Art Gallery.

University of Redlands’ Professor Ann Marie Leimer will moderate the panel. She said, “Most people think of lynching as a phenomenon that took place only in the South, but it also occurred in California as well as many other places in the Unites States. In California, Mexicans were often targets of these racist attacks.”

Dr. Leimer added, “Historically, the issue of the victim's guilt is secondary or often inconsequential in a lynching. The mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. Grounded in a discussion of artworks produced by Ann Tyler and Constance White, the panel will explore the impact of lynching and its effect on the American psyche. The panel will also examine these issues within the context of recent events, such as the Jena 6.”

The distinguished panel includes the artists Professors Ann Tyler and Constance White, from the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as scholars Dr. Sheila Lloyd, University of Redlands, and Dr. Tiffany López, University of California, Riverside.

Since the exhibition and forum will examine issues of racial violence in the United States, it may not be suitable for all audiences. This event has been generously supported by Student Life, Diversity Affairs, Women’s Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, the Department of Art and the Department of Art History at the University of Redlands.

-30-

For more information please contact: Ann Marie Leimer, Ph.D., University or Redlands, (909) 748-8505, ann_leimer@redlands.edu