viewfromaloft

Chicano Art Panel at the Getty

The Getty Center's current exhibition The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide has powerful imagery of gang culture, and that brings the question of why that's a recurring image defining Chicano identity, and used in art as well.

A January 17 panel discussion, Chicano Culture in the Arts, will explore if the Chicano arts empower change of that same identity, or add interpretation to iconic images, like the "homeboy,"  allowing it to carry more narrative depth.

DotDotDash: Happy New Cho-lo-Sphere

YOU GOT 'CHICANO' MAIL: The U.S. Postal Service new stamps for 2008 include a pane honoring five journalists who "risked their lives reporting some of the most important events of the 20th century." . . ––  Martha Gellhorn,  John Hersey,  George Polk, and Eric Sevareid, are joined by Ruben Salazar (1928-1970), the LA Times reporter killed by a tear gas projectile while covering the
National Chicano Moratorium March protesting the Vietnam War.   [USAToday] [Postal Service PR] [Previous VFAL]
. . ––
BANDING TOGETHER: The Nuestros Angeles de El Salvador "Banda de La Paz" were invited to march in the 2008 Rose Parade. After saving and raising money all year, getting U.S. Visas, they planned to fly to L.A. in time, but problems had the band scrap plans to travel by air so they chartered buses, leaving El Salvador on Dec 24 . .–– They were stopped at the Mexican border because the last minute switch to travel ground required a different visa, making for yet another delay. . –– They reach TJ Friday night, and are due to arrive in L.A. Saturday afternoon, according to El Diaro de Hoy El Salvador.

After the jump, more DotDotDash:

Xmas Art Sales on North Main

The Annual Print Sale at La Mano Press is a gallery level gathering of Latino and Chicano Artists selling linocuts, etchings, and paintings, among other things.  Many of the items on sale are a lower price than one would expect. Sunday, December 9 is the last day and worth the trip.

Annual Print Sale 2007
La Mano Press
11am - 6pm
1749 N Main St
LA CA 90031
323.227.1275

"La Katrina" by Artemio Rodriguez.

Something from the Archives

A series of digital murals called Bookmarks: People and Place in Public Space, explores the tradition of murals with found and new photography. A 2nd set called "Family Reunion" (2006) , looks at generational influences in 8 panels, which 4 of the color proofs will be on display for this weeks Downtown Art Walk and on through September at Lost Souls Cafe.

With direct link to Los Angeles Chicano/Latino community based work in public artwork installations, the visual profile of Latinos in the "Inland Empire" is based on Los Angeles muralism. Latino identity was explored as individuals created their own identity, just as the cities of Riverside, Ontario, San Bernardino grew from their own ethos rather than an extension of early Los Angeles. As the cities of the inland cities of Southern California, once separated by field, and now freeways; the 4 panels are scattered in around the cafe distant from each other.

Some Chicano Notes

Someone give El Chavo a digital video camera.  His photo essays are visual pans of East LA's identity while the cutlines tie in an image with a thought  that's  insightful, satirical, reflective and rebellious. A current example is his recent post on Blogging LA  for his Eastside 101 series (Vatos for Dummies?)  explores the OddFellows Cemetery.

On a previous post I stated that El Chavo is more than a 99 cent store version of Gustavo Arellano --to which El Chavo corrected me and said "the 99 cent version is fine by me".  Recently, a higher authority has dubbed El Chavo the premier blogger for L.A.'s Chicanos.

Extras:
LA Fusion in Drawing up the the playful heart of hybrid L.A that looks at Shizu Salamando. [Daniel Hernandez]
The premier Chicana blogger  says 'good riddance' Dynes resigns, the Compact stays [Loteria Chicana]
Two year anniversary means make a 'best of' list. [The Great Taco Hunt]
Ride in third person, Militant, Ride  Another 'two-wheeled solo reconnaissance mission' [Militant Angeleno]
A year ago: I still say it's time for  Chicano Art History to be reassigned + Previous Latino/Asian Art Fusion.

Voices Waiting to be Heard

Pictured:  Juan Devis “Departures,” with Lydia Hernandez (NYT)

A modernization of the art of the mural is profiled in the NYTimes with Cybermural: The Web as the Wall, a series by multimedia artist Juan Devis that combines the traditions of muralism with street photography to tell the story of  a changing landscape in Boyle Heights while exploring it's history.

Visually the project seems clearly inflected by European modernism, starting with Dada and Surrealist photomontage. While editing, Mr. Devis said, he sought inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s 1928 book “One-Way Street,” a stream-of-consciousness meditation based on objects encountered in an imaginary Parisian street.

There is also the influence of film. To Rita Gonzalez, a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art who works on many of its contemporary Latino art projects, “Departures” suggests the “city symphony” films of the 1920s, movies that limned the patterns and rhythms of urban life, like Walther Ruttmann’s 1927 “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” or “Manhatta,” a 1920 paean to New York by the painter Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand.

NYTimes reporter Carol Kino introduces the works as a "twist on the Los Angeles muralism of the 1970s, a movement born from the Chicano civil rights movement when Mexican-American artists like Judy Baca, David Rivas Botello and Willie Herrón adapted the Mexican muralist tradition for their own time."

Combined video and sound to an online exhibit platform does take the craft of the  mural to the new level. However, the use of photography for storytelling in the form of Mexican Murals is not that new. 

Art across the river (and beyond)

Wayne Healy is being exhibited at East LA City College's Vincent Price Gallery (soon to close on August 2). The LA Times has a profile on the artist  whose four decades of work helped defined Chicano Art.   

"Neighborhood has always sort of been a backdrop," says Healy, who also has utilized all manner of found backdrops -- apartment building walls, worn fences -- as canvases within neighborhoods themselves to tell his stories. He is probably best known for a series of iconic murals, a trail of history laced along walls of civic buildings, nursery schools and garages around the city, county and beyond. As one of the founding members of East Los StreetScapers, one of the original public art collectives to come out of East L.A., Healy, 61, is considered one of the fathers of the Los Angeles mural movement of the 1970s.

Pictured: La Caricia Jarocha, 2005, Acrylic on canvas, Courtesy of the artist and Patricia Correia Gallery,

Related recent posts and links:  El Chavo explores Estrada Courts + LAWeekly explores ASCO + aftermath + Ricardo Favela, an early Chicano Artist and founder of the Royal Chicano Air Force passed away at 62 this month.

Griffith Park Fire as Art

While bloggers were out taking photos of the Griffith Park fires May 8, artist Sandy Rodriguez watch her television set and painted what she saw documenting the wildfire as site specific / media influenced work. The series, including the iconic Griffth Observatory near flames, was on exhibition in "Burn, Hollywood, Burn" at Echo Park's Underground Gallery.

Art Across Borders

5TH & MAIN IS ON-THE-POD: Pharmakast will now podcast art roundtable discussions held at Pharmaka. Episode 4 is from the current exhibit Dear Mr Saltz. The orgins of Pharmaka can be heard on episodes 2 and 3.

SELF-SURVEY: Co-curator of Pharmaka's Xhican@Demiurge, Armando Torres, plans to open his own gallery in Echo Park . . . Which brings the question of the ongoing protest of Eastside vs Westside. More Latino and Chicano art is being seen in the Downtown / Silver Lake / Echo Park area than in East L.A. What gives?

SPEAKING OF: The next issue of "Eastside is Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Felix and some of Downtown" New Angeles Monthly will be on the streets west of the Los Angeles River next week.

OUR OWN SURVEY of local and not so local Latino / Chicano / Hispanic art, is after the jump:

 

Healy on Exhibit in East LA

Vincent Price Gallery & Art Museum (East Los Angeles College) will host a solo exhibition for Wayne Healy, including a free artists talk on Thursday, June 28 at 1:30pm. From the release for WAYNE HEALY East LA: The Way I Remember It:

This exhibition will include nearly sixty artworks spanning Healy’s four decades as a practicing artist. An active participant and recorder of life in the City of Angels, Healy’s vivid paintings, prints and etchings combine cultural and political specificity with themes of universal and global relevance.

Pictured: La Caricia Jarocha, 2005,   Acrylic on canvas, Courtesy of the artist and Patricia Correia Gallery

Boccalero Still Helps Self Help

Today is the One-Day Print Fair at Self Help Graphics (Sunday, June 24). Yesterday, an afternoon mass was lead by Father Gregory Boyle, began the summer long worship of the late Sister Karen Boccalero to mark the 10 anniversary of her death.  35 years ago she founded East LA's Self Help graphics, the community arts catch-all that has produced Chicano art, Latino Artists, debates about art, and art about the debates. From LAT:

. . .co-curators Christina Ochoa and Alex Alferov were starting to hang the selected pieces, which were leaning against the gallery walls, waiting to give silent testimony to Boccalero's accomplishments.

Ochoa and Alferov are both former Self Help staffers, among the many the agency could no longer afford to pay. But both returned this month as volunteers to help with the tribute. Surrounded by the art she inspired, they seemed to summon her spirit as a reason to carry on.

<snip>

Critics knock Self Help as an outdated product of the Chicano Movement, allegedly stagnated in the art of identity politics. Some younger artists have avoided the place because they chafe at what they consider those aesthetic confines.

But maybe it's the critics who need to open their minds and reconsider their calcified perceptions. Judging from the artwork on display today, the only standard seems to be the variety of styles and themes. Artist Omar Ramirez was one of those young artists who felt Self Help was "not for us." Ideologies aside, he was trained as a painter and muralist, not a silk screener.

But there he was this week, bent over a table at Self Help, signing a fresh set of prints depicting a forbidding urban landscape titled "Luci in the Sky," a piece that suggested its pro-immigrant protest not with slogans but with troubling shadows in a people-less cityscape.

Flowers From Carmen's Garden: Homenaje a Sister Karen Boccalero (1933-1997)
Self Help Graphics & Art
3802 Cesar E. Chavez Ave
Ends Aug. 12.

Annual Print Fair
Noon to 5 p.m.
Sunday, June 24 

'Tacos for Two'

El Chavo is a social critic, Lincoln Heights advocate, and vato-in-residence at bloggingla. He adds a comment in the last post: "I wonder if my collection of Homies figurines qualifies as art? Maybe I'll go and ask the panel!" 

It's a valid question. However, despite the "Homies" using a Latino tradition of cultural satire for it's series of plastic cholos, it's obvious the manufacturing and distribution of these figures would decrease any value they may currently have. But if El Chavo and I did an exhibition using the toy characters like "Mariachi Pedro", "Babylocs" and "El Grumpy" wrapped in corn tortillas from Tortilleria La California––then displayed them at Tacos Chapalita on North Broadway––it would get an audience. We just need a title to put on the grant proposal like, say. . . "Carne La Raza".

Pictured:  Animated version "Mr Raza", one of the original six plastic "Homies" created by artist David Gonzales.

Xhican@Demiurge

Chican@(A)rtsMagazine is on hold, so for the record, here's a review of  a group show that was reviewed updated, and then shelved.

2nd Edition

Two of a Kind: Artist/printmaker/daughter Sonia Romero with Chicano artist/muralist/father,  Frank Romero, opening night of their "first official show"  held Friday evening at Self Help Graphics. Debuting is a collaborative print (seen in back) that uses iconic images familiar in each others separate word and presented as a "family quilt."

It's billed as the "first official show" since a family art sale is held each year at Frank Romero's studio.  This exhibit runs until March 16 at Self-Help.

The Brooklyn Gallery at Galerias Otra Vez
Self-Help Graphics & Art, Inc.
February 23-March 16

Frank Romero and Sonia Romero
"2nd Edition"
A Father/Daughter Print Retrospective

Has Aztlán Been Discovered?

Off Topic. When you survey Chicano Art the legend of Aztlán comes up. It's told to be the home base of the Nahuatlaca tribe that migrated south to later form what became the Aztec civilization. The problem is no one knows where it is, so it became a spiritual homeland.

In the beta version of View From a Loft––during the immigrant demonstrations last May–-we speculated with tongue in cheek that it would be ironic if the marches were not an invasion, but a return home. That Los Angeles or Riverside,  two regions with rich farmland along a river, was the actual site of the mysterious Aztlán.

As it turns out, it may be Blythe, California, located near the Colorado River in Riverside County.

I have issues

Publisher Laura Molina asked that if I would consider adding on Deputy Editor for Chicano Arts Magazine to my list of things to do.

Having admired writers my whole life while working on publications, a time came to apply some of what I've stolen...uh...learned and I was able to apply it as an advertising art director by jumping in to write concepts and headlines. It all came in handy later while co-writing headlines with Steve Saunders while leading Daily Variety's in-house advertising team. This blog, as ranted earlier, was started to be the occasional break from graphic design and digital murals, but lead to an art commentary column in the Arts District Citizen.

Now this. Deputy Editor.  Story Federalas. A Wordinista. It's something I never expected to put on my resume.  Logo designer? Yes. Editorial layout? No problem. Advertising design? No sweat. Photographer? Sure. But editor? Hell, I don't always know where the, commas, go, sometimes.

Ah, why not.  I like the subject of Chicano Art and while doing my own version of it, discovered factoids about the direct lines of influences that someday may be published. For ten years. I've seen up close how artists and curators are so impassioned by it. And it continues to grow.

But most importantly, Laura Molina is tagged as "the Angriest Woman in the World"––and that was before she was a publisher. I accept her offer.

 

Holiday Gift

An invitation from the City of Riverside Public Library came in last week:

The Casa Blanca Library & Family Learning Center
Requests the pleasure of your company
At the unveiling of
Ed Fuentes
"picked by hand"
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Three o' Clock in the afternoon
2985 Madison Street
Riverside California
Please join us with the artist, neighbors and friends in celebrating this gift to the community.

As some of you may know, I'm the artist. I was asked to speak Saturday, December 16 and I'll make sure to take a photo or two. The backstory on "Picked By Hand" is at a previous post "Orange Finds a Home" Add I just got some kind emails from on the digital shadowbox I did in late summer. Blogging aside, with my first painted project (seen in public), the extension of digital collage in a traditional format, the photo exhibit at Lost Souls Cafe, doing reviews for Chican@ArtsMagazine, and the commentary column at Arts District Citizen -- it's been an interesting year.

Tree Full of Life

From a review of Sonio Romero's debut solo show in the latest issue of Chican@ArtsMagazine

Angel by a River

A "nicho" is a handcrafted shadowbox portraying devotional folk art and displayed as a memorial. Consider it a home version of recesses in churches that holds a saint and has become a popular form of mestizo influenced pop folk art, often holding day of the dead figures, artifacts, or anything with some personal significance. Here, an spiritual angel overlooks the Los Angeles River in this piece created for Yes On 84, (Clean Water, Parks and Coastal Protection Bond).

Stories TK

Xican@Demiuge brings overlapping generations of Chicano Artists to Gallery Row and it slipped into town with little fanfare yet opening night was packed. An important characteristic of this art movement are the stories behind the work and some of them will be shared closing night.

Where is home?

Since this column was filed, murals by Willie Herron and Frank Romero were partially painted over, funding for a mural at Olvera Street reappeared and a new Chicano Art publication made it's debut. Plus, critics have embraced a story based in Echo Park, showing that films on the Mexican-American experience have come of age,  a Chicano Arts institution gets a letter, we lost a Keeper of Stories,  and Culture Clash opens "Water and Power." From the August 2006 Arts District Citizen version of View From a Loft:

More than help may be needed.

In a transition year with people coming to it's aid to overhaul the East L.A. institution, all is still not well at Self-Help Graphics.  Accusations of misconduct –– well documented and credible it seems –– are not just a few steps backward, but a big tumble down the steps of Sister Karen Boccalero's dream gallery. An open letter from a staffer has been posted at LatinoLA that in part reads:

It is truly unfortunate that I’ve been left with no choice but to proceed with my grievances in this manner. It should be noted that prior to filing a formal complaint I made several well-intentioned attempts, with both Tenorio and Board President Armando Durón, to bring attention to my concerns and resolve this matter with no casualties. However, both Tenorio and Durón acted negligently and failed in their fiduciary duty to me as an SHG employee and to the operating protocols, procedures, and by-laws of this Board and the organization. I ask that this Board please objectively consider the factors and circumstances that motivated my grievance.

Mark Vallen pulled no punches on previous problems a year ago at Art For A Change.

Blogpadres

I do guests blogs at Chican@ Art Magazine. Today on The Pocho Hour of Power Chican@ Art Magazine's Editor, Laura Molina and Art Director, Oscar Magallanes will be guests on air at 4pm. PST on KPFK, Los Angeles, 90.7 FM. Tomorrow,  the first print issue of Chican@ Art Magazine will be available. Also, that other radical paper, The Arts District Citizen is out next Saturday and the print version of "View From a Loft" looks at a home for Modern Latino Art.

Keeper of Stories

A "corrido" is a Mexican ballad that chronicles day to day events and passed on from village to village by musicians.  Guillermo Hernandez is the scholar that brought the story of the "corridor" to academia.  Guillermo Hernandez passed away last week, at age 66.

More after the jump.

There's no place like home.

Two "homelands" are highlighted today in the Los Angeles Times. David Kelly reports on the mythical home of Aztlan, filled with quotes from those in my real homeland of Riverside, California. Kelly writes:

Aztlan is a state of mind for some people. It's a point in history. For some it's a political place. For some it's a separate nation," said Armando Navarro, chairman of UC Riverside's Ethnic Studies Department, whose views have generated controversy. "It represents land lost. You are sitting in a city, Riverside, that used to be in Mexico. That gives us a sense of entitlement. This was our land."

(migrate ahead after the jump)