On View Gallery

Decolonizing the Artist: Indigenous Mexican identity in the Art of Suzy González and Sage Alucero

Suzy González (She/They) and Sage Alucero (They/He) are two contemporary Chicano/a/x artists who are part of an expanding group of Mexican-Americans who identify strongly with their Indigenous Mexican ancestry. Through choice of art medium, imagery, and historical location these artists create works that explore their indigenous connections in an effort to heal the generational scarring of colonization. A large part of the decolonization of their artwork and themselves as artists is the radical act of uncovering the past and internalizing the indigenous understandings that they have found. González does this through her choice of culturally significant media which she calls “Mestizx Media” and her practice of dietary non-violence, while Alucero does this through their location of queer and non-binary identity within indigenous histories and imagery.

Read more of the essay by Curator Nicole Rudolph-Vallerga

“… in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation.’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

For González and Alucero, research and the gathering of knowledge is integral to their artistic expression. They are informed by authors such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is a member of the Potawatomi nation and writes on indigenous understandings of nature supported by her PhD in botany, and Gloria Anzaldúa who writes on her experiences as a queer Mestiza woman working through Borderland politics. The poetic influences of these authors can be seen within their work as well as a deep look into Mesoamerican history. They honor their artistic ancestors through the continued Chicano/a/x practice of mural painting, and examine the materials and imagery that they use closely to express their nepantla existence. But most importantly they take their lessons from nature. In both artists you can find a strong theme of being a part of nature in the most literal sense. For example in Alucero’s Teonanacatl you can see mushrooms emerge from the main figure’s fingertips emphasizing the physical and spiritual relationship between the human body and the mycelial body. In González’s work she uses dyed hojas de maiz (corn husks) as the skin of her subjects referring to the Mesoamerican belief that humans were created from maíz. This visual cue ties the figures not only to a people and history, but to the importance of the relationship we have with our food and our environment.

When Mexico was first colonized by the Spanish in 1519, one of the many major acts of colonial violence was to destroy the vast libraries of complex and comprehensive historic codexes created by the Mesoamerican people. Cutting a culture off from its history and traditions is detrimental to the survival of the people; assimilation becomes the only way for them to survive. Today, the act of locating oneself within an indigenous history has become a radical act, internalizing and expressing that history even more so. One such radical expression to reflect and reclaim a lost indigenous identity has been through the arts.

“Nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.”

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

A complexity emerges within the modern Mexican-American identity as to be Mexican often means that you are biracial; part European and part Indigenous or Indio. As González says, “we are the colonized and the colonizer in one body, and art can be a method of healing and coming to terms with this.” Both artists work to reconcile this mixture and decolonize their own bodies through their artwork. Alucero, a queer non-binary trans masculine person, has been finding understanding of their identity through their relationship to nature and their ancestry. Of this they say, “The gender binary has been imposed through colonial violence and my existence is something outside of that entirely.” 

“Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shifting consciousness. They are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning, crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio.

Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Instead of giving into a pressure to embrace one way of thinking over another, these two artists embrace nepantla, an in-betweenness that much of western culture rejects. Here they can embrace the wholeness of their identity by demonstrating within their art the way in which this mixed identity can exist within a modern space. Indigenous bodies and ideas are brought into the present through their choice of imagery, medium, and presentation. González’s figures are all presented in a very modern style of painting, expressed in bright blocks of color, however their message is ancient, a plea to return to being stewards of the earth and to find your place within the cycle of nature, not outside of it. Alucero expresses similar connections and ideals in their lush oil paintings of ancient figures and places, however contemporary imagery such as the top surgery scars in Romero / Rabbit are present within their work connecting their trans masculine identity to the past, further validating their contemporary existence. 

A great function of art is to act as an intermediary to help communicate ideas so complex that words alone cannot convey the intricacies. The decolonization of anything is difficult as colonial ideas are insidious and permeate our very existence. We express them in what we wear, what we eat, how we view ourselves and others, and so many little ways that it feels like sorting grains of sand when we finally do take notice. Alucero and González come on the heels of earlier Chicano/a/x artists who expressed this mixed identity and the cultural collision of finding and translating their indigenous existence within a modern world. With each generation the message becomes clearer, and reaffirms the existence of contemporary indigeneity, and that Indigenous people do not only exist in the past and neither does their way of life.

“This land was Mexican once,
was Indian always
and is.
And will be again.”

― Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

 

Nicole Rudolph-Vallerga is the 2022-23 Guest Curatorial Intern with Museo Eduardo Carrillo and a multimedia artist 

Citations:

Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2016. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Tantor Media, Inc.

Sage Alucero

Cover of Sage Alucero story on Google Arts & Culture, showing detail of painting of person's face next to side view of a brown rabbit.

Artist Statement
Sage Alucero (they/he) is a multimedia visual and performance artist. Through oil painting, traditional and digital drawing, sculpture, poetry and performance he creates works with themes of interconnection with nature, gender expansiveness and more. It is the beautiful details of this green expansive world that Alucero is inspired by; roots and fractal shapes are prevalent in their work as a visual reminder that all of humanity is connected to our Earth and worlds beyond our current comprehension. 

Read more..

Through color and light their paintings reveal energy that is unseen by the naked eye, but perceived through our energetic auras. Decolonizing notions of gender identity is a central theme in their work. Just as there are infinite manifestations of life in nature, there are infinite ways of being in relation to femininity, masculinity, androgyny and/or personal expression. Alucero’s work often conveys the unification of such dualities and emphasizes how unity amplifies their power. Creating work that is loudly transgender and non-binary can be enough to urge their viewers to rethink the rigid roles which we as a community on Earth need to dismantle with agency and creativity. 

Ancestry connects Alucero to their purpose in this lifetime. Supported by the processes of emotional alchemy, kinship with the land, herbalism, and Mesoamerican studies, Alucero seeks to bridge the gap created from lack of  access to cultural traditions and ancestral lineage. It is with ancestry as a seed, that he works to tend to the wonder of life, as it is a garden asking to be nourished. In the cosmic cycles of life & death; sunrise & sunset; birth & rebirth; Alucero speaks through visual art as nourishment, creates realms to explore, composes referential metaphors, and casts spells of protection and empowered love. 

  
https://www.instagram.com/alucero777/

Suzy González

Cover of Sage Alucero story on Google Arts & Culture, showing detail of multimedia piece using painted cornhusks

Artist Statement
Suzy González (she/they) is an artist, writer, self-publisher, curator, and organizer based in Yanaguana, aka San Antonio, TX. Her enthusiasm  towards decolonizing consumption and art creation is intertwined with remembering the lessons that the earth has to teach us.

Read more..

She works with natural plant materials like corn husks in conjunction with manipulated art supplies to consider identity, mixedness, and resistance. The corn husks represent the skin of the figures, recalling Mesoamerican beliefs that our very beings are created from maíz. This material use works to dismantle folk and fine art hierarchies. She calls  these “mestizx media” works, reclaiming the “mestizo” colonial caste label. She defines mestizx media as when materials originate from the region(s) of the artist’s ancestors. Accepting mixedness is also about embracing queerness and the fluid nature of identities that reject constructed binaries. Her public artwork has included themes of celebrating contemporary artists and activists, histories of the land, native plants and animals, and concepts of love and solidarity. Her work serves to work through her own intersections and to strive for intercultural conversations in her communities. This, she hopes, will open doors to compassion and healing in this world of destruction.

  
https://suzygonzalez.com   |   https://www.instagram.com/soozgonzalez


In Memoriam: Betsy Andersen, Museo Eduardo Carrillo  Executive Director 

Photo of Betsy Miller Andersen, an older white woman with long gray hair in a purple top and green scarf, long silver and red earrings,

This exhibit is dedicated to the memory of Betsy Andersen who spent her life supporting and promoting the arts. This was the last exhibit that she worked on and her encouragement and mentorship was invaluable to the development and success of this show.

Decolonizing the Artist: Indigenous Mexican identity in the Art of Suzy González and Sage Alucero is supported by the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County through the 2023 Create Grant. Photos Courtesy of the Artists

Writing and Curation by Nicole Rudolph-Vallerga, 2022-23 Guest Curatorial Intern for Museo Eduardo Carrillo | https://nicolerudolphart.wixsite.com/home

Dis-Placed: Peter Liashkov, Nguyen Ly and Marianne Sadowski

This exhibition brings together three L.A. artists from different continents whose life and works have been informed by their diasporic identities. Mining from personal and observed experiences, the art of Nguyen Ly, Peter Liashkov and Marianne Sadowski explore diverse types of displacements in poetic and deeply poignant visual memoires.

Read More of the essay by Dianna Marisol Santillano

The artworks featured in DIS–PLACED are experimental, both in technique and materiality. Their approach is one that is rooted in printmaking and yet Ly, Liashkov, and Sadowski push this medium to new frontiers, as if crafting a new visual language. Their art is layered and textured, utilizing mixed media, and ranging from two and three dimensional forms to installation. The handmade and conceptual acuity is the strong and unifying element among these artists. Through the process of reworking, layering and reconstituting archival materials and photographic images through various print methods, these artists are also producing knowledge, allowing these artworks to communicate epistemological meaning born of personal memory and testimony. This approach endows their work with a patina of nostalgia while being in conversation with today’s sociopolitical dialogues and neocolonialism.

Indeed, Ly, Liashkov, and Sadowski correlate transnational politics and the effects of capitalism with the personal in a creative practice that is immersed in reflection and memory. In the case of Nguyen Ly, his work weaves together printmaking, sculpture / installations and stitching. His art investigates his trajectory from post-Vietnam war, where his family fled as refugees when he was a child, to eventually getting sponsored and coming to the U.S. The origins of these lithographs were based on old family photos – which triggered Ly’s blocked childhood memories. NL6. Pants, 2012 and NL5. Shirt, 2006 are beautifully crafted clothing, perhaps a nod to his father who was a tailor, made out of paper lithography, old family photos and recycled tea bags ⎯ all threaded together to resemble the traditional clothing of his grandmother. Every element here signals towards his process-based approach to artmaking and harkens back to inquiries about his family’s journey and cultural traditions.

As in Ly’s work, Peter Liashkov’s practice is also infused by memory and movement across continents due to war and the subsequent cultural and linguistic negotiations. Born in France to Russian refugee parents (his father fought in WWI), his family fled to Argentina when he was a boy as a way to evade the communist threat. At age 15, Liashkov and his family relocated once again, this time ending up in the U.S. His work thus reflects these childhood transitions, mapping geographic borders, displacement and subsequent adaptations to new languages and cultures. Utilizing a variety of media, Liashkov uses images of his childhood superimposed with archival documents, and rendered in a way as to look like old relics. Foot Hold 1, 2014, is a collage print comprised of Xeroxed photographs of his father, immigration papers and letters on a Pellon cloth made to look like crumpled paper, giving this work the look and feel of age. Superimposed on these archival materials is the artist’s foot, as if inserting himself and his life’s trajectory and movement into his family’s past, connecting him to the history that has always left him feeling like he had one foot here and one foot there. This feeling is one shared by many with similar pasts never quite feeling like he fully belonged to one place or the other; A well-known feeling among “subjects formed in-between”, to quote Homi Bhabha.

In a different but congruent experience of displacement, the art of Marianne Sadowski brings focus to the current unhinged homeless situation in Los Angeles. Born in Mexico City, Sadowski hails from a Mexican mother and a German father who left East Germany for West Germany and thereafter moved to Venezuela, eventually settling in Mexico. This led Sadowski to explore the concept of home, one’s constant search for a home and the desire to create that home space. Her work explores the question what is ‘home’ in a city that has been plagued with displacement in the hands of gentrification.

As with the work of Ly and Liashkov, Sadowski’s work is multi-faceted, utilizing photographic images and drawings to create multimedia prints and remarkable codex-like artist books, as in Street Blues, 2020. However, in contradistinction to Ly and Liashkov, she utilizes her own photographs taken over many years to document the reality of the streets of L.A. and its homeless situation. In Home-less LA-Sideview, 2021, Sadowski transforms her photos of homeless encampments into vintage-looking cyanotypes. Using the postcard format, she visually dispels the notions of L.A. as a glamourous and desirable city. Instead, she depicts the ground level reality and the ubiquitous nature of the unhoused in the city.

In Life on the street III, 2021, an image of an unhoused man and his belongings is superimposed on various maps of Los Angeles, including an old map of the Mexican and Spanish land grants. By juxtaposing these images, Sadowski makes connections across time and space and demonstrates two types of displacements within this geographic terrain. She aligns historic displacements with the current unhoused phenomena, both of which, for Sadowski, are a result of systemic and institutionalized corporate/government greed.

Whether it is due to migration resulting from wars of the past, or current socio-economic factors that produce displacement and injustice, this exhibition brings into dialogue both their subsequent and continued legacies. In these deeply personal works, Nguyen Ly, Peter Liashkov and Marianne Sadowski open us up to consider how the political affects the personal and how from personal testimony, new ways of knowing and understanding emerge.

—Dianna Marisol Santillano

 

Artist Collaboration

Peter Liashkov and Marianne Sadowski

(click to enlarge)

 

Peter Liashkov

 

Nguyen Ly

 

Marianne Sadowski

Califas Legacy Project Online Exhibition

Carmen Leon, Ralph D'Oliveira, Yermo Aranda, Amalia Mesa-BainsThe Califas Legacy Project online exhibition, offered by the Santa Cruz Art League (SCAL) and Museo Eduardo Carrillo, tells an untold story of Chicano/a/x artists living in the Central California Coastal region. This exhibition includes artworks by Guillermo (Yermo) Aranda, Ralph D’Oliveira, Carmen León, and Amalia Mesa-Bains.  We expand the geographic art historical narratives about Latino artists in the United States that are primarily centered in large, urban environments such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. 

The Califas Legacy Project has unified the Monterey Bay Crescent through public retrospective and multi-generational exhibitions, zoomed in opportunities, streetside art viewing, portable murals, documentary videos, panel discussions, and a Latinx-based symposium. In 1982, Professor Eduardo Carrillo conceived of the “Califas: Chicano Art and Culture in California” conference to bring together artists, scholars, and creative social instigators to take stock of La Raza y El Movimiendo after several decades of political awakening and action. Together with Philip Brookman, Tomas Ybarra Frausto, and Juventino Esparza, he assembled a remarkable group for a multi-day symposium. They argued and agreed that the Chicano movement in all its variety and manifestations was very much alive and needed continued nurturance. 

Now, almost forty years later, the Califas Legacy Project features the art and ideas of our region’s Chicano/a/x and Latinx creative leaders, the elders in the movement.

Our commitment is to secure the preservation of these artists’ legacies and awaken a new generation to the richness of the Monterey Bay Crescent artists contributions.  Theirs is an un-contained influence – linking the powerful social movements of the 1960s to the next generation of Latinx and other artists. The exhibition surveys work from over four decades per artist, thereby sharing their artistic evolution and making visible what has been here all along.

The Califas Legacy Project fills a vacant part of American art history.

Read more about the Califas Legacy Project | FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

View artworks by Guillermo (Yermo) Aranda | Ralph D’Oliveira | Carmen León | Amalia Mesa-Bains

 

Guillermo Aranda

Guillermo (Yermo) Aranda is an elder and wisdom keeper of the history and ancestral teachings for Chicano/Native/Mexica identified peoples. He was the co-founder of El Centro Cultural de La Raza, a cultural art center focusing on Latino and Indigenous Art forms. As the Centro’s first Administrative Director, Aranda initiated the Chicano Park Murals in San Diego in 1973. Chicano Park is now recognized by the City of San Diego and the State of California as an historical site.

Ralph D’Oliveira

Ralph D’Oliveira has painted more than 100 murals in California and abroad during his 40+ year career as a muralist. He has done dozens of projects with schools and school children. In 2013, he traveled to Norway to do a mural project in Trondheim. He coordinates his projects collaboratively with neighbors and students in schools. He views all these projects as a way to build community. Ralph draws on his multicultural background incorporating native Chumash and Mexican roots.

Carmen León

Carmen León is a painter and teacher of art. In 1975-76, she was involved with a grassroots arts center, the Academia del Arte Chicano de Azlan, painting some of the first murals in Watsonville. In 1985, she began teaching art in the schools, focusing her involvement with the Latino community and drawing on her Peruvian and Mexican heritage. León was one of the co-founders of Galeria Tonantzin in San Juan Bautista, CA, a venue for women’s art. 

Amalia Mesa-Bains

Amalia Mesa-Bains is a curator, author, visual artist, and educator. In her home altars, ofrendas, and writing, she examines the formation of Chicana identity and aesthetic practices, the shared experiences of historically-marginalized communities in the United States, especially among women of color, and the role of multiculturalism within museums and cultural institutions. Her work is in collections worldwide and in 1992 she was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.

 

Slow Build: A Collaborative Exhibition with Borderline Art Collective

Borderline Art Collective is a Bay Area artist group. The members share the desire for a cooperative environment to work alongside peers, the aspiration to sustain art in the Bay Area, and the commitment to community involvement and social justice.

This show is a digital iteration of Borderline Art Collective’s ongoing project: Slow Build, a collaborative format art exhibition. The four artists of Borderline Art Collective have each collaborated with an artist from outside of the collective, engaging in a call and response digital exchange of visual language. The Borderline artist begins the conversation with a single digital image of her own work. The selected artist responds in kind with a work inspired by the first image, to be posted two weeks after the first post. The Borderline artist will then respond to that image with another work, and finally, the selected artist will submit the fourth work, inspired by the progression thus far.

Participating artists:
Danielle Andress (BAC) and Elena Adler
Marissa Geoffroy (BAC) and Kristi Arnold
Amy Lange (BAC) and Nathan Becka
Tescia Seufferlein (BAC) and Anna Rotty

Slow Build Gallery

Initiating Artworks    see artist reflections on the work»

 

Response #1        see artist reflections on the work and view video»

 

Response #2        see artist reflections on the work and view video»

 

Response #3    see artist reflections and view video

(click to enlarge)

 

Slow Build: An Essay by Chris Cohoon

Two of my favorite exercises to engage people with art are Blind Contour Portraits and Exquisite Corpse Drawings. The fun, imaginative collaborations bypass inhibitions for those of us conditioned to fear failure, because there is no way to win or lose. Both activities live in the freedom of ridiculousness. Exquisite Corpse was born from absurdity. Surrealists exited the Dada movement, which expressed the existential vacuum of reason amidst the madness of Humanism’s technological triumph in gaseous trenches. Andre Breton, Yves Tanguy, Jacques Prevert, and Marcel Duchamp searched for meaning from within without the constraints of conventional philosophy. Together, they employed play; shedding conscious thought to uncover the automatic synaptic storms of the subconscious. As a communal exercise, Exquisite Corpse is the chimera of the collective subconscious.

Read More of the essay by Chris Cohoon

The partnership between Museo Eduardo Carrillo and Borderline Collective for Slow Build is not the Surrealist, nonsensical juxtaposition performed as a conceptual work that it may appear to be at first. Given context, the only opportunity for the insertion of chance is the initial meeting between members of the two groups. Everything else makes perfect sense.

In January of 2020, I was involved with Monterey Museum of Art’s Art of the State Symposium. The theme was California Community: Artist Colonies and Collectives Past, Present, and Future. Traditional geographic communities such as Monterey/Carmel by the Sea and Arroyo Seco/Laguna Beach were covered in the program along with the Dada and photographic communities that developed in San Francisco. Despite the disparate seeds from which each community sprang, whether cheap housing, beautiful vistas, or strong personalities, the golden thread that connected each of the historical accounts was charity among artists – not feel good philanthropy, but that ancient understanding that the greatest of virtues is to put the needs of others above your own.

The final presentation of the symposium covered the present and future potential for artist communities. Borderline Collective spoke about their practice as a contemporary collective in the Bay Area (with one member in Chicago). They take on the virtue of generosity drawn from their communal, artistic predecessors and blow it up in the best way possible. Rather than existing as a collective for the benefit of their own work, they developed a practice that is about giving to other artists by creating spaces to promote art that would otherwise have little opportunity to exist. The collective provides a place for art to live which may not be marketable but adds substantial value to the present cultural conversation to shape a better future.

As chance, fate, or providence would have it, Betsy Andersen, Executive Director of the Museo Eduardo Carrillo (MEC), attended Borderline’s presentation and recognized a kindred spirit to that of the Museo’s namesake. Eduardo Carrillo was known for his generosity. As a prominent member of California’s Chicano Arts movement, his work brought recognition to a grossly underrepresented community. He founded El Centro de Arte Regional, Baja, California’s first Art Center, to mentor youth and develop arts in Mexico. He then returned to the U.S. and became a respected artist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he often allowed students and even passers by to pick up a brush and contribute to his murals. Like it’s namesake, MEC continues to share Chicana/o art, generously partnering with other institutions and creating incredible education programs. In the spirit of Carrillo, they design mentorship opportunities for young Latinx artists to work with and learn from older artists. And, as evinced by this exhibition, they seek out artists who give of themselves so that others flourish in an act of multiplication. For Slow Build, MEC sketched out the opportunity, unfolded the paper, and handed it to Borderline who drafted a beautiful concept, unfolded the paper, and handed it to others. Generative art, that which creates beyond itself, doesn’t get more exquisite than this.

—Chris Cohoon

 

Initiating Artists’ Introductions/Reflections

Danielle Andress

Danielle Andress is a Chicago based artist. She produces primarily non-functional weavings that investigate our relationships with consumable images and objects. She earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. Danielle is a co-founding and active member of Borderline Art Collective (San Francisco) and an Assistant Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
 www.danielleandress.com

Danielle Andress   “Untitled (When Surface Was Depth)”, jacquard woven cotton on latex balloons, dimensions vary, 2020

Marissa Geoffroy

Marissa Geoffroy moved from New York to the Bay Area in 2014. She received her MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts (CCA). Marissa is a painter, photographer and sculptor. She is intrigued by spaces and architecture, and by the philosophical implications of human perception. She is also a founding member of Borderline Art Collective, which aims to support local artists, provide a venue for discourse, and expand art appreciation in the Bay Area.  www.marissageoffroy.com

Marissa Geoffroy   “Untitled (Wood Puzzle Collage)”, wood & acrylic paint, 12″ x 14″ x 3″, 2020


 

Amy Lange

Amy Lange is an artist based in San Francisco, California. She received her BFA in Fibers from the University of Oregon in 2009, and received her MFA from California College of the Arts in spring 2017. She is a founding member of Borderline Art Collective in San Francisco. Amy makes objects, images, and installations inspired by the surfaces of other worlds using repurposed textiles as a jumping-off point.  www.amy-lange.net

Amy Lange   “Crust #4”, flour, house paint & t-shirt, 20” x 20”, 2020

 

 

 

 

Tescia Seufferlein

Tescia Seufferlein is an Oakland based installation and textile artist. Born and raised in the Silicon Valley, Tescia earned her Bachelor in Fine Arts and Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley in 2005. Tescia lived in New York City and Brooklyn from 2005-2015, working and living as an artist, costume designer and fabric painter. Although, she is a classically trained painter, her work today is based more in conceptual installations with political and social undertones. Most recently, Tescia’s work has been grappling with public displays of mourning and how we as a society cope with death and tragedy. Tescia graduated with her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2017. Seufferlein has shown work in Bushwick, Manhattan, Paris, and San Francisco.  www.tesciaseufferlein.com

Tescia Seufferlein   “Repeated Reflections Series-M14 Freeway Lights “, photograph, 18″ x 24”, 2020

Responding Artists’ Introductions/Reflections

Elena Adler

Elana Adler (b.1986) is a multidisciplinary artist who portrays social hierarchies and systems. She is interested in how the web of hierarchies and systems breathes and functions alongside systematic and symbolic boundaries, creating exclusion and inclusion. Utilizing the grid as an accessible visual language to discuss complex systems and structures of power; she challenges expectations of material potential. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2017.
www.elanamarteadler.com

Responding to Danielle Andress’ “Untitled (When Surface Was Depth)”

Elana Adler“not consisting of an ever-changing flow of time but a calculable set of things”,
3D sewn felt grid, 72″ x 72″ x 72″, 2020

Kristi Arnold

The main objective of my work employs methods of distortion, transformation, dark humor, absurdity, contrasting color palettes, and the play between positive and negative space. Often, the imagery is overtly apparent, resembling certain icons found in popular culture, science fiction, and nature, while other times they are more concealed. By exploiting these situations through the juxtaposition of opposites, I hope to incite ideas that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and between beauty and ugliness.
http://www.kristi-arnold.com/

Responding to Marissa Geoffroy’s Untitled (Wood Puzzle Collage)

 

In this piece, I worked from a photograph of a garden that I had visited in Japan from a few years ago during a residency. I found similarities between the colors and textures of Marissa’s piece to be comparable to the imagery of the Japanese garden.

In reaction to Marissa’s piece, I wanted to use the same type of collage method but through a different medium. My approach to printmaking incorporates collage-like methods of printed cut out shapes. I have had this unfinished print hanging in my studio for some time. Once I saw Marissa’s work, I immediately drew a correlation between the color, shape and textures of her piece and my mokuhanga print.

 

Nathan Becka

Nathan Becka is from Kansas City, and is curious about all of the things we are surrounded by and understanding our emotional attachments and their unnoticed significancies.
Nathan Becka IG

Responding to Amy Lange’s Crust #4

 

When Amy asked me to collaborate on this project I was immediately excited. Our practices are so different that could not imagine what we would end up making. But as I made my response to her, it occurred to me that it might mostly be our materials that are different.

The images in my video all came from a collection I have of old chemical industry and technology business-to-business magazines. I wanted to pull out anything that could relate to space or space travel. Deciding what to do with my out of context scraps reminded of other work Amy’s made which involved shredding second-hand clothing into strips that she wove and crocheted into a spacesuit and survival gear for other planets. Unraveling a magazine is not so different from a sweater. I look forward to seeing what happens when we weave it all back together.

 

Anna Rotty

Anna Rotty lives in Oakland, CA. Growing up in Massachusetts, she received a BFA in photography from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2011. Anna has been part of the San Francisco Artists Studios since 2017 after a month-long residency with One Plus One Plus Two Collective. She is the co-founder of Work in Progress, an art discussion and critique group bringing together individuals practicing activism through creative outlets and promoting collaboration and support through the arts. She has recently exhibited with Incline Gallery, SF Camerawork, PhotoPlace Gallery and UMass Amherst. Projects have been featured with Stay Home Gallery, Juxtapoz and Six Feet Photography, and her alternative-process photography was recently recognized by the Denis Roussel Award. Community and collaboration is an important part of Anna’s practice. Anna is currently working as a Poll Worker Coordinator with the San Francisco Department of Elections.
www.annarotty.com

Responding to Tescia Seufferlein’s   “Repeated Reflections Series-M14 Freeway Lights”:
Contemplating Vastness and Worm’s Eye View

 

In response to Tescia’s piece “Repeated Reflections Series-M14 Freeway Lights” I began thinking about the lack of tactility in digital space and perspective. She created an insular repeated space that felt both vast and meditative, and similar to when a thought won’t escape, repeating over and over in an attempt to revise itself into something digestible. I wanted to see it bigger and touch it with my hands.

I printed the piece out and started to live with it on the wall of my studio, getting to know it, changing its direction over time, and moving the light source to see how it interacted with my physical space. I could see the image subtly in reverse on the backside of the paper and thought about an exchange. It bent and moved partly in my control, but with the print being so large, and me being alone, it had the ability to move in ways on its own. I let it dictate the space and I documented how light and shadows played into it, eventually piercing holes through the paper thinking about impact and transparency.

Initiating Artists Respond

Danielle Andress responds to Elana Adler’s “not consisting of an ever-changing flow of time but a calculable set of things”

 

Marissa Geoffroy responds to Kristi Arnold’s “Untitled”, Mokuhanga and colored pencil on paper” with “Untitled (Wood Wave)”

 
I am really responding to the squiggly curving branches and roots in Kristi’s drawing. I am picturing them coming to life in 3D as wooden twig-like forms. I am also planning to mimic her palette in this drawing – the spectrum of yellow to green to blue, the interplay of the pink and purple, and the white of the paper.

My first piece for this project was constructed of wood, and Kristi’s response depicted trees as the subject of her drawing. Her representation of the living wood is very evocative of the material for me, and so for my response piece I have returned to my initial medium. I have abstracted the branches and roots into wave forms, and have painted the sides with acrylic paint, using the color palette of Kristi’s work.

 

Amy Lange responds to Nathan Becka’s untitled video

Nathan Becka Still from ” Collaboration with Amy Lange”, video, 2020

Final response video by Amy Lange: “Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it like waves”
 
Alternative Realities: Tescia Seufferlein responds to Anna Rotty’s “Alternative Horizons” with “Fire Tree”

 
As Anna and I have gone back and forth we have been playing with light, indoors and out. I began to play with the light of the fires, the orange sky seeping into my windows. Anna was doing the same!! I had a great image of this mini palm trees shadow against the orange light; it was gorgeous. I then began playing with my kaleidoscope and the light. It began to create these stain glass windows type images.

 

Final Responses from Responding Artists

Homage to Rohm A: Elena Adler Responds to “Trick Mirror” by Danielle Andress

Inspired by Robert Rohm, who made a series of instruction based installations using instruction and manila rope. I have been recreating my own versions of these installations. The images are documentation of the performative process.

 

Kristi Arnold Responds to Marissa Geoffroy’s “Untitled: Wood Wave”

 

AC On: Nathan Becka’s responds to Amy Lange’s video “Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it like waves” 

 

Sisyphus:  Anna Rotty responds to Tescia Seufferlein’s “Fire Tree”

Tess’s piece “Fire Tree” gave me the sense of being within a space just outside a larger reality. Both repetitive and ethereal I couldn’t help but think of my days spent in Church as a kid, beneath an ornate ceiling, contemplating the stories of faith and forgiveness, but also of shame, guilt and punishment. Over the last few months, Tess and I have both been working with materiality, light and reflection to create seemingly larger worlds within the walls of our home. With the fires and the virus penetrating everyday thought, I considered my safe and privileged distance from these threats, thinking about interior and exterior, finally landing on an image reminiscent of a fiery hillside, conjuring consequence. I’ve been contemplating the human perspective and our impact on the land and the resilience and power of nature.

A New Chapter: Art by Recent University and College Graduates

The time post graduation after earning a Bachelor’s degree in visual arts often is followed with the question, “What Next?”

How do we blend studio practice with practical needs like making a living supporting oneself and maybe a family.

This work reflects the time of transition right before or just after leaving school.

The artists are Jorge Gomez-Gonzalez, Jennifer Ortiz, Natalie Jauregui Ortiz and Karina Tavares Perez from University of California, Santa Cruz,  Narsiso Martinez from California State University, Long Beach, and Ysabel Martinez from the Cafritz Art Center at Montgomery College, Silver Springs, Maryland.

We have also featured these artists in our Hablamos Juntos series of broadsides. The 11 x 17 posters are available for downloads, along with text of interviews with each artist.

Keep an eye out for the work by these artists- you will see more of it in the ensuing years- I’m sure of it.

Seen/Unseen: Stories into Creativity
A Film by by Wallace Boss

 Seen/UnSeen: Stories into Creativity (13 minutes, 2018, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, CA) is a film by Wallace Boss.  He is a seasoned documentarian whose career has focused on creativity.

The artists in Seen/UnSeen: Stories into Creativity are Doyle Foreman (sculpture), Edward Ramirez (photography) and Claire Thorson (painting).  In Seen/UnSeen you will get to hear each artist explore their studio or “in the world” process and how it shapes an artwork coming into being.  

A project of Museo Eduardo Carrillo,  Seen/UnSeen: Stories into Creativity  is part of a Santa Cruz County wide initiative titled Spoken/Unspoken.  Museo is committed to sharing the art and voices of contemporary artists.

The Spoken/Unspoken countywide collaborative venture was organized by Cabrillo Gallery and fueled by the generosity of a donor-advised grant from the Roy and Frances Rydell Visual Arts Fund at Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, which allowed this project to come into being.  Find out more here: www.spokenunspokenart.com

Through a myriad of practices, artists give voice to a broad array of ideas, feelings, and concerns.  They invite us to think, to feel, to wonder, to question, to act and react. Through art, artists can shout dissent, rally for a cause, incite action, and foster community. Art can inform us, speak unspoken secrets and give a voice to the silenced. Art can offer comfort and a platform to communicate grief, anger, or injustice for those in difficult circumstances. Art can delight us aesthetically and touch us emotionally. It can express deeply personal thoughts and desires. Art can present puzzles to be solved or ambiguities to ponder.

Discover, through Wallace Boss’s film how  Doyle Foreman (sculpture), Edward Ramirez (photography) and Claire Thorson (painting) bring the Unseen into the Seen.

A free film screening of “Seen/UnSeen- Stories into Creativity” (16 minutes) and panel discussion with the artists and film maker will be hosted by The Sesnon Gallery in the Porter Faculty Gallery – Porter College at University of California, Santa Cruz on March 14th at 6PM.  Come early for best parking.  Please email betsy@museoeduardocarrillo.org for more information.

Seen/Unseen Gallery

Click thumbnail to enlarge

 

Carlos Jackson: Reckoning With Hxstory

Reckoning with Hxstory, is an online-exhibition curated by Museo Eduardo Carrillo featuring Carlos F. Jackson’s drawings and silkscreen prints. The works in the series present a narrative that underlines hxstories of structural inequalities in the U.S. This online exhibition takes its title from the first sentence of Chicanx Studies founding manifesto, El Plan de Santa Barbara, which states, “For all people, as with individuals, the time comes when they must reckon with their history.”i

Read More of the essay by Gilda Posada

Hence, to reckon with hxstory, or to “take inventory,” as Gloria Anzaldúa calls it, is the first step towards conocimiento/ consciousness.ii She states that one must first take inventory to fully understand the weight one carries on their back, ultimately so to stop blaming victims for the problems generated by years of racism, colonialism, and oppression. These “weights” can be seen through the accounts that the viewer encounters when engaging with Jackson’s prints. The next step that Anzaldúa poses following the “taking of inventory” is a “winnowing out of the lies”, which is necessary to see what is true, so that injustice is not reproduced in actions that seek to generate social justice. Thus, in this journey, this exhibition replaces the i/e in history/herstory with an x to embrace decolonial teachings, as well as to create a space with the “x” for those whose truths and narratives have been left out because of hegemonic, patriarchal and heteronormative oppression.

Carlos Jackson’s Reckoning with Hxstory pulls from a variety of influences in his life as a cultural worker. Jackson’s extensive background in Chicanx art can be seen in the content of the work, particularly in creating visuals where consciousness and subjectivity is produced. As a printmaker, the influence of Cuban poster artists and graphic designers can be seen in layout choices and color selections. For example, the influence of René Mederos’ screen-print series “vallas”, on the history of the Cuban revolution commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada, can be seen in Jackson’s use of visual narrative formation and choice in 3’x 4’ prints. Though his prints are bigger than René Mederos’ prints, they still carry the function of being utilized for public educational use to anyone with or without literacy. Jackson’s usage of large blocks of color to define shapes and people is similar to that of Mederos, but traces of his training in painting can be seen in the strokes used in the shading and definition of figures in his prints. The choice of interconnecting moments through iconic images of liberation movements in the last six decades is part of the larger work that Jackson engages in as a scholar in the Chicanx Studies department of UC Davis, and as Director and founder of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer (TANA), a Chicanx community art center.

Jackson’s large-scaled prints demand the viewer confront hxstories of fascism, racism and colonialism that Blacks, Chicanxs and other minority groups have endured in U.S. That is to say, the experiences depicted here are a result the settler-colonial project brought into the Americas, where people were seen as less then by their white counterparts due to skin color, hair texture, religion and ancestral backgrounds. This haunting truth comes to life in his screen-print RELENTLESS/Little Rock 9, where he replicates the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford attempting to enter Little Rock Central High School on September 4, 1957 following the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decisions for integration.iii A furious white mob of roughly 400 gathered around the school that day along with the Arkansas National Guard to refuse these students entry. Jackson’s print brings to life the racism thrown at Eckford by white women, it is as if the viewer could hear the echoes of white supremacy ringing in their ears years later. Of course, to the viewer paying attention to the current events happening in the U.S., they will find that the echoes of white supremacy have not died out; the viewer will find a parallel between RELENTLESS/Little Rock 9 and the recent pro-white/alt-right attacks happening throughout the country, most noticeably in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is why it is of importance for the viewer to recognize as Anzaldúa states that “Awareness of your situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society,” because “nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” iv This point is crucial, especially in a time where news is manipulated into alt-facts that deceive the viewer.

For those that feel overwhelmed and exhausted because they have been aware of the current conditions happening across the U.S., Jackson’s work then offers a reminder of courage, resistance and ruthless and unapologetic motivation to keep going. The image of Eckford walking by the white mob can serve as a motivation in the ability to keep seeking change in America until it becomes the America which embodies a true democracy and gives opportunity to all despite documentation, race, gender and/or body ability. The transparent red gradient with the word “Relentless” which appears over RELENTLESS/Little Rock 9, signals to the viewer that against all odds, people of color have resisted through being relentless and unyielding to white supremacy. In this print, Eckford is no longer seen as a victim of white supremacy, instead she is someone who relentlessly imagined an alternative future for herself and future generations. Eckford then becomes someone creating a new image of America in her head and paving that path towards self-determination and democracy.

The reiterations of resistance and the carving out America continue throughout Jackson’s work, for instance, Historical Materialism: Carpooling and Breaking the Fast, 1969, give us insights to moments of power and agency. These two prints showcase hxstories of Boycotts where Black and Chicanx communities organized as a means to be seen as human beings because America has not always looked at their experiences as such. This concept can be traced back to the first-contact of settler Europeans in the Americas, extending into the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the implementation of nation-state borders, which created genocide and institutional racist structures. Institutional racist structures, where migrants, people of color, the working class, and those labeled as the marginal of society were (and continue to be) seen as products in the agricultural chain, the supply industry, the labor force, etc.v Arrival 2, XICANX/Citizenship: Arrival, and Bracero Living or the Concentration Camp recap the life that Mexican workers who participated in the bracero program underwent from 1942-1947 in primarily agricultural labor contracts.vi Upon arrival, braceros were taken to processing centers where they were stripped and searched and then sprayed with DDT by Department of Agriculture. These long hxstories of exploitation and atrocious working and living conditions were met with opposition and ultimately strikes. Often overlooked, but shown in Jackson’s Breaking the Fast, 1969, is the Filipino community, who took the first role in leading the strike against growers in the summer of 1965, demanding that their wages be increased from $1.10 an hour as well as demanding better living conditions.vii In Carlos Jackson’s screen-print we see Cesar Chavez preparing to breaks his 25-day fast in Delano, California. The fatigued Cesar Chavez sits with Senator Robert F. Kennedy, his wife Helen Chavez and mother Juana Chavez. Often cut out of the frame, but shown here behind Chavez and flying the U.F.W. flags are Irwin DeShetler, Andy Imutan, Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, all major organizers who joined forces with Mexican field laborers in the fight against exploitation and abuse. An understanding of this hxstory allows the viewer to gain a new perspective on unity. Jackson’s images remind many of painful struggles, but many forget that it was not done alone; these communities made each other stronger. Filipinos farmworkers introduced “Isang Bagsak” to the U.F.W. a phrase that means “one down, one fall.” A visual retelling of these narratives allows for the viewer to gain a further understanding that alone change is hard, and if one falls, everyone falls, but that together change can be achived.

Jackson’s inventory in moments in hxstory are a testament that one is never alone in the struggle; his work demonstrates that the foundations towards liberation have been set and that we have nothing to lose but our chains. Before Boycott was used as a tool towards liberation in the West coast it was used by Black America in the south, as seen through Historical Materialism: Carpooling. In this print, the viewer is given an insight into the mid 50s where three womxn and a man are entering a cab while an empty bus appears across from them. This moment which we see is alluding to the bus strikes between December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956, where Black people were engaging in the struggle to end segregated seating in Montgomery, Alabama. Once again, these fundamental images remind us that defiance can serve as a tool against the tyrannizing forces today and remind us that everyone in America today is of value regardless of federally recognized citizenship. The bus boycotts are lived testaments that showed America that the Black experience was composed of people with families, with histories, with culture, with aspirations and with dreams that deserve to be respected and lived. Jackson proposes that “in order to know who we are, we first need awareness, which comes through education, and the only education that can produce this knowledge as a liberatory form is governed by praxis; action and reflection.”viii The creation of Black Lives Matter builds upon this vision, and reminds us that a reformation of America is needed. To reckon with hxstory, the viewer must educate themselves and hold America accountable for slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, lynching, and the mass incarceration of Black individuals. The viewer must then sit with these hxstories and connect them to the genocide of Black bodies in the hands of police departments and grand juries convening across the U.S.

Remaining in the hxstory of resistance, Jackson’s work continues to reckons with instances of state violence in relation to protestors. Workings of the State Apparatus: Walter Gadsden being attacked, Birmingham Alabama, May 4, 1964, references The Birmingham Campaign, which was composed of a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall and boycotts on downtown merchants to protest segregation laws in the city.ix In Jackson’s print we witness a case of a reoccurring practices, where peaceful demonstrators were met with violent attacks, high-pressure fire hoses, as well as police dogs. This moment is considered to be “one of the major turning points in the Civil Rights Movement and the ‘beginning of the end’ of a centuries-long struggle for freedom.” x Likewise, The workings of the State Apparatus: August 29, 1970, tells the hxstory of protestors in East Los Angeles. On August 29, 1970, the National Chicano Moratorium Committee organized its first public demonstration to protest the war in Viet Nam in East Los Angeles, where 30,000 attended the demonstration in a display of solidarity. The march culminated with speeches and festivities at Laguna Park and despite peaceful rally, the Los Angeles Police Department opened fire on activists, families and children, using “non-lethal projectiles” and tear gas. Police officials alleged that a liquor store had been broken into and that the robbers fled into the crowd. As families scattered, innocent community members were beaten and arrested, during the ensuring riot, police shot a tear gas projectile into the Silver Dollar Bar, where a group of people had sought refuge from the violence. Ruben Salazar, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, was hit in the head by the tear gas canister and killed. By the end of the day police had killed three people and injured more than sixty other individuals. Ruben Salazar’s image and events at the Silver Dollar Bar had become emblematic of the moratorium’s tragic end.xi Workings of the State Apparatus: Walter Gadsden being attacked, Birmingham Alabama, May 4, 1964 and The workings of the State Apparatus: August 29, 1970, visually elaborate the lengths to which the American government and law enforcement agencies were willing to go to crush peaceful dissent and protest. In these prints, Jackson is asking the viewer for communal remembrance; a note to never forget or underestimate the extent to which institutions, local or federal, will go to in order to keep their power and privileges in place.

The measures which the American government has taken to keep its dominance can always be taken one step further, as can be seen in The workings of the State Apparatus: Martin and The workings of the State Apparatus: Ernesto Guevara, Age 39. Although, the viewer will want to move past these works because of content, the viewer must reckon with the distaste and impulse to turn away. While these works bring sorrow, they also highlight the radical power that an idea of different worlds being possible holds. American empire played a role in attempting to extinguish the flames of hope and change across the world through the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Jackson inserts these images to continue communal remembrance, but also to signal that ideas of a different world will be seen as a threat, and that those in power will use all their resources to extinguish any change that does not uphold their power. But Jackson is also presenting us with these moments in movements to remind us as Fred Hampton said, “You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill the revolution.” Thus, reflection of these images can serve as a collective consciousness on the way to seeing that there are multiple ways of being and doing the work, so long as it keeps the revolution in process.

Carlos Jackson’s work will carry the open wounds of injustice, sometimes imposed on by institutions and other times by community members that were utilizing the master’s tools to oppress their own community. Each print will ask the viewer to bear witness to the hurt and exclusion, but each print also carries a redemptive quality if the viewer is willing to “winnow out the lies.” This is the nature of Carlos Jackson’s work; it is an invitation to those who want to embark on the journey towards decolonization. Now is the time for the viewer to readjust their own views and seek the truths, there is no direct answer as to how to do this and no direct end because each individual governs a different path. Jackson’s work has done its part in creating new symbols, new forms of hxstories, new perspectives or/and ways of seeing ourselves in the world. Just as the children in Drawing for Xicanx Park, April 1970 that plant the seeds for a new space that will hold their hxstories, truths, and visions of the world they wish to see, we too must begin to carve out the space we envision for Nuestra Américasin fronteras, sin miedo y resistiendo.

C/S

—Gilda Posada

i El Plan de Santa Barbara. 1969

ii Anzaldúa, Gloria E. Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2007) 105

iv Anzaldúa, Gloria E. ibid. 109.

v See print by Carlos Jackson’s Victoria, Texas, May 13, 2013.

vii Imutan, Andy . What happened when Mexicans and Filipinos joined together. From: 40th anniversary of Delano Grape Srrike two-day reunion in Delano, September 2005<http://ufw.org/research/history/mexicans-filipinos-joined-together/>

viii Email exchange with Carlos Jackson on 9/13/2016.

ix The Birmingham Campaign. Public Broadcasting Service. 1995-2017. < http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-birmingham-campaign/#.Waj5R5OGNsM>

x The Birmingham Campaign. ibid

xi Jackson, Carlos F. Protest Arte: Chicana and Chicano Art. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2009) 127

 

   

The Chicanx Poster Workshop: A Space Where Subjectivity Is Produced

I frame my printmaking and writing practice as that of a cultural worker…
…Chicanx posters demonstrate that Chicanx identity is fluid, in development, and open for creation, a finding that contests the widespread notion that Chicanx identity is a fixed category that is manifested in predictable ways.  

—Carlos Francisco Jackson

Read the entire article from AZTLÁN: A JOURNAL OF CHICANO STUDIES in PDF format

 

Carlos Francisco Jackson is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received a BS in community and regional development and an MFA in painting from UC Davis, and he was awarded the Robert Arneson Award for excellence in the MFA program. He has been a fellow at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in central Maine and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Between 2004 and 2015 he served as founding director of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer. Jackson has shown his art at exhibitions throughout the United States. He is the author of Chicana and Chicano Art: ProtestArte (University of Arizons Press, 2009), and his work appears in the exhibition catalogs Mi América/My America: Carlos Jackson (University of Illinois, 2011) and Estampas de la Raza: Contemporary Mexican American Prints from the Romo Collection (University of Texas Press, 2012).

carlosfjackson.com
http://www.artpractical.com/feature/abolish-borders-as-revolutionary-futurity/
https://boomcalifornia.com/2014/04/16/serigrafia/

Text © Gilda Posada, all rights reserved
Artwork and Text © Carlos Francisco Jackson, all rights reserved

ARRT: Artists Respond & Resist Together

This exhibit, Artists Respond and Resist Together, was synchronistic in its evolution. Before there was an election in 2016 there was the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, which had been serving the community for 40 years and there were a myriad of local artists, whose work focussed on the political landscape and if not specifically, who wanted to support that kind of work, because they believe in art as a social agent for change.

When the election results were confirmed, these 80 artists were in search of each other and formed a group called ARRT and at that same time RCNV was, as always, responding to the issues of the times and was right in the middle of remodeling their building to include an extensive art exhibition space. So, an inaugural ARRT exhibition was proposed, to bring these two forces together.

The Resource Center for Nonviolence, founded in 1976, is a peace and justice organization promoting the practice of nonviolent social change. Their primary mission is to support the growth of nonviolent activists.

The mission of ARRT states, “We are an affiliation of artists joined together by our shared belief in the power of art to effect social change and protect democratic values. Our creative skills support progressive social actions in our local community and beyond.”

For this juried show the theme was: Dynamic artistic responses to the current political climate. Submissions could address resistance, immigration, civil rights, climate change, injustice, etc. and the artists were encouraged to submit work that was in the spirit of both organizations.

Curators:
Sara Friedlander
Anita Heckman
Dee Hooker 

The Painting as World: Frank Galuszka’s self-refracting paintings through the edges of Borges and Velasquez

Las Meninas

He paints quickly, as if to make sure he captures the thought, the insight while it is still fresh. The very elision of the brushwork shivers with movement, if not urgency, at least a swiftness of purpose. And confidence.

On a winter afternoon the light pools down around the floor of the huge, empty room where the figures appear to be assembled. A thickening of texture, sfumato, permeates the upper reaches of the room. The chandeliers are no longer lit, only a few windows allow some illumination to pierce the cavernous interior.

Read More of the essay by Christina Waters

The child’s pale halo of hair arrests our gaze. For this one frozen moment it has captured what light there is in the room.

But something else is going on as well. Velasquez has caught the decline, the darkening fortunes of this house of Hapsburg. The king and queen are now seen, glimpsed actually, as indistinct, hazy reflections in a small mirror at the back of the room. They are in fact reflections of reflections, since the entire painting itself is an image captured in a huge mirror – the mirror that must presumably stand in front of the figures we see, as they see themselves.

Yet it is our gaze that is required to complete this picture. What Velasquez is painting is us looking at the figures reflected in the mirror. We see him painting – his hand is blurred with movement, the paint fresh and puddled on his palette. He looks up to check that we are paying attention.

This painting captures us, our gaze, the viewer – and once we begin to enter the space of the painting, it closes behind us. We are within it. Inside. Our gaze completes it. Velasquez has not only painted himself-painting-this-painting. He has painted our complicity with the act. He has painted us reflecting upon, and reflected within, the moment that he is making the painting. The process either never ends — in which case the moment of the painting is eternal— or it is one which has become a world, a perpetual Now. It is an aesthetic act of self-referentiality in which the artist painting has become simultaneously the object painted, as well as witness to the witnesses of both act and outcome.

La Vista Totale: a partial view

Just as in the uncanny event of Velasquez’ Las Meninas, the 20-year oeuvre of painter Frank Galuszka invites us to sample a point of view in which our viewing is already anticipated by the image. Each painting of his on-going self-referential series, La Vista Totale: a partial view,  is dialectically linked —by a subliminally embedded iconography—to every other. Much as two mirrors, placed just so, provide a dizzying sequence of curved reflections that seem to continue on into infinity — or into a world that is suggested and yet not fully visible — inhabitants of Galuszka’s LVT network (over 45 paintings so far) refract and reflect each other, yet from possible (or impossible) fictional futures (and pasts).

His interlocking network/narrative invites the viewer to complete a thought, or event just out of view. It is our presence that ignites the organism. Ours is the partial view that conspires with the totality of images. He, like Valesquez, has captured us and uses our embodied gaze to animate his cosmos-in-progress.

As with Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, Galuszka’s expanding series of inter-mirrored images begins not with an origin myth, but with a mystery. We are dropped into a saga that is already well underway. We are entranced even as we are perplexed.  Somewhere (we suspect) there is a missing explanation about which (we eventually realize) we are co-creators. What Galuszka’s richly-wrought enigmas intend is up to us, to our own desires and inquiry. And in asking about la vista totale, we are ensnared in its multiplicity of perspectives. It reveals to us as much about ourselves as it does the painter’s mercurial skill.

—Christina Waters

 
Text © Christina Waters, all rights reserved
Artwork © Frank Galuszka, all rights reserved

Immigration: Borders, Boundaries, Beginnings

Sara Friedlander and Jane Gregorius

The art work of Sara Friedlander and Jane Gregorius addresses the current and historic issues of migration and displacement.  What does it mean to belong, and who controls who stays?

Each artist brings their wise and thoughtful hand to their art.  Read what they have to say.

Birds of im/Migration by Sara Friedlander

I have created these visual narratives to honor the courageous women, who left their homeland and their families, often under great duress and traveled to America to start a new life. Most of them spoke no English; and holding steadfast to their hopes for a brighter future, faced daunting challenges in order to establish themselves in this new world.

I began with photographs of my maternal grandmother, born Masha Bornstein, who in 1908 at the age of 15 left her family behind in Petrikov, Belarus (background image) and traveled alone in steerage to Boston. She soon made her way to Providence, Rhode Island to begin anew. She was an accomplished seamstress who designed and made all the clothes in the photographs you see of her. Warmth and integrity emanate from her face. I’m told that she worked in and then ran a small sewing shop. And after marrying, she and my grandfather sent for her mother and three siblings to join them. She died before I was two and by creating this piece, I feel more connected to her life and my own history.

At this critical time, immigration is seen as a national and global threat throughout the world. These portraits can help us remember and reflect deeply on the reality that most Americans, most of us, are relatively recent descendants of or immigrants ourselves.

 

 

Artist statement by Jane Gregorius

Even the noun “immigration” has started to fill me with sadness. It used to stand for adventure, for courage, for the will to survive, the right to a choice. With politicians trying to capitalize on xenophobia, the word has become a two-part description as in “illegal-immigrant,” and it is often said that “that person is illegal.” Really, an illegal person?

I can’t imagine the poverty and squalor, the fear, the political terrors, the life of the persecuted that force populations to escape from the mother country. One of my pieces visually describes the wall and the border patrol who keep an eye on it, another describes the home that was left behind and another the homeless and anonymous wanderer without roots and home land.