Ricardo Favela, a founding member of the groundbreaking Chicano Arts collective, the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF, aka: The Rebel Chicano Art Front), died of a heart attack this past July 15th, 2007. He was 62. The RCAF colectivo was founded in Sacramento, California, in 1969, and through its inspired and tireless output was intrumental in helping to establish the Chicano Arts Movement. Favela and other members of the RCAF painted more than a dozen public murals in Sacramento, as well as establishing community arts programs like the Barrio Art Program for impoverished Chicano children, and the Anciano Art Project for elders.

But it was the silkscreen poster works of Favela and the RCAF that had the most profound impact. Those posters were highly political, and expressed community concerns from the Vietnam war and gang violence, to supporting the United Farm Workers. In the extensive Los Angeles Times obituary for Favela, the following single paragraph summed things up nicely:

“‘Social commentary was the point of Ricardo’s art,’ said Catherine Turrill, chairwoman of the Sacramento State art department, in an interview this week. For the Royal Chicano Air Force, she said, ‘art was an instrument of social change.’”

The posters of Favela and the RCAF brought unity and pride to the Mexican American community, and those prints flew across the U.S. and around the world - indeed, some of them flew right into the mind of yours truly, where they found fertile ground. I’m indebted to Favela and his RCAF compeñeros, a great many of us are. As fate would have it, Favela passed away just days before the opening of Dos Generaciones, an exhibition of his artworks at Sacramento’s Toyroom Gallery organized by Favela and his former students, Manuel Rios and Xico Gonzalez. The exhibit runs until August 11th, 2007, if you’re in the vicinity, drop by and pay your last respects to a beloved artista.

There is much about today’s art world that I find tedious and unpalatable. The mediocrity, elitism and pretentiousness, the bloated egos and the ceaseless pursuit of fame and riches. But even in death, Favela touches me with his implacable spirit - reminding me that there is another way. A humble man has passed from this world, a man who in every respect was dedicated to his art and his people… he left an example for all of us to follow.

The Royal Chicano Air Force Still Flys.

The 2nd City Council Art Gallery and Performance Space in Long Beach, California, has asked me to act as juror for their upcoming exhibit, Dia de los Muertos. For those artists interested in submitting works, I’m publishing the gallery’s Call for Art on this web log. A complete and detailed prospectus for the exhibit is available here.

Call for Artists living in California
Dia de los Muertos.
Entry Deadline is Sunday, September 16, 2007

Eligibility
All artists living in California.
All media except film and video.
All work submitted for consideration must be available for exhibition October 27 – November 22, 2007.

Cash awards $500, $300, $200, $100 plus the infamous Eye Opener Statue.

Entry Submissions. Images can be presented four ways:
Slides - standard 2″x 2″ mounted, labeled slides (no glass)
Photographs - at least 5″x7″, no bigger than 8.5″x 11″
Digital Prints - at least 5″x7″, no bigger than 8.5″x 11″
Emailed images - to: 2ndcitycouncil@earthlink.net - JPEG or TIFF files only; cannot exceed 500 KB.

Entry Fees are $10 per entry for members and $20 per entry for nonmembers. Become a member of the 2nd City Council and get your first entry free. Volunteer Hours (in the gallery or at home on your computer) are welcome in lieu of entry fees.

Mail submissions to: 2nd City Council Art Gallery + Performance Space. 435 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90802. Phone: (562) 901-0997. E-mail: 2ndcitycouncil@earthlink.net. Web: www.2ndcitycouncil.org

For years, Long Beach has celebrated Dia de los Muertos in a huge apartment complex and courtyard. The 2nd City Council Art Gallery + Performance Space (2cc) is now a neighbor and has been invited to participate. This year the gates on both sides of the alley will open wide to encourage an exchange of culture, art, fun and flow of community from the apartment courtyard to 2cc’s gallery and garden. The courtyard is a magical place where altars, candlelight, marigolds, Aztec dancing and live music will fill the air. In addition to the exhibition and the community ofrenda, 2cc’s garden will likewise be transformed with altars, calaveras, music, movies, delicious food & desserts and craft vendors. Please join us.

It’s an honor for me to be selected as the juror for the 2nd City Council’s Dia de los Muertos exhibition. In the past the gallery’s distinguished jurors have included, amongst others: Carol S. Eliel, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at LACMA; Barbara Drucker, Chair of the Art Department, UCLA; Betti-Sue Hertz, Curator of Contemporary Art at San Diego Museum of Art; Ruth Weisberg, Dean of the School of Fine Arts, USC; Wesley Jessup, Executive Director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art; Patt Morrison, L.A. Times writer and columnist and founding commentator of “Life & Times” and Sara Cochran, Ph.D. Associate Curator LACMA. I’m sure that with the participation of the working artists who read this web log, Dia de los Muertos will be a lively and vibrant exhibition.

To celebrate the 100th birthday of artist Frida Kahlo, which falls on July 6th, 2007, Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) is exhibiting the largest body of Kahlo’s artworks ever to be put on public display anywhere in the world. Opening June 13th, 2007 and running until August 19th, 2007, the show is the first comprehensive exhibit of the artist’s works to be held in Mexico, and it’s comprised of some 354 original drawings and paintings - as well as a portion of Kahlo’s manuscripts and letters. In addition, talks on Kahlo’s political views and influence on the arts will be held in conjunction with the exhibit. The Associate Press quoted Bellas Artes Director Roxana Gonzalez as saying, “It is important for our visitors to know that Frida wrote, thought - challenged the Americans - here they will see the complete Frida.”

And that complete view of Frida is long overdue, especially here in the United States, where “Fridamania” has refashioned the radical artist into a series of harmless and exotic clichés. In Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, author Hayden Herrera wrote that the artist became, “first a legend, then a myth and now a cult figure.” The end of that statement is most certainly true, and Herrera played no small role in the transformation of Kahlo into a pop icon - her 1983 biography served as the basis for director Julie Taymor’s 2002 Frida, starring Salma Hayek as Kahlo. Unfortunately that film has become the prevailing English-language history of the left-wing painter.

In an interview conducted for PBS by filmmaker Amy Stechler (The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo), Herrera was asked when people started to recognize Frida as a painter, and she responded by saying:

“(….) in the second half of the seventies, she was not really very well known. In Mexico, she was known as Diego Rivera’s sort of peculiar wife with the strange little paintings that most people really didn’t like very much. They were too peculiar. And too weird. They are weird. I mean, we’ve gotten used to them now, but they still are kind of weird. And in the United States, I don’t think many people had heard of her. At least, I’d never heard of her until somebody…Max Kozlov and Joyce Kozlov presented me with a catalog and said, ‘Go write about it for Art Forum.’ And that was about, I think around 1974 - ‘74, ‘75 - somewhere in there. Anyway, I think Frida Kahlo’s fame began in the late ’70s and had a lot to do with feminism, had a lot to do with the Chicana people in the United States loving having this sort of emblem of Mexicanidad and loving her whole story, because it’s a painful one.”

As a devotee of Kahlo, Herrera’s observations as quoted above are on target, but what exactly is she telling us? That the reasons for Kahlo’s fame have less to do with her abilities as an artist and more to do with the sensibilities of a contemporary audience? That’s quite a revealing statement regarding the cult of personality that has developed around Kahlo, which seems to have more to do with her tragic personal life than with her actual artistic output. When Herrera admits that Kahlo is understood as “myth” and “cult figure,” we’ve already slipped into territory where anything about the artist will be believed, which is undeniably why the Taymor/Hayek version of Kahlo’s life was so popular in the United States. The superficial film provided its audience with an easy to digest soap opera that focused on the sex lives and marital problems of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - it was a movie that for all intents and purposes effectively stripped Kahlo of her political beliefs.

I’ve been singing the praises of Frida Kahlo ever since the early 1970’s, but I find it astonishing that she’s now perceived - at least outside of Mexico - as that country’s leading artist, while her compatriots in the Mexican Muralist Movement have largely been excised from history. To gauge the depth and breadth of “Fridamania” and how quickly the phenomenon took over, one need only examine the 1988 PBS American Masters documentary about her husband, Rivera in America, which detailed the art and career of the eminent painter. Though you do catch glimpses of Kahlo in the documentary, the hour-long film barely mentioned her, and instead focused on the achievements of Rivera - who played an enormous role in changing the face of his nation’s art and culture. Today that portrayal has been entirely reversed, with Kahlo the super-star in the limelight and Diego left forgotten.

I don’t mean to imply that Kahlo doesn’t deserve acknowledgment or that she should be thrown back into obscurity - personally I love her art and recognize her as a fantastic, inspiring painter. But the passing of time should bring about a deeper appreciation of artists and art movements once misunderstood, and while time has no doubt been good to Frida Kahlo - why have the extraordinary artists surrounding her been retired to the shadows? It has been relatively easy to commodify Kahlo’s works over the likes of those by fellow radical painters Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Jean Charlot, Pablo O’ Higgins, Juan O’ Gorman and others. But it’s a mistake to view these didactic artists as “political” while maintaining Kahlo’s paintings were simply “personal.” Kahlo’s works are the perfect example of “the personal being the political.” No less than the founder of Surrealism, André Breton, recognized this fact. He famously said that “The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon around a bomb.”

A militant if unorthodox communist, Kahlo was connected to the major political events of her day. Whatever one makes of her politics, ideology was undeniably a major force that consistently ran through her life, so I find it annoying that her persona has been recast to fit the current intellectual atmosphere. While big money and fan worship have airbrushed Kahlo into an easily digestible, exotic commodity - the truth can be found elsewhere. As fate would have it, an exciting new discovery has been made that re-emphasizes the undying loyalty and comradeship between Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The Mexican paper, La Jornada, reports that scientists in Mexico City have found over 100 hitherto unknown drawings created by the couple. The artworks, along with photos and letters, were secreted away in a hidden room of the Casa Azul (Blue House), the house where the two artists once lived together and which now functions as The Frida Kahlo Museum. A special press conference has been arranged for June 27th, where a list of the exact items found will be revealed.

Frida Kahlo sought to sweep away the cobwebs of the old world, and perhaps the major exhibit at Mexico’s Palacio de Bellas Artes will shed some much needed light on that reality.

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, California, is celebrating its grand reopening with a month long series of events that focus on Latino culture. Agustin Gurza of the Los Angeles Times wrote about the new MOLAA in his article, Latin American Art museum reopens with new look, attitude, but regrettably Gurza’s revealing dialog with MOLAA’s executive director Gregorio Luke, divulges not a new attitude - but the same old one. The Latin American Art museum still maintains a protracted refusal to exhibit or otherwise collaborate with Chicano/Mexican American artists.

Mr. Gurza’s article is peppered with accolades for MOLAA and Luke, who was the former cultural attaché for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C. Gurza writes: “You could call MOLAA the little museum that could, totally upstaging the massive metropolis to the north. It’s almost a scandal that L.A. has no comparable Latino-themed museum — not yet anyway.” The unnamed institution Gurza refers to is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which has had an abysmal track record when it comes to exhibiting works by Chicano/Latino artists - but to say it’s “almost a scandal” that L.A.’s galleries and museums ignore Chicano/Latino artists is the understatement of the year.

Having long been intimately involved with L.A.’s Chicano art circles, I can personally attest to the hurt, confusion, feelings of dejection, indignation and outright anger expressed by Mexican American artists over MOLAA’s unshakable insistence on exclusively showing only Latino artists from south of the U.S.-Mexican border - as if Latino artists born within the borders of the U.S. were completely invisible and irrelevant. It is one thing to have mainstream cultural institutions in the U.S. ignore the indigenous Chicano arts movement and artists of Latin American heritage - but it is quite another to be totally disregarded by an institution claiming to speak for Latin American artists.

MOLAA’s unjustifiable stance is a slap in the face to the many talented Chicano and Latino artists who for decades have struggled within the United States to maintain and expand a distinctive cultural heritage and set of unique aesthetics. The Chicano school of art for one, is well established and recognized internationally, and it’s high time for MOLAA to acknowledge the movement as having a well deserved place in the wider family of Latin American artists.

In a March 25th, 2007 article for the New York Times titled, The Art’s Here, Where’s the Crowd?, Edward Wyatt examined Los Angeles as “the nation’s second art capital,” and he scrutinized the big players who pull the strings, particularly Eli Broad and his backing of LACMA:

“Mr. Broad (whose name rhymes with road) has generated a fair amount of resentment in some corners here for his outsized presence on the art scene. His devotion to the downtown projects have been criticized as ignoring pockets of the city that have less access to the arts, like the largely Hispanic sections of East Los Angeles and the areas south of downtown that have large African-American populations.”

It is no exaggeration to say that Chicano and Latino artists have come to expect being overlooked by the likes of Broad, LACMA - and now MOLAA. But the cultural gulf widened significantly when news spread that the new Museo Alameda Smithsonian (or MAS, “More” in Spanish) officially opened its doors on April 12th, 2007, in San Antonio, Texas. The question arises - If there is a mainstream museum dedicated to Chicano/Latino art in Texas, why is there no similar arts institution in California with its enormous Chicano/Latino population and vibrant Chicano/Latino arts community?

Gurza’s L.A. Times article quotes Gregorio Luke as saying: “I used to think only in terms of Mexico and Mexican culture, but for me, these years at MOLAA have suddenly made me appreciate the art of Peru and Ecuador, the music of Brazil, the pupusas of El Salvador and the mate of Argentina. I think the museum is going to be able to inspire this expanded sense of identity for everybody that comes to it.” But the MOLAA director’s alleged “vision of a pan-Latin American culture that crosses national boundaries” inexplicably stops short of embracing those Latinos who happen to live within the United States. Gregorio Luke takes the deplorable posture of extending consideration to Mexican artists, while absolutely denying any attention to their gifted Mexican American counterparts.

Gurza’s article makes a single oblique remark concerning MOLAA’s graceless and blinkered policy, “One important element is missing from the artistic mission of MOLAA - the art made in its own backyard.” As long as that observation remains true, the Museum of Latin American Art will remain a stunted and unfulfilled institution in contention with America’s Latino population.

My large pastel drawing, She Who Wears Bells On Her Cheeks, has been published as the book cover for Milagros Peña’s, Latina Activists across Borders: Women’s Grassroots Organizing in Mexico and Texas. In September of 2006 Ms. Peña’s publisher, Duke University Press, contacted me with an offer to publish my drawing. Apparently Peña had seen my artwork and thought it would make an appropriate cover for her examination of grassroots organizing conducted by Latinas on both sides of the U.S., Mexico border.

After the publishing house representative explained that Peña’s book would be a progressive, sociological analysis of border region women confronting issues of sexism, labor exploitation and domestic violence - I agreed to have my art associated with the project. I have no interest in doing commercial illustration for just any client, but on occasion a prospect will come along that dovetails with my own worldview - such is the case with Ms. Peña’s book. The Aztec Goddess of the Moon was named ‘She who wears bells on her Cheeks’ (Coayolquaxi.) My life-sized chalk portrait of an anonymous Chicana, portrays my subject holding a printed reproduction of the Moon Goddess.

Author and professor, Alberto López Pulido, said this of Ms. Peña’s Latina Activists across Borders: “Through powerful narratives and context, Milagros Peña finds a common and collective voice for Mexican, Mexican American, and Latina women. This work is groundbreaking because it provides a new vista by which to understand and assess the local and the global women’s movements from a feminist perspective. Peña tells a story that has never been told and tells it very well.” Mr. Pulido expressed precisely why I’m so pleased to have my artwork associated with this book.

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) in Los Angeles has included my 1988 poster, No Human Being Is Illegal - Ningun ser Humano es Ilegal, in their traveling poster exhibit, No Human Being is Illegal! - Posters of the Myths and Realities of the Immigrant Experience.

Currently on display at Self-Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles through February 17th, 2007, the exhibit premiered in 1988 as one of the first exhibitions produced by the center. The show was a graphic response to the escalating deportations of Central Americans, and has since been updated a number of times. From the show’s press release:

Much has happened since the exhibit was last put on display in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 2001 - notably September 11th, the Iraq War, and the Patriot Act. While these events profoundly affect all of us, immigrants are the most vulnerable to the resulting rise in repression, racism and discrimination. Fortunately, many are fighting back, and as always, posters are central to educational and organizing efforts. The current version of No Human Being Is Illegal! includes posters made for the 2006 immigrant rights demonstrations - the largest demonstrations in the history of the United States. These posters are not just “Made in America.” Immigration is a volatile topic around the world, and although the majority shown here are made in the U.S., this exhibition includes posters from Argentina, Australia, Cuba, France, Germany, Greece, and Mexico.”

The exhibit is funded in part by the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles. The Executive Director of CSPG, Carol A. Wells, will give a guided tour of the show held on February 17th, 2007, at 11 a.m. To RSVP, please call CSPG at 323 653-4662. The exhibit will be on display until February 18th, 2007. Self-Help Graphics & Art (map) is located at 3802 Cesar Chavez Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90063. Hours for the gallery are: Tuesday - Friday 10 - 5p.m., Saturday 10 - 3 p.m.

Xican@ Demiurge: An Immediate Survey at L.A.’s downtown Pharmaka Art gallery, is the latest examination of Chicano art to grace the L.A. art scene. I viewed the works of the twenty-one artists in the exhibit, which according to the organizers of the show are referred to as “Los In-betweens”, both for their standing in-between cultures and for evading the clichés of their chosen genre. Curated by Richard Duardo, Francesco X. Siqueiros and Armando H. Torres, the raison d’être of the exhibit is to “reposition ‘Xicanism@’ as a viable genre in which any artist influenced by our community can participate”.

Instead of commenting on the artistic merits of individual artists participating in the show, I’ve decided to critique the exhibit as a whole, it is after all a collective statement billed as a survey, and my assessment can also be read as an evaluation of the current state of Chicano art and its possible directions. For those expecting to find powerful, evocative images that expand and deepen the legacy of Chicano art as an activist oriented art form, Xican@ Demiurge is likely to disappoint. While the works largely adhere to the tradition of Chicano art as a bulwark for figurative realism, the stance of the show is decidedly postmodernist - offering little in the way of narrative, history or direction.

For those familiar with Chicano art - please bear with me. Since this web log has an international audience, I feel the need to reveal the obscure and esoteric secrets of the “Xican@” chronicles so that readers new to these histories can better appreciate what I’m going to say about Xican@ Demiurge. Historically, the Mexican American population in the western states of the U.S. endured the pains of a suffocating discrimination. In the mid-1960s, they rose to claim equality with the larger society, a struggle that entailed the right of self-identification - leading to the use of the term, “Chicano.” As a cultural identity and signifier of ethnic pride, “Chicano” is today more or less accepted by the mainstream, though the term is still evolving. Currently a number of Chicanos spell the word with an “X”, connecting their identity to ancient indigenous roots - in the Nahuatl language, the Aztecs called themselves Mexica (pronounced: meh-Shee-ka). Also, the gendered structure of the Spanish language has been rejected by some, who favor the written plural forms “Chicano/a” or “Chican@”.

Now that those basic facts have been made somewhat clear, allow me to open another can of worms - exactly what is Chicano art and how shall it be defined? Xican@ Demiurge attempts to form a definition, but as a survey it is stilted and woefully incomplete, in part because it’s extremely difficult to present the totality of Chicano aesthetics with a single exhibit. Chicano art necessarily arose from the tumultuous 60’s as a combative aesthetic in opposition to a system of racial, cultural, and political oppression - a cultural renaissance that took place concurrently with the Mexican American community’s political awakening. The California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives of the University of Santa Barbara, California (CEMA), describes the aesthetic in the following manner: “Chicano art is a public and political art, proclaiming and expressing public and social concerns in its themes and subjects.” That is not a description I’m inclined to argue against, though in all fairness it is one in need of further elaboration.

In their curatorial statement, the organizers of Xican@ Demiurge wrote: “Art that is innovative and aggressive in its approach is critical to developing a contemporary aesthetic that is representative of the 21st Century Xican@ artist. The cultural climate influencing this particular group today is not the same as the one that triggered ‘El Movimiento Chicano’ of the 1960’s.”

I’m left wondering how the art presented in this exhibit could be considered “aggressive in its approach”, unless the direction is one of insistent self-absorption, political retreat and apathy. The curators of Xican@ Demiurge take pains to point out that conditions currently facing Chicanos are not those of the 60s, which is true enough - but this seems an excuse not to address current realities more than anything else. Of the twenty-one artists in the exhibit, only one displayed a work addressing an overt political issue - and that attempt was not very engaging. The show nearly exists in a vacuum, as if one million Latinos did not march in the streets of Los Angeles to protest repressive immigration laws on May 1st, 2006, or that Latinos in the U.S. armed forces are not being wounded and killed in huge numbers in the pointless occupation of Iraq. The powerful tradition of Chicano art as an irrepressible force for social justice is almost nowhere to be found in this exhibit.

Historically Chicano Art - or Chicanarte - has served as the basic building blocks of a people’s self-esteem. It has exhorted the Mexican American community to stand, take pride in itself, and to resist the forces of subjugation. The earliest expressions of Chicano art were in support of the United Farm Worker’s Union and their leader César Chávez, as the battle to bring decent working conditions to California’s agricultural workers raged in the mid-60s, but artworks soon addressed other concerns - from cultural identity and immigration, to poverty and the Vietnam war. Chicanarte was - and remains - community based and tied to the culture, folk traditions and histories of people on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. Over the years Chicano art has become nuanced, accepting a multiplicity of styles and interests without becoming diluted, it has embraced performance, installation, and conceptual forms without abandoning its essence. But the works in Xican@ Demiurge are ripped from any traditional moorings, they float freely as a hodge-podge informed by minimalism, low brow, hip-hop and yawning personal introspection.

It is certainly true that we are not living in the 1960’s, but I fear the curator’s statement represents a depoliticalization of Chicano art, which up to this point has persisted as a genre known for social engagement and activism. I’m not arguing here that Chicano art is nothing more than the artistic expression of social concerns, or that Chicano artists must be yoked with continually producing political imagery, far from it. It’s my firm conviction that every artist must be free to explore and create without constraint, but at the same time the legacy of Chicano art cannot be ignored. One could say that Chicanarte is nothing more than art created by Chicanos - but it has always been so much more than that. To remain viable it must remain true to its history, otherwise, why continue to create works under its banner?

The word “demiurge” has as its root, the Greek “demiurgus”, meaning quite literally an “artisan in the service of the people.” The word can also refer to an autonomous and powerful creative force. But the artworks in Xican@ Demiurge seem out of synch with these definitions, and so it’s difficult to imagine them representing an independent force, let alone one that is in the service of the people.

Spirit of the Children is an unusual art exhibit at L.A.’s celebrated Ave 50 Studio. Timed to kick-off the city’s Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead celebrations, the exhibition features artists that have created works in homage to children “who have died an untimely death due to preventable disease, gang warfare, abuse and war.” Kathy Mas-Gallegos, the director of Ave 50 Studio, asked me to create a painting especially for the exhibit, so I produced a small oil I’ve titled, War Child - a piece memorializing the children who have been slain in warfare. I’m pleased to have my painting shown alongside artworks by Edith and Rob Abeyta, Roberto Delgado, Kathi Flood, Clement Hanami, David Andres Kietzman, Betsy Lohrer Hall, Ricardo Munoz, and John Paul Thornton.

Those expecting a quintessentially traditional Día de los Muertos exhibition are in for a few surprises. I say this because the show contains art of an international theme - with some works created by non-Chicano artists. Japanese American artist Clement Hanami is currently the Art Director of L.A.’s Japanese American National Museum, and a Commissioner on L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Commission. His mother is a hibakusha (atom bomb survivor), and his works often explore the topic of atomic war and its aftermath. Hanami will be presenting a special work at Ave 50 that commemorates those young people who died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some might be surprised at the inclusion of John Paul Thornton in a Day of the Dead exhibit, but after examining his Missing Children paintings, his participation seems almost obligatory. Over the years, Thornton has produced hundreds of expressionist oil paintings based upon the photos of missing children found on the flyers and mailers that end up in our mailboxes.

The full title of the Ave 50 exhibit is actually, Miccailhuitontli - Spirit of the Children. In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Miccailhuitontli (Meek-Hail-We-Tontly), or “Little Feast of the Dead” - was the name of the month the Aztecs devoted to the celebration of death and departed ancestors. The month was lorded over by Mictecacihuatl, the Goddess of Death and the Queen of the Underworld. The observances began with remembrances for departed children and ended with commemorations for deceased adults. After the Spanish conquest of 1519-1521, these Aztec traditions and rituals evolved into today’s modern Día de los Muertos celebrations.

The Opening Reception for Miccailhuitontli - Spirit of the Children, takes place on Saturday, October 14, 2006, from 7 to 11 pm. The exhibit will run until November 12th, 2006. Avenue 50 Studio is located in the Highland Park area of L.A., at 131 North Avenue 50, LA., CA 90042. Phone: (323) 258-1435 or visit the gallery website at, www.avenue50studio.com.

At Work: The Art of California Labor, opened with a fabulous Artist’s Reception on June 17th, 2006. Well over 500 art lovers from all over Southern California and beyond made their way to the event at the historic Pico House Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, located on the founding avenue of the city, Olvera Street. At Work is of course an artistic chronicle of labor in California, and a large part of the evening’s festivities were about celebrating that history - not a dead past, but a living history that continues to evolve and grow. To make its point, the exhibit presents a balance of paintings, prints, and drawings alongside a number of photographic works - with contemporary artworks shown alongside creations from times past.

A good portion of the artworks in the At Work exhibit are by Latino artists and focus on Mexican American workers, who have undeniably played a major role in the saga of California labor. Their contributions as told through the eyes of artists are well represented in the exhibition; from the varied silkscreen prints celebrating the United Farm Workers, to the latest installation piece by Ricardo Duffy commemorating L.A.’s million person march in support of immigrant worker’s rights.

At the opening I had an opportunity to talk with one of the show’s exhibiting photographer’s, Gil Ortiz. He told me about the photograph he had taken in 1974 of an agricultural worker bent over in back-breaking labor, digging in California’s fields with a short-handled hoe, a tool that caused arthritis of the spine and ruptured spinal disks for those who used it. The New York Times picked up and published Ortiz’s photo for an article about California’s United Farm Workers union. Of his photo, Ortiz said: “In one picture, I sought to capture the inhumanity of ‘el cortito’, the crippling short-handled hoe that had come to symbolize stoop labor and the cruel exploitation that the farm workers were fighting. My work follows one history in the tradition of documentary photography, that of allowing images to capture the inhumane treatment of human beings, particularly the exploitation of labor for profit.”

The Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, Paul Conrad, saw Ortiz’s photo and based a cartoon upon the arresting image, giving the photographer full credit for inspiring the drawing. Conrad’s cartoon depicted a farm worker as the victim of a violent crime, showing the laborer lying face down amid cultivated rows of crops - a hoe brutally stuck into his bloodied back like a spear. Ortiz’s photo and Conrad’s cartoon brought attention to the misery of agricultural workers, and finally in the mid-70’s the California Supreme Court banned the use of the tool. I’m continually asked if art makes a difference, if it’s a force capable of changing society, and if it has any power at all outside of itself. I can think of no better example of art’s transformative energy than Gil Ortiz’s photograph - and this exhibit is filled with such images.

At Work is not just a consideration of Latino workers and the art created about them, it is after all dedicated to the entire working class in all of its diversity. Some of the strongest artworks in the exhibit were created by those American artists belonging to the social realist school of the 1930’s, when art and social concerns were inextricably linked. There is much to be learned from the social realist artists of the 1930’s, and if just a tiny amount of their idealism, commitment, and vision were to rub off on us we’d all be better off.

Of particular interest to me are the two photographs on display by Dorothea Lange, a personal hero of mine. Her photos are of factory workers leaving their shift, exiting their workplaces en masse, tired looking but also proud, possessing an inner strength that makes them appear implacable. Gazing at the workers in Lange’s photos, looking smart in their work clothes and wearing optimistic faces or grim expressions - I was overwhelmed with empathy, but also struck at how different U.S. workers seem today. Solidarity, my own painting on display in the exhibit, in part addresses that dissimilarity - but globalization, technology, and other changes in the work environment not only continue to place great pressures upon labor, they challenge artists to comprehend and help make clear the evolving situation.

At Work almost serves as a study guide when it comes to introducing artists from the 1930’s like Louise Gilbert, Consuelo Kanaga, Fletcher Martin, Emmy Lou Packard, Henrietta Shore, and others who created profound images focusing on workers, the poor, and the disenfranchised. But this part of the exhibition is ironically its weakest point. The traveling exhibit was originally put together by the California Historical Society and the San Francisco State University Art Gallery, and it includes a few digital replicas of historical works that frankly could have been better reproduced. The curators of the Pico House exhibit, Marianna Gatto and Shervin Shahbazi, made up for this flaw by bringing in a number of local and national artists to enhance the core traveling exhibit - an augmentation that makes the show stand out.

On Saturday, July 15th, I’ll be presenting an artist’s panel discussion and slide show at the Pico House Gallery on the history of artist’s responses to the issues of labor in California. I’ll be joined by photographers Sheila Pinkel and Slobodan Dimitrov, who have long careers photographing workers on the job and in union organizing activities. A question and answer roundtable with the panelists will follow the lecture. For more information on At Work, including a full listing of participating artists, a schedule of public events, and maps to the Pico House, please visit: www.art-for-a-change.com/exhibits/atwork.htm.

The photographic works of longtime Los Angeles artist Diane Gamboa, are available for viewing on the official KCET website as part of their Unpopular Culture series. Gamboa’s photos focus on L.A.’s punk underground of the late 1970’s - specifically, the role young Chicanos played in the scene as band members and fans. It’s hardly ever mentioned or pointed out, but the Mexican American community of California had much to do with the founding of the state’s original punk scene - something Gamboa’s photos so beautifully illustrate. Bands like The Brat, Plugz, Bags, Stains, Nuns, Los Illegals, and the Zeros broke new ground - bringing fresh rhythms and sensibilities to a scene usually thought of as the turf of disaffected white youth. Back in the late 1970’s, after seeing the likes of the Plugz perform a twisted anarchistic cover version of La Bamba by Ritchie Valens, and witnessing the maniacal stage persona of Bags front woman Alice Bag (Alicia Armendariz) - my life was literally changed forever.

Ironically, after we must have crossed paths a million times as denizens of L.A.’s early apocalyptic punk scene, I only just met Gamboa in late 2005 when we both exhibited artworks at Both Sides of the Border - a major exhibit of Chicano and Latin American art held here in L.A. Along with Gamboa’s photos, the KCET Unpopular Culture webpage sports a solid list of links - including a link to my own Art For A Change website for its documentation of the punk portraits I created as a participant in the 1970’s L.A. punk scene. KCET also supplies links to the websites of Alice Bag, The Plugz and many others, downloadable music by The Brat and Thee Undertakers, and related useful resources.