Chicanarte Comes More Alive Than Ever

Three-in-One At Avenue 50: A Pristine Masterwork

Michael Sedano

Chicanarte is coming out of the GOPlague with healthy disregard for agoraphobia and maybe no-so-healthy disregard for masking. Así es. Throwing open its doors to a trio of shows, Highland Park's venerable Avenue 50 Studio once again proclaims its place at the center of Chicano arte, and as showplace for new work.

 

Just a mile closer to downtown LA, at the foot of Mt. Washington and the abandoned tower of the Autry Museum of the American Indian, a glorious masterwork of Chicano muralism spreads along Marmion Way, still unmarked by taggers three years after the mural's restoration.

 

In Avenue 50's main gallery, Fernando Barragan basks in saludos and congratulations visitors heap upon him. "Llamas del fuego" is his debut show in a major gallery. The center gallery's multimedia challenge a viewer to find its ambitious  theme, "Unconditional Love." "Maja: Multidisciplinary Works" makes the understatement of the year.

 

The shows open at 3:00 p.m., an inspired strategy that attracts a lively crowd covering a spectrum of gente and generations. Old acquaintances renew with boisterous joy infecting the three rooms with happiness. We are out and about again.

 

Margaret Garcia, Fernando Barragan, Thelma Reyna

I don't know who sold what. One recent show at Avenue 50 sold every hanging. I found it encouraging noticing a curator enthralling a couple with the story of a Maja bread dough sculpture. Red dots are produced from such conversations.

 

Twenty-plus years ago, I drove past a kid spray painting a mural inside a garage on Griffin Avenue in Highland Park. I stopped and took his picture and introduced myself to Fernando Barragan. We share that story in the main gallery of Avenue 50.

 

I enjoy the diversity of work in "Unconditional Love," and take each at face value. There's an artist statement not written by the curator. The curator, Rebecca Guerrero, was surrounded by a host of well-wishers and I couldn't step in and interrupt. I enjoyed a conversation with photographer and Pasadena en Español blogger (link), Isabel Ramirez. Isabel's work hangs in the Unconditional Love exhibition.

 

Maja walked into a meeting I attended at Galeria Mundo, Margaret Garcia's studio on Figueroa. He introduces himself as an artist and wants to know how to get access to the L.A. art world where he's landed.

Fast-forward to the crowded gallery where Pola Lopez once had her studio. Today the room crowds with glittery people and shining smiles at the incredible diversity of Milton Antonio Jurado's talent.

 

I want to saludar Maja and remind him of that visita but his adoring fans surround him and the artist beams with their attaboys. 

I nod at him from outside the circle and move along. Last time I saw Maja, he was opening Espresso mi Cultura coffee house in Monrovia. This afternoon, Maja's shining, not to be interrupted.

Avenue 50 Studio opens Saturday, Sunday, and through Thursday, closed Friday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Click here for its website.

Pristine Masterwork Is No Accident

 

It's been four calendar years since my most recent visit to the Daniel Cervantes mural just south of Avenue 50. I showed my wife, Barbara, her name on the mural as one of the supporters of Pola Lopez' restoration. 

 

My support won't save a work of public art. I drove past the corner of Soto and Cesar Chavez, where "El Corrido de Boyle Heights" (click) is covered by artless tagging. It takes only one pendejo with a spray can to ruin a masterwork like the Streetscapers' mural.

 

It takes more than one kid not to tag a mural. It takes all of them.

 

And that's what I discover as my car slows to a stop at the bend in the road when the mural comes into sight. My wincing brow rises in delight. The first panel I see is totally untouched. The car pulls to the right and as far as the mural goes around the bend no one has sullied the arte.

 

Not that anyone knows. Except for the cars passing along the foot of Mt. Washington, it's likely no one else in the whole world knows the mural stands there depicting a diversity of indigenous settings and persons.

 

Pola Lopez restoring a panel by Daniel Cervantes in 2020

The owners know. The Autry National Center (link) owns the hilltop landmark Southwest Museum of the American Indian, where the mural adorns a key retaining wall. Search the Autry's website for a foto of the mural. Nothing. Nothing results from asking the little magnifying glass for "Daniel Cervantes", "Pola Lopez," Searching for "Mural" has disappointing results for Los Angeles museum-goers who want to see the Autry's only mural commemorating indigenous gente. Reasonable people expect a modicum of pride from the membership appeals that make no mention of this indigenous treasure as a reason to buy access.

 

The Community, on the other hand, obviously cares enough not to tag the mural. That's in no debt to the Autry nor Avenue 50 who shepherded Pola Lopez' restoration through the funding process. Lopez herself made an agreement with the likeliest taggers, the Avenues gang. No amount of money, save a chain link cage, can protect a mural. Honor does.

 

Footnote to the Pristine Museum Mural

 

La Bloga-Tuesday reported on the restoration, in 2016, of "Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Culture," (link) a spectacular mural at the other end of Highland Park from the Daniel Cervantes / Pola Lopez indigenous peoples mural. Its portavoz, muralist Anthony Ortega, reminds La Bloga that "his" mural needs ongoing protection and preservation, too.

 

If Ortega, or his fiduciary agent Avenue 50, develop an organized plan for funding the ongoing restoration, La Bloga-Tuesday will share the story as it develops.