Whelmed By PST:LA/LA. Hurry Up, Please, There's Time To See A Lot

Magulandia Stops Time in Pacific Standard Time Exhibition
Michael Sedano

I wish I knew what Southern California did to deserve PST:LA/LA (link), so we could do more of it. Some possible answers: Maybe it’s a reward for being a sensible electorate. Maybe it’s global warming. Maybe it’s beyond fathoming.

Ni modo. The Getty Foundation, among the world’s richest-endowed museums, recognized it didn’t want to continue being an outpost of European civilization planted on the American west coast. Located in the heart of a region whose aesthetic character is sharply defined by its Latino and Latin American culturas, except in the fine arts, the Getty decided to open big doors to raza arte.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA represents a multimillion dollar investment into the local art community. With PST:LA/LA Getty offers its Los Angeles regional audience a spiritedly intensive survey of Latin American arte with emphasis on Chicanarte.

Per the Getty’s P.R. for PST:LA/LA:
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA (PST: LA/LA) is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, which takes place from Sept. 2017 through Jan. 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America. 

You can see a list of all the grants awarded to LA/LA by the Getty Foundation at the organization’s website at this link.

Vitrine at Magulandia

With Fall a season of plenty, PST:LA/LA fits right in. From Ventura to Irvine, from the Westside to the East Side, PST:LA/LA’s cup runs over with some of the best events ever to happen for Chicana and Chicano artists, among numerous artists from both Americas. Dozens of Chicana and Chicano artists will find not only deserving audiences but also access to established art marketplaces, where museums and collectors go when they acquire work. Chacun à son goût and budget time, gente.

So many events, so little time. The first week of PST:LA/LA I was able to join two widely dispersed events. The week started down in Orange County. There was no way I would not attend the opening reception at UC Irvine for Aztlán to Magulandia: the Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Luján.  Magu is a good friend and I miss him, qepd.

In a different way, there are lots of reasons to attend the opening reception in Camarillo, California up in Ventura County of El Museo de Historia, Arte Y Cultura Latina Revistado (1995-2000), featuring work by Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, Oscar Castillo, and Leo Limón. And that was it for me and my camera the first week of PST:LA/LA.

These, plus all the events I missed last week and am going to miss next week, have continuous runs, so visitors can plan leisurely visits strolling galleries, taking time as each piece deserves. Many are near enough to one another that visiting several can be an all day art holiday for familia or a group of compañeras and compañeros.

Vitrines and walls at UCI Magulandia

A reception is a time to become the audience the artists painted for. Taking in a work that resonates brings a reaffirmation of one’s sense of cultural space. By triangulating the spirit of the event with the arte and one’s own spirit, the experience renews while it excites the soul. The wine and gluten-filled foods offer a measure of value, too. It is “A” list treats for Getty-granted events.

UC Irvine’s University Art Galleries gave Magu a gala VIP opening reception, Aztlán to Magulandia: the Journey of Chicano Artist Gilbert ‘Magu’ Luján. Curated by Hal Glicksman and Rhea Anastas.

The artist’s spirit attended. Magu totally dug the excitement, the energy, all his friends who showed up, and the attention to detail UCI devotes to his career retrospective.

Cameras are ubiquitous, as are reminiscing people, laughing up a storm while others concentrate on a work.

UCI's marketing materials are deluxe. A postcard, a full-color 8-page gallery guide, a button saying “There will be an orange dog hugging a man,” a top-notch web page, a detailed lList of Works. The curators, Hal Glicksman and Rhea Anastas, published a scholarly book to serve as a catalog to the exhibition, documenting curatorial energies and Magu’s life and career. Magu took his MFA at UCI, and worked with Glicksman.

The Clare Trevor School of the Arts opened two generous spaces for Magulandia. The gallery’s P.R. believes its goal that viewers forge a link between movimiento concepts and history, results from its:

focus on creativity and invention in Luján’s work in a myriad of sketches and drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Luján combined two world-making concepts, Aztlán, the mythic northern ancestral home of the indigenous Mexican Aztecs that became a charged symbol of Chicano activism; and Magulandia, the term Luján coined for the space in which he lived and produced his work, and for his work as a whole.

In this heady academic setting the opening was good times and old home week. Magu’s friends told stories about the artist, recalling him working on one or another sculpture on exhibit, laughing about times they pushed aside a particular monumental sculpture so they could gather in his cramped living room, commenting on their own original Magu at home. One couple at the opening own Magu's final paint-spotted easel, but it isn't in the exhibit.

Engaged people, Sergio Hernandez, Mario Guerrero, Barbara Carrasco

Photographer Gil Ortiz reminisced about staging a portrait of Magu seated with companions at a Mental Menudo in Mario Trillo’s garage. Ortiz is tickled that people call it “the last supper” without irony. It is a fabulous portrait with an inescapable echo of Da Vinci’s pose and the rich tonality of a Gilbert Ortiz photograph. It's not a Magu, so it's not in the UCI gallery.

Sculpture display U-line

The sculpture hall layout reflected ingenuity. To display a dozen individual small scupltures  could eat lots of floor space and create navigation hazards. The curators created a U-shaped table that encourages visitors to stroll along the outside for one perspective, then back through the inside for a second.

There’s a frustrating yet encouraging detail in the explanatory note on the show listing of the 90 works:

All works courtesy the Estate of Gilbert “Magu” Lujan. When no collection appears on the final line of a work entry, the work is loaned by the Lujan Estate. Works in this exhibition are also loaned courtesy Robert Berman Gallery, Rob Biniaz, Therese Hernandez-Cano, Barbara and Zach Horowitz, Mardi Luján, Cheech Marin, Dennis Lisinsky Montoya, Pablo and Mary De La Rosa, Roger and Susan Rousset, and The Los Angeles Metro.

Frustration arises that many of the works on display remained unsold in Magu’s studio, and how he could have used the money. Encouragement arises from Estate ownership of so many beautiful examples of the spirit of Magulandia. This means some of the works at UCI are available to hang on your walls or place on a horizontal surface where you can touch it. Inquire via magulandia.com.

Exhibition postcard and souvenir button

Channel Islands Puts On Gala In Opening Reception for El Museo de Historia, Arte Y Cultura Latina Revistado (1995-2000), The Latino Museum of History, Art, and Culture.

Normally I avoid appositional translation as above, but consecutive translation was the order of the day at California State University Channel Islands, where the U’s picturesque setting against ten- million-year old volcanic mounds makes a dramatic setting for a ceremony.



Permanence occupies the plans of a majority of students here. They are farmworker kids, a montón sin papeles. I learned the students don’t want to be called “dreamers” They are sick and tired of dreaming. They want their rights now.

CSUCI has a stunning campus. A retrofitted state hospital for mentally disabled and psychologically impaired people, spacious patios and a gorgeous central promenade cut through white stucco red-tiled buildings that now serve as classrooms, laboratories, studios, and galleries.

The opening of the Latino Museum show filled the entry terrace of Broome Library. The PST:LA/LA event is underwritten by local berry grower, Reiter Affiliated Companies (link), whose president was speaking as I arrived. Not CPT. CSUCI is a long way from Camarillo city where I rented a room, and once at the campus, finding parking can be bedlam. But find it we did, within sight of Broome Library.

My wife and I missed the opening speeches by Denise Lugo and campus leaders. I am especially dismayed to miss student performances by a string quartet and folkorico.

Lugo introduced artists Oscar Castillo and Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin and Leo Limón, who didn’t attend. The trio were featured in exhibits at the defunct downtown LA Latino museo. Aparicio-Chamberlin read a poem that I can share here, along with a portrait of her father, Elias Aparicio, done in Polaroid transfer, hand stamps and xerography.

Vibiana's multi-talented arte on display included paintings, altar constructions, and her book,

This Latino Museum exhibit draws from Broome Library’s holdings of historic materials. I was especially interested to talk to Associate Curator Julianne Gavino. Professor Gavino is the mind behind the media. She works with students and digital materials; together they make rare documents universally available.

Associate Curator Julianne Gavino

CSUCI holds extensive materials from the historic movimiento magazine, Con Safos, along with numerous special collections (link). Perhaps one day, digital media will make “rare” a little-used word among book users. In the meantime, a visit to Camarillo for hands-on research will reward the scholar with genuinely rare materials, like a nearly-complete collection of C/S magazine.

Professor Gavino has been nurturing the C/S collection in the best academic fashion. She plans for long-term development across several generations of students. Her goals for students include innovation. For example, she works with three students in the process of developing a present-day Con Safos magazine. This generation, or perhaps a future team of students, will bring back C/S.

I referred to the students as "kids" and Professor Gavino noted that CSUCI welcomes the "nontraditional" student. Some of her "kids" are 30+ years old. In my eyes, that's quite young. In the student eyes, they're taking advantage of opportunity and taking as long as it takes. Slow but steady wins that degree.

Elias Aparicio by Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin. Polaroid transfer, hand stamps and xerography. 

Con Ciega Pasión
Poetry by Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin

Dicen que los muertos se refugian en calma.
Que no hay sufrimiento en la otra mansión.
Que si el cuerpo muera,
Jamás muera la alma.
Y ella es la que te ama,
Con ciega pasión.
Prayer by Abuela Emilia Rodríguez Aparicio

They say that the dead find refuge in calm.
That there is no suffering in the other mansion.
That if the body dies,
never will the soul.
And it is with my soul that I love you
with blind passion.

And so I dream.
I dream that I will be with you while I breathe,
while I am losing my breath,
while I have but a bit of breath
in a breathless place which is the today,
the yesterday, the tomorrow and the
always of our souls’ together place
beyond
the yearning touch,
the desperate touch,
the barely touch,
the tender touch.

I dream that I will be with you in the bodiless,
painless, yearnless,
spaceless place.
In the place of dreams, where all dreams
are so full of the eternal love of the souls
who love with blind passion.

Con ciega pasión.
I will be one of the souls who love in
a fleshless place.
Who love eternally in
the breathless place.

This Profesora organizes student danzantes as elements of their study in Chicano Studies. She explains her work and objectives in English and Spanish. The IT staff were so anxious to wrap they pulled the plug and la profa had to shout her barely audible inspirational message to the front row's honored guests of farmworkers.

After the dance teacher's remarks, the danzantes wrap the program in a procession across campus to the Napa Gallery, where Aparacio-Chamberlin, Castillo, and Limón show their work.

Napa Gallery thunders with danzante drumming and Chachayotes rattles as danzantes inaugurate the PST:LA/LA sponsored exhibit of sculpture, painting, drawing, and photography. Oscar Castillo, center, and Vibiana Aparacio-Chamberlin, fourth from right, enjoy the spectacle. 

Leo Limón's walls display the spirit of his work. Good that each invites a conversation with it, the artist is unable to attend.

Oscar Castillo exhibits family photographs and a selection of fine art fotos, including a copy of his Smithsonian-collected '47 Chevy in Wilmington, California

Enjoying art as the artist narrates its creation and spirit is why people attend art openings. Lavish treatment of guests is not the only other reason to attend.

Below, Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin, left center, Jose Antonio Aguirre, right. Aguirre is nearing completion of a mosaic mural at the Azusa Gold Line surface rail station.

Outside the Napa studio gallery, the patio was alive with student performers and a happy audience snacking on sugar beverages and snacks.

Technical glitches cut off their music, but unfazed, CSUCI's folklorico dancers knew the steps and whirled and clacked their heels in synchrony with unheard music. The silence enhanced the beauty of their performance.

No visit to Camarillo is complete without at least a cursory visit to the huge outlet mall conveniently just off the 101 Freeway at the edge of town. My wife dashed in and out at my insistence and scored a couple of bargains and a bunch of no thanks. Stuff in the outlet is here because no one bought it in the retail world, either.

Our spirits continued soaring as we wrapped up a week’s worth of art--Tuesday in Irvine, Thursday in Camarillo--- and drove east toward home. Even the horrendous congestion in the Valley couldn’t dampen spirits nourished by friends, art, the youth and future of the gente at CSUCI, and the ongoing wonders of PST:LA/LA.

Magulandia lands in Santa Paula • 10,000 Strong Veterans

Michael Sedano

Magu. When Magu died his many friends grieved his absence because he was so vital and so young and so alive. You can't miss him, though, because sabes que? Magu lives. There's Magu photo-bombing Eloy Torrez, resisting the urge to make rabbit ears. Always liked a good laugh, Magu did.

The legendary artist, Gilbert Magu Lujan, is all over the walls in Santa Paula's Art Museum where In Search of Magulandia, this year's 21st De Colores Art Show, opened last Saturday, October 18 and will run through February 22, 2015.

The Santa Paula Art Museum occupies a solidly built 1920's two-story building in the heart of a scenic valley where agriculture and oil helped form a town that is finding community through culture. The Limoneira Building was Union Oil Co's founding Hq.

Museum Executive Director Jennifer Heighton worked with Curators Xavier Montes and Vanessa Acosta to mount the dual shows. A companion exhibit opened at the city's Agricultural Museum, a restored railroad warehouse where Los Fabulocos performed and the Magu-painted Family Car was surrounded by superb exemplars of Magu's sculpture and paintings.

At the Art Museum, the 1950 Chevy coupe with the FAMCAR license, together with Mario Trillo’s delivery van, greeted visitors at the side entry, where shade added to the welcome on the open sky Spring-like afternoon. Danzantes opened the doors at two in the afternoon and the place soon rocked with gente taking in the tributes to el maestro.

Jennifer Heighton beamed as she passed among the throngs moving about the gallery, posing for fotos with artists and one another. Angel Guerrero and Sergio Hernandez showed portraiture while Paty Diaz (with daughter Leylany Rodriguez) and Manuel Unzueta created symbolic references to Magu's love for cars.

There are some precious gems among the work on display. All endeavor tributes to Magu’s iconography. Artists paint trokitas, pyramidal dogs, indigenous motifs, color, smiles. They attempt to capture Magu's attitude; he painted with disarming innocence that takes a big bite out of comfortable ideas and perspectives.

The show brings together dozens of Magu's friends and running mates, also in the show artists who knew Magu, artists who studied Chicano Art and knew of Magu. The work includes variety from pastiche to portrait to allusion to school-of tributes. The artists speak in acts of friendship and love for Magu, his art, and what Magu championed. It is an altogether invigorating and encouraging exhibition.

There's always something. I missed a knee-high wood sculpture set on the floor beside a support beam--a couple of times--and in the crowd couldn’t bend to study it when I noticed it.

Spirit-infused artists showed up to make the opening a distinguished gathering. This particular group knows how to have fun. Oscar Castillo and Mario Trillo captured images. Pola Lopez and Victoria Plata relaxed with the Family Car. David Botello shared fine points of the giclée Manuel Urrutia bought in the gift store. Urrutia did what visitors need to do more of when visiting museums, buy stuff. Mario Trillo photo bombs David and Manuel.

A museum visitor's friend captures a moment with J. Michael Walker, whose piece is obscured by the phone. Walker's stunning work merits such widespread acclaim that one day this visitor's relatives will want copies of the foto he's snapping. Be sure to click on the links to individual artist webpages, like this one for Michael's.

Pola Lopez tells a rich story of her first meeting Magu. They knew of one another by reputation and their work. Pola had constructed a work featuring the Family Car in a landscape populated by feminist symbology. Entitled Not a Hood Ornament. Magu was apprehensive she was calling him on the carpet.

Lopez'work is an appreciation. Magu learns this and Pola and he become lifelong friends. Pola's narrative of creating this tribute to her first Magu encounter will have visitors triply engaged with Pola's wonderful kiss, Magu's smile, and the artist's expressiveness. Peace Offering lettered down the left edge shares their history while also remembering her friend, qepd. 

Pola Lopez and her work

Museum Executive Director Jennifer Heighton beams delightedly when spotted circulating through the lively crowd who pack the gallery. The turn-out for the show is historic. Gente galore wander in and about the red-brick walls, enjoying the ambience, the food and beverage, the plein aire style found in side galleries where gulp-prices on large paintings give one pause. It's discover day for many, their first visit to town.

The large crowd mills about the big room until they begin claiming chairs for the presentations. Magu's son, Otoño, will be playing later with el Conjunto Los Pochos. All the Magu kids, and their mom, have come to celebrate Magulandia with his friends. 

Vanessa Acosta sparkles with excitement and indefatigable energy reserves. She and museum staff and Xavier Montes have worked months inviting, receiving, hanging, making arrangements. Here now, then gone in sixty microseconds, Acosta may have discovered teleportation. The museum publishes a beautiful full-color glossy commemorative pamphlet. Santa Paula Museum of Art does things first class for Magu and his friends.

Vanessa Acosta

Big X, as Montes is called, gives free music lessons to local kids--Jarocho to Beatles but mostly musica--through Strings of De Colores, a museum-sponsored non-profit. Details at the link on donations and mailing address for non-card donors.

Montes conducts the music with fervor and the musicians perform with puro ganas. Calling out the chord, he sings as well as coaches them through an able and extended performance. These kids are wonderful music makers. Performances like these will eventually coax out the dollars to help the museum wire the place for sound.

As X collapses in joy and exhaustion with the concluding notes, one of the Angels on Harps leaps from her instrument and claims victory of kids over loving music teacher. He challenged them to make all that practice pay off and it was Carnegie Hall day in their home town art museum. They all triumphed today.

Musicianship and heart

Museum Executive Director Jennifer Heighton, David Botello with Botello's Magulandia painting. Exquisite in detail and symbol, Botello's portrayal would be extra fabulous adorning one of those big walls downtown, or at the Smithsonian. Docents would spend hours pointing out the history and significance Botello places onto the canvas. It, along with Family Car, one day will be in the Smithsonian. Heighton can claim art world bragging rights on having launched the wall.

The Agricultural Museum waited after a pleasant stroll passing an old Moreton Bay fig, crossing the railroad tracks and a route step march along the tidy tracks to the pea gravel then the door.

Magu's own work hangs in a corner of the huge space. Collectors owning quintessential Magus shared freely with curators Montes and Acosta. Free-standing sculpture on display encourages 360 degree appreciation of Magu's clay and corrugated work. Seeing these seminal works together is seeing the beginnings of Chicana Chicano art.

Here In Search of Magulandia allows gente to get up close to Family Car unimpeded by barrier tape and stanchions. People were respectful of the finish and kept proper distance. It is a show of generosity and respect for this audience.

Paul Dunlap enjoys sharing the 1950 Chevy Coupe Magu painted. They were friends. Dunlap, back to camera, treats the car like the gem it is. He trucks Family Car to wherever he shows it. He drives it low and slow from the Art Museum to its place of honor in the museum. Sadly, La Bloga did not photograph the car wheeling on the street.

Santa Paula Art Museum hosts the main show through February. Travelers heading to El Lay from Fresno and parts north can detour from the 5 via Highway 126. Travelers to and from Santa Barbara will delight in the detour up the 126 from Ventura to Santa Paula, then the canyon road to Ojai, back to Ventura.

Leaving the Agricultural Museum and Magulandia, sharp-eyed witnesses watched a velocipede cruise past the Moreton Bay Fig tree, followed at a proper distance by a lass who didn't dare display any ankle  as she pedaled along the dusky road.

Getting to Santa Paula is its own adventure. Go. See the show. Add value to the journey by joining the museum. You can renew that membership every year; this trip through Magulandia happens only this once. Through February 2015.
c/s

Los Angeles

Veterans Job Hopes Gain 10,000 Possibilities

Magu was proud to be Veteran of the United States Air Force. Veterans everywhere welcome any effort with genuine possibilities for meaningful full time work.

Time runs short to apply for the October 28 deadline to get in on this Los Angeles program. Click this link for details.

Goodby artist magu. 45 artists on the walls. On-Line Floricanto.

East Los Says Goodbye to a Great Friend. Magu, ave atque te wacho.

Michael Sedano

Gente my age joke about getting old but sabes que, when a friend dies the death signals the start of an inevitable slide to a Dorothy moment, the last to go will see the first ones go before her. Him. That fate underlay the morose undertone of the festivities memorializing Gilbert Lujan, the artist Magu. It’s an awareness Ruben Guevara, Funkahuatl, alludes to in his “Some haiku for magú” that appeared in La Bloga,

So, what’s new Magú?
Getting ready to join you
Just a few more years

Laugh in the face of death, dying, and grief. The morning dawned with a chill that led to a brilliant and temperate afternoon, especially for the gente in the shade. Out on the island, Emcee Richard Montoya suffered the radiation with loud equanimity. There was plenty of sadness and laughter as speakers and performers held the stage in music, dance, ritual, thanks for the life of our friend who is dead.

Ese, magu, here’s some of what it took to send you off right. Your familia did it up just right. The beautiful arbol de vida grew out of your first altar. Naiche and your carnal Mark drove the Family Car right up to the front door like they owned the place and carried your ashes down to the stage. Right behind your carrito comes Mario Trillo in his delivery van looking bad. Then Mario Guerrero in his white trokita. Then a whole bunch of vatos and their rides. A fine line up and shiny send-off.



Speeches, and Ave Maria, all the verses, in Latin (you woulda dug it, brother), danzantes working to a hard pounding drum. Speeches from your friends. Richard emceed--introduced Mountain to the gente—and kept the ball rolling for all the tributes, paeans, and a bit of chisme but with love. Don’t hang your head, magu, you deserve every word.

You did not deserve the deliberate triple pass by that LA Sheriff helicopter with the muffler turned off. Hey, do you think it was a tribute? The way the craft approached wide of the bowl, circled around like the widening gyre except tightening until the spiral took it directly over your primo’s head was no accident. Rrrrraaaaaaaa the beast flew low and slow above your altar so no one could hear your primo’s chistes. Ni modo. The ducks swam and fussed unperturbed. That was cool.

Mardy was the perfect familia matriarch. The kids made this happen. Obviously your legacy is taking care of itself. The kids are shouldering the responsibility of dealing with your estate. They’ll do fine, magu, they are good people.

It was good hearing you speak at your own memorial, definitely via Memorex. I thought you were going to get the last word in, but then Wayne Healy kicked my ass with his “final letter to magu.” If you can, get your hands on Brooklyn & Boyle. Able put the whole issue in your name, Wayne’s letter and Funkahuatl’s haiku are in there, an interview with Mario plus other good stuff. And check out LA Eastside, great detail fotos of the shrine your familia all put together. Ya stuvo, brother.

Te wacho, magu. Qepd.

Visit Read! Raza for a high resolution foto show with commentary on each frame. Click on a photo for an enlarged view in a new window.

Visit magulandia.com for updates on the estate and magu's archive.

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Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery Hosts Major Chicano Mexican American Painting Exhibition

Add a new venue to the eastside’s host of significant art exhibition spaces. Continuing through January 1, Glendale California’s Forest Lawn Cemetery hosts forty-five artists in a sweeping survey of painting and drawing by raza since 1960, Adelante! Mexican American Artists: 1960’s and Beyond.

The museum literally tops the cemetery’s collection of noted sculptural reproductions. The drive up to the museum from San Fernando road meanders past a magnificent David sparking in monumental whiteness. It’s kitsch, but it’s glorious.

At the top of the hill, an ornate church and the museum. Parts of the plaza look west, across the valley as far as the smog allows. Visitora stand on the edge of the quiescent San Rafael fault, the upthrust cliff supporting the rear patio defining the eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley. The breathtaking view rivals what’s hanging inside.

News of the show springs out of nowhere. Forest Lawn’s regular art-based pitch beckons with its reproduction of The Last Supper for casual tourism, and grief counseling for others. Bringing art brings in people, bringing in big time art brings in crowds. Bringing in “Mexican American” art brings in the area's growing demographic.

The event is a rousing success. Funkahuatl was on a groove with The Eastside Luvers, pounding out the oldies. Little Willie G did a special unannounced guest appearance that had the gente around me sighing in sweet memories. Talk about oldies. It is a good crowd that achieves the cemetery’s objective of showcasing itself.

Forest Lawn Glendale Museum joins a trend among local cemeteries to stage chicana chicano events. For instance, this DDLM brings the twelfth annual Hollywood Forever Cemetery fair and the second at Pico Rivera’s Rose Hills. Here, beautiful as its setting, the Glendale site has a small footprint atop the hill. Putting together a major DDLM fest in the space presents logistic nightmares. Pero a ver.

The show, of course, speaks for itself. Still, Forest Lawn p.r. people did not respond to a last-minute query. The event’s website offers useful information, other than crediting the curator’s role. The site proclaims:

“¡Adelante! Mexican American Artists: 1960s and Beyond” is a collection of works by an array of both established and emerging Mexican American artists, and includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography.

Many of the pieces are on loan from the Cheech Marin collection, the website reveals. Marin deserves recognition for sharing his work so generously. Sadly, the event at Forest Lawn Museum is so successful that moving about the exhibit during the opening reception is a wonderful exercise of etiquette, interpersonal communication, and just plain bumping into strangers. I accidently rub Judithe Hernandez’ butt and can offer only a passing nonverbal apology.

Visitors passing through the rear door take in some excellent bronze sculpture in the anteroom to Adelante! The first thing a visitor notices how close everything is. The unnamed curator’s decision to hang such a rich array of visual delights in such tight proximity to rival work is boon and bane. It’s a good way to get one’s head spinning but still one’s head gets to spinning turning from one delight to the next to the next to the… Clearly the choice between show a lot of artists and art or show a lot of wall was made for the former.

This is a fabulous exhibition. Gente in the greater L.A. should get in their cars and make the trek up that long drive to the top of the hill where Glendale becomes L.A. Check out the geography. This show, because the walls are so crowded, is a wonderful feast for the eyes that requires unhurried and multiple visits. The show is free.

When you leave the cemetery, turn left onto San Fernando Road and take it south a couple miles. Turn left on Roseview Avenue. Drive up to the corner and have a big bowl of cocido at King Taco on Roseview and Cypress Ave. Tell them La Bloga sent you.


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On-Line Floricanto 2d Tuesday month 9

Featuring: Leticia Diaz Perez, Elena Diaz Bjorkquist, Victor Avila, Avotcja, Sylvia Maltzman

Today’s La Bloga On-Line Floricanto reflects the larger scope of poetry’s response to SB 1070: five voices speaking for human rights, the pursuit of happiness, respecto al derecho ajeno. In other words, quintessentially American values, in the sense of both the United States of America and America the continent.

Today, the moderators of the Facebook group Poets Responding to SB 1070 found compelling five poems: A first grader sees things stacked against her. A budding teenager brutalized for doing the right thing. A voter’s abandonment of hope. A second take on invisibility, allusions to a dream denied. Today’s floricanto closes with a painful reminder of our “Americanness”.

"1st Grade Lunch" by Leticia Diaz Perez
"Algebra I" by Elena Diaz Bjorkquist
"The Invisible Man" Victor Avila
"In the Shadow of Carijama" by Avotcja
"Zero" by Sylvia Maltzman



1st Grade Lunch
by Leticia Diaz-Perez


Skinny little white girls
in my 1st grade class
open up the brown bags
and take their lunches out

it's
Wonder Bread
Wonder Bread
peanut butter sandwiches
grape and cherry jam

they don't seem very happy
with the contents of their lunch bags
and look around the table
to see who they can pick on
that's when they spot my entree
that I'm happily devouring
and one skinny little white girl
starts putting on a face
" What is that stuff you're eating,
is that Spanish food again? "

Debbie, Jenny, Cindy, Sue
decide my lunch is over
they poke into my rice
with their peanut butter fingers
yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk
bugger fingers in my rice
" Will you leave my rice alone
Debbie, Jenny, Cindy, Sue?
I'm going to tell Miss Peters..."
and they laugh and laugh and laugh

so I stomp into the classroom
to straighten out the matter
Miss Peters is correcting
this morning's spelling tests
I stand right right beside her
and show her my white rice
" What are you trying to tell me? "
she asks so quite annoyed
as she opens up her lunch bag
to take her sandwich out

"Debbie, Jenny, Cindy,Sue
they poked into my rice
and now I'm very angry
because I have no lunch."
Miss Peters rolls her eyes
and bites into her sandwich
her mouth makes funny noises
she takes a sip of coffee
and clears her throat before
she tells me oh so calmly
"Remind me, will you dear,
to write your mom a note
to fix you simple sandwiches
instead of Spanish food?
It does create a problem
between you and the others
and smells so quite unpleasant
that it becomes a bother.
Now go back to your table
and finish up your lunch
cause' lunchtime's nearly over
but remind me, will you dear,
to write your mom a note?"

Skinny little white girls
in my 1st grade class
Wonder Bread
Wonder Bread
peanut butter sandwiches
grape and cherry jam.

© Leticia Diaz-Perez
September,2011


Algebra I
by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist


He was a big, blonde, dumb
Star football player,
A lone senior repeating Alegbra I
With a class of freshmen.

I sat in front of him,
A shy, Spanish-speaking Chicana.
He got F’s.
I got A’s.

He tried to cheat
Off my midterm exam.
I hid it from him.
Retaliation swiftly followed.

A powerful blow fell
Full force upon my neck.
My world darkened in pain
That didn’t go away.

I saw Mr. Pfeifer staring
At me through coke bottle
Glasses, but then looking away.
Did he see?


The football player hissed,
“You tell, you get more.”
My stomach churned,
I swallowed bile.

The next day, I asked Pfeifer
To move me closer to the board.
I never told a soul
but never forgot.

I heard the football player died.
Did he ever remember
What he did,
Ever regretted it?


Elena Díaz Bjorkquist ©2011


The Invisible Man
by Victor Avila


They searched the White House
for the President.
They looked long and hard
but just couldn't find him.
Environmentalists asked,
"But who will protect
the trees, air, and land?" -
Apparently not
the Invisible Man.

Through the tunnels of the Capitol
a more expanded search began.
But the Tea Party beasties were roaming
and afraid to confront them, the President ran.
The working poor asked, "Who will stand with us
against corporate vampires and their greedy demands?"
Certainly not
the Invisible Man.

So where is the person we voted for?
The promise of change never came.
Now the rich buy bigger mansions
and look for ways to destroy the minimum wage.
We are desperate and hungry
and take any menial job we can.
No thanks are given to
the Invisible Man.

Conspicuous by his absence in Wisconsin,
on his watch the Dream Act was shelved.
He let them whittle Health Care Reform to nothing.
But that's just another day in Washington
and the prowess of
the Invisible Man.


So when some bright-eyed kid says,
"I want to be President."
Answer them, "Oh, yes you can!"
But first you have to learn how to hide in a closet...
All hail to the Chief-
The Invisible Man.



IN THE SHADOW OF CARIJAMA

for Connie Williams, Jackie Artman, The African Queens,
Malonga Cascalourde, Jacque Barnes, D’Midas,
Carlos Aceituno/Regina Calloway & Fogo Na Ropa,
Sistas-Wit-Style, Mas Makers Massive, Val Serrant,
The Bay Area Blues Society, United Sisters, All-Ah-We,
Diamano Coura, DJ Miller The Killer, & Avotcja

by Avotcja


I was there
Standing in the shadows
Of a revelry denied
I was invisible
Pushed to the side
Hidden
Like yesterday’s Bacchanal
And the slavery we danced in spite of
I was invisible
Unseen like the pain we sang in the face of
Nobody saw me
Crying
Lost in the shambles
Just another invisible nonentity
An embodied phantom
Standing alone
In between the naked homelessness
Of the Ghosts of Carijama
And another trampled on dream
In a now fenced in Park
In a passionless neighborhood
I left unnoticed
Swam all the way home
Wrapped in an ocean of sadness
Swimming in tears
A bitter tasting travesty
A sea of furious, foul tasting tears
Seasoned
By hundreds of years of unstoppable pride
Just waiting for the right time to be reborn
But you better know
Though I may have been invisible
I was never alone
And I was always there

Copyright © Avotcja


Zero

in honor of the anniversary of 9/11

by Sylvia Maltzman


Someone shot a hole through me
where words should be.
I stutter and halt,
English verbs struggling to sputter into life,
a stalled airplane crashing into my chest,
thoughts crumbling into ashes.
The paper I should scrawl upon
floats to a rubbled street,
burning as it lands,
pierced by a thousand shards of blasted glass.
The pen bleeds in my hand,
the hand that ought to write the heart,
but the heart
disintegrates within me like grated drywall.
The steel resolution of my spine
turns molten;
I am a vacant skull,
eyes floating in a liquid metal puddle.


Someone shot a hole in us
where words should be,
where monuments of light or stone or steel
should rise.
Fall’s harvest yields no fruit palatable to the eyes or soul,
September’s blue pinstripe suit unsuitable for mourning.
How bury the dead when they cannot be found?
Memorialize the souls when they are but vapor?
Epitaphs—can they be written on monuments to the missing
when talking heads deliberate minutiae?
Two millennia and a day from now, will there be sufficient dust
To send these ragged souls to their Elysium?
Perhaps then the words of ghosts could write themselves
on monoliths of peace.

10/07/09


BIOS
"1st Grade Lunch" by Leticia Diaz Perez
"Algebra I" by Elena Diaz Bjorkquist
"The Invisible Man" Victor Avila
"In the Shadow of Carijama" by Avotcja
"Zero" by Sylvia Maltzman

Leticia Diaz-Perez was born in Virginia and raised in Michigan.She attended the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a BA/English and American Literature and an MA/Spanish and Latin American Literature. While at the University of Michigan she co-hosted "Radio Caliente" at WCBN FM , one of the first Latino radio shows in the Ann Arbor area. It was at WCBN that she interviewed Latino writers Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera, Trinidad Sanchez,Sandra Cisneros and Piri Thomas-inspiring her to start writing and telling her story.Leticia has taught Spanish at the University of Michigan and in the Michigan public school system. She also taught in the New York City public school system, (4th grade bilingual teacher) where she had the opportunity to work with a group of beautiful children who had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic.Leticia is currently working on her first book of poems, "Sugar from the Sky".

Elena Díaz Björkquist, a writer, historian, and artist from Tucson, writes about Morenci, Arizona where she was born. She is the author of two books, Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon. Elena has been on the Arizona Humanities Council (AHC) Speakers Bureau for ten years performing as Teresa Urrea in a Chautauqua living history presentation, and doing presentations about Morenci, Arizona and also the 1880’s Schoolhouse in Tubac.

Elena is co-editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos, an anthology written by her writers group. The project was funded by AHC. She is nearing completion of another collection of Morenci stories entitled Albóndiga Soup and is co-editing a new anthology entitled Our Spirit, Our Reality; our life experiences in stories and poems by the Comadres of Sowing the Seeds.

A SIROW Scholar at the University of Arizona, Elena conducted an oral history project funded by AHC; “In the Shadow of the Smokestack.” A website she created contains the oral history interviews and photographs of Chicano elders living in Morenci during the Depression and World War II. Another project funded by AHC and the Stocker Foundation is “Tubac 1880’s Schoolhouse Living History Program.” Her website is www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/.

Elena is one of the poet moderators for the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB1070.

Victor Avila is a California educator. He has been teaching in public schools for over 22 years. Victor is a widely published poet and a winner of the Chicano Literary Prize. He also writes and illustrates ghost stories for GHOULA Comix. Three of those stories will be published in GHOULA Comix # 2 in October.

photo by Howard Dy

AVOTCJA (prounounced Avacha)-Musica, Poeta y Loca is a card carrying Music fanatic/sound junkie & popular Bay Area Radio DeeJay. She’s a lifelong Musician/Writer/Educator & is on a shamelessly Spirit driven melodic mission to heal herself. Wanna go???

Peruvian Poet Camincha says:
“AVACHA's poetry is music and Avacha's music is poetry. Both are as hot as fire and as soothing as snow flakes. And in both she brings the best of her talent in Spanish and English. Listen to her. Read her . Enjoy her. Celebrate her.”

Sylvia Maltzman is a poet who has spent most of her life in Miami, Florida among the various flora, fauna & amazingly varied human beings who have sought out this place for sanctuary. She is co-hosting one of the Miami events for 100 Thousand Poets for Change in September. Her poem "Zero" will be one of the poems she will read for this event.