La Bloga

Friday, January 03, 2020

Papel Chicano Dos

Northern Colorado, which means north of Denver, is still big sky country. Farms and rolling hills take up whatever space is left along the rapidly developing I-25 corridor, but in a few years (months?) this stretch of Colorado north to the Wyoming border will be solid with urban sprawl, outlet malls, truck stops and cookie-cutter housing. Colorado's unchecked growth and over-population will infect this part of the state. A high-speed train will one day run from Fort Collins to Pueblo, but "planners" already foresee more lanes added to the freeway, as well as more exits and fast food rest stops. But for now, come springtime, the earth will be covered with bright green foliage that contrasts and complements the purple Rocky Mountains to the west and the orange-tinted morning sky to the east.

I went to college in Fort Collins and my memories of the time and place are framed with the gold and green hues of youth and adventure. There was a sense of independence and solidness in the air in Fort Collins when I was a student, and that feeling must still linger in the towns struggling to maintain their identities: Loveland, Longmont, Fort Collins, Greeley.

Today, when we travel north, it's usually to participate in a cultural event. We've transported part of Flo's father's nacimiento collection to a museum in Fort Collins for a Christmas exhibit. We've checked out cornfield mazes with our grandsons along narrow roads in Larimer County. We attended an event in Longmont honoring the early Latino pioneers of Boulder County. I've returned to Colorado State University to talk about my writing and to record an interview for the CSU library archives. We've browsed día de los muertos exhibitions, sampled cherry pie at a pie festival, and spent the night in a quaint bed and breakfast on our way to Wyoming.

In the interest of art and artists, we've attended exhibits featuring Goya, Picasso, and other masters – away from crowded Denver and inflated admission fees. This week we drove to the Loveland Museum to enjoy the exhibit entitled Papel Chicano Dos: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin.

I’ll quote from the brochure prepared by the Museum staff for this show.

Primarily known as an actor, director, and performer, Cheech Marin has developed the finest private collection of Chicano art in the United States. Diverse, colorful, and iconic, the artworks in Papel Chicano Dos range from the realism of Texas artists Gaspar Enriquez and Vincent Valdez to the expressionism of Californians Sonya Fe and Frank Romero. Prominent Chicano artists Diane Gamboa, Leo Limón, and Glugio “Gronk” Nicondra, and artists selected by Marin for the exhibition such as Carlos Almaraz and Carlos Donjuan, bring a multifaceted view of the Chicano experience as well as present social issues relevant to all communities. Utilizing unique and traditional practices of portraiture, and varied viewpoints incorporating urban culture and images from a range of historical sources, these artists move Chicano art from marginalized to mainstream.

This exhibition includes 65 artworks by 24 established and emerging artists. Their work demonstrates a myriad of techniques from watercolor and aquatint to pastel and mixed media, and dates from the late 1980s to present day.

In the near future, Marin's collection will be donated to the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture and Industry. "The Cheech," as Marin prefers to call it, will open in 2021 (in Riverside, CA.)

The full range of Chicano art cannot be represented in one show, but Papel Chicano Dos manages to present an exciting and colorful spectrum of art that came of age in the streets, fields, and campuses of political activism, and that has continued to grow and develop even as Chicanos and Chicanas stubbornly hold on to vanishing history and lost identities. This art is vital for the head and heart.

Below are a few photos from the show. Enjoy the pics, but in your own self-interest, go north, as soon as you can. The exhibit is scheduled to close January 12, 2020.

Admission: $7.00 (12 and under free)

The Loveland Museum

503 N. Lincoln Avenue

Loveland, CO 80537

970-962-2410

If that's not enough, the Museum also is showing a collection of work by Denver artist Josiah Lee Lopez. Outstanding. Lopez's exhibit is open until January 26, 2020.

And for those of you with an even hungrier eye, there's a Justin Favela (and his grandmother) nacimiento installation at the Firehouse Art Gallery in Longmont.

____________________________

John Valadez

Works by César Martínez -- artist whose Bato con Sunglasses graced the cover of my novel King of the Chicanos

Gaspar Enríquez - Tirando Rollo (I Love You)

Soy Chicana - CiCi Segura González

Wenceslao Quiroz - East L.A. Metal Pickup Cruise

Vato Getting Hit By Car - Adán Hernández (whose art was used for the cover of my novel Desperado: A Mile High Noir

Diane Gamboa

Gilbert "Magu" Luján

Vincent Valdez

Gronk

The next three are from the series Retold Story of La Llorona by Sonya Fe

The following are from Josiah Lee Lopez

And, finally, Nacimiento by Justin and Isabel Favela

Later.

______________________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction. His latest is The Golden Havana Night (Arte Público Press.)

Thursday, January 02, 2020

Chicanonautica: Cuca, the Monsters of Aztlán, and Me

by Ernest Hogan

Though it looks like 2020 is going to be an another pendejada of a year, but it’s starting off in a good way for me. I’ve got a new story out! Which is the sort of thing I live for.

It’s called “Cuca,” which is short for the main character’s name La Cucarachona. Yeah, I’m aware that it means “The big female cockroach,” I’m not like those tontos who have named their Mexican restaurants La Curaracha (they have existed, Emily and I used to eat at a Pancho’s Mexican Buffet across the street from one). Cuca is Chicana masked wrestler. It begins like this:

The empty highway dumped them onto a road lit only by the light of distant stars.

'Look!' The driver jabbed a metallic brown fingernail that matched her bug-eyed, antenna’d mask and her lipstick. 'We found it.'

'Wonder how they get electricity out here,' said the passenger, a smartly dressed, balding, green-eyed Chicano with a hint of a mustache.

On one side of the lumpy stretch of unpaved road, a dilapidated motel was illuminated by a sputtering neon sign that had the iconic Indian and his horse hanging their heads, only the Indian was missing his head, and the horse was missing his tail.

'I was about ready to grab the wheel, and talk you into looking for a nice, sleazy motel.' He put his hand on her thigh, 'And give you what you’ve really been needing.'

She gave him a quick, hard elbow to the ribs.

In that mysterious motel in the middle of an Arizona desert, Cuca and her agent find themselves in a nexus of the monsters of Aztlán. She has a life-changing experience that involves the disturbing trend of corporate entities gobbling up local cultures. It’s a short piece crammed with strange creatures of this corner of the world.

This all began with me getting a message from Margrét Helgadóttir, asking me if I lived in North or South America. I guess if people are confused over that, I’m being a proper Chicanonaut, also I wasn’t sure what Scandinavian country she was from (she’s Norwegian/Icelandic). I told her I’m in North America, and she informed me that she was doing a series of anthologies about monsters from different parts of the world, and was looking for stories for the volume about South America, but she would get back to me when she did the one about North America, which she did, a year later.

The book is American Monsters Part 2 (Part1 was the volume about South America), and it’s available from Amazon and Amazon UK (it's from a UK publisher, in case you were wondering about the quotations marks in the snippet).

I couldn’t settle for just one of the monsters from my neighborhood, so I contrived a way to write a monster orgy with Chicano/Mexican pop culture for some sabor pincante.

So buy it, read it, now!

Ernest Hogan, author of High Aztech, Smoking Mirror Blues, and Cortez on Jupiter considers himself to be a monster of Aztlán.

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

Collecíon de Nacimientos by AntonioSolisGomez

Adriana Cordova was one of my classmates at the University of Arizona in the mid 1970’s and later she became a principal for the Tucson Unified School District. She was Catholic and having participated for many years in Las Posadas, the reenactment of the Holy Family seeking shelter, she began collecting scenes of the Nativity when she travelle, fascinated by the variety that she encountered. Friends and family knowing of her interest also began contributing to her collection that eventually numbered well over two hundred pieces. Her daughter Teresa Guerrero now displays the collection and I have included a small sample.

What is fascinating is how the devotion of people has manifested in the utilization of cultural attributes with their particular talents and interests.

The Birth of Christ has been a theme for professional artists for hundreds of years and many of the exquisite works of art that bear such a theme are revered and treasured throughout the Christian world. However the majority in this collection of Nacimientos were crafted by local artisans, craftpeople, perhaps even by people doing it as a hobby. So probably it is best to classify them as folk art with a few exceptions.