2008 ChismeArte ¡Y Que! Exhibit

Her birth in 1944 in the San Joaquin Valley to Yaqui-Mexican farm worker parents grounded her earliest work in farm worker struggle for social justice. The UC Berkeley graduate and internationally exhibited artist is known for pastels and prints that explore the possibilities of Latina identity. Her illustration of “The Virgin of Guadalupe” offers a feminist re-interpretation of Latin America’s most important religious icon. She replaces her sacred image with a woman karate-kicking her way out of, or from her aura, as she battles injustice. Sun Mad, her most recognized work, ironically recasts the Sun Maid logo into a woman’s skeleton packing raisins under a punishing sun.

Student contributor: Katie S. Galliher

The East L.A. native described as “So L.A.” is today known for his colorful, dreamlike cityscapes such as Los Muertos, and Ayi! Dream of Chicos Corazon. His early involvement with Los Four, the pioneering art Chicano gang, brought him to Carlos Almaraz, whose vibrant pastels, midnight palette, and iconography influenced Limon’s gallery work. The “Alley River Cat’s” painted on huge L.A. storm drains, however, represent his most seen work. He has also earned recognition as a community arts activist, organizing such events as the annual Dia de Los Muertos celebrations at East L.A.’s Self-help Graphics.

Student contributor: Shannon Aguilar

Born in California in 1994, Villanueva grew up in the Mission district of San Francisco with her grandmother. Her younger years were harsh. She dropped out of high school in the 10th grade to have her first child, gave birth to her second at seventeen, and later lived on welfare in the housing projects with a violent husband. She survived, returned to school, earning an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Vermont College. Her early works addressed her difficult upbringing and the love and strength she found in women. She has published consistently since 1970, winning awards for her novels and poetry. Today Villanueva teaches Creating Writing program at Antioch University in Los Angeles and lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Student contributor: Kelly Iwasko.

Like Rodriguez, Marisela Norte’s work focuses on Chicano urban imagery, but from a campy Chicana feminist perspective. Her lyric and prose poems convey L.A.’s life through snippets of overheard conversations and everyday observations made from the MTA’s Number 18 bus, the East/West route traversing the city’s social geography. She sees her work as kind of documentary pastiche, a collaborative conversation with the city’s denizens. Norte wrote, “I don’t write fiction. To me I have always felt that I’m keeping the books. I just want people to experience the everyday glimpses of life that I see, that to me are sometimes heartbreaking, but most of the time incredibly beautiful.” Norte describes L.A. as Walter Benjamin might, walking, absorbing daily activities, remembering sensations and stories suggested by Eastside streetscapes. In “Each Street/ Each Story” she mocks an immigrant male gaze: “MUCHACHAS BAILIANDO EN BIKINI! I pass these joints and must look… I hear the trampling of their feet. Men knocking doors down to get a good look at a pair of fishnet stockings.” (Chismearte, 201).

Student contributor: Rachel Glabe, ES 323