F2014PradoHector

Hello everyone! I’m a bit late to the game so I’ll try to catch up with everyone. My name is Hector Manuel Prado. I’m a third year Physics major with a Chicano Studies minor. I’m from El Monte and was raised in the San Gabriel Valley. I am involved with organizations such as the Community Programs Office as well as with Hermanos Unidos.  I decided to take this course because I felt that it would offer a broad spectrum of ideas that I don’t normally think of in my everyday like and I thought this could be a refreshing experience. I’m not really artistically inclined although I do love to appreciate art of all types of art including visual art, music, spoken word, etc.  I hope that I’ll be able to learn something about art to be able to produce my own works.

Gaspar de Alba’s readings were particularly interesting to read because it is something that I have such little knowledge about. It’s shocking to me to know that there is an entire collection of chicana cultural art that is so little known to myself and very likely many people.  The world seems to have a bias towards what types are art are worthy of recognition.  Women unfortunately tend to be criticized more harshly or their opinions/ideas are taken with less seriousness. This is not to say that their achievements are not noteworthy, but I’m saying quite the opposite. When we learn about something we know nothing about, we gain the most wealth of knowledge.  Chicana artists have extremely powerful messages that vary immensely from the ideas of males.  These women have been categorized in a stereotypical way and the art they create is a way of breaking those barriers and having their inner voices heard.

I plan to do my artist presentation on Cecilia Alvarez.

Finally I did grow up with the Virgin of Guadalupe in my family. I was raised a catholic and was taught that she needed to be respected because she was the mother of god. In Catholicism, she is considered to be a pure woman. She appeared before Juan Diego and made roses, not native to Mexico appear out of season. Juan collected the roses in his tilma and when he went to go present them, the tilma had the notable image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.  I saw a copy of the original image every week when we would go to church and it was a common thing in my life. As crazy as it may seem, when Gaspar de Alba came in to lecture and showed us artist variations of the Virgen, I was shocked because I had never seen anything like them.

My initial reaction was sort of like the feeling you get when something has been violated or vandalized, but the way Gaspar de Alba explained the motives behind the art and the ideas they were meant to evoke, I felt an idea click. It’s an image, not meant to be disrespectful in any sense, but rather meant to portray a different meaning. Although new ideas may sometimes seem scary, I feel like challenging those old ideas is a great way to learn about other things which you yourself may never have thought of.