Carmen Lomas Garza is a well known Chicana artist and curator from Texas. She is highly skilled in her use of color, handling of gouache, and her immense pieces utilizing the paper cut-out method popular in Mexican culture-- papel-picado. Installations are just a small piece of her work. As a young woman she was in charge of a small exhibit of Chicana/o artwork for the organization MAYO. This marked her first experience as a curator. After relocating in San Francisco some time later she was further mentored in the art business. All these experiences extended the breadth of her relationship to art beyond its production and into its exhibition. In her installation altar piece Día de los Muertos/Ofrenda para Antonio Lomas (1988-1990) Garza honors the life of her late grandfather Antonio Lomas. Garza utilizes papel picado to adorn a background faux window looking out into a backyard in view of her grandfather while the walls the floor and table are also papel pacado-adorned. The floor is laden with colorful papel flowers. The "walls" surrounding and making up the installation are curtains de papel-picado. In the scene the table has candles, skulls, a chair, and personal items from his life such as his garden tools, paño, and hat. Each item is significant and beautifully representative of him. This homage is personal and telling of her influential and defining culture, family and spirituality.
This piece really touched me because last year my family lost our grandfather. He too worked hard all his life, coming this country as a bracero in the 1950s. He passed at the age of 96 due to complications after emergency surgery after he fell. Despite this very sad event in our family we celebrate his long life with us and all his legacy that lies in all of us grandchildren and great grandchildren.
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