Blog 6: Carmen Lomas Garza

The artwork that I am selecting for my blog post for this week is the black paper cut out image titled Haciendo Papel Picado/Making Paper Cutouts that was created in 1999 by Carmen Lomas Garza. In Constance Cortez’ book titled Carmen Lomas Garza, Cortez mentions towards the end of the book how later on in Garza’s career, she wanted to share with the youth her culture and art. Garza wanted kids to be able to express themselves with creativity. In the book we learn that Garza accomplishes this goal by creating and writing different types of books for the youth. The image shows a woman (most likely Garza) teaching three kids how to create art with paper cut outs. It is quite neat how Garza creates a paper cutout image that shows her teaching how to create cutout images. I feel that Garza wanting to teach kids her art and about culture is fully represented in this paper cutout. This cutout really stood out the most to me because throughout the book, Garza has always had a passion for kids, and teaching as well as for advocacy. The struggle that Garza went through while trying to help the Spanish-speaking students at Robstown High School and trying to compromise with the school, shows that she does not give up on her passions. Garza really tries her best to help the youth because she genuinely cares about them. These amazing qualities about Garza shines through in this cutout image as it can be interpreted as more than Garza teaching kids how to create art, but how she loves to teach and to inspire the youth.