Lang, Bella Abstracts

 1. Garcia, Jacalyn Lopez. "Glass Houses: A View of American Assimilation from a Mexican-American Perspective." Leonardo, vol. 33 no. 4, 2000, p. 263-264. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/618056.

This article written by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia highlights the meaning behind and the work going into her most popular art piece; the Glass Houses immersive website. The struggles she felt growing up as a Chicana, such as fear and identity issues, are offset by ideas of opportunity and desire. In this article, she describes the intricacy of her work, which was highly influenced by her family life and her childhood. She considers her viewers as “houseguests” who walk into the Glass House freely, and can explore complex ideas of feminism, cultural identity, gender issues, and much more.

2. Cecil, Leslie G. “Cruel Beauty, Precarious Breath; Visualizing the U.S- Mexico Border.” New Frontiers in Latin American Borderlands, Cambridge Scholars Pr Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012. 

Author Leslie Cecil explores the boundaries created in art, the human body, social policy, and other non-traditional borders in Latin American culture. In chapter 8, titled “Cruel Beauty, Precarious Breath; Visualizing the U.S- Mexico Border,” she touches on Jacalyn Lopez Garcia’s work, and how it depicts the border as a place of everlasting development and cruel reality. Cecil expands on Garcia’s use of dark irony in her work, which further helps portray the struggles that the Chicanx community experiences in modern day America. Corporate greed and the divisions economic institutions have created make it hard for the Chicanx community to see the opportunity everyone speaks of in America.

3. “UC Riverside Art Major Explores the Boundaries of the World Wide Web.” Inland Empire Hispanic News, 10th ed., 14 May 1997, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55333994.pdfp. 132.

This newspaper article gives an inside look into Jacalyn Lopez Garcia’s academic accomplishments and career. By reading this article, we can find that she was a multitalented and well-rounded young woman, who has more passions than art alone. This article also highlights the anticipation that built before her popular “Glass Houses” immersive web experience was released. Along with this website, her other art pieces have rightfully been displayed in well-known museums. The fact that this article dedicated the front page to her unreleased art shows that she was able to gain an audience and raise awareness for the struggles of Chicana artists, despite the struggles she faced along the way.