Pat Gomez (artist)
Patricia “Pat” Gomez (born 1960) is a Chicana visual artist based in Los Angeles best known for incorporating text within her art. She is currently the Civic Art Project Manager at Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Biography
Pat Gomez has previously studied and earned both her Master and Bachelor degrees in visual art from California State University at Fullerton. Gomez has previously worked with the Chicano art collective called Self Help Graphics.
Art
In 1991, Gomez created her first piece for Self Help Graphics titled War Stories. In the art piece, Gomez wrote personal accounts of her uncle and her cousin’s respective experiences in the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. War Stories was specifically created in response to the First Gulf War and was Gomez’s attempts at “tearing off the fabric of a million people’s stories”.
Within the text, Gomez explains how her uncle could not pursue college or a white collar career because of social and economic reasons and he eventually joined his local gang. Upon being caught and tried for a crime, Gomez’s uncle was given a choice of either being imprisoned or joining the war effort in Vietnam. Six months after enlisting in the army, her uncle was killed in action. The second story inscribed in War Stories is a story about Gomez’s cousin who grew up in a similar environment as her uncle and how he aspired to be the first one in his family to go to college and the only way he could financially accomplish this was through enlisting in the army.
The Trappings of Sor Juana
Created as part of an art gallery about Sor Juana in 1999, Pat Gomez sought to evoke a similar message to the story of the nun’s life. Sor Juana was a writer in colonial Mexico that was eventually silenced and unable to publish her work because she criticized the church and the political establishment. Included in this piece is text from an excerpt from Sor Juana’s Disillusionment.
Stay Tuned
Pat Gomez created the 1992 art piece Stay Tuned as a response to her experience in the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In her art piece, Gomez displays rows of televisions providing a glimpse into the destruction she witnessed during the riots. On the right side of the art piece, a personal account of the riots are written from Pat Gomez’s perspective from that time.
Exhibitions
Her work has been included in private and public collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
References
“Pat Gomez on ‘War Stories’ & ‘The Trappings of Sor Juana.’” YouTube, uploaded by SoCalStudio, 16 May 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JetLHeKguiM.
“Patricia Gomez.” Blanton Museum of Art - Patricia Gómez (Aka Pat Gómez), https://collection.bma.utexas.edu/artist-maker/info/10264.
Gomez, Pat. “Stay Tuned.” Center for the Study of Political Graphics, http://collection-politicalgraphics.org/detail.php?module=objects&type=browse&id=2&term=Self%2BHelp%2BGraphics%2Band%2BArt&kv=3365&record=2&page=1.
“Speaker Bios.” Americans for the Arts, 15 May 2019, https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/services-and-training/training-professional-development/webinars/digital-classrooms/public-art-and-placemaking-digital-classroom/speaker-bios
Gómez, Pat. “The Trappings of Sor Juana.” Calisphere, UC Santa Barbara, Library, Department of Special Research Collections, 1 Jan. 1999, https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/hb8199p23g/.
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