Presentation: Camille Rose Garcia

Camille Rose Garcia is a Chicana artist born in LA. Her father was an activist for Chicano rights and equality while her mother was an artist herself. Her mother was primarily a muralist which served as an opportunity for Camille; she assisted her mom with the artwork at age fourteen. Camille did her BFA at Otis College in 1992, and then completed her MFA at UC Davis in 1994. Her collections are permanently featured at LACMA and San Jose MOA. Music was also her artistic passion and formed a rockband in the OC; this exposed her to the themes she'd always use. Most of Camille's work is based on her childhood, exhibits the bright colors often used in her mother's murals, as well as maintaining a fluid psychedelic theme. The psychedelic essence comes from the heavy presence of Disney Land in her life since she was living in Anaheim at the time. She recreated scenes from popular Disney movies and stories like Snow White and Alice in Wonderland while maintaining the Chicana flare by giving the charachters the "Dia de los Muertos" or "sugar-skull" appearance. The painting I've chosen is from her illustrative remake of the story, Snow White. Her work stood out the most within the other presentations since her paintings are very mystical and psychedelic. I could see the natural talent and trust the artist has in herself.

Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza is originally from Kingsville, a small city in southern Texas close to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Constance Cortez introduces the artist’s upbringing in the fifties and sixties with a historian approach; South Texas during that time period was not a welcoming place for Chicanas/os and maintained a very formal and staunch anti-Mexican platform politically and sociologically. Segregation of Caucasians and Mexicans was apparent in various manners including segregated schools, which impacted the youths’ upbringing. Lomas Garza experienced the stigma and institutionalized racism in full force like many other Chicanas/os in Texas. From a historian perspective like Cortez’s, the sixties was also a time known for the rebellious kids protesting against their parents and “the man”, while many ignore the Mexican-American children from the same era who were rather close to their families and drew inspiration from their elders. While some artists of that time and location portrayed the perils of being Chicana/o in their artwork, Lomas Garza aimed at presenting the beauty and unity of Chicana/o cultures. She also felt the same anger and sadness like many others, but Lomas Garza translated that energy into harmonious and vibrant art.

Lomas Garza’s landscape painting, (3) Hammerhead Shark on Padre Island from 1987 displays a community coming together to see a huge hammerhead shark caught by a proud fisherman. The characters in the painting are enjoying themselves, and while being united may be a sense of peace and health, safety is still a challenge as seen with the hammerhead shark. The unsafe element in the painting alludes to the norm of how Mexican-Americans are unsafe and unwanted in many aspects in South Padre Island and Texas in general.

Celia Muñoz Alvarez

Robert Tejada explores the artist, Celia Muñoz Alvarez through a series of interviews, meetups, and artwork analysis. As a Houston native myself, artwork in the bordering cities of Texas with Mexico is inspired heavily by both sides. Muñoz Alvarez was born in the El Paso area around the depression era, this is when many men were being put through arduous work and struggling to make a means was more challenging. The divide was very prevalent in her childhood, which she bases most of her work on. Muñoz Alvarez went back to school in her forties to get her MFA and specifically chose University of North Texas – Denton since it specialized in avant-garde work in the state. Since then, she has engrossed herself into the genre of folk, traditional, avant-garde art. Some of her artwork is a combination of Catholic and local urban street art. She also depicts historical and linguistic differences in her works by using mixed media such as texts to accompany the image. Her images can be very subliminal with hidden definitions and puns that people similar to her can relate.

Muñoz Alvarez’s What Came First?, 1982, is initially a rather obscure and random image of five identical eggs perfectly lined up in a row. There are eight photos of the rowed eggs with five grade school assigned sentences describing a chicken laying an egg in a variety of tenses like past, present, and future. However, the last sentence is grammatically incorrect although it makes sense in her view, the text reads, “The chicken lies everyday,” which claims the chicken is actually lying and not laying eggs. Muñoz Alvarez’s grandmother shared to her about how chickens lay eggs from their mouth as an effort to avert from sex education. This made young Muñoz Alvarez confused and passive with the linguistics even more than she was. She made childhood mistakes in language due to different linguistic cultures. As for the visual content, the eggs are all the same size, but it fluctuates due to the angles it’s taken in, therefore the eggs are lying about their sizes. Muñoz Alvarez includes an additional pun, eggs are translated to “huevos” in Spanish and it’s often referred to men’s testicles or manhood, which men might often lie about too.