Final Post

I really had a wonderful time in this class. I noticed that this was the only class that made me laugh almost every day. I enjoyed having lots of different mediums with which to interact with the material, and the informal nature of the assignments made me feel more relaxed and open. I felt like I got to know the histories and personalities of the class a lot more than I usually do in classes, and I really enjoyed hearing everyone's passion and opinions. I feel like it has been rare for me to be in a classroom full of people conscious of social justice, or even people having a general awareness of what's going and willing to speak on that awareness. Learning about everyone's views has been awesome!

I originally enrolled in this class because I knew I loved art, but knew very little about Chican@ history culture. I am from sleepy beach towns, and one of my main motivations for accepting enrollment at UCLA and moving to LA was to expand my awareness and open myself up to people of different backgrounds and cultures. I definitely feel like got a good introduction to Chican@ culture, and learned many new things. Reading people's blog posts, hearing their opinions and seeing their art also made this class feel like a more personal learning experience. So thank you everyone for sharing! It has been a great first quarter for me, and I wish everyone a great Winter quarter, too.

All the best,

Skylar

P.S. I'm sorry for putting a tarnish on Disney for some folks. If you are looking for a rebound, check out some Studio Ghibli movies! They are beautiful, conscious, and nostalgic even if you didn't grow up with them. I'd recommend Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, Totoro, or any of the others, really!

Weel 7: Letter to an Artist

Dear Laura Aguilar,

I find your work beautiful and inspiring. In my class, we watched a video where you talked about your struggles and your art. The peace and comfort you described to have found with your body through your time in nature is a powerful lesson of healing. Hearing you talk about being nude in nature and about expressing yourself through your self-portraits reminded me how important it is to take time to be in nature and make expressive art for my own self-empowerment and mental health. I really believe that our connection to nature is a greatly untapped resource in modern medicine and psychotherapy, but I also believe that artists like yourself are helping to make room for the incorporation of nature in modern healing.

Art, too, can be a great modem for self-discovery and inward healing. Even though I have often used art for healing myself, I seem to forget when I have been away from it for too long. Your work has definitely reminded me of the power I have to discover myself through art, and I hope I don't forget it again soon! I also think that it is important that you are a self-taught artist. I believe that there is too much emphasis on the formal education of artists, and the work you put out shows that the desire to create can be innate. You don't have to go to an academy to put out great work! We need more artists like you demonstrating that fact for new generations of artists.

I hope you continue to make and show your art. It seems like a very important process to you, but it is also important to the people who see your work and learn your story.

Best,

Skylar

Shark on Padre Island

Carmen Lomas Garza's piece, Hammerhead Shark on Padre Island is a painting that really stuck out to me. I enjoyed spending time interacting with all Garza's work featured in the book. I found her style and content to be refreshing and relate-able. Although always in danger of becoming sentimental and kitschy, the genuine love and sincerity in Garza's work always seems to prevent such pitfalls. I read her someone who is deeply connected to her family and to herself across time and space, and her work comes from that place of connection and understanding. It is refreshing to see images of a childhood from the perspective of a young person who appears to feel safe, loved, and supported by a whole community of people. I find that representations of healthy and peaceful community/family dynamics are relatively rare, and that rarity is only part of what makes Garza's work so refreshing, and even cathartic. Her work never feels fake or disconnected from a world that is not always to healthy and peaceful, and that understanding present in the work gives it the edge it needs to feel real. Nowhere doesthat tension feel more evident than in Hammerhead Shark on Padre Island. As in many of her paintings, a special attention is places on connected community/family dynamics, people and children engaging in play and enjoyable activities, and a participation with the landscape and natural world, but, of course, there is a large bleeding shark that has been pulled out the water. The shark seems to remind us that even connected communities engaged in peaceful activities are not exempt from danger. Even the a child who feels safe is aware of this tension that is inherint in being a part of the cycle of human lives, and Garza's willingness to acknowledge that in her paintings is a part of what makes her work so successful and beautiful.    

Response: Mahyar Naghshvar's post on Laura Aguilar

I am interested in Mahyar Naghshvar's observation that Laura Aguilar's work contains universal themes that even transcend Aguilar's chosen identifiers as a Chicana/Lesbian. One of the first things was reminded of when I first saw Aguilar's work was of the earliest and longest periods of human history: hunter-gather societies. Hunter-gather societies were marked by low-to-no class stratification, equal distribution of labor and goods, an abundance of creativity, and, of course, an inseparable connection to the natural world. Sometimes, when I'm considering the complexity and inequalities we face in our societies today, I think about this social system from which all our ancestors came, and how different that world was from the one we live in now.

I agree with Mahyar that when I look at Aguilar's work, I see the healing can occur when we reconnect to nature, and I agree that it is so important to love our bodies for the sake of mental health. That love can be hard to find in the societies where things so intrinsic to ourselves--in the case of Aguilar, her race, body shape, sexuality, and mental health--can be the sources of prejudice, stigma, and hardship. Nature can teach us the absurdity of such judgments and boundaries being placed on our bodies and minds. I think Mahyar raises an excellent point that the subject matter and emotive power of Aguilar's work has the power to permeate not the just the Chican@ community--but all communities. I think there is a deep message of healing that resonates from Aguilar's work that we should all be listening to. 

Margarita Cabrera

I was impressed by the layers of meaning within the works of Margarita Cabrera. I responded to Cabrera's conscious use of materials to create her pieces and the political messages within her work. I am particularly interested in artists--or anyone, really--who breaks boundaries in their work, and Cabrera does just that in  many ways. The institution of the art world can often seem like an uncompromising place where certain norms indicate whether an artist is a "fine artist"...or something else. I feel like Cabrera, who is formally trained as fine artist, intentionally plays with that imaginary boundary through the use of fabric and sewing in many of her pieces. Fabric and sewing is frequently associated with craft-art, a form of creativity that is often deemed less refined than what is commonly considered "fine art". Cabrera's merging of these materials with her fine art sculptural sensibilities calls into question these institutional artistic boundaries. This boundary is further brought into question through her subject of a sewing machine--which directly references crafting, sewing, and labor. The color pink genders the piece, compelling the viewer to ask questions about the lack of recognition, and lack of institutional representation of the works of female artists, artisans, and creative laborers.   

Week 3: Sketchbook Stencil

For my stencil I cut out a drawing inspired by one of my favorite animated characters from Kiki's Delivery Service. When I was growing up, I remember being discouraged by the lack of female characters that I could identify with in animated movies. It only takes a few games of imagining to be a princess trapped in a castle to realize that playing princess is kind of boring. What I started to do was imagine new characters for myself to play within roles that seemed more complex and exciting, but rarely did I find a story that was already doing that for me.

It wasn't until much later that I discovered the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animation director who has been noted for his liberal views on the rights of woman and working class people, and on the importance of the environment. I first watched Kiki's Delivery Service as an eighteen year old girl who had just moved away from home. Here was a female character who was struggling with all the things I was--from finding a place to live and a job, making friends in a new town, and struggling with her talents...and she was a witch! It was unlike anything I had seen before. As a creative writer and artist, Miyazki's influence has been profound. Especially in the context of my experiences as a young girl, his movies have informed the way I write and relate to children's stories today.

Week 2: Personal Symbols

 I have often felt that it is natural for popular images--even powerful and spiritual ones--to be reinterpreted over time to accommodate the needs and values of an ever changing culture. The re-imaginings of la Virgen we saw by Chicana artists showed a lot of love for the image and character of la Virgen. No matter how widespread or institutionalized figures like la Virgen can become, our relationships with icons, symbols, and important figures are often deeply personal ones. I can understand how re-imagining such an important spiritual figure is a sensitive topic for many people, but seeing the idiosyncratic needs, voices and desires of the women artists who chose to re-depict la Virgen felt very special to me.

I didn't really grow up with any special images to my family or community. My family was often a-religious, sometimes Buddhist, with a-little-new-age-thrown-in mishmash. I moved frequently and often felt very lonely. When I was maybe two years old, I saw a stuffed bunny rabbit in my mom's Easter basket and it was love at first sight. As a child, I did not go anywhere without that bunny, and I really felt love and protection from him. The bunny became a part of how I identified myself, and how other people identified me. Of course as I grew older, I naturally became less attached with the stuffed rabbit himself, but bunnies became an important and personal symbol for me: one of intimacy, innocence and safety in a sometimes crazy world.

A few years ago he mysteriously disappeared, and I have not seen him since. I was very sad about losing my most personal symbol. It began to make me question why a material object could be so important, and why for so long as a child I felt he was so real. I realized it was because I had created him, and the love little-Skylar felt was love that I had created myself. I think that symbolic figures like la Virgen can be similar. Even though our relationship to personal symbols can change over a lifetime. We can question, modify, re-imagine, or even lose those symbols--but the special power they provided is always within us, and is ultimately is a reflection of ourselves.         

Ryan, Skylar

Hi! My name is Skylar, and I'm a junior transfer student currently studying Gender Studies and Art History. I am gathering information about creating my own major centered around diversity, so if you have any experience creating your own major at UCLA, or want to talk to me about my idea, please let me know! I have lived all over California, and recently moved to LA to attend school. My parents and siblings live in New Zealand. I am also a multimedia artist and creative writer, and I am particularly interested in the therapeutic potential of art--both for individuals dealing with any kind of pain, sickness or trauma, and as a mode of expression and communication within social movements and in advocacy of social justice.   

In reading Gaspar de Alba's "Out of the House" I was interested to learn that Chicana feminists have been considered anti-Chicano. As an outsider to Chicana/a culture, I was immediately curious if there has been more inclusion for Chicana feminism in the 21st century, or is feminism still considered derisive and threatening? The inclusion of Frida Kahlo imagery by the male artists in the show made me curious why she was a popular image to evoke. As a woman who was disabled, bisexual, and an artist who repeatedly exposed her complex inner world and physical imperfections, I would find her difficult to categorize within a patriarchal stereotype. Is there a mythology and symbolism behind Frida's life? What does she represent to Chicanos and Chicanas today? 

I was fascinated by the descriptions of all the different place aesthetics in, "There's No Place like Aztlan". The concept of physical land being gendered was also fascinating to me. Within the las tres Marias archetype, I thought it was interesting that the examples of land could be seen as either a virgin or a mother, but never a whore. Is it because virgin and mother is passive, while whore is active? I was curious if it was possible for the archetype of the whore be projected on something equivalent/similar to the idea of projecting the mother onto "homeland" or the virgin onto "The New World". 

Artist for Presentation: Camille Rose Garcia

 Hi, my name is Skylar! I would like to present on Camille Rose Garcia. I was immediately interested in her dark, whimsical style. I was reminded very much of cartoons, street art, murals, or tattoos. I couldn't remember if we were supposed to include a picture or not, so I added one any way!