Extra Credit Art of the State Symposium

 In the Art of the State symposium hosted by the Monterey Museum of Art, the artist that spoke that I was really intrigued with his message was Juan Felipe Herrera. Juan is a poet, a performer, a writer, a teacher, and an activist. He was born in Flower, California and as a son of migrant farmers. He believes that our unique history that whiteness tries to tell needs to be in art, poetry, and media and he calls this information flow. The information flow would contain gender spectrum identity and Chicano power because we need to embrace and retell our identity because there is a lot of whiteness. As this relates to Covid, there is still a lot of whiteness and in times like these we go through challenge a white person cannot convey so we must do it for ourselves. This is important because as this would go into a textbook written by a white man, we need to make it clear that our experiences are unique and cannot be told by another. Our people have struggled with jobs, day care and our migrant workers were forced to work a few miles away from huge forest fires while the whites were told to evacuate.  Juan creates a call to action within his lecture to expand as artist, thinkers and intellectuals. He does this because he believes that we need to be taking more space so we can tell our own narratives and create our own information flows. One unique topic he covered was that we need to connect to inner selves to identify with the Earth and the climate such as the forest fires and the ice caps melting. He does this so we can take action and help solve for climate change because it is our own responsibility to do so as we consume what the Earth has given us.