Ruby Chacon worked with youth trying tor express the first generation experience of pursing higher education, which she has expressed through her art and community events. She attainted her bachelor of fine arts from the University of Utah. She used her family as her basis of her work, which she is really close to. Her mom and dad are from Mexico, but they moved to Utah very early on, which caused and identity crisis for her. She later was able to intertwine both identities by labeling herself as Utana, combining Utah native and Chicana. She was allowed creative freedom through her uncle as he also painted, and would let her draw on his walls. After he was murdered, she became more adamant on painting her family in ways that she could highlight their positive traits. Her artwork mostly consists of murals which are found in Utah, Wyoming, California, Thailand and Morocco. She seeked to humanize her work by drawing people from Utah, as many Utah paintings are mainly just landscapes. She wanted her art to be put in public spaces so it could be accessible to people, as she remembered that when she was young she couldn’t go to museums and see typical art due to it not being free. In one of her pieces, Chacon highlights the liveliness of her community by displaying what it means to be a Chicano person in Utah. She painted all the Abuelitas, someone playing a saxophone, kids playing, and even a rooster. She also drew a normal person as the Virgin of Guadalupe, her take on showing how Catholicism was a normal part of her community. To wrap up her mural, she drew mountain landscapes in the background, representative of her Utah identity. In such a clever way, Ruby was able to combine both sides of her cultural world.
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