Week 10 Reflection Post

This class is one of the most interesting class I have taken in UCLA. During the first weeks, I was worried about the workload and the overall material because I was not familiar with the Chicanx culture. I was not born and raised in the US so I never learned the US history and its relationship with Mexico. From this class, I learned that the Chicanx community was discriminated in the US. They were not given equal opportunities in almost every aspect of life, including the opportunity to speak up and have their own opinion. I also learned that the Chicanx community did not stay quiet. Rather, they fought for equality in unique ways through art.

While learning about the different ways Chicanx artists express their feelings, not only we studied about what was behind their artworks, we also tried to make our own work of art: our sketchbook. Throughout the quarter, we did a lot of drawings and paintings in our sketchbook. I personally think that the drawing assignment is what makes this class different from other classes in UCLA. From the drawing assignments, I gained my drawing skill and attention to detail, especially when drawing the hands. Professor Lopez helped me pay attention to detail by asking us to draw the hands in 3 phases: outline sketch, shadow, and finger joints. After doing these 3 phases, I was finally able to draw a hand that looks very real and 3D.

All in all, this class has been a great class for me and I will definitely recommend this class and Professor Lopez to my friends. The workload was just right and I gained so much knowledge from this class.

Week 8 Presentation Artist: Harmonia Rosales

This week’s presentation artist that stood out to me the most was Harmonia Rosales and her artwork,
The Creation of God, 2017. Rosales reimagined the creation story Michaelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. She repainted the figures — Jesus, Adam, God, and a chorus of angels as black women. After the artwork was released, there were a lot of reactions towards the series, some good and some bad, but unlike other artists, Rosales viewed these controversies as a boost to her career, because without controversy, she would never become an artist.

When interviewed, Rosales gave some convincing fact to response the question on why do you think God and the first human should be black. She said that all human life came out of Africa, the Garden of Eden, so it makes sense to paint God as a black woman. Aside from the racism issue, some people also criticized Rosales’ artwork as not original, since she copied Michaelangelo’s artwork and modified it. People think that if making something for the identity and value for black women is so important, then why not just make original art, instead of copying someone else’s original art. Rosales’ response to this criticism was however very humble and she truly gained my respect and I believe some other people’s respect too. She told the media that she was a little naive in underestimating the number of individuals who would not accept such a statement and that everyone has a right to react and express their feelings. Despite the accepting response, Rosales, however, was sad that people are afraid of change and of seeing the world differently. Also, their words and the things they have done were truly destructive.

Week 7 Presentation Artist: Camille Rose Garcia

The artist that stood out to me during this week’s presentation was Camille Rose Garcia. Camille Rose Garcia was born on 18 November 1970 in Los Angeles, California. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree at University of California, Davis in 1994 and her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 1992. Her works are publicly displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Resnick Collection, and the San Jose Museum of Art.

She began her journey at age 14 when she started working on murals with her mother while visiting Disneyland and going to punk shows, which affected her artworks a lot. She then began producing paintings, prints, and sculptures in a gothic, creepy cartoon style.

One illustration that stood out to me was “Snow White”. Inspired by her visits to Disneyland, she retold the dreamy, classical fairy-tale into a creepy, dark tale. In “Snow White”, Garcia gorgeously skewed portraits of Snow White and her angry dwarves. The painting presents a snarling princess reflected through a funhouse mirror from hell. Garcia’s works stood out to me because she can bring the opposite side of the dreamy and happy side of every fairy tale.

Garcia’s works brought a lot of media’s attention and people’s views towards her artworks are more on the negative side. One critic reviewed Garcia’s artwork as lack of specific meaning and specific context. Although there are not much of good impressions towards her artworks, I personally find her artworks cool and interesting.

Extra Credit: Stencil Workshop

On Friday, 18 May 2018, I went to the 2018 Q Scholars Undergraduate Research Symposium event and the topic of the event is “The Power of Storytelling: Exploring, Resilience, Resistance, and Struggle in Queer Narratives. I attended the Stencil-making Workshop which was held by Professor Alma Lopez and her spouse, Professor Gaspar de Alba. There were around 8 participants of the workshop, each with different backgrounds. Some were Chicanx descent and some were not. Professor Gaspar de Alba started the workshop by asking us to do a 5-minute free-writing about who we are right now. I used those 5 minutes focusing on writing who I am and where I am right now, independent of my past. Five minutes passed by and Professor Gaspar de Alba told us to pick 3 words that highlight our free-writing and use those 3 words for our stencils.

I chose to do a silhouette of a palm tree because of how much LA has changed my life. Professor Alma Lopez guided us step-by-step starting from drawing on a blank paper, transferring the drawing on a plastic paper, cutting the shape using x-acto knife, and finally painting the stencil. I chose to color my palm tree silhouette in yellow and orange to represent sunset since Los Angeles is identical with palm trees and sunset. I did two layers of each color because the colors were too transparent at first. While waiting for the paint to dry, I looked at Professor Gaspar de Alba’s stencil. She drew a coyote and wrote "coyolteadas" underneath the drawing. She then put the stencil on top of a plain black t-shirt and painted it in baby blue. After waiting a couple of minutes to let the paint dry, I finally pulled the excess plastic paper off and my stencil is finished.

Carmen Lomas Garza: Cakewalk (1987)

Carmen Lomas Garza is a unique Mexican-American artist because her artwork tells customs and cultures instead of racial oppression or political resistance. She mostly based her artwork from her childhood and personal memory. Garza’s mother, Maria, took a big part in Garza’s career by teaching her and her sister to use watercolors and paint lottery tablets, inspiring them to become great artists.

The chapter “Politics and Life in Tejas: From Tejana to Chicana” discusses about how racism influenced Garza’s painting. Garza was born in an era operated under institutionalized racism, where minorities were not allowed to obtain a higher degree at school or work and get equal pay as professionals. The painting Cakewalk (1987) was about a fundraising event to enable Mexican-American to get a bachelor’s degree. Despite the efforts made towards educational reform, Garza did not attend school until junior high and when she finally attended a school, segregation still existed in her daily lives, such as when she had a gym class, the white girls get to shower first, leaving the place steamy and muggy for the people of color to shower afterwards.

In conclusion, Garza’s artwork is the product of her commitment to preserve her community by showing the world Mexican-American culture through her lens. Garza has successfully shown the world the Mexican-American culture based on her memories and experiences from the era when she was born until recently, where Garza has become a great artist. Garza’s interest in detail and her belief that art is a dialogue brought her this far. Like a dialogue, her art goes two ways: Garza shared a message about the past and the present through her paintings and viewers relate to Garza’s paintings based on his or her own experiences.

Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza was born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1948. She is a Chicana artist who creates paintings about the everyday life of a Mexican-American based on her own memories and experiences. Her artworks are mostly influenced by her family; whether they are the highlights of her childhood or simply her everyday family routines. Many people make children’s books using her paintings because she wants viewers to have their own interpretations of her paintings.

One painting that caught my attention was the Earache Treatment (1989). It is a painting about Garza’s mom doing an ear candle treatment to her husband. It seems that this natural remedy has been used in the Southern states of America for a long time. 

To me, this painting was about how the Chicanx community fought for their rights. In the painting, the father’s ear was blocked by water, so the mother rolled the newspaper into a cone and burned the tip to evaporate the water in the father’s ear. It was like the father’s ear was blocked; Chicanx was discriminated in the U.S, but he could not find a justification to make it right because of the stereotype about Chicanx that the dominant power made. Therefore, the mother rolled a newspaper to form a funnel full of information about discrimination towards the Chicanx community and burned the tip to dilute the information to the father, hoping that the flame would fire up the father’s spirit and he would get enlightenment on how to fight for the Chicanx community.

Yolanda M. Lopez - Free Los Siete

The book that I chose was Yolanda M. Lopez by Karen Davalos. This book describes the works of a Chicana artist named Yolanda Lopez who strives to redefine popular representations of Mexicans and Mexican women. Fueled by her dissatisfaction of popular Chicana and Chicano stereotype, Lopez represents her activism by standing up for both women and people of color and her desire to achieve social justice for Chicanos and Chicanas through her artwork. She does it by manipulating and exposing images all in order to change the stereotypes of Mexican-Americans.
“In the Trenches, Development of a Political Artist” discusses the journey of Lopez becoming a political artist that upholds social justice. This is shown in her work, Free Los Siete (1969) on page 28. Free Los Siete is about seven Latino youths who were accused of killing a police officer. Lopez portrayed this incident by drawing the American flag vertically that made the stripes of the American flag look like steel bars in a jail cell that imprisoned 6 innocent inmates. Moreover, Lopez used the Pledge of Allegiance by changing the third line into “One nation under God with free”, it can be implied that it was truncated to show the incomplete word “freedom”. This piece shows that Latinos did not receive social justice as they were convicted due to law enforcement’s bias towards people of color.

Cultural Politics and the CARA Exhibition

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, in her book specifically in Chapter 3: Out of the House, the Halo, and the Whore’s Mask: The Mirror of Malinchismo, talked about the CARA exhibition, one of the significant events in Chicano Art Movement, yet Chicana artists were treated unfairly there.The unfairness was shown by the number of artworks displayed in the exhibition, which was dominated by Chicano artists approximately by a hundred more than those of Chicana artists. Moreover, the artworks done by Chicanos were placed in more strategic places and eye-catching spots.

Although the artworks were sketches of Chicanas, most of the artworks that were presented in the general section were pieces of art that were interpreted by men. Therefore, the way the artworks were depicted were to serve the interest of the dominant power; the views upon women were constructed from the eyes of men and not women themselves. Consequently, the women represented in the artworks were those who primarily had the roles of a housewife, a whore, or a baby machine. The artworks were as if women were stationed to produce the future of men.

The situation described in the CARA exhibition was similar to Debra Blake’s book: history was made to serve the interest of the dominant power. Women, the subdominant in this case, were not able to express who they really were or who they wanted people to think of them as because they live in the shadows of the dominant power. Therefore, Chicanas were fighting to complete the missing pieces of the history and to change the stereotype made by the dominant power.
In last week's lecture, Professor Gaspar de Alba highlighted the difference between politics of identity and identity of politics. She defined politics of identity as the way an individual considers him/herself. She asked the class to raise their hands if they consider themselves as a feminist, and surprisingly, although most people who raised their hands were female, there was a man who also raised his hand. The professor then emphasized that people often misunderstood feminism as anti-men movement, but that was not the case. It is nice to see that even men support female rights and believe that female should be treated fairly and equally.

After reading the book, I learned that there are several ways to empower Chicana or U.S Mexicana. The three main ways that I have acknowledged are empowerment through adding the missing pieces of history, creating a mythic or fictional character or symbol, and reconfiguring cultural stories. I strongly agree that these three agents can deliver empowerment for Chicana or U.S Mexicana.

Chapter one discusses that history was written based on the dominating power’s perspective, so Chicana was stereotyped according to what the dominant power wanted them to be. In order to change the stereotype, Chicana artists use their artworks to add positive elements that were excluded from the history, creating a new stereotype of Chicana. “At the same time, they replace negative elements of the representations by unearthing submerged cultural memories of the figures as powerful, active forces” (Blake, 14). It can be established that Chicanas were under-represented by the dominant power. However, in the status quo, Chicanas have the opportunity to deliver the missing pieces of history through gathering personal narratives and compiling them so that they could add the missing pieces of their history. These missing pieces will be able to serve the future generation Chicanas by empowering them through the similar struggles that the older generation Chicanas faced.

Vallejo, Linda

For my presentation, I chose Linda Vallejo among the other artists on the list because when I googled their names, an article with a very interesting title appeared and it was about Linda Vallejo. Linda Vallejo is a Mexican-American artist born in 1951 in East Los Angeles. She received a BA in Fine Arts from Whittier College in 1973, studied lithography at the University of Madrid, Spain, and earned an MFA from California State University, Long Beach in 1978. Her arts are influenced from her study and travel throughout Europe, the United States, and Mexico.

The article written about Linda Vallejo that caught my eyes was about how she got the idea to change numerous famous icons’ skin colors into tanned skin, sometimes with tattoos, presenting them as all Mexicans in her series titled “Make ‘Em All Mexican”. Some of those famous icons include Marilyn Monroe (Marielena), Elvis Presley (El Vis), Audrey Hepburn (Aurora Hernandez), Cate Blanchett (Catarina Blancarte), etc. She even changed Oscar statues and they suddenly became starlets of Mexican descent, which attracted a lot of press. Along with the ongoing popular hashtag #OscarSoWhite, Linda Vallejo prefers to imagine it as the year of #OscarSoBrown.

Linda’s series, “Make ‘Em All Mexican” has made some people think that the Oscar statue was modeled after a Mexican actor and director, Emilio Fernandez. Although The Academy has officially stated that there was no model for the statue, it was still really hard for people to look at the trophy and the image of Emilio side-by-side and not see that they were almost exactly alike. Linda’s unique idea has caught attention to people and to me. Thus, I am really looking forward to discovering more about her art.

Marcelline, Michelle (Michelle)

Hello everyone! My name is Michelle Marcelline but you can call me Michelle, and my preferred pronoun is she/her. I am a junior majoring in Financial Actuarial Mathematics with a specialization in Computing. I was born and raised in Indonesia, a developing country in Southeast Asia. As a Chinese Indonesian, I have not been exposed to many things so moving to the United States and studying in UCLA has been a big step in my life. I want to make use of this opportunity to study different cultures and subjects that are not related to my major to expand my knowledge not just in Science, but also in Arts.

The in-class exercise we had on Tuesday made me realize that great artists are mostly men. This is proven by the number of male artists we managed to list, 69, versus the number of female artists we listed, 57. This fact is then explained by Nochlin through the essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”. The essay discusses this question from an extremely sexist point of view, “human beings with wombs are unable to create anything significant”, to a feminist point of view, “women create a different kind of great art”. The conclusion of this essay is that women have not been great in art because of lack of opportunities for women in art: established artists tend to look for men apprentices, only males in the family were taught art, some women were able to study art but they must come from an extremely wealthy family. Moreover, those women can only study art as a hobby and not as a profession. So, there have been no great women artists due to institutional, not individual reasons.

This essay caught my attention because I don’t think that gender limits one’s desired profession. Every profession should have an equal opportunity for both genders and they must perform an equal effort in order to achieve it.