Wiki Draft, 11/20/21 - Avril Rincon

11/20/21

Wikipedia: Celeste De Luna

[Celeste De Luna] is a printmaker artist known for her works depicting themes of motherhood, globalization, and migration. She aims for her art to validate Latino culture and serve as contributor to the dialogue about art, culture, and politics [2]. Her work integrates personal and collective experiences in the material, spiritual, and supernatural world [3].

Biography (or Early Life and Education)

Celeste De Luna was born in Aurora, Illinois, 40 miles southwest Chicago, where her parents met. She grew up there until she was 8 years old, when she moved to the Valle [1]. She now currently lives in Brownsville and San Antonio, Texas [2], where she works out of her home studio, Metztli Press. De Luna is a self-taught printmaker whose work includes woodcut prints, fabric prints, installations, and press prints [3]. Her work seeks to tease out the intricacies of living in and along the borderlands in her art. However, some of the struggles she has had in conveying her messages are that sometimes nobody cares about her work, but herself and close relatives; so she believes as an artist, most of the joy comes from the process of making the art, which includes the experience [1].

She explores the geo-political aspects of post-911 militarization of her environment [4]. This is portrayed boldly in her pieces Our Lady of the Checkpoint and Chupacabra at Boca Chica Beach. Her use of barbed wire fences, drones, border walls, numerous surveillance cameras, and her play with fantastical creatures as an outlook of anti-colonial sentiments, allow viewers to understand the experiences of women, children, and families [2].

In addition to her artwork, Celeste De Luna is an accomplished home cook, cultural advocate and professor – she teaches Mexican-American studies for Northwest Vista College [3].

Art (or Notable Works or Selected Works. Also Exhibitions, Projects, Collections)

• “Necrocitizen” print was featured on the cover book Fencing in Democracy by Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey, published by Duke Press 2020

• Co-founder of Las Imaginistas, a social engaged art collective

• A June 2020 Vermont Studio artist in residence

• Las Imaginistas: recipients of 2017 ArtPlace America Creative Placemaking Grant

  and 2018 A Blade of Grass Fellows

References

1. ^ [Trevino, Gabriel. “The Art of Brownsville Interviews: Celeste De Luna.” The Art of Brownsville Interviews, 28 Jan. 2009, brownsvilleart.blogspot.com/2009/01/art-of-brownsville-interviews-celeste.html.]

2. ^ [COEHD, UTSA. “Celeste De Luna.” Chicana/Latina Studies, 4 Feb. 2021, journal.malcs.org/artistas/celeste-de-luna/.

3. ^ [De Luna, Celeste. “Artist's Statement/Bio.” Celeste De Luna, Jan. 2021, www.celestedeluna.com/about-ba/.]

4. Sanchez, Graciela. “Celeste De Luna Art.” Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Apr. 2018, esperanzacenter.org/artists/celeste-de-luna-art/.

Further reading

• Exhibition Catalogue of De Luna’s Art Works: https://wsworkshop.org/event- artists/celeste-de-luna/

• C/LS MALCS Extensive Art Journal for De Luna: https://journal.malcs.org/artistas/celeste-de-luna/

  External links

• Celeste De Luna, City of San Antonio Department of Arts and Culture,https://events.getcreativesanantonio.com/artist/celeste-de-luna/

• Day of the Dead, San Antonino, https://dayofthedeadsa.com/celeste-de-luna/

• Santa Fe Art Institute, Alumni: Celeste De Luna, https://sfai.org/alumni/celeste-de-

  luna/

November 29, 2021: Reflection - Avril Rincon

Upon reflection of this past quarter, I realize a tremendous amount of material that I have learned. Being able to bring awareness about these amazing Chicano artists, via Wikipedia, was an experience I was proud of being a part of. Reflecting back to my own artist, Celeste De Luna, her artwork displayed lots of immigrant sentiments that I never realized I was so passionate about until I saw her work. I related to a lot of her family displacement and identity crisis works due to the immigration system. My parents being from Mexico and me my siblings growing up in the US, I have always felt this missing part of my identity since I have never been able to go to Mexico, due to my parents not being able to travel abroad. Because of this, it felt as if I never really was able to connect to my Mexican roots, as I have never met my grandparents, cousins, or really any of my family members besides my immediate family. Through Celeste’s work, I learned the importance of expressing these feelings through art. It was nice knowing that I am not the only one going through this and that we have the Chicano community as support. I think this is why one of my favorite pieces of her is the “My Body is A Border” print. Not only does it celebrate Chicano feminism, but it also brings up important themes such as borderlands, immigration, and the strength of family. Overall, I am very happy I took this class and learned about a growing sector within our Chicano community - art! It’s nice to know that little by little, people that look like me are being better represented in such fields. Being able to be a part of this movement by helping publish an article is an honor that I am humbled to be a part of.

November 22, 2021: Presentations - Sand One

Sand One is an artist who is known for her paintings of dolls with extra long eye lashes. She grew up in East Los Angeles, California and has been featured in TV networks featuring her work such. She has had the opportunity to paint not only all over California, but also in Mexico, Guatmela, and Puerto Rico. She works mainly with watercolor and spray paint. She grew up with single mother and started painting in her garage at the age of 8. Her inspiration was seeing her mom put on makeup and loads of mascara, which she highlighted brilliantly in her art. Although she was criticized for not going to college, she emphasized that she created this art for the people that the chicano community usually turn their backs on. People like single mothers, uneducated folks, and strippers. One of her paintings named Cake displayed a doll, representative of all the women that have daddy issues. In the image she held a teddy bear, and One likes to think that boys are toys, so she draws them as teddy bears, instead of the actual men. Each teddy bear has its own personality, an example being the drug dealer teddy bear. Her murals are representative of One getting input from her community into the mural, where she can paint the mural according to what people would recommend her. Like this, her artwork really are building pieces of their own. In another painting she depicts a female solider named Sanchez that symbolizes female empowerment, where she still looks cute, but is able to show, from her stance, confidence. This one was one of my favorite pieces because it shows the duality a chicano woman, or really and woman, can have. Through her work she is able to fight stereotypes that women face on a daily basis. This painting was also very special in the way that it reminded me of the lost solider Vanessa Guillen.

November 15, 2021: Presentations - Ruby Chacon

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.

November 8, 2021: Claudia Zapata - Avril Rincon

I thought Claudia Zapata’s essay on The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics was very eye-opening. It reminded me of the importance of technology and the implications it had on Chicano art. For many years, Chicano art has been known to be displayed as 2-dimensional: work on paper like print making and paining. However, the downside to this is that its not as easy to mainstream to the community compared to a virtual piece. In addition, Chicano art has been a hallmark for fighting against injustices and being a symbol for resilience in underserved communities. Because it is such a central role to this, it makes sense why so much of our art is on paper; it is much easier to carry around a poster than to be carrying your computer monitor around. Zapata does bring up a good point in saying that new forms of art don’t, or shouldn’t at least, replace old art. With the brink of the 21st century, digital art allowed us to reach more people and in turn, Chicano art was able to have a bigger, lasting impact not only within the Chicano community, but also for the general public. For example, Chicano artist Barbara Carrasco’s work being portrayed on the Spectacolor light board in New York was a big achievement. At that time it was not common for work like hers to be featured on such stages that even Cesar Chavez himself couldn’t believe it. The next big thing was the web. This was a major technological trade for art, because now not only was Chicano art being able to be spread throughout the communities, but so were the artist’s stories. Their background, who they were, and what they represented was only a click away. Through these mediums, including media, Chicano artwork was transformed and evolved into a vessel that more people could relate to.

November 1, 2021: Chicana Futurism - Avril Rincon

One of Xandra Ibarra’s work that really stood out to me was a photography series called Lo Norteño, 2008. The series consisted of three photographs. The first one depicted a man inside an empty pool seeming to be resealing or flooring the bottom of the pool.The second picture was something that looked like a construction site within a very urbanized city. These orange metal bars that looked like ladders, were spread out in the opening of the site. The last picture was a woman on her front yard, behind her fence that guarded her home. However, the woman’s face didn’t really seem like she was happy, rather the way that she was grabbing the fence bar made it seem almost as she felt trapped. Throughout all these pictures, a common theme that I picked from all of them was the struggle of being Chicano on this side of the border. Since the title of this piece is called Lo Norteño, I automatically thought of it as the North of Mexico, meaning the US. In all the pictures, it is demonstrated that life can be hard and often feel as we are trapped despite living in the land of the free. In the second picture, this can be the depiction of someone’s neighborhood, where they are surrounded by polluting companies and other industrialized features. It is in these conditions that many of the working-class live in. Besides the poor built-in-environment, the man in the first picture is seen working under the hot sun, doing some work on the floor pool. While this does demonstrate the resilience and hard work ethic that many Chicanos have upon coming to this country, it also shows that sometimes the working conditions of many can be unfair. Life is hard though, and sometimes by being immigrants to a country, one has to suffer more sacrifices to allow for the next generation to succeed. Sometimes even within our homes, one can feel out of place, prisoners to a capitalist society - putting it in symbolic terms to the women behind her home’s fence. A question I have of her work is, what inspired her to pick up on sculpture work, specifically the pieces where she shows workers’ clothes in vacuum air-tight bags?

October 25, 2021: Papel Picado - Avril Rincon

Carmen Lopez Garza was a very interesting artist in the way that she portrayed alternative visions of Chicano familial, communal, and cultural practices. As an intermediary between the art world and the community, she established a commitment to always remember her community despite the institutional and societal forces that had a violent and burdening affect in her histories. She does this in her image called La Feria en Reynoso, 1987. This image really stood out to me not for its colors but also because of how relatable it is in a symbolic way.  Although I don’t really live in a borderline town like her image recounts, I do feel as my life is a spilt between Mexican and American lifestyles. In her image, she presents what she remembers when she would go to a fair in a Mexican border town. She drew three booths each which contain their own variety of goods from Mexico. There is also this sense of a duality and mixing of cultures by the way she writes her signs: “Sodas, Coca Cola”, “Fresh, Limon”. The frequent switch between English and Spanish displays the close relations between both sides despite this bringing its conflict of its own. In my life, such coexistence of cultures was something that I was always proud of, but I didn’t really see the implications it had until I grew up. Just like that old saying, “ni de aqua, ni de aya”, where one is never American nor Mexican enough to fit in, this was an identity crisis I had to overcome. But in Garza’s image, she is able to celebrate not only our differences, but also our hybridity in culture, by showing lots of color and people smiling as they are shopping. I really like how she incorporated all different types of factors such as food, clothing, music, and craftsmanships like vases.

October 18, 2021: Rasquaschismo - Avril Rincon

Rasquachismo is quite literally when we repurpose used or old materials into something new that can be of use. It’s a strategy formed by the working-class to do the most of what they have. This “making do with what is at hand” mentality does not only highlight what Rasquachismo is, but it also comes with this “underdog” hindsight. Besides its physical attributes, it also represents the codification of Chicano culture, where we could be fregados pero no jodidos - be down but not out. It’s symbolic for using it as a form of cultural and political resistance, where we incorporate strategies of appropriation, reversal, and inversion, as told by Gonzalez. He presents it as the artistic process of selection and combination of materials. This is because many of these things are found in within our homes and community, which in turn creates objects imbued with new meaning. This can partially be an explanation as to why some people, not matter how old or beaten up an object is, will never throw them out for new, “better” ones because of the ties and memories they have bound to the object. Through Rasquachismo we are able to display our culture and and an attitude rooted in resourcefulness and adaptability. An example of this in my own family is that we reuse yogurt family size cups for salsas. There are so many times that I go into the fridge thinking that I am about to eat yogurt, only to be disappointed, but not surprised, that there is salsa in it instead. At its heart, Rasquachismo is our way of displaying our own cultural wealth. Like this we are able to pass down the traditions and stories that come with reusing everyday objects. In my example, I have been able to learn more about my Grandma, because she used to also use yogurt cups for salsa, and every time we do this, it reminds us of her and her story. In essence, it’s a way to keep our culture alive through the cleverness and resourcefulness of our raza.

Bibliographical References Abstracts - Avril Rincon

Celeste De Luna

https://sfai.org/alumni/celeste-de-luna/

This article on the Santa Fe art institute website gives insight into Celeste De Luna’s work and her background story. As an alumni of this institute, she has done a guest presentation at the school and has her art displayed throughout. This article also describes various achievements she has, such as being an owner of an art collective, having her prints featured in books, and holding artist awards.

Andar, Kourtney. “Celeste De Luna.” Santa Fe Art Institute, 6 Aug. 2020, sfai.org/alumni/celeste-de-luna/. 

https://esperanzacenter.org/artists/celeste-de-luna-art/

In this piece article on the Esperanza Center website, it provides an extensive biography on the Luna. Besides this, it is unique in that it contains a first-point-of-view excerpt from Luna herself, where she describes what her art means to her and the statements she fulfills and displays through her pieces of art.

Sanchez, Graciela. “Celeste De Luna Art.” Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, esperanzacenter.org/artists/celeste-de-luna-art/. 

https://wsworkshop.org/event-artists/celeste-de-luna/

This exhibition catalogue highlights some of Luna’s work and provides a brief introduction to her achievements and background. Some art displayed on the website includes “Woman Fence” and “Citizen Quilt”.

Walling, Lauren V. “Celeste De Luna.” Women's Studio Workshop, 4 Dec. 2018, wsworkshop.org/event-artists/celeste-de-luna/. 

https://journal.malcs.org/artistas/celeste-de-luna/

This very descriptive exhibition catalogue showcases multiple pieces of Luna’s art. It provides for each one the title, dimensions, year, media, and an analytical description of the piece. All of this is published on a Chicano journal.

Alemán, Sonya M. “Celeste De Luna.” Chicana/Latina Studies, The Journal of Mujeres Activas En Letras y Cambio Social, 4 Feb. 2021, journal.malcs.org/artistas/celeste-de-luna/. 

Virgin de Guadalupe - Avril Rincon

The Virgin de Guadalupe personally doesn't have much of a significant meaning to me as it does with my peers, but growing up in a Latinx community, I have become very familiarized with her. In my community there is this catholic church that does a parade every year where they carry the Virgin de Guadalupe on an altar and sing songs, while people dressed as apaches dance with drums and maracas. I see her image painted on a couple of Mexican restaurants as well, a display of art that I believe helps them believe that their business will prosper.

My parents initially grew up Catholic when they were young, so they used to have pieces of art of her displayed throughout their homes in Mexico - I believe my dad had her on a golden chain once. My mom was more well-versed in this area, so she would in addition go to misa every week and pray to her. But upon arrival to the US, my parents converted to Christianism and the Virgin de Guadalupe no longer was a significant figure in our household, but now rather the cross and Jesus Christ. Growing up Christian myself, my perspective towards the Virgin de Guadalupe is what the Bible says, a woman who gave birth to Jesus, His mother here on Earth. Besides this, she doesn't really hold a position of praise or faith in my family, as we were taught from the Bible that the only being worthy of worship is God Himself.

Living in LA though, it is nice to see the interpretations that people have of Virgin Mary displayed throughout the city, whether that be with murals, sculptures, or even clothes. In the stores I also see her on candles and calendars. I think this was probably my first exposure to her, as I didn't grow up in a Catholic church, so I never really saw her up in a church altar until years later when we were invited to a Catholic wedding. Overall, I respect her person and recognize that she plays an important role in the character development and identities of many people in my community.

Celeste de Luna

2. Korina Esther Moreno

3. Isabel Martinez

Rincon, Avril

My name is Avril Rincon and my preferred pronouns are she/her. I am a 3rd year Molecular, Cellular, & Developmental Biology major, but I am recently switching it to Human Biology and Society. My interests in research are very broad within science, but recently, I have joined a lab and have been studying the morphogenesis of microridges. I collect embryos from zebrafish and take images of the outer layer of their cells to see how fingerprint-like protrusions, that are found on their cellular surface, develop at different stages of development. Besides this scientific research, I have delved into more interdisciplinary research this past year by studying intersections of public health and the environment. We studied particularly indoor air quality and how that relates to the built-in environment that the community lives in. We found that our surroundings have a direct impact as to how the quality of air inside our home is. Some factors include living in denser cities with more buildings and traffic, the socioeconomic demographics of an area, the type of home it is, and the type of appliances found in homes. Within our research, we did find that there are disparities within air quality conditions and outcomes, meaning more affluent areas tend to have more healthy levels of indoor air quality compared to more underprivileged areas. These findings highlight the importance of public health, in terms of better understanding the interactions between the community and underlying social determinants of health. I am pursuing a minor in Chicano Studies to better understand the history and knowledge behind Chicano culture. I am super excited to take this course as we delve into Chicano art, hopefully we'll be able to make some art project of our own! The readings look pretty interesting; I really like the ones with pictures to better visualize the art. Looking forward to the quarter!