Aldama House /©2011 Atelier Visit.

Resurrected Histories: Voices from the Chicano Arts Collectives of Highland Park

From the late 1960s to the early 1980s Highland Park in Northeast Los Angeles was home to the influential Chicana/o artists collectives Mechicano and Concilio de Arte Popular, which included among their members some of the most important Chicana/o artists of their time: Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Judithe Hernandez, Teddy Sandoval, Gilbert Magu Lujan, Leo Limon, Barbara Carrasco, and John Valadez.  In stark contrast to the upscale galleries of West Los Angeles, where an individualistic conceptual art was taking root, Highland Park was becoming home to an art form that emphasized the themes of community, cultural pride, and economic struggle inherited from the great Mexican muralists of the previous generation.  The work of these collectives on the East-side housing projects of Ramona Gardens and Estrada Courts and in numerous public spaces and institutions across the city ignited an explosion of Chicana/o muralism in L.A. in the 1970′s, turning L.A. into the mural capital of the country.  Connected with the Chicana/o nationalist movement, these artists were working toward the visibility of the Mexican American experience and the problems of justice and equality faced by members of their community.  In order to have maximum impact, the artists deliberately located their collectives in Highland Park, a predominantly Latino/a neighborhood, so as to engage and inform the people who stood to benefit the most.  The work was not only a visual representation of the cultural and political life of a silenced group, but, in its size and visibility, a defiant occupation of urban space and an inexpensive form of mass communication as well.  For a city and a school system devoid of authentic information about its Mexican cultural past, these tactics were vital for creating a sense of united cultural identity among a population that had been denied that right, and for communicating a vision of what the American democracy could ideally be.  The very production of the murals envisioned and enacted democracy by involving multiple authors and community members.  Moreover, since murals could not (easily) be moved to museums or added to personal art collections, their very existence was always subject to wider public debate, public funding, and the mood of society.   In these ways, this work was a democratic and participatory art form like no other.  But these organizations were also made up of highly accomplished individual artists with their own voices and styles, who nevertheless could not get represented or promoted by mainstream galleries.  Their stories raise a number of questions about how artists contend with balancing personal visions and political obligations.  Telling their story exposes a tension between two different ideas of democracy that is particularly resonant for artists from disenfranchised groups: on the one hand, the obligation to work toward visibility and equality within society, and, on the other, the unencumbered right to their own expression.  Now fifty years later, the surviving members are in a critical place to look back and reflect upon what they had hoped to achieve, what they feel they did or did not accomplish, and what were the benefits and sacrifices of viewing themselves as cultural workers.

Resurrected Histories: Voices from the Chicano Arts Collectives of Highland Park from Atelier Visit on Vimeo.

Today very few Highland Park residents know about the historical presence of these collectives in their neighborhood.  Local public schools lack arts programs, there are no major cultural or art institutions in the area, and nearly 40% of families live below the poverty line.  Just as the collectives of the late 60′s and 70′s worked to give people their history, we would like to do the same.  Via video-recorded oral history interviews with the living members of these collectives, we propose to construct a multi-voiced history of the arts collectives of Highland Park which will be edited into a single film.  We have planned the completion of the video to coincide with an exhibit featuring archival material about Concilio de Arte Popular, a separate project being curated in our gallery by Professor Sybil Venegas of East Los Angeles College.  The interviews will be playing on a screen in the gallery in conjunction with the exhibit of the archival material.  We seek to involve our community in this project in several ways.  The questions posed to these artists will be collectively developed by our project staff, humanities consultants, consultant artist and informant, John Valadez, and by a select number of local high school students who have been involved in some of the public art programs of our partner institution, L.A. Commons.  In doing so we want the film to be guided by the community’s own need for information about its history.  When the video is shown publicly in our gallery, viewers will be asked to write their impressions and to answer a few questions which seek to uncover how current Highland Park residents view the role of public art and murals in particular.  After this opening night, the video will also be uploaded to our website where it will be made permanently available.  The webpage will have an interactive element that will enable viewers to continue making comments about the artists’ oral histories.  Instead of a static, formal document, then, we wish for this film to be the center of an ongoing conversation.

Source:  resurrectedhistories.com

Sonya Fe being interviewed at old Mechicano Art Center location/©2011 Atelier Visit.

“Resurrected Histories” has an exciting update. After scheduling, filming, editing and fine-tuning, KCET’s Departures, has video clips, photos, and essays available online for viewing.

Richard Duardo being interviewed at Modern Multiples studio/©2011 Atelier Visit.

In an effort to share resources, KCET partnered with our grant group, Avenue 50, on our documentary project, “Resurrecting Histories.” As a part of this partnership, we have contributed to KCET’s “Departures” in their neighborhood profile of Highland Park. Our grant group helped to contribute to the “Departures” segment titled, “Painting the Walls,” which will find available online links to below:

PLAN DE AZTLAN

THE CHICANO MORATORIUM

CORAZON PRODUCTIONS

CENTRO DE ARTE PUBLICO

MECHICANO ART CENTER

CHISME ARTE

SHIFRA GOLDMAN

YO SOY CHICANA

RECLAIMING THE CITY

 -Abel Alejandre November 2011

For Alfred Arteaga

Day and the presence of day

Unlike its positive

White and the presence of content

Like its nemesis and incomplete waste

Released to stitch together

The feet

In the light of midnight

Much later

Morning

Outside the city of encounters and

The malice of encounters

In the day

The city without motion

Without a noisy stop of night

The city of night

Without water

With a little asphyxia

The profane is

Now and then here

If that can be taken

Like grief or time

Unlike a possible wait

Living is demonized

Later forgotten

In the city of day

Yet slices whole

The pattern that erases

What is

As false and unimportant

Unlike being moved to sing and hide

Insignificance exposed

Stops near death

Gloria Enedina Alvarez

I dreamed I killed a seal last night.
I sat in my umiak
my muluks in two inches of water
and my hands high above my head.

Harpoon in my hands
I asked him politely if we may eat him.

I wrapped my parka close against me
and pulled him ashore.

My body split in half
I gave thanks to the Creator
as I sat at the table and
spoke my native tongue
for the first time and
all the Inuits ate for the next
500 years.

Marie Huskey

11/5/02

steel ripens into bird of paradise

April smelted from gifts in the periodic table

& sweat soaking a master drummer’s forearms

insinuating tambourine stitches single dancers

into a circle hissing with the alchemy of unlocking shackles

shivering in the friction of transformation

iron into sequin   slavery into jewelry

forged from bees wax   rhythm   passion

haunting crossroads at Ile Ife

meaning unsheathed from metal

stunned as a cymbal consecrated by a master’s sticks & splashing sweat

reverence in paint   arch in stirred pigment

stem of holiness at the unguarded root

of dangerous witness & committed living

sip from a woman’s tilted neck

blush at her curved shoulder

bow at her foot poised between heel & toe

of what elements are dancers made?

combustion   concussion   offering

believing hands

ripening flower  smelting April

finding haven in the fusion of still movement

Peter J. Harris

9/10/05

Artist Myron Kaufman in home studio/©2011 Atelier Visit.

Brooklyn born Artist Myron Kaufman shares his time with Atelier Visit to discuss his work and thoughts on art. The interview/dialogue was filmed in his Pasadena studio in  2010. Mr. Kaufman’s work has been exhibited at Project 210 and Offramp Galleries in Pasadena. -Abel Alejandre

Interview with Myron Kaufman from Atelier Visit on Vimeo.