ARTIST

ARTWORK

NOTES

Baca, Judith (1946)

·          Judith Baca received her bachelor's degree from Cal State Northridge in 1969 and her Master's degree from the same institution in 1979.

·          She studied mural painting techniques in Mexico and has used her art to not only as an expression of her Chicana identity, but as a medium for serving her community.

She said, "Show me what you do."  So I took out what I could find that was realistic, some drawings, and showed them to her.  She said just one thing, "What's it for?"  I was devastated by that one little remark. . . Her question really guided me from that point on.  I knew I had to use this particular skill I had, but that it had to be connected with something that had meaning or purpose beyond my self gratification and could speak to the people I cared most about, my family and community. (Cockcroft 78)”  - http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/chavez/jb_bio.html

Bing, Bernice

“For me, all nature is pure, and purely abstracted; the spiritual union links both the seen and the unseen forms of nature. I would like to think of myself as a disciple of the art of Chinese calligraphy. “

WAAW  http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/   

Chan, Gaye

“My work centers around immigrant narratives, in particular, how they relate to the location of Hawaii, where I live and work. I occupy the uneasy position of being both the colonized and the colonizer. My interest in immigrant narratives lies precisely within this conflict.” AAWAA – WAAW  http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/   - http://www.aawaaart.com/

Domingues, Diana

Connected by interfaces, bodies communicate with electronic memories of the computer, and thus experience "virtual hallucinations" in real time. I offer an electronic trance through digital technologies in a dark room that simulates a cavern with illuminated images projected on a wall where by interacting, people can give life to the environment. I architecturally simulate a cavern to offer a space where people can have "visions" with shamanic powers, as the cavern is one of the spaces where shamans go to meet the spirits. Their visions are like images of light that appear on the walls. According to researchers, shamans believe that the stone has power.  http://www.latinart.com/aiview.cfm?id=17

Fields, Anita

My work is an extension of my intuitive self and represents the search for expressing the essence of my being. My work is narrative, relating stories from the realm of personal experiences. It is about clarifying elusive, intangible moments of time, truth and place.

Ideas are informed by memory and recalling instances of certainty; the comforting smell of cedar smoke, sounds heard during the quiet arrival a new day, and moving over the earth on ground I know my grandmothers moved on before me.

The clay is soft , malleable and easily articulated into symbolic elements alluding to the presence of nature and human emotions. Shaped, pressed and arranged forms serve as metaphors for personal and cultural ideology.

My creative efforts are how I acknowledge what I know to be true. It is the language I employ to define my place within culture and the world.

Anita Fields, Osage/ Creek Oklahoma http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Peterson/Fields.html

Fuller, Meta Warrick

Born in 1922, Fuller has lived in California all but the first two years of her life. She studied philosophy at Berkeley, and discovered she loved to work with metal and stone while welding in a Richmond, California shipyard during World War II. In 1949 she married Robert McChesney, and much of her writing, including the book A Period of Exploration: San Francisco 1945-1950 (which has been called "one of the key documentary works in the field of modern California art history") has been published under the Mary Fuller McChesney name.

 An ardent feminist who makes art that is consciously "anti-patriarchal," Fuller found that in the 1950's, women artists, as well as west coast artists, were not taken seriously. More recently she has said that "women artists [. . .] are often viewed as eccentrics, or perhaps merely quaint, or worse, plain uninteresting, depending upon husbands to support them, and painting privately for themselves."

 http://www.sla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Ressler/images/fig28sm-m.jpg

Gama, Esperanza

She describes her works as being influenced by the Renaissance tradition and the Surrealists. By her own description, they fall into the class of Magical Realism. A versatile artist with a broad range of artistic perspectives and expressions.  http://www.esperanzagama.com/index.html

Garza, Carmen Lomas

Carmen Lomas Garza was raised in south Texas. She was inspired to take up a career in art by the traditional paintings that her mother executed. Lomas Garza's folk art style is used to capture a broad range of subjects. In the 1960s Lomas Garza chronicled events she recollected during the Chicano movement. She has also done a series of paintings of Mexican American family life.  http://www.carmenlomasgarza.com/

Ha, Yeung

Life is like a giant chess board--one maneuvers and tries to make the best move. Sometimes one wins and other times one loses, regardless of one's best efforts.

Aerial views of earth have always been fascinating elements in my art, and they have been occupying themes for my prints for many years. Naturally, I love maps. Recently, I started using maps with printed monotype grids (like a chess board) as a stage for my personal narrative. "1-2-3-4"

Evolved from an assemblage of found and collected objects and memorabilia. These elements are metaphoric and their importance lies with the associations brought to my mind, communicating its subtle complexities. This work is about my life experiences, and history through two cultures--East and West, and about my relationship with my family. It is a communication between reality and memory.  http://www.aawaaart.com/Pages/V_artists/Ha.html

Hibi, Hisako

The struggles endured during World War II can be taught from an outsider's perspective, through textbooks and lectures that preach history in a one-way glance at the events now viewed in hindsight.

An exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles captures the frustration and anxiety of being incarcerated in an American internment camp and looking outward.

"A Process of Reflection" features the work of the late Hisako Hibi, a mother, artist and issei - first generation Japanese American woman - who painted over 70 works which reflect her three-year experience at the Tanforan Assembly Center and Topaz internment camp in Utah.

"She had visionary kinds of paintings," said Kristine Kim, project manager and assistant curator of the museum. "Immediately after the war she recognized their significance. Because people couldn't have cameras in camp, her paintings were important as a view of what things were like."

Her paintings, which range from snowy winters in Topaz to mothers bathing children in the laundry room, depict the harsh realism she endured and her struggle with inner dissonance. http://www.scu.edu/deSaisset/exhibits/hibi.html

Ka, Charlotte

My Song: I preserve and recast my heritage through art - the complexities of the past combined with the rhythms of the present. I give thanks for blessings of innovative creative energy sustained by magnificent legacies. I conjure layered images – African and American; urban and rural; sophisticated and raw – using multiple patterns, embellishment and collage, coupling naive visual patterns with sophisticated methods of painting to achieve a sense of “folk elegance” and mystery. http://www.entitled-bwartists.com/   [click “Artists Profiles”

La Marr, Jean

National Museum for American Indian - Jean LaMarr (Paiute-Pit River, b. 1945) http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/indian_humor/toc/index.htm

 "Ms. Coyote is a contemporary response to Native American narratives of Coyote, the trickster, who is generally portrayed as a male persona, forever seeking to satisfy his curiosities and sexual appetite. Sometimes Coyote becomes female or other disguises to get what he wants. These actions exemplify the follies of life, and set a standard for proper human behavior for tribal communities. Many stories portray the female Coyote, as the wife, homely and not attractive, which drives the male 'Coyote' to look for more beautiful females outside the home. The mask, Ms. Coyote, reinterprets the female persona as a hip, sexy character and offers another view of a trickster."  http://www.plainsart.org/exhibits/artin2worlds.shtml

Lee, Betty

“I would like to insist that being American does not mean white American, and that Asians, as well as other under-represented groups of people, have long been a part of American culture and American history. In my art, my goal is to hopefully project some of the complexities of race and culture that are not always apparent. “ AAWAA WAAW 4 more images http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/   - http://www.aawaaart.com/

Lopez, Yolanda

Yolanda Lopez (born:1942) Yolanda Lopez was born in San Diego, California. She views her art as a tool for political and social change and has labeled herself as an "artistic provocateur." her Virgin of Guadalupe series, including the most famous rendition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in running shoes, are explorations into the power and dynamism of women.  http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lats41/kerb/gallery/exhibitions.html

Lyon, Rebecca

I was born in Cordova, Alaska and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. I am part Alutiiq (Aleut) and Athabascan. I have always had a love for the visual arts. I have studied art at the University of Alaska, Anchorage but I am a self-taught metalsmith. I have chosen copper and glass as my media. Copper has been used by many different Native cultures in Alaska. My works in copper and glass make an artistic and creative connection with my native heritage. To me, glass was copper's perfect partner. They compliment each other, the solid and the liquid. I hammer each piece of copper by hand on a cedar board paying special attention to the number of times each mark is struck. www.ciri.com/newsletter/aug2002/02touch.html

Marrero, Ana Rosa Rivera

Quick time movie

Ana Rosa Rivera Marrero’s work examines historical architecture and its frequently colonial and patriarchal implications. As a Puerto Rican feminist, she engages sexual politics as well as mythological and religious symbolism. Her newest project, Carrucho, investigates the meanings of the shell: armor, home, religious symbol, sexual metaphor, ubiquitous Puerto Rican animal, and Caribbean icon. WAAW  http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/

Muranaga, Reiko

"Reiko Muranaga, a painter who began her career just three years ago, shows the expertise of an artist who has been working much longer. A technical language interpreter by day (she speaks fluent Japanese, German, and English), Muranaga heads to her studio each evening to create her large paintings (54" X 54"). She seldom uses paint brushes, instead, she prefers palm fronds, sawdust, hairbrushes and even her hands. Don't miss her 40' scroll of drawings and sketches." --- San Francisco Arts Monthly, November 1992. http://www.reikomuranaga.net/index.html   

Since the above was written, Reiko's work continues to evolve and expand. The painting above is one of her most recent of the 12 oil paintings from 2000.  See her other oil paintings, line drawings, and giant scrolls by clicking the buttons below.

Naranjo-Morse, Nora

Nora Naranjo-Morse, born in 1953, is a potter and a poet with an unusual world view, though she lives a traditional life at Santa Clara Pueblo. Her pointedly satirical figures and huge conceptual installations make her one of the most exciting Indian artists of her generation.

"For hundreds of years Pueblo people have treasured their powerful relationship with clay," writes Nora in the preface to her book of poetry, Mud Woman. "Veins of colored earth run along the hillsides of New Mexico, covering remote trails with golden flecks of mica. Channels of brown and scarlet mud wash across the valleys, dipping and climbing with the sprawling landscape. Intricately woven patterns of clay fan out under the topsoil, carrying the life of pottery to the Pueblo people." http://www.nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/indian_humor/toc/index.htm

Nayda Collazo-Llorens

Nayda Collazo-Llorens, a painter and installation artist, is an accomplished printmaker. Since 1999, she has presented digital and video projections. Through her background in graphics, Collazo-Llorens has acquired a sophisticated understanding of the impact of repetition, variation, layering, and sequencing. Her newest work, From the Memories Series: Dream (2000), takes her deep into the heart of the psychoanalytical interests specific to video. El Museo (file) http://www.elmuseo.org/herethere/home.html

Shields, Pamela

·          Native American Photographer

·          collage that combines objects and images that recall specific aspects of her community's history

·          (Blackfoot/Blood Band), who was born in 1956 in Salt Lake City, Utah and grew up in Calgary, Canada, currently lives and works in San Francisco, California WAAW  -  http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/   -  http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/Jensen/NAW.html

Stout, Renee

Memories of the Old Fortune Teller is Stout's earliest piece about Madam Ching. The man and woman she depicts may be Ching herself and a lover; it is significant that Ching is represented by a watercolor simulating an old photograph whereas her lover is pictured in an actual photograph. This captures well Stout's insistence on keeping Ching mysterious, timeless, without a fixed identity. The crystal ball further historicizes her and begins to suggest the different systems she might have used to channel spiritual energy, from Hoodoo formulae to tarot cards to astrology. All are employed in healing relationships, the primary focus of Madam Ching's work in Stout's formulation. The choice of tarot cards to frame the images of a man and woman in Memories of the Old Fortune Teller reinforce this, with the lover's card carrying two meanings: "If the card should fall upright in a reading it means yearning, beauty, perfection, harmony, or the beginning of a possible romance. If the card should fall upside down in a reading it indicates infidelity, interference, the possibility of a wrong choice or frustrations in love and marriage." This dynamic tension between the positive and the negative and the role of chance in determining which way the cards will fall is at the heart of divinitory practices and at the heart of Stout's efforts to tip the scales favorably.

From M. Berns, Dear Robert, I'll See You at the Crossroads: A Project by Renée Stout,   http://www.uam.ucsb.edu/Pages/stout_museum.html

Swentzell, Roxanne

"My mom potted so the clay was right there where I saw it all the time. I had a speech impediment so I had to communicate in other ways, and I started making figures that would depict what I meant. I hated going to school so I made a clay figure of a little girl crying to explain how I felt. I made hundreds of these figures. They were tiny, but they got more elaborate as I was pinching them solid in the clay. In junior high school I began to hollow-build the clay figures because they got larger.

"I would say I am still communicating with figures. I want to symbolize women, and my culture, and humanity. I am trying to say things to the world, and the response has been amazing! My pieces are crossing cultural and all kinds of boundaries. People from all over the world see things in my pieces. It has been very, very exciting to me, the ultimate communication. WAAW http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/

Tom, Cynthia

“Lee Ho” Angel Island mug shot of my mother's paternal grandmother. Redefinition" is part of an ongoing series exploring my Chinese heritage, its effects on my life, and those around me. This particular painting represents an image of myself far beyond my comfort level. However, the "process" has had a great impact on my self-confidence as an Asian-American female. My paintings have become archaeological digs and the act of painting has become a vehicle for me to explore the meanings of stories from my family. http://www.aawaaart.com/

Wong, Anna XL

The two people who influenced and shaped me the most were my parents. I see a strong part of each of them in me. My father was born in Canton, China in the year 1918. He left China in the late 1930's as a young man under a false name in order to qualify for entry into his new homeland. He was allowed into the United States because many years earlier, his grandfather had settled in Oakland where he was running a small grocery store. When he arrived he lived with his aunt and uncle and was attending school when WW II broke out. My father immediately enlisted and was stationed in the Philippines. His work there was exclusively espionage which was always dangerous and which required him to be ever vigilant and on the move. My father was a complex man whose contrasting qualities allowed him to survive with his wonderful human outlook intact. He always felt akin to the earth and would do his tai chi outdoors and take time to admire the nature around him (Wong, Anna XL, con’t) when he would go on his numerous rural outings. He was an easy-going, carefree person who was full of laughter. He always had plans and schemes on how to become a successful entrepreneur, but more often than not, they never came to fruition. More information WAAW http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/

Wong, Flo Oy

I am a narrative mixed media installation artist who focuses on ordinary people and their extraordinary stories. I use rice, rice sacks, joss paper, bilingual English and Chinese text, as well as recycled and found objects to visually talk about the human condition. As an American artist of Chinese descent, I retrieve metaphors from my ancestral culture to aesthetically examine my sense of bifurcation. I seek transformation of family, cultural and collective issues that are emotionally corrosive. WAAW – AAWAA - More images/info http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/   - http://www.cla.purdue.edu/WAAW/

Wong, Maree

Color, energy, drama, spontaneity, wit and humor are the inspiring elements that spark my imagination and fuel my creative process. My Paintings are like storyboards: very personal, complex and visual, dramatically showing Life's contradictions and polarities at play. My mixed media works of Art fall into two Worlds--the serene, traditional Asian genre--and the Theatrical-Surreal-Expressionist genre

In addition to being a Painter, I am also an established, active Jewelry Design Artist, doing private showings and exhibits throughout California and the East Coast.  Born 1953.    Detroit, Michigan  Current Residence    Marin County, California

Inspired by my travels and love of world arts and cultures--my one-of-a-kind jewelry creations are expressions of the Spiritual, evoking a sense of timeless beauty and sensitivity. http://www.aawaaart.com/

Weems, Carrie Mae