Category Archives: People of Color POC
Who Will Take a Page from Sandy’s To Do List
These are the principles that underlie the work that Sandy was doing.
- I believe in justice for all
- I believe in lifting up the disadvantaged
- I believe in dismantling unjust criminalization systems
- I believe in equal protection under the law
- I believe in ending poverty
- I believe in ending systemic racism
- I believe in ending the war economy
- I believe in ending ecological devastation
- I believe in building unity across lines of division
- I believe in a moral narrative that is concerned with how society treats the marginalized
- I believe in transforming the political, economic and moral structures of our society
- I believe in working toward non-partisan goals
- I believe in sustained moral direct action
- I believe in nonviolence
Celebration of Life and Legacy
Tuesday September 13, 2022 5 pm – 8 pm
First Interstate Center of the Arts
334 S Spokane Falls Blvd Spokane WA
The family asked that instead of flowers donations be given to the Carl Maxey Center 3114 E. 5th Avenue Spokane WA 99202
OUR VOICES OUR VISIONS
Reply
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Uriah De La O
Biography
Uriah De La O, 13, is an enrolled Spokane Tribal member and descendant of the Makah Tribe. He attends Shaw Middle School and loves to spend time sketching, hanging out with his paralyzed Frenchie Hoola, and playing video games. His art is inspired by nature, fictional characters and monsters, and his family.
He helped illustrate this 2-minute digital story (Cocoon Woman). It’s a traditional indigenous story used to process and discuss grief.
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Ruben Trejo
Biography
Ruben Trejo (1937–2009) was born in a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad yard in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father, a mixed Tarascan Indian and Hispanic from Michoacán, Mexico, and his mother, from Ixtlan in the same Mexican province, had found a home for the family in a boxcar while his father worked for the railroad. Trejo became the first in his family to graduate from college, and in 1973 he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he began a thirty-year association with Eastern Washington University as teacher and artist.
His isolation from major centers of Chicano culture led him to search for self-identity through his art. Influenced and inspired by such writers and artists as Octavio Paz and Guillermo Gómez-Pena, he explored a dynamic, multidimensional worldview through his sculpture and mixed-media pieces and created a body of work that deftly limns his identity as an artist and a Chicano. Throughout his long teaching career, he worked tirelessly to create opportunities for young Chicanos through tutoring and mentoring.
Artist Statement
“Multiple backgrounds can form such two- and three-dimensional ideas that they take you to the brink of lunacy, but I have used this rich background and ethnic landscape for creating art. As a student at the University of Minnesota, I often wondered what the study of Russian history, Shakespeare, English literature, or Freud . . . had to do with cleaning onions in Hollandale, Minnesota, picking potatoes in Hoople, North Dakota, or visiting relatives in Michoacán. This diversity of ideas can produce a three-headed monster or an artist, and I chose the latter.” -Ruben Trejo
https://marmotartspace.com/art-for-sale/ols/categories/ruben-trejo
https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295990040/ruben-trejo/
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Pok Chi Lau
With high intentions to go fishing, Pok Chi Lau has traveled to 36 countries, and he has ended up with more photographs than fish at the end of his fishing poles. Through the years, he has come to the realization that in the history of China, stretching from around 1700 to 1950, her poor coastal fishing villagers experienced some of the first Diasporas to different parts of the world, especially Southeast Asia.
He was born in British Hong Kong in 1950. Since 1967, Pok Chi Lau 劉博智, has been a documentary photographer. His work on migration focuses on the Chinese Diaspora in the Americas, Cuba, and Malaysia and now Myanmar. For a decade, he also documented the Diaspora within China, where rural peasants/migrants from all over China moved to seek factory work in coastal Made-in-China regions.
Pok Chi Lau is Professor Emeritus of PhotoMedia in the Department of Design at the University of Kansas, which has provided him with numerous international research opportunities, and through which his work has been exhibited and published broadly. Besides his work as a documentary photographer, Lau’s work as a poet and essayist has led him to collaborate with professionals in East Asian studies, journalism, ethnic studies, anthropology and social science.
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Miguel Maltos Gonzales
Miguel is an American born artist from San Antonio, TX currently living in Spokane, WA. He’s a Chicano photographer documenting the bicultural lifestyle of living in a monocultural world.
The illustrated people of color are drawn onto the photograph to resemble a memory, and the yellow circles represent the indigenous heritage. His indigenous ancestry is symbolized as sunbeams guiding the person in the image. They are known as the people of the sun of the Yanaguana river. This land is now known as San Antonio, TX. Drawing colorful people is symbolic of how people of color are vibrantly expressive as they navigate an ethnocentric world, and at times still struggling to connect their internal mixed colonized family history. Mixing film photography and digital illustration represents the mixing of American and Mexican cultures. Balancing the existence between multiple languages, social practices, and at times a conflicting self identity. As each generation develops there is a language loss, and disconnection from ancestral ties. The Chicano arte (art) of Miguel Maltos Gonzales hopes to reconnect Mexican culture, American upbringing, and honor the indigenous heritage from pre colonization in each composition for future generations to know they will always be connected to their ancestors. Somos de aquí y de allá (I am from here and there).
Film photography captures the beauty in the land, and preserves the world we all share for generations to come. Each photograph is a finished image derived from a trusty fifty year old 35mm camera. The illustrated people of color are drawn on to the photographs to resemble a memory. Drawing colorful people is symbolic of how people of color are vibrantly expressive as they navigate an ethnocentric world, and at times still struggling to connect their internal mixed colonized family history. Balancing the existence between multiple languages, social practices, and at times a conflicting self identity. As each generation develops there is a language loss, and disconnection from ancestral ties. The Chicano arte (art) of Miguel Maltos Gonzales hopes to reconnect Mexican culture, American upbringing, and honor the indigenous heritage from pre colonization in each composition for future generations. In the Pacific Northwest, Miguel is developing ¡Taller Firme! to express his arte y cultura.
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Joel Gaytan
Biography
Joel Gaytan is a Mexican artist who is a BFA graduate from Eastern Washington University (2018). He has been a practicing artist from a young age. More recently his work consisted of 2d figurative artworks such as drawings and paintings. Joel’s artwork portrays familiar scenes and experiences from his upbringing, as he feels that Latinx voices or perspectives are often dismissed within the mainstream. In his work he creates scenes within the lives of his subjects often giving his art a candid or voyeuristic approach. Creating familiarity with the viewer is an important motivation for Joel’s art and equally it is essential to produce a more inclusive space for a variety of experiences.
Artist Statement
The works from this body of work are meant to bring recognition to the Latinx community within Walla Walla, Washington. The images represent the strength of a community that is in many ways a seminal part of this city, and yet is often underrepresented. Flipping through the pages of a publication such as Walla Walla Lifestyles might give you a slight indication that there is a lively Latinx community that resides here, why is that? It is extremely frustrating being part of a community where the social construct fails to acknowledge the work of a minority community, yet willing to reap all the rewards for said work. The drawings in this series are meant to symbolize people, stories, and experiences that I have seen, heard, and lived. There is more to this town than the renowned, superficial wineries, and the posh downtown will lead you to believe. I would like the Latinx community to know that their participation in the Walla Walla valley is valued, appreciated, and an integral part to the growth of this city.
OUR STORIES OUR VISIONS
Afaria Duke
man mythical poet, hue man
Artist Statement
I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.
I channel my medium for creation through various tools such as, paint brushes, thread, metal, wood, earth, and copper.
My motto “my art 🖼 does not fit into one box 📦”