NEWS: WEBSITE LAUNCH!
Our new juntosart.org website is up and running! This was all made possible through the hard work by website designer, Alex Macias; the website development team: Erica Panetta, Diana Molina, and Rebecca Gomez; and, our website sponsors:
Craig Feronti, Juntos Art Association Board President
Carol J. MacGuire Foundation
Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the federal CARES Act
Oscar Moya, Juntos Art Association Member
Our Board President, Craig Feronti kindly offered matching funds to sponsor the website. To donate, we are collecting donations on the website.
BOOK RELEASE
Image Credit: Diana Molina, Icons and Symbols of the Borderland. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 2020, page 36. The book is officially available and mailed to each artist/contributor featured in the pages! We hope you enjoy your copy and share your excitement with friends and family. Copies of the book may also be purchased through the website, and a percentage of the sale will support Juntos Art Association's outreach programming. Please contact us directly for a discount on large orders. Schiffer Publishing is kindly offering a book giveaway contest, please follow this link to enter.
In Memoriam: Rudolfo Anaya, 1937 - 2020
Image Credit: Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Latino Center. Gaspar Enriquez,Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya, 2016, Acrylic on paper, NPG.2016.100
Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya passed away on June 28, 2020. Born and raised in rural New Mexico, his ancestry was tied to the Southwest and would be a major influence on his writing. In 1952, his family relocated to Albuquerque and he graduated from Albuquerque High School in 1956. He went on to earn a B.A. in English and American Literature and two master's degrees in English (1968) and Guidance and Counseling (1972) from the University of New Mexico. Anaya worked as a high school English teacher in the Albuquerque public schools from 1963 until 1968. It was during the Chicano civil rights movement when he emerged as a writer, publishing his first book Bless Me, Ultima (1972), a semi-autobiographic novel set in rural New Mexico during World War II. The novel has been acclaimed for its lyrical evocation of the New Mexican landscape and its use of dual languages. The novel has been translated into eight languages and a motion picture adaptation in 2013. Over his course of his career, spanning nearly five decades, Anaya wrote epic poems, short stories, mysteries, and children's books. He has received major awards for his books, he founded the creative writing program at the University of New Mexico, and he received the National Humanities Medal in 2016 from President Barack Obama. In 2015, the National Portrait Gallery, commissioned Gaspar Enríquez a create portrait to commemorate Anaya that would be the museum's first Latino portrait commission. Anaya will be remembered for generations to come through his powerful writings and he will certainly be missed as he touched so many lives.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: CELIA ÁLVAREZ MUÑOZ
Image Credit: Celia Álvarez Muñoz
This month we are pleased to feature conceptual multimedia artist Celia Álvarez Muñoz (b. 1937 in El Paso, Texas), who was awarded the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts by the Art League Houston. We wish to congratulate her and her commitment to the visual arts.
Image Credit: El Límite, 1991, 16 × 20". El Límite is a layered work about the emigration routes, via railroad, from Texas to California and beyond into globalization. It envelopes the working-class Chicano coming out of the Depression to serve in World War II, an experience that, if he was lucky, expanded his world. In railroad language, El Límite means maximum cargo.
Álvarez Muñoz had a strong female influence (mother, aunt, and maternal grandmother) growing up when her father was deployed to Alaska and Germany during WWII. She studied at Texas Western University (now University of Texas) in El Paso, with a concentration in Advertising, Printmaking & Drawing. She then earned a Certification for Art Ed while teaching in the El Paso Independent School District. After relocating several times to different parts of the country, Álvarez Muñoz and her husband and their two small children returned to Arlington, Texas. In 1977, she enrolled in graduate school at North Texas State University (NTSU; now University of North Texas) in Denton. There she took courses with the artists Vernon Fisher (b. 1943) and Al Souza (b. 1944), who influenced her conceptual practice across mediums, from artist's books and photographs to installations and public works. Her work taps into her childhood memories of growing up along the Mexican border in the aftermath of the Great Depression and highlights her bilingual and bicultural heritage with variations of language, text, puns, and double meanings.
Image Credit: The life, work and process of alumna and acclaimed Texas-based contextual artist Celia Alvarez Muñoz (’82 M.F.A.) is the subject of a book by Roberto Tejada, associate professor of art history at the University of Texas. Available for purchase. She is both artist and activist and her work details the experiences of living in the physical as well as the psychological and political border zone. Álvarez Muñoz has received numerous awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants (1988, 1991) and the Honors Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts from the Women's Caucus for Art (1995). Her work has been exhibited widely in group exhibitions, such as the Whitney Biennial (1991), and in solo presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1991); Dallas Museum of Art (1991); Capp Street Project, San Francisco (1994); and University of Texas at Arlington (2002). Her work has been acquired by public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
ART ANNOUNCEMENTS
Image Credit: Courtesy of Victoria Suesum
Victoria Suesum has a solo exhibit “Folk Pop: Victoria Suesum’s Tienditas” at the Butt Paperwork Gallery at the McNay Museum of Art from August 2020 to January 2021. She is part of the national juried exhibit "Town and Country: 2020 Texas Painting Symposium Juried Exhibition" at Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts in Lubbock, TX.
Image Credit: Alejandro Macias,Water that Divides and Consumes, 2019, Oil, acrylic, graphite on paper, 26x40"
Alejandro Macias: Hidden in Plain Sight will be on view from July 3 – July 25, 2020 at the Presa House Gallery. Hidden in Plain Sight investigates Macias’ personal socio-political trepidations, and the deeper struggle of migrants across the border. Macias explores broader themes of underrepresentation, misrepresentation, and misconceptions of marginalized people along the borderlands across the United States.
We would like to welcome one of our newest members, Jacob Muñoz from El Paso, Texas. He has been designing for over a decade and teaches graphic design at the University of Texas at El Paso in the Art Department. He earned an MFA from New Mexico State University in Graphic Design. Muñoz's designs touch on current event issues of identity politics, race, and culture.