Carmen Lomas Garza, La Curandera, ca. 1974, hand-colored etching and aquatint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, 1995.50.60, © 1974, Carmen Lomas Garza

“This show charts the rise and impact of the Chicano graphics tradition which really blossoms with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but which remains vital today,” summarizes Spencer Wigmore, Assistant Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper at the Carter.

“Many of the artists would have seen themselves as activists as well as artists. They used their creativity to develop innovative and aesthetically complex and rich artworks that were meant to support and raise visibility for social justice in the United States while projecting the new political and cultural consciousness for people of Mexican descent,” said Wigmore.

Carlos Francisco Jackson, Breaking the Fast, 1968, 2012, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Drs. Harriett and Ricardo Romo, 2019.50.2

The 74 artists featured in the show, most of whom are of Mexican descent or active in the Chicanx network, utilize colorful graphics to draw attention to larger social issues of the last five decades such as immigration rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and, most recently, the Black Lives Matter movement. Additional themes include the shifting notion of the term “Chicano”, a term originally adopted by Mexican Americans in the 60s and 70s in response to the social and political oppression caused by Caucasian American society and has evolved to “Chicanx”, the current and more inclusive designation, and the importance of community as it relates to the network influence of Chicanx mentors and print centers on art culture.

“The Carter is thrilled to be able to bring such an important, landmark collection of Latinx art to our North Texas Community,” said Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director at the Carter. “With historic and contemporary work that deeply resonates with social issues we’re grappling with today. We hope this exhibition offers visitors new ways to engage in important conversations for our time.”

¡Printing the Revolution! will run through May 8, and a free, daylong celebration of the exhibit is scheduled for April 23. In addition, Sandy Rodriguez: In Isolation, an exploration of the healing power of art in the age of COVID-19, runs through April 17.

Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975), Detail of Covid-19 Sunrise with Rabbit, 2020–21, hand-processed watercolor on amate paper, © 2020–21 Sandy Rodriguez

Although she prefers burnt orange to purple, Hannah Bush is happy to call Fort Worth her new home. She began freelance writing a few years ago to break up the monotony of her 9 to 5, and to prove to her parents that she’s making good use of her journalism degree. When she’s not hanging out with her cat, Hannah can likely be found on a patio with her husband, talking about her cat.

The post Celebrating Chicanx Artists at the Carter first appeared on Tanglewood Moms.

In spring of 2020, as the magnitude of the pandemic came into view, Rodriguez began her residency as the inaugural Alma Ruiz Fellow at Joshua Tree Highlands, situated at the junction of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts. The rapid news cycle of rising COVID fatalities and nationwide demonstrations against police brutality made Rodriguez feel deeply connected to a lineage of artists who have translated historic conflicts amid past pandemics through their work. In the slow, monastic setting adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park, she turned to the vocabulary of the surrounding desert as a guide for her response. Contextualizing her ongoing investigation into the methods and materials of painting across cultures, she collected botanical specimens linked to Nahua and Cahuilla healing practices for respiratory ailments, which she then processed as handmade paints with extracted plant colorants and mineral pigments. Within the first seven weeks of her stay, she produced over 60 objects capturing both the natural and sociopolitical environment she experienced through plant-life studies, portraits, landscapes, and maps that meditate on desert life amid a pandemic. Exhibiting the works completed through the course of her residency for the first time, alongside materials used in her paints and paper, Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation illustrates the painter’s creation of channels for healing past and present trauma through the recovery of Indigenous knowledge systems.

Images [left to right]: Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975), Humwichawa / Arbol de Josue / Joshua Tree / Yucca brevifolia, 2020–21, hand-processed watercolor on amate paper, © 2020–21 Sandy Rodriguez; Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975), Nocturne for Robert Fuller and Malcolm Harsch, 2020–21, hand-processed watercolor on amate paper, © 2020–21 Sandy Rodriguez; Sandy Rodriguez’s artist materials in the studio at Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, 2021, photography © 2021 Elon Schoenholz

At the intersection of social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production, Rodriguez’s work magnifies the ways in which knowledge—both personal and societal—is captured, shared, and preserved. Focusing on language and visual art as tools of documentation, she draws inspiration for her paintings from colonial-period writings and documents, namely the Florentine Codex. Authored by a Franciscan friar and Nahua scholars in the mid-16th century amid a pandemic, the encyclopedic work records the history and practices of the Indigenous cultures in Central Mexico, as well as the flora and fauna found in the region, with both Nahuatl and Spanish text and over 2,000 ink and watercolor illustrations.

Exactly 500 years from the time of conquest, the works featured in Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation activate this history by documenting the ecosystem of Rodriguez’s quarantine—with annotations in Cahuilla, Spanish, Latin, and English—and amplifying Indigenous insight on the medicinal and aesthetic significance of local plants and pigments. Further reclaiming precolonial art history, the exhibition highlights Rodriguez’s use of amate paper, a symbol of Indigenous culture that, having been used for codices and artworks, was destroyed and outlawed under Spanish rule. Rodriguez’s works are painted on amate paper made from bark and spices, by a fifth-generation Otomi papermaking family in Puebla, Mexico.

Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975), Detail of Mapa de Califas—Atrocities, Isolation and Uprisings (in progess), 2020–21, hand-processed watercolor on amate paper, © 2020–21 Sandy Rodriguez

“Rodriguez’s work is a stunning synthesis of Chicana identity, ancestral iconography and techniques, and contemporary subjects,” said Maggie Adler, Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper at the Carter. “She creates simply extraordinary works on paper, from the sophistication of the paper itself to her innovative use of handmade, historical pigments, and continues to ascend as a leader in the contemporary arts dialogue. Through this exhibition’s timely address of the year’s monumental events— as well as the museum’s recent acquisition of her large-scale watercolor map tracing sites along the U.S.-Mexico border where migrant children died in U.S. custody—Rodriguez deeply enriches the Carter’s engagement with some of the most pressing issues both within and beyond the arts.”

Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation is organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and curated by Adler. Exemplifying the Carter’s mission to tell new and important stories of American art, Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation is part of a yearlong exhibition program celebrating the museum’s 60th year of collecting, preserving, and exhibiting the finest examples of American creativity.

The post Carter to Debut New Work by Sandy Rodriguez in Solo Exhibit first appeared on Tanglewood Moms.