Carmen Lomas Garza

Carmen Lomas Garza
Born 1948
Kingsville, Texas
Nationality American
Known for painting, illustration

Carmen Lomas Garza (born 1948) is a Mexican American artist and illustrator. She is well known for her paintings, ofrendas and for her papel picado work. Garza's paintings, especially, have achieved "widespread appeal."[1] Her work is collected by galleries, museums around the world[2] and also by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A primary school in Los Angeles, the Carmen Lomas Garza Primary Center, is named in her honor.[3]

Biography

Garza was born in 1948 in Kingsville, Texas.[4] Garza's mother was a self-taught artist who created pen and ink drawings and painted.[4] Garza loved watching her mother paint, and felt like what her mother did was magic.[5] Garza also helped her grandmother create embroidery patterns using paper cutouts as a young child.[6] The influence of her mother's and grandmother's art-making was very strong and by age thirteen Garza had decided she would be an artist.[7] Her parents encouraged her to pursue her interests in college.[5]

Garza first attended Texas Arts and Industry University (now Texas A&M University, Kingsville).[8] Her parents had been involved in political organizing through the American GI Forum, and Garza followed in their footsteps by organizing Chicanos on her college campus.[9] In 1972, she received a BS in art education and a Texas Teaching Certificate at Texas Arts and Industry.[8] During her undergraduate studies, she decided that it was important for her to create art that would be understood by people of all ages.[10]

Later, Garza received a Master of Education in 1973 at Juarez-Lincoln/Antioch Graduate School and a Master of Art in 1981 from San Francisco State University.[11]

Garza currently lives in San Francisco, California.[12]

Art

The initial roots of Garza's artwork lay in her family, to whom she is close, and in the Chicano Movement.[9] Garza later wrote that the Chicano Movement nourished her goal of being an artist and gave her back her voice.[13] She says that her artistic creations helped her "heal the wounds inflicted by discrimination and racism."[13] Garza also feels that by creating positive images of Mexican-American families, her work can help combat racism.[14] Her choice to use personal and family images to combat racism is a departure from more political works by many Chicano artists.[15] The creation of her own narrative, rather than one that is forced on her, however, speaks against racism on its own.[15]

Garza incorporates little figures (monitos) in her artwork.[14] The figures and their interactions with the spaces they inhabit show how Chicano/a identities are connected to the places she paints.[16] Her paintings are also idealized and the figures become archetypes.[1] Her flattened figures and sense of space create "a sense of immediacy," letting the viewer interact directly with the subject matter.[15]

Garza has made Day of the Dead ofrendas, or ritual alters, to honor not just family members, but also people from history. She has made ofrendas for Frida Kahlo, Doña Sebastiana and Tenochtitlán.[6]

Carmen Lomas Garza: A Retrospective was Garza's first retrospective and featured work from the mid-1970s to the present. It was organized by the San Jose Museum of Art, where it was on view from January to April 2001; it later traveled to the San Antonio Museum of Art, South Texas Institute for the Arts, Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and the Polk Museum of Art.[17]

Awards

1996 Pura Belpré Award honor[18]

Quotes

"Every time I paint, it serves a purpose--to bring about pride in our Mexican-American heritage."[5]

"I felt like I had to start with my earliest recollections of my life and validate each event or incident by depicting it in a visual format."[13]

References

  1. 1 2 Pérez, Laura E. (9 August 2007). Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities. Duke University Press Books. ISBN 9780822338680. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  2. ↑ "Carmen Lomas Garza". Scholastic. Scholastic, Inc. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  3. ↑ "Facilities Services Division". Los Angeles Unified School District. 13 October 2011. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  4. 1 2 Meier, Matt S.; Gutiérrez, Margo (30 December 2003). The Mexican American Experience: An Encyclopedia. Greenwood. pp. 155–157. ISBN 9780313316432.
  5. 1 2 3 Today's Tejano Heroes. 15 January 2000. pp. 15–18. ISBN 9781571683281. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
  6. 1 2 O'Hara, Delia (October 2014). "Celebrating the Spirits". American Craft 74 (5): 38–41. ISSN 0194-8008. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
  7. ↑ "Carmen Lomas Garza". American Immigration Council. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
  8. 1 2 "Carmen Lomas Garza". Smithsonian American Art Museum. 1996. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  9. 1 2 Mesa-Bains, Amalia. "Chicano Chronicle and Cosmology: The Works of Carmen Lomas Garza." In Lomas Garza, p. 16.
  10. 1 2 Kernick, Cassie (3 April 2014). "Artist Carmen Lomas Garza to Speak at Sheldon for New Acquisition". Daily Nebraskan. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  11. ↑ Garza, Carmen Lomas (2012). "Resume Selections". Carmen Lomas Garza. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  12. ↑ Stetson, Daniel E. "Empowering the Familiar: A Foreword." In Lomas Garza, pp. 7-8.
  13. 1 2 3 Lomas Garza, Carmen. "A Piece of My Heart / Pedacito de Mi Corazon." In Lomas Garza, pp. 11-13.
  14. 1 2 "Carmen Lomas Garza". ¡Del Corazón! Latino Voices in American Art. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
  15. 1 2 3 Dura, Lucia, ed. (2006). Texas 100: Selections From the El Paso Museum of Art. El Paso, Texas: El Paso Museum of Art Foundation. p. 52. ISBN 0978538307.
  16. ↑ Saldívar, José David (December 1997). Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520206823.
  17. ↑ http://www.sjmusart.org/content/carmen-lomas-garza-retrospective
  18. 1 2 3 "The Pura Belpré Award winners, 1996-present". www.ala.org. American Library Association. Retrieved 8 September 2015.

Works cited

Further reading

External links

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