Oscar Martiínez - His Home - 7/5/88
that artists were basically doing.
It's something that I see again and again.
You know artists don't like to talk about their ego.
The fact that whenever you do anything, you're dedicated to it and you put hours after hours with not immediate gratification.
There's not an audience going great, you're doing a beautiful job, you're doing great and stroking you and what have you.
The only thing that's abstaining you is that you feel good about what you're doing.
When you feel good about what you're doing, you have to have an amount of ego involved.
You're getting pleasure that is completed to yourself.
That you're not sharing with somebody else at that moment.
And artists tend to want to be by themselves.
They don't want to be around anyone around.
By the same time, part of that ego also demands that you get recognition.
And the recognition that you want is a kind of recognition that comes from the art world or the mainstream.
Because that's when you really begin to make it.
That's when you begin to sell.
Galleries begin to open, articles, and you can make a living as an artist.
When you do murals, you get some very special recognition.
Which is very unique in itself.
And that is you get the recognition for people in the neighborhood.
You get the recognition from kids.
You get the recognition from people who walk by.
So the funny part about doing a mural is you get immediate gratification.
You get up there and you start drawing.
Is that a mural? So right away you feel good.
People are every day coming by.
You stand back and be somebody who is like, oh I like that.
And the beautiful part is people go by there every single day.
And the mural slowly grows in them.
Because they see piece by piece by piece by piece and so on there.
It's not like they go on there and there is the finished product.
People see the finished product, not the process.
So the process becomes important.
The problem is that fine, you get that kind of gratification from doing it, which we enjoy very much.
But then the mainstream does not recognize mural painting as a serious artistic expression.
Especially because you're doing it in its politics.
You're doing it in your movement.
Besides, who's making money out of it? The collectors are not making money out of it.
The galleries are not making money.
So it's like when you do it, you put it down.
And it's actually what art should be all about.
Because when I paint, I want as many people to see my artwork.
You know? The reason I would like to see it on magazines is because a lot of people are going to see it.
It's also equal to this thing.
And you're about to communicate.
Yeah, shaking away people's things too, right? Maybe changing their ideas a little bit.
Even indirectly or unconsciously.
So that's what a mural tends to do within the community.
But then you don't get the big reviews or the person comments, oh, so they're mural, social place.
You should come over there and see it.
And all the art critics don't do that.
They want it to be recognized because it helps you survive.
It helps you pay to buy the supplies.
The shoe and board supplies are very expensive.
And so you are worth so more people have it.
Then you also want to do something that is public.
You want to share what you have with a large amount of people.
And murals is a beautiful way to do it.
But the murals are not going to give you the seriousness or artistic recognition that a canvas is.
Then if you start painting what you paint on murals, they become the same.
And that is because of politics.
Your issue is not recognized as serious.
Because it becomes public art.
And public art, unfortunately, in the mainstream, except if it's done like sculptures for the large building, you should get a hell of a lot of money.
The rest of it is meaningless.
Because you're doing it for the people.
Who cares for the people? Who is making the box? I was also thought about that in terms of the kinds of painting that's done.
It seems, at least the early 70s murals, tended to be really specific, recognizable images.
So I was wondering if some artists had sort of a more personal sort of abstract style that they used to make their own visual painting.
Well, you have to remember at that time there was also an unspoken competition among the murals.
Everybody went to see what everybody else was doing.
So even if people say, oh, that's really nice, you can hear other tones.
And you get real flattered when somebody copies something that you did.
When large amount of people, a lot of the murals would come and really compliment you how good it was.
Or when they ignore you, they also felt good.
Because that made them maybe they felt apprehensive.
But doing a mural in Bosnia and Herzegovina is really a unique experience, let me tell you.
First of all, you have to be able to communicate.
Most artists communicating on the campus is not with people.
Or to communicate with themselves, I think? Well, you have to be able to do that.
You have to have a clear thought.
But you have to communicate with a number of people that usually don't have deals with.
You have to have a community organization that's very producing and convince them to become the sponsors.
You have to go to the wall and the owners and convince them that what they're getting is something that's going to be an improvement, it's going to look good, it's going to look good for the neighborhood, it's good for them, maybe it has a backing of the neighborhood.
And then you have to go to meetings and then you have to go back home and do the sketch and draw it in proportion to the building and make it look nice.
Go back and present it to them.
To make sure that they feel that they're part of the approval of the process.
Because if they come more out of the process, the more they're going to help you.
Especially getting the supplies and paying for doing the mural, which is a very expensive proposition.
It's tremendous, tremendous hard work.
The mural is not, it is fun, but it's not the fun that you say, wow, this is really, I mean, it's work.
You break your back out there.
One, you have to, I remember rubbing my hands with bleeding and what have you.
I should clean the wall with this wire pieces.
You really scrub it off and make sure it was clean.
Then you had to put this chemical to prepare the wall and the whole thing where you put the weight.
You had to scuff it, you had to take it out, set up put the few things, get up there and do it, right? And you take it apart at the end of the day, like it, clean everything up, the brushes and everything, go home and collapse.
So you had to take the scaffolding apart or something? Yes.
Well, some people did not, but there was a lot of situations where you had to take it all apart and be gone.
Some neighborhood you can like it and keep it there and nobody would touch it.
But not all neighborhoods were like that.
There was a few projects where you had to take the whole thing apart.
Then you come back the next day and you put the white part and you finish the white part and you start drawing the drawing and you had to do it in proportion.
That's a lot of work in itself to make sure everything is, you know, the way that you come down, move back, come up, do some more, come down, move back and that process continues.
And when you start painting, you had to do the whole painting and wash out colors to see how the combination looks So if you had to make changes, it would cost you a lot of money.
And again, you come in in the morning every day, take the scaffolding apart, put everything up, go up there, do whatever you're going to do, come down, take a rest and you have the sun hitting you.
Okay? And you did that all day long.
Sweating and what have you, eating a little bit.
I mean, my mind can tell you I used to come and collapse from doing murals.
Then we had a mural over there by a church where we decided to do panels.
Oh, that's Diversity, right? Yeah.
No, not Diversity, the other one.
It's a church by Sheridan, close to Broadway.
Oh! It's in the back of the church.
We did it on panels because the priest didn't want to see the mirror in front.
And of course Jim, who's a Japanese artist, and my software, the one, Jim, had dark glasses, looked very suspicious, had long hair up to here from college, right? So these two guys had another mirror in front of the church, go away.
So I decided to do it on the back in panels.
And the panels had to be, they were just, ah, ah, ah, can't even tell you how many.
They had to be taken all in, taken out, put on the floor, and we painted on the floor all day long with backs like this.
And then if you wanted to see what you were painting, you had to run to the top of the building and look down.
Okay? And when the panels were white, there was all that reflected light that just killed your eyes.
That was hard, hard work by two people every single day.
Take the panels out, put them back in.
I mean, and those panels were heavy.
Is that mural still there? Still there.
The priest got, the priest got a, ah, ah, priest got a pretty size when they put it in the front.
They said that he was a shame.
And it was a mural put in the Hispanic and the Japanese history next to each other to show how similar they were.
In terms of coming to the United States.
What church is this? Can you remember? Oh, it is.
So that is tremendous, tremendous hard work.
Then you have to, if everything goes right, and of course you only have the summer to do it, you don't have no more time.
You only have about a month to months to get the whole project finished.
Then you can have a big party, a big celebration.
If you're lucky, maybe the local press will come and cover it.
Maybe super lucky if sometime you make a little story on it.
So the good gratification is that all the neighborhood, the big party.
I mean one of the parties that, the wall I did over here on Norr Avenue began through the party.
And they have ah, ah, pigs, drinks, music, the whole thing.
It was a big, everybody was shocked.
And it was a very dangerous place.
Because there's a lot of people being killed there.
And the gangs, fights, and what have you.
I mean going there and doing a mural there, you're putting your life on the mark.
And I was there most of the time by myself.
But most of the time I was there by myself when we first started.
Which one was this? And it's folding in Norr Avenue.
Have you seen that one? I'm sure not.
Is it still there? It's still there.
I think it has something small but that's about it.
And the real funny is I painted three heads looking up on the top.
And the gang thought there were three people who got killed.
But they thought I was glorifying the three people who got shot.
Which meant they were going to protect it.
You know I never say no it's not bad.
That's convenient number three, right? Yeah.
It hasn't been touched whatsoever.
How did you think that spot was doing it? It was the only wall available in the area.
And I wanted to do a mural last summer and actually I think that was my last mural.
And what was the theme or topic? I think all concerned, my concerns and Guerrero's concerns was we wanted to do something that deals with the neighborhood area.
You know the prostitution people taking.
And also Plan 21 was a big thing.
So we did something with Plan 21 that was supposed to renovate the neighborhood which meant that a lot of people would be displaced and stuff.
It's just to give an impact of the mural in that area.
But it wasn't any glorifying the worker, the community and that type of thing.
That's another thing about murals is that most of the themes they'll deal with issues, community issues.
And unfortunately there wasn't an opportunity to do murals for the sake of art and nothing else.
It was go there and do something that I think only the first muralist in Chicago, what's his name? Castillo was the only one that managed to do a mural with no thing in terms of relating to the neighborhood.
And the painting up there looks exactly like his painting at the studio.
But still it was an artistic expression.
Art for people to appreciate and enjoy.
With the mural group the philosophy was that it has to have a message.
It has to do with the neighborhood.
It has to be a social political type of thing.
And when you go to almost all those murals they all have that social political themes.
And that was the main grain Walker, myself, John Weber, everybody, Sharpe and so forth.
They all have the social political theme.
And that was pretty much agreed upon by everyone.
Right, but the only one that came after that that I saw that I think had that theme was the one that Weber did on North Avenue with the big flower sculpture.
See once they got into doing sculptures because the media limited itself, they were not able to get into heavy duty things that were in the neighborhood.
That was another part that they created from the whole idea of beautification.
And of course, a lot of modern art is not filled with art, we're supposed to beautify but it's supposed to have a certain visual impact.
There's a certain artistic impact, whatever.
But it's not there to make things look pretty.
So as soon as you say beautification, you're giving a little word that artists don't like.
So people didn't want to get too much into that.
And then when you get into the little part with the little sculptures with its public art, it's very nice, but it doesn't have a strong political social message.
Unless you say, well it has a social message.
It's being interior and the people can play it, but it's not that clear.
Also there was the other problem is that many of the artists, including John, even though he's been recognized nationally, to some extent internationally in terms of one of the muralists, was not getting the due respect in terms of his canvas.
John doesn't have galleries running after him.
It is now that some galleries have opened the doors here and there.
Well the fascinating thing is the work that he's beginning to show in galleries is not the work that he was doing that was social political in nature.
I mean he used to go to large pieces that was all strongly political.
And the little synotomics in like the murals, the little stronger.
So you had that pressure as well.
Then of course as some of the key leaders in the mural world began to look and said yeah murals are great.
I've been doing them for a while, but I need to also get recognition for it.
I mean as an artist they begin to worry more about their canvases and slowly they begin to leave the mural behind.
And what's happening is you have less muralists, active, strong muralists going at it than ever before.
Of course you still have the Walker who lost a mural a year or so.
You still have what's the other black artist? Katarandes, those are murals.
Yeah, but those artists have been represented by galleries and those artists are doing really, really well.
They've been claimed for being great masters.
And the reason they're getting a claim is because they've been at it for such a long time that eventually people begin to take notice.
I feel like that show of the Walkers that was traveling around, but it was in the social sciences building of UC.
So if you decide to go totally public art, the chances are that you're never going to be recognized by the mainstream as a serious artist.
So what I personally did is I felt it was very important for me to make the contributions and to do something.
I always felt very compelled to do something for the neighborhood, for the people and so forth.
And I gave free classes at the murals, I gave free artwork, gave away t -shirts and what have you for a long time, continuously.
And now I'm getting to the point where some non -proposal said, will you give me a piece of artwork? I said, yes, I will.
You pay 50 % of the cost and another 50 % you give away.
And the reason I do that is not taking it serious.
Anything that is really I hate to say, is not taking it as being important.
Just say, yeah, I'm willing to donate.
You have to pay for 50 % that will give me back the supplies and so on my time and work and the rest of it you can keep.
And I tell other artists to do the same.
Because we cannot contribute to give, give, give, give and then get very little back.
For instance, I know artists who contribute hell of a lot from their time, work and artistic talent, what have you, to community agencies.
And when those community agencies were able to get the money to pay, they were the last one that saw it.
You never think of paying anyone you can get for free.
Other professions may not be asked to contribute as much to the artist to examine people.
To understand what an artist does or think of their work.
Most people have no problem paying a band to come and perform.
They may try to get so many surprises and they may try to get one for free.
But overall they're willing to pay a band.
But they're not willing to pay an artist to show their artwork.
And that's something that I did.
We had a festival called Festival Por Igua.
And they asked me to do the exhibition to put it together.
The artist has got to be paid.
We had to give them at least $50 for their inconvenience in bringing the artwork so they can go ahead and frame a piece at one, get some lunch.
So all the artists got to be paid.
Then years later I did a show with the Pan American Festival.
I did a show with Harry's Bank.
The second time, the following year I was not able to pay them, but they all got a colored portfolio.
And they got their resumes done so they can use it.
See the difference? Here I am trying to give something back to the artists for us having the honor of showing their artwork.
A lot of people didn't like that.
And you know artists pay to show their artwork in fairs? Sure.
Artists pay to show their artwork.
See what I was trying to get is people thinking you're going to benefit by having the art here.
They transport things of that nature.
Hey, let's give something to the artists.
Why not? We pay the musicians.
The musicians also make records and sell them.
So the artists make paintings and sell them.
What's the difference? You still pay the musicians.
And then what they're trying to do is say well the artists can come and show their artwork but we get a percentage of what they sell.
They never ask the musician well you can come and play and promote yourself at our festival but you know watch yourself the record we want a percentage of it.
And of course the problem is artists don't control their money.
Investors, galleries, and no artists control their money.
So really in a way I can see there's a big difference between public art on the walls like the murals.
I think that public art is fantastic.
Some great pieces that enhance values and artistic.
But what happened in Mexico when Derozco, Ezequitos and Andres Rivera was doing that big movement.
I can read you an art history book.
They have the little thing, a little picture about Erozco, a painting or a mural and a little extra about the mural movement in Mexico.
That's all you get in art history.
So it was like some, and it was a major movement.
It was a very serious movement that has tremendous value.
Still the art world doesn't recognize it.
I think it's starting to move.
After you die, come on, look at what's his name? This guy, the bango.
Nobody wanted to show his work.
Now everybody is paying millions of dollars for their art.
Why does it take Picasso to paint African artwork to say well African work has a value? We should recognize it now because Picasso, a white person by the way, says it's okay.
African work always has its value.
It wasn't any better, any less when Picasso came to be.
But see how the world and mainstream, how it thinks.
That's why you have tremendous problems you have now in New York where now art is becoming that fashion.
You know how the fashion, one month everybody is wearing something that's going to change? But one month everybody is into Neo Geo, you know, whatever, and then next week everybody runs over here and buys over here.
And the next thing, the new wave is artists, well it's nothing new, it goes back way back when Michael Adams was people, is artists have people who this guy was an article that has a team of people, three or four people he pays to come over and do his co -paintings.
What will sell? He has another team of people who begin to develop the idea on the campus.
And then the artist, well sure he does, then the artist he comes and says okay let's do this, this next, he stands there where he's coming, but the next one comes in over here, okay there and there.
Next, guys making millions, making money left and right.
What about this guy, who just this guy who was doing an idea which I think is great, he was doing paintings of women who were contemplating suicide.
I thought that was great, that's a great subject matter.
How they look like, what's the intensity of a woman who's thinking seriously, didn't go anywhere.
So for a friend he went and did a little painting of a reproduction of the castle.
Everybody liked it, people could come and say will you do me a reproduction? You know what he's doing now? Reproductions of bread masters.
He's making an abundant of money, he just came on the art magazines, he has pictures of castles and other people, he's doing great.
Well don't you think, I mean in a way, I don't know, maybe I haven't adequate in view, but in a way you're really limited sort of by public taste.
Maybe you'd rather continue doing women contemplating suicide.
I mean in a sense, I can see where to make money.
You have to survive, well that's why.
You have to live by what people will buy versus what you maybe really are interested in.
You're limited by the market, but then who controls the market? The buyers, the family.
Most people who come into a gallery to buy a painting would come in and buy one painting for their apartment they want to have an original, especially now that you have a lot of Japanese I mean, I'm not happy with somebody's apartment, those kind of things.
Even if it's a non -person, but at least you've got an original, or local artist and what have you.
If I want, maybe if you have a Manchester floor, maybe I buy two, and that's it.
Those paintings will be like your furniture, wherever you go they go with you and their family.
Sears collectors buy a number of paintings.
And they have large spaces in their collectors to really show to all their friends, their business and what have you, and also they buy and sell.
And what a lot of times happens is that they decide well, this guy is moving up and selling a few paintings his name is Oscar Martinez, his family.
Let's buy! They come in and they buy like crazy.
I mean, I can't even produce anymore because they're sold even before they get to the market.
They already got all this, and the demand increases and people want my work.
And I cannot produce enough, guess who has a number of them that they can sell for, you know, up there in the prices.
Only pay $2 ,000 $10 ,000 a piece, $30 ,000 a piece.
Who's going to make the money? Everybody wants one.
It's not enough to go around hey, I have a few.
And they sell the pieces and they make a bundle of money.
And they make sure that you make it.
And in certain sectors it's a big fat in thing.
Do you feel you have to sacrifice your art for them? Or do you feel that's just sounding like a good question to ask? Well, my feeling, even when I was in college I had that feeling.
Because of the second amount of things I was thinking at that time, I felt that I was not going to paint things that were demanding of the market.
And the only way I could do that was by limiting my trying to paint, which is kind of sad.
And to have a job that I can support myself and I can tell everybody go to hell.
Not only pay a price, I mean everybody wants to go full time.
Maybe some of these things happen because Hispanic art is happening now and they're looking for people who are more mature.
It just happened that this gallery over here is happening to Paul Sierra.
Paul Sierra now is beginning to develop a demand.
It already happened to Orlando Roche.
But also one should get that momentum.
Once people start saying that somebody is good, it's almost like this movie that came out of something that rabbit.
It turned out it was a fantastic movie.
Story wise, it's not a big deal.
But once you get into that thing and it's good and everybody jumped into the bandwagon, Jesus, you know, you got the market.
And if an album knows how to use that to its advantage and begin to make his move and begin to look for an entrance in New York and carry that kind of fame that he's good, that he's good, that he's good.
In less than five years, that guy's going to be really, really involved.
And that's being in the right place at the right time.
It doesn't mean that he's the only one who's good.
He's open to the good artists.
This guy, the guy who's doing sculpture, 50 year old, great artist.
He's just playing by playing, sculpture by sculpture, by this small number of people who buy their work.
He's probably been at the right time, the right place.
And the funny thing that's happening is it's happening already in architecture.
The personality of the artist is just as important as the artwork itself.
Before you can make crazy artists and tell everybody to go to hell, the client would come and say you can go to hell, I don't care if you buy it or not.
And it was oh, that was cool, right? The artist is really an artist off the wall.
The artist has to be in good public relations, work as well, pick up the champagne, talk to clients, be nice, go to their houses, mingle with people.
I teach somebody like whatever, I don't think he's going to do that at all.
We've been having that conversation with him right now.
My sense is that he's really sort of the opposite of that.
He really wants to see his work.
Yes, as part of the ego, you want to share.
But if you look at John's work, the ones that he's showing around, it's not whatsoever what he used to do five, seven years ago.
He does a lot of work that has to do with his family.
He's very quiet, very good, very emotional, very spiritual.
But you don't see a strong political hit you on the face anymore.
Do you think he's torn about that? That he's the right recognition of his murals, of his private? John has always been very realistic.
He looks at what's out there, he analyzes it.
You have to remember, John is a historian.
If you forget that, someone like, I tell people, my background is in science.
I have a Bachelor of Science, not in art, in science.
He really does have more courses in science than I have in art.
And the same thing with John Weber.
He has talent, he's an artist too.
But people say, you can be to things.
Can you buy your lawyers from them for politics? That's a conflict of interest.
Some people say lawyers should be the one because they know the laws.
They're already biased, they already got opinions.
Maybe you need people who are not in law background so they can look at the whole aspect of things.
And also the sociological, moral part of it.
But you know what I'm saying? You need people who are people oriented.
But no, we say lawyers should be the one.
Could you tell us a story when we were on the mural tour? You told a story about a woman who came up to you and told you how much she liked you.
I did a very...that was my strongest political statement.
I wanted to go all out politically.
I felt at that time I was more radical.
All these people are scared to go strong.
Something I should show you that...
And everybody at that time was glorifying the U .S.
Which is nothing wrong with it.
But it appeared to me one time that this was so overdone and there were so many problems.
You know, they were homeless at that time.
It wasn't as bad as they can get the recognition it gets now.
Drop times was all over the place.
And everyone was doing a painting that was real bad and everyone was getting better now.
Lincoln Park over there by the next to the ballgame.
It's almost like an anti -Bicentennial mural.
And I don't remember if I called.
If I have the title, let's see if I can handle that.
But anyway, this guy was a sociologist.
I don't know if you've heard of him.
He did a book called Social Problems.
And he decided to use my mural.
Now the reason it's all messed up you can tell was that this older person decided to vandalize it because it was anti -...
The police looked a little bit like pigs.
Here's the eagle, the United States eagle with money all over the place.
This is a guy on top of this section here with chains grabbed all over the place.
And it is problems in the family, health, how they used to kiss in the games and what have you.
The killing, the cook has gone.
And you can tell somebody came up painting it on top of that and they put spray in certain areas.
Anyway, they decided to use it on the cover which is a hell of a compliment.
This is ACLU united by Congress.
So what was the story about the mural? Well this mural was there for a number of years.
I was using other formulas that are near from other murals.
And that is that we were doing, if you look at it, we were doing things which are pretty.
And safe and colorful and nice that everybody was going to like.
I decided to do dark, ugly, strong, depressing to get my message across.
And of course a lot of people saw the trains to go by there.
But anyway, this young woman at the last summer festival happened to come and see the exhibition by accident.
Came in and recognized my name.
She lived in the neighborhood.
And she came up to me and said, you know what, I've been dying to meet you for a very, very long time.
You're asking my things, right? And I go, ooh.
And she said, well you were the one who did the mural over there.
And she said, well I've been dying to tell you how much of an impact that had on my life.
I used to go by there every day and look at the mural all the time.
And that mural grew as I grew.
Not only just physically, but also intellectually.
And it's such a, I suffered so much when they painted it.
Because it was so much part of my life.
And it's fascinating how a painting, even something like this that was so strong and negative can have such an impact on someone.
That they felt good about something and that had an effect on them in terms of the way the soul, their itself things around them, questioning things.
And the mural that looked like this became something of beauty versus ugly.
Because it makes you think, it makes you expand, it makes you look for other things.
And I think that was fascinating.
After so many years, I mean 76 that's over ten years ago, that somebody would come up to me and say And she'll carry that mural with her always.
She was a white lady from the area.
Which is even for me was even more like, you know, because you said well Hispanic because my name is, you know, I like him.
So that was one example that I may like.
And I was That took me by surprise.
I was not expecting it that way.
And still people come up to me and say You were the one who did substance social media.
Or there was a conversation that I was sitting with someone about four years ago.
And we were talking, we didn't introduce ourselves, we were talking about things, you know, because the party was boring.
And then we started talking about art.
And I said what do you like about trans -bar? She brought the subject up.
And I said I like this, I like that.
And especially like this guy's work.
Some of the murals say yeah, who is that? And I say ask for Martinez.
And it's such an embarrassing moment.
You know, you get a rush like that.
Then you don't dare, you're so curious, you don't know more what you have to say about this guy, right? And then you go on and say well what is so interesting? And then you get more embarrassed because she had told you what she thinks about the guy in terms of his artwork.
And you are the person, right? So it is weird to put down a user's face in it.
And then they happened to me another time and did a mural in Champaign, Urbana.
I think it's the only, it's two murals in Champaign at the university.
One that is a very old mural done during the WPA.
And I was at a party someplace and I was talking to this person and he told me he went to Champaign.
So yeah, what do you like about Champaign? I like this and I like the cultural center.
And I stand in there and somebody comes and says he's the one who did it.
It's like you? You did it? And it's like yeah.
So those little things happen a lot.
I'm sure it happens to John where people really react and they feel close because they made with it.
I mean even though you want obviously recognition in a more wider public level.
I mean to get that kind of recognition, that in a way in some sense is more thrilling.
I'm not saying it's not going to be in a gallery, but to know in a sense that you've changed how people have lived their lives maybe a little bit.
But it's also a struggle that you have to go through.
It's almost like having the opportunities.
It's almost like what we're talking about is having the opportunity to do what your imagination allows.
To be able to show in galleries.
To be able to do some great murals.
To be able to interact with people.
I mean to have this opportunity.
When you have a system where they're trying to stop you from doing all of that.
Then you really begin to develop a struggle of opposites.
And then what you have to do is keep it in perspective.
And really realize what each of the things really are.
And be able to separate their political nature and what they mean so that you continue to keep your solid base on who you are and what you're all about.
This is something that I always tell people.
I don't allow other people to define who I am.
And once you define who you are then you have that plateau to do whatever you want.
Of course you're going to have the struggle that people are not going to allow you to do certain things.
But then that's part of the struggle of anything that you do.
So when you know what to define that's when you have this paradox where I'm an artist if I do murals.
The problem that I have now is I don't have time to do murals.
I would like to but I just don't have time.
So the choice was I wanted to do more HESO which is more realistic.
And then do the other social things that I do in my job.
That might change right? Well I think it would change.
I never had a thousand change in terms of my work being recognized and me having a niche.
It's more of a struggle than most of the people.
But that's part of the whole forming.
You add it and you add it and you add it and you know they kick you down and you get up and continue to fight.
What about you know when you work all day do you ever spend any time thinking about painting while you're working? How do you recognize it? Just shut it off.
One time years back one of the dentists who made a deal.
He was going to give me space in the basement get the supplies and I would do medical illustration for him.
Meantime since I had space during lunch I would run downstairs and paint.
A little sandwich on one side and hang with the other.
When I used to go down to the basement it would take me about a good fifteen minutes for me to be able to start painting.
I would start painting I would get a call from my secretary.
It was like ah! And then I couldn't go back.
So after going through that struggle I realized that something very interesting happened and I began to analyze and that's why I know about it because I didn't know why this was happening.
What I learned is that there's a chip I colored a chip and I heard that someplace I think.
Oh when I took Neuron out of me.
And what I mean by chip is people talk about art and being able to see.
Seeing is you hear that about art.
What does that mean? Seeing is very important.
It means perceiving something in a different mode of thinking.
It's almost like you get up in the morning and you have some problems or something and you're going to work and what have you.
You're like chipped somehow thinking differently with the press and the bow.
You win the lottery or something great happens and you're laughing and you're so happy what a great life.
And you paint and something happens.
I think it's more in terms of right, left, right, hemisphere.
What I do as a work is all left hemisphere.
One of the things that I have problems with is remembering people's names.
I tried to find out and I said what I have found out is most in a lot of artists who tend to be very absent minded.
An adult or a chipped has got to be one of the worst.
You're telling your name in five seconds and you don't even remember.
Not as bad but I'm bad as well.
And what happened was there was they needed to be at distance.
When I get up in the morning, take a shower and dress and put on my tie, I already managed to chip on one side thinking one way, understand the path is when I'm going to face, how to go about it, how to plan the day and how to deal with everything.
I'm content and I think I do very well at that.
By the time I did work and been traveling here, I already had chipped into my clothes.
For instance, I can give you a real funny and say that I was seeing someone for a while and this person knew me as an artist.
Making jokes about everything, doing things because she used to say I was crazy or weird and stuff like that.
And then I made the mistake, I invited her to a function which was political in nature.
It was cultural thing, it was very political.
And of course, I chipped into my political side which she never seen before.
So she saw me dealing with people in certain ways, talking about this and that, and she was a young woman and she was having problems and said what's wrong with you? She said there's nothing wrong with me.
I was not aware, I just didn't ask her, she comes second hand.
And then the highlight of the whole thing was we were standing by the door, mayor of Washington walked in, he came and said hi, ask her how you doing, how you doing, and walked right by and was like, you're not here.
I said, shit, how? It's my mayor, your mayor.
But the shot was, seeing the developed personality, how I'd say we'd go one year.
So there is, obviously there is a big difference.
And I think most artists that are able to do that said they don't want to bother.
We tend to want to get really sucked into the art and do it.
It's a different perception, it's a very interesting thing how in middle of the island it's different from the main population.
But there is a different people thinking that people can develop and they don't bother to develop their artists for one reason or another.
They're born or just developed one way and that's able to see the different realities.
So it doesn't, and then when you do murals, you're continuously fighting that and that's something that I'm getting back into the political, social versus the artistic, which they all can be the same.
But this political social demands that you have a certain way of thinking about yourself, your environment, and how you see art.
John Porter was very easy because he has a background in history.
Some of the Hispanic and Black artists have a background of mystery in terms of what they've seen and gone through.
They've been in a poor neighborhood and they've grown up so they had that sense of problem.
But not everybody thinks the same way.
Not everybody sees a different hero.
It is a different way of thinking.
John gave me the rundown of the history of music.
He wanted us to give you some of the history.
Even though you're all in the same meeting.
Do you think, I was sort of wanting to get back for a couple seconds to the impact on the audience.
Do you feel that the murals that you've done, I mean I'll just, just one moment.
I'll just give you an example.
I mean how have, maybe a better question would be how.
How have they changed? That's something that I'm not sure.
I would love to see some very common looking community people.
You know, I'm not, I don't want to talk about middle class poor people.
I mean a bunch to go to their institute.
I would like to see how the administration and the guards would react to them.
I think that would be an interesting experience.
The, those environments for some reason or another don't feel welcoming to a lot of the poor people.
I have an upfront opinion of people who are intelligent, who have a nice job coming up with lines such as I don't know anything about art so I wouldn't want to stand in.
Say I was going to say that you're welcoming to rich people.
I think people just think they should go there.
And actually, you know, the things you can really touch.
Well it has a certain feeling that you don't touch.
That you're from out, there's a distance.
I just like to see art on the walls as art that belongs to the community.
That becomes part of the community.
I don't feel that way personally when I go see a community.
I mean they're paying me, I like them a lot.
But I don't feel that that belongs to me the same way that I might feel.
You hear a joke, you can retell the joke, you can change the joke, it becomes your joke in a way.
I think the middle is kind of on that thing.
Well let me give you how I saw the problem of these people who told me it was from the Harris bank.
That they didn't understand art and of course artists seemed kind of aliens to them to some extent.
They felt stupid asking questions about what does that do and so forth.
So what I did, I took a group of them and went to visit each of the artists.
And we came in and we talked and I'm actually going to make some jokes and laugh and talk about this and the artists talk about that.
And someone realized this is people.
And before you know it they were asking the artists, well they presented me with two personal questions.
We don't put this here symbolic.
What is that supposed to mean? What do you think that over there? And the artists love explaining it.
Suddenly these people felt that the art was not something alien.
They were part of themselves as well.
They got close to it and asked questions about it.
So the art became something different.
Same thing happens with murals.
When you're able to go and see the world develop.
When you're able to go up to the artist and ask questions they will answer it.
When you become part of the process of designing and the designs and things of that nature.
Then you can help people become, you feel it's part of you.
So you have to remember as artists we say, put ourselves in place.
When you go to a gallery, artworks up there, the artists up here, everybody's around the artist.
So you say, God I don't have time to find that.
But it doesn't mean you can't appreciate it and enjoy it.
But you feel this perception that it's rich.
That's going to cause an anomaly.
Sometimes you don't have the doorway to understand the work.
Like how to start breaking it open.
But then the minute you do get the first thing it starts to take you apart.
That's why the writing in terms of the introduction and talking to the artist becomes so crucial.
Because you have to have the reaction of the person who created it.
I think the symbols in murals, I didn't even go through all the murals.
The symbols seem more accessible to me than a lot of private art.
At least I can recognize them.
Because we do that on purpose.
We are aware of which are the symbolic that work with the public.
We are aware of the symbols that they will understand.
They are plain, simple, direct, easy to pick up.
And even if you don't pick it up in terms of every single essence of the mural.
You get the feeling that something beautiful is happening there.
Something that relates to you.
That you see yourself in the mural.
I have friends who are close to certain murals.
The reason they are close to some of them is because they come here and they saw the painting.
They got going and explained it to them and what have you.
And slowly they got close to the painting.
And they felt the painting was part of it.
Also, that's the other thing that murals seem to use for cultural standards.
So those are the things from religious.
While artists working at home do have time to develop their own vocabulary.
It's harder to make some things immediately.
Because it's a communication to a mass amount of people.
Working with community agencies.
Working with the owners of the world.
There are so many things that are involved that one should begin to become already complicated.
And begin to lose the otherness.
Actually, you sometimes do a good job.
I used to get mad that we would sit there and talk about exactly what I'm telling you.
And I'd say, that is bullshit.
Why would we go assuming that people are dumb? If we out there doing murals assume that they have a tremendous potential for learning.
And let's give it everything we have.
If we don't pick it up now, they eventually pick it up.
We can explain to them whatever we have to do.
But we shouldn't simplify them and think that they think it's simple and look what they do on TV.
If you're talking to them about them, they'll probably really be painful to them.
I think you should pull intellect and hopefully they will pick it up.
But at least you challenge them to raise from where they're at.
And if they don't fully understand it, they may like the way it looks.
So it's two arguments, keep it simple or make it look like it's dumb? No, I think the argument is more don't think people are dumb.
As soon as you start saying, we have to keep it simple, we use searches involved.
Do it at the level that I'm mad, we're going to come to that level, whatever that is.
Did you feel like there was painting down? Well, it was not by intention.
But it certainly was the opening where if you have a mural that is by Main Street, keep it simple so people can read the message as you continue to drive.
They can just peek at it, understand it, and do what? I said, listen, if your mural is done good, the people who really want to read the message will eventually stop, go up to the wall and stare.
If they keep going, the one they're not interested in, they will never be interested and they know you're going to pick up the message.
So you should look at the mural and keep going.
The other thing that I found is that I think a good mural can contain many layers of meaning, like even a children's book.
There's the obvious level X, whatever that is.
But this is something that I found, and it's in my book, that every time we go back in fact, there's more.
So that you don't see all the layers the first time.
You don't read the book or listen to the piece of music.
You're not going to hear everything the first time.
I wanted to do, and I tried so much to do, hidden symbols.
You're so good at explaining your symbols after.
For instance, the one with the lion, which I didn't explain to you.
On top of her head, there's this big, what do you call that? Goose.
Is it called goose or is it something else? It's a big white bird.
Yeah, the white bird with the long neck.
There's a head of a swan coming to the top of her head.
You can't see it? You can't see it.
And the painting that you saw over there at the Illinois Bell, there's birds, lions, and all those things that you won't be able to see right away.
What I tried to do is that, the painting grows in you and it becomes interesting because you will discover things.
You will see one day, think about something beautiful that you can't see.
And it has a subconscious feeling to it.
There's something beyond what you see.
That's something to keep emerging.
I sense that a lot in your work.
I'm probably an art critic, but I sense a kind of, sort of that dream life.
You know how in a dream, there's all these layers, and there's the obvious message, and all these hidden things? I sense that a lot in your work.
That somehow, I explain the artwork to you, you kind of help feeling that there's something else that I'm not saying.
That it's something more that the language is not interpreting.
And things don't fit together quite the way they would in this world.
In a dream, things go together that way.
Well, remember, the artwork has to become just as fascinating to me as it will become to you.
Otherwise, why do it? I like the artwork.
Right, I mean, you start with yourself.
And what happens is I can sit here for a little ticket piece, put it in front of me.
I sit there for two hours, and see things that I was not aware that were there when I painted it in.
Which means that a certain part of my subconscious is also expressing itself.
And sometimes I sit there and say, ooh, this is scary.
There's a few things there that I can identify with which I was not aware I was putting.
Just can't think of the subconscious.
You sort of make decisions as you're going along.
You don't completely plan a piece out of place.
I'm getting more into allowing the subconscious.
Before, I wanted to control every single part.
It's almost like the way Frank is trained.
You know, when you get to the situation where you cannot be with something being a little closer here.
You have to know exactly what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, so you have control over it.
And it happens the way you plan it.
So you have an event, A, B, C, and D happen the way it's supposed to happen.
And it's the end, the closure, the discussion is over, and it worked.
But the whole thing about being ambiguous and surprising and something came out wrong or not having control.
I'm sure you see this big snack in here.
So I used to have that problem with my paintings too, because that's the way I got trained in medical illustration.
And it's only when it's supposed to be there, it should be there, you control.
And if it didn't work, it started over from the beginning and it didn't work.
So I used to approach my paintings that way in the beginning.
Some of the smaller ones, it's like everything has to be concise.
And it was real hard for me to just let go, because I was driving myself crazy.
Do you think there's a correlation between, as you said, it's probably another building out of narration.
But you wanted to control everything a little.
Now you're doing works on a large scale.
Is there a correlation? In the sense of letting loose? The beautiful thing about large scale pieces is not so much that they're going to sell easy, because it's harder to sell because people have small apartments.
And they want smaller paintings.
The other thing is that whenever you want to allow your full expression, to allow all the creative juices to come out, you need to really allow it to fool the world.
A large painting somehow, when you're getting a large painting, nothing is this, it's that big canvas that's in front of you.
And somehow you go into it, you walk into the canvas, because it fills your whole, so you can see.
You go into the painting and you disappear on it.
I remember the times that I feel this paint over here.
I said, oh, what is this? And it's already 12 o 'clock.
I've been painting since 7 in the morning.
And I've been painting about four hours in this position, without even noticing the paint was there until it was actually taken in the morning.
And it felt like real, strong, sharp paint.
Oh! Did I have to do the Jackson Pollock painting? I never liked Jackson Pollock that well.
I went and stood in front of a painting one day, and I stood close enough that the whole world disappeared.
I went into it, and his paintings are so...
I love Jackson Pollock now, but it was exactly that, it was because of scale.
What was it like to go into the painting? I mean, the world disappeared.
And with a painting this large, you can hear it? It is a high.
It's almost like you feel like you're floating.
And actually, I read some of this about other artists.
You don't know what you're doing.
You're going into the painting.
It comes to roll, and everything just flows.
Of course, when you're painting it, you can use your whole body.
Yeah, and then everything's in motion.
Do you think that mural painting, because it's so large, is a little like large scale painting? Yes.
One thing that I'm struck with when we look at murals is the flesh.
The only problem with murals is you got the city noises, the traffic, the cars, and the people interrupt you.
They want to know, well, you know you'll paint you all by yourself into the painting.
Unless a phone happens to ring, nobody else will interrupt me.
But the scale, obviously I love the scale.
It's a huge thing just looking back at your work.
You couldn't walk by there without noticing it.
You know what it is to be able to communicate, people say, this is what you mean, dungeon.
People coming up to you and saying, we're here.
It's getting close to the people.
For an artist to go out there and work with people, it's a different feeling than being in a studio.
I'm always amazed because I don't know what kind of work I can be writing.
I'm always amazed when I look at a painting and we get it.
I'm shocked because he's painting.
We looked at it and everything got in the whole thing.
I'm always amazed that there's something in the painting when we actually got it.
I was at a gallery at the Mexican Fine Arts.
I was standing in front of the painting.
Somebody in the back said, do you understand this painting? I said, yes.
He said, what does it mean? I was so in tune with the painting that it's almost like I was talking to myself.
I didn't realize there was actually a person back to me that I hadn't even invited to look to see who it was.
I started telling this woman's history because it was all there.
I went to her and said, I like your work better than that.
What you do with this, this, this and that.
How did you know that? This guy over there told me.
It wouldn't happen if his name would be Oscar Martinez.
I didn't know who it was in the back of me.
Then they left and I just continued looking.
You travel into it and everything is there.
You're going into somebody's personal life.
How did your symbols come to you? How did you decide you were a lion? Did you just use your painting and you think, aha, lion? A white lion is almost like a ghost.
I mean, just as your pops in your mind as you're painting? No.
Your painting seems very symbolic to me in the sense that it's like a code.
You've got to decode symbols to get a message.
I know all messages are all that clear.
There's many messages intermingled with a number of things.
Just one, you can say this means.
If you read Young in terms of dreams and symbols, he has a great book called My Man and His Symbols.
How do you seize on your images? Some of them, like the prehistoric frog.
That's just put down already and look in bulk and make a highway.
You planned it out in advance.
You may know a few steps, but you don't know what the other person knows.
You may improvise because the tune may change.
You never heard a song before.
The person in their life doesn't know how to dance or knows how to dance.
You may decide in this moment to do a turn which you were not planning for it.
But you have no real idea what you're going to do.
You approach it with a certain idea, a certain symbol in your mind.
Then as you develop it, all the symbols begin to merge because they interrelate.
That's the best way I can explain it.
So it's sort of as you're painting things, things occur to you.
Part of it, you have to plan things in your mind.
You have to have a certain amount of perception and vision.
But what you're doing, right? You have to go beyond this little world.
You're confronted with this big, huge, wide piece of paper.
A grown man sits there, takes this little pencil -like thing with a brush.
And he takes all this pigment and puts it together.
And he sits there and takes out some pigment and puts it on this piece of paper.
And he's like, I'm going to do this for hours.
Well, it had hit me a few times.
I'm sitting there all by myself.
And I look around and say, oh, this is you.
What am I doing here? You're sitting there, a grown man putting pigment on a canvas.
Someone out here takes a tick.
But this is another part of it.
That is, you're doing something very unique.
You're opening a window into your own mind.
And you are presenting to somebody a perception of reality or a perception into my dreams.
That I will not be able to present any other way.
So when you sit there and look at that painting with the lion and the woman standing there.
And they're both standing on water.
And you got two sons and this weird tree, kind of mystical.
And she's looking straight at you with a super yellow dress.
And the lion's one is kind of dark and dusty in the background.
Let me put it in the best way I can put it.
When I look at that painting, I think this is a dream you have.
I mean, perception is the most beautiful thing.
I'm sure you've gone through it.
You go to one of the workshops and you go to one person and they say this is the best workshop I've been in.
I learned this and I had this.
And you go to somebody else and they say this is bullshit.
I mean, why did I get out of this stuff? It was a waste of my time.
They will go through the same thing.
Depending on your experience, what you expect and what's there.
I don't know if you've seen any of the things about vision that keep you channeled at some times.
The one that I like that is really symbolic of perception is that I got it mostly from me or another.
If you have a truck that is yellow, obviously the light is a wave.
And sound when you hear a train coming, it goes back down.
So when you see a truck at a distance, it should look lighter.
Even artists discovered that a long time ago.
The farther away, the more washed it out.
The closer, the more brighter.
But if you see a truck in a few blocks down, it looks yellow.
As it gets closer to you, it looks the same yellow.
And when it is the brain, it makes up its mind that that's yellow.
So it gives you that message that it's completely yellow and doesn't change.
So your brain also pulls you and lies to you in terms of what's there.
That doesn't happen just in physical things.
It also happens in your own personal perceptions.
I was telling you before, you may feel happy one day and everything is great.
The next day, some kind of problem and everything is messed up.
The sound came down and so forth.
You have changed in your perception of reality.
So how do you take that and present it at different levels? Present it in terms of the public? Your own crazy self and all your thinking about things around you and how you present it in your studies as a campus isolated from anybody else.
You may do a piece and nobody sees you for a few months.
How does that relate to mirrors? Or not? Well, I think one of the things that interests me is this whole perception of how the person, not the artist, takes the message and how that somehow gets incorporated into that person's life.
You have to remember, mirrors have another impact.
Mirrors go beyond also the mere fact of the visual impact.
An effective part of change is how you feel.
If you're involved in the organization, putting it together, there's a certain sense of pride, a certain sense of ownership.
I mean, the artist did it, but you were a very important integral part of it.
It's not longer the artist's mural.
In any cases, you know of a neighborhood mural, like some part of it being taken over as a logo for something or kind of a neighborhood symbol? So they actually...
That has something to do with that.
It's one of his paintings that actually served as a term.
We did a champagne with the mural that I did there.
XA was a real robust woman, almost like the Ziqueros woman with the big red, green arm.
And the university thought that was a good idea to have a woman...
I feel murals are slowly becoming part of...
They're getting less attention.
Usually the ones that get attention are because young people are getting involved in painting.
Which means the quality is not as good as the kids.
I think also the pressure that you spoke on at the beginning of the talk was how artists often tend to switch directions.
We're all deciding, hey, we've done great, we did my murals.
Now what I need to do for myself, I already gave back to the community.
But also people want to be portrayed in a style and interest.
But I think it's going down tremendously.
Mural now because most of them have been done in poor neighborhoods, most of them are in poor neighborhoods.
Already have developed a certain perception by the majority of people.
You have a mural next to your building, that's what you're supposed to report.
So you buy a building, it has a mural, you want it out of there.
It's the value of architecture.
Now there's other murals like the one over there by Broadway and University.
You know, which is very abstract, very beautiful, cloudy type.
And the problem is if you do a mural that's on campus and you place it up there, it's going to get damaged with wind drills.
When you pay the money you gotta have it inside.
So I don't think murals are...
I mean it's kind of neat that you're doing this because they're really there.
And it's not even happening because a new generation is not as interested in us involved.
And it's almost like the me generation is going to bury for me.
But it hasn't picked up as much.
Do you want to see the video? It's containing that the master's been doing for many months now.
Can you go for me? It's called Christopher.
Christopher how? Christopher Church.
The mural that he made in Sheridan.
Oh, that's the name of the church? Yeah, that's the one on...
This audio was recorded for an unfinished documentary about the visual language of murals in Chicago's Hispanic communities.