Artist's Statement

Abstract

THE IMAGES OF MY ART included in the Journal of the Academy of American Religion are part of a larger series of work I have developed over the last twenty years that reflect my ongoing interests in land, spirituality, and memory. Many of my works were inspired by my own cultural values of the spiritual and the sacred connected to ancient beliefs and indigenous practices revered in the early Chicano/a Movement. My search for the spiritual has been both a personal practice and an artistic form born out of traditional spirituality concerned with home altars, ofrendas for the dead, and vernacular forms such as the capilla yard shrines and descansos, a roadside memorial that is a resting place that marks the site of a death. In the passing years, my interest has spread to gardens, libraries, laboratories, and “cabinets of curiosity” as forms of artistic intervention and community knowledge. The themes associated with land and nature have often been expressions of my concern with Mesoamerican origins, colonial resistance, and contemporary issues of social justice and rights, as well as the personal memories of an agricultural life in the Santa Clara and San Joaquin valleys.