Chapter 5: A Chicano-Ish, Chicano, Chican@, or Chicanx Artist Statement

Spanish was my father’s first language, but in school he was not allowed to speak it. My grandparents, especially my grandmother, did not speak much English. My father did not want his boys to have the trouble he had in school, so my brother and I never learned to speak Spanish. Spanish was the language of mysteries to me, things I was not supposed to know as a child. Decades later, I tried to join a “Mexican-American” club in art school, I was not allowed to enter and was voted out because I did not speak Spanish. For years I have been fascinated by language. This fascination has informed much of my artwork in letterforms, fragmented language, misspellings, and Spanish text.