Linda Vallejo
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Biography
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Regional, National and International Arts Community
Linda Vallejo, born in Los Angeles in 1951, is a practicing professional artist creating images, which describe the world from her indigenous training and understanding. Awards include Quien es Quien in U.S. Commerce, National Award, 1994; National Association Chicano Studies, Distinguished Recognition, 1993; and Latinas Making History Award, Comision Feminil de Los Angeles, 1991.
Selected Exhibitions include "NATURE AND SPIRIT," Solo Exhibition, Latino Art Museum, Pomona, California 2002; "NATURE AND SPIRIT," Solo Exhibition, Howell and Green Fine Art Gallery, Topanga, California 2002"Dreams and Reality," University of Judaism, Marjorie and Herman Platt Gallery; `Los Cielos' One Woman Show, SPARC, Los Angeles, 2000; Armand Hammer Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Art Museum of South Texas, Anchorage Museum of History and Art, The Bronx Museum, Museum of Modern Art New York, San Antonio Museum, Mexico City Modem Art Museum, and Galeria Las Americas; and The Santa Monica Museum "East of the River" 2000, and The Carnegie Museum, Oxnard CA., which acquired four sculptures for its permanent collection.
Major Publications and Media include Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art, Bi-Lingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University, Los Angeles Times Artist Review, October 2000, Art Business News, Southwest Art, Saludos Hispanos, Hispanic Business Magazine, "Strong Hearts, Inspired Minds," Rowanbeny Books, Los Angeles Times, Latin Style Magazine, PBS "The History of the Mexican American Civil Right Movement," 1996. Guest Lectureships and Teaching Positions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1992-1993-1994), LA; Museum of Contemporary Art (1991-1992-1993), Fresno Metropolitan Art Museum; Cal State University Long Beach Art Department; University of California, Irvine, Art Department, and Santa Monica City College.
Indigenous Spiritual Community
Linda Vallejo was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1951. She traveled and studied throughout the United States, Europe and Mexico. She received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cal State University, Long Beach, in 1978. In the late 1970s and early 1980s she studied Maya and Azteca dance with the Flores de Aztlan Troupe. During these formative years, Las Flores de Aztlan presented teachings and workshops throughout the State of California at cultural centers, universities, and in traditional Native American and Chicano ceremonies that included Fiesta de Maiz and Dia de Los Muertos in Los Angeles, Fiesta de Colores in Sacramento, and Chicano Park Day in San Diego. Over the past twenty years, she has participated in and supported traditional ceremony in South Dakota, California and Arizona. She served as a community volunteer for the Native American Religious Society, California Rehabilitation Center, Norco for the past fifteen years.
Recent Portfolios
The "Los Cielos" suite of over fifty works (1997-2000), was successfully exhibited in five venues in Southern California (2000-2001), published and reviewed in two national Latino magazines, and The Los Angeles Times. Now, a new suite entitled, "Nature and Spirit - La Naturaleza y el Espiritu," a portfolio of over thirty works produced between September 2001 and 2002, including oil on canvas and paper, and gouache on paper works are a continuation of Vallejo's last major portfolio of works "Los Cielos." "Nature and Spirit" is comprised of California mountainscapes depicting the horizon line and its relationship to the human character, ancient monumental rock formations, and oceanscapes depicting deep sea life forms with intricate crystalline symmetry. These two sequential portfolios continue to express Vallejo's dedication to a healthy ecosystem and humanity's intrinsic connection to nature.
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Statement
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NATURE AND SPIRIT
ARTIST STATEMENT
Linda Vallejo's paintings express a tradition of respect for the healing power of nature. She investigates humanity's valuable and fundamental relationship to the natural world as detailed in the exquisite brushstrokes and delicate layering of a traditional medium. Leah Ollman of The Los Angeles Times stated, "Linda Vallejo's paintings are generated by her deeply felt connection to exactly those fundamental life forces - birth, nature, spirit - that are spurned as quaint or old-fashioned by the hippest tier of the contemporary art world." "Nature," as the artist shares, "is the final answer." Vallejo states, "Nature connects us to intrinsic truth; offering solace to our interior lives. Nature exists beyond religion, politics, market, and art."
As an artist, Vallejo asks, "Why not paint the fear and horror?" Her paintings, described as a "soothing poultice," are an alternative, an answer to the constant unanswered questions of our complex lives. Judi Jordan, writer for Latin Style Magazine concurred saying, "Wouldn't you rather draw solace from a gorgeously rendered sky, knowing that tomorrow is no longer a promise, but a prayer?"
Each painting includes layer upon layer, thin gauzes of paint; Both spiritual and technical work is needed to communicate this serenity and beauty. The technique is recognized by Leah Ollman, "Vallejo visualizes the unity of all living things by layering them. This approach verges on kitsch at times, but when it works.it works gloriously." Each facet of Vallejo's art is integrated in finely honed processes of observation, recollection, and production. Vallejo's paintings recall a place to the viewer, evoking a sublime reality from the depths of memory and recollection. "I don't believe a healthy human culture can be sustained by destroying nature," Linda says, as she looks out the window of her Topanga Canyon home, "We need to integrate our relationship with nature as we have done so readily with machines and war. There are responsibilities that accompany life, both in art and in the natural world." Vallejo's environmental message works in both worlds.
Vallejo's concern for the environment becomes a political reality through participation in ceremony integral to native culture and land politics. She not only protects the land by painting the landscape, but also through ceremony. An essay, written by renowned collector Armando Duron, states, "Linda's art works over the past twenty-five years evoke the spirit of a Meso-American shaman chronicling the story of her people's creation and journey through transcendent time and space." Sybil Venegas, historian and educator reflected, "the art of Linda Vallejo is quite unique and distinct in its ability to integrate her personal truth and life experience into a visual whole that defies convention." The artists states, "In ceremony anything is possible, one has to be equipped, and cognitive, and ready to carry away that experience and memory to use in life." ?And Leah Ollman, Los Angeles Times, observed, "For Vallejo, an LA native with a deep interest in the function of ceremony, these paintings serve perhaps, as acts of prayer. For the viewer, they are at the least a soothing poultice." Linda communicates her message through a visceral experience, which evokes the power of the natural world.
The "Los Cielos" suite of over fifty works (1997-2000), was successfully exhibited in five venues in Southern California (2000-2001), published and reviewed in two national Latino magazines, and The Los Angeles Times. Now, a new suite entitled, "Nature and Spirit - La Naturaleza y el Espiritu," a portfolio of over thirty works produced between September 2001 and 2002, including oil on canvas and paper, and gouache on paper works are a continuation of Vallejo's last major portfolio of works "Los Cielos." "Nature and Spirit" is comprised of California mountainscapes depicting the horizon line and its relationship to the human character, ancient monumental rock formations, and oceanscapes depicting deep sea life forms with intricate crystalline symmetry. These two sequential portfolios continue to express Vallejo's dedication to a healthy ecosystem and humanity's intrinsic connection to nature.
The recent publication, Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: 2002 (Bi-Lingual Press, Hispanic Research Center, Arizona State University) states, "Vallejo's significant impact originates in her distinctive ability to reconcile diverse influences of indigenous pre-Hispanic culture with a well-grounded art historical exposure. Her work exhibits a confidence and passion engaging the viewer in a rumination that is directed without depending on polemics. Vallejo's subjects move beyond mundane rhetoric with a stylistic maturity that undermines the reason of the political. Tangible and inevitable, the work of this artist sacrifices the abstract notion for the specific struggle, effectively replacing debate with responsibility. This is achieved by the successful orientation of the viewer in an erudite consideration of urbanism in decline and the imperiled position of those in its wake. For a population of Chicanos increasingly situated in the cityscapes of America, Vallejo's work is an expansive statement on the real threats challenging her community."
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Exhibitions
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