Hernández Corrections
JUDITHE HERNÁNDEZ AN AMERICAN ARTIST
By A. J. Goldsmith
Judithe Hernández was there in February, 1974, when a collective of four college-educated, socially-conscious, American artists of Mexican descent launched the Los Four, the exhibit that is recognized today as the seminal event of Chicano* art in the United States.
“With this exhibition, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art became the first mainstream institution to recognize the importance of Chicano art as a unique school of American art,” says Hernández. Calling themselves Los Four, the group founded by Gilbert “MGU” Sanchez Lujan (d. 2011), included Frank Romero, Roberto (Beto) de la Roche and Carlos Almaraz (d. 1989). Although each had his own studio, together, their work reflected each one’s concerns of Chicano civil rights, the Viet Nam War, politics, labor and migrant farmers.
| *Chicano(a) is a term used in the Southwestern United States by Mexican Americans to themselves.
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A Los Angeles native, Hernández aided in the installation of this epic show at LACMA. She was a graduate-school classmate and friend of Almaraz at Otis Institute of Art. She described Almaraz as intelligent, sophisticated, charming, playful and funny. It was he who had proposed Hernández become a member. The LACMA exhibition was an expanded version of the first Los Four exhibition at the University of California Irvine Gallery. As a result, only the work of the founding members, were included in the LACMA exhibition.
Born in 1948, Judithe Hernández is an artist and educator whose heritage permeates her Pastel- on- paper work and her murals that often speak to such contemporary issues as peace, justice, labor, immigration and especially those women who are disrespected in the workplace or are preyed upon. (See “Women of Juarez” below).
“I come from a really normal family…normal, hard-working parents, nice people who produced this oddball who is an artist, but my brother is a lawyer and a Deputy District Attorney in Los Angeles.”
Hernández describes herself as an “artist who draws, opposed to an artist who paints.” “I have an intense interest in color and pastel is the perfect form of color,” she says.
“Her proficiency with pastels places Hernández among the artists who continue to practice one of the oldest visual techniques in history,” says Dolores Mercado who curated ‘Women of Juarez’ for the National Museum of Mexican Art.
Fast forward 42 years to May 20, 2016 when tens of thousands of Californians celebrated the new METRO link between Santa Monica and Los Angeles. Greeting the riders were 24 amazing Hernández murals lofted above the Downtown Santa Monica station.
“ La Soñata” one of the 24 murals above Santa Monica station. (See also page 12)
Commenting on the Santa Monica murals, Hernandez says: “I sought an image palette from the ancient myths and legends of Europe, Mexico, Japan, India, Latin America, Iran, Russia, Native America, Polynesia and Africa. These images blend a visual symphony, a magical dreamscape.”
Hernández is not shy in saying what she believes, verbally or artistically. When she and the others from Los Four were called to task by a forgotten critic for “shedding (their)… Latino cultural identity and political militancy” in order “to enter the mainstream as competitive professionals,” Hernández forcibly responded: “Why should changes in my work and socio-political attitudes be construed as compromising my commitment?”
While attending Lincoln High School, Hernández won the Future Masters’ Scholarship offered by Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Sears Roebuck Foundation that enabled her to attend Otis Art Institute. She went on to earn both a BA and MFA from Otis. From 2011-15 Hernández served as chairman of the Alumni Council of Otis College of Art and Design.
Expo Line Downtown Santa Monica (2016).
As a 22-year-old student at Otis, Hernández studied with Charles White, the legendary African-American artist. At that time, she was Otis’ only female Latina student.
Hernández says she came of age during the 1970s era of social and political tensions and her work included Chicano rights in the shadow of the Viet Nam War. With pride she points to her early art that supported the political positions of social movements. Forty years later, Hernandez is still fighting for peace as well as equal rights for all Americans and for those who wish to become American.
During the period of 1973-77, Hernández’ murals appeared in the Ramona Gardens Housing Project and the Century Playhouse (made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts) and various projects with Carlos Almaraz for Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers Union. Hernández was the lead artist/designer for the mural “Homenaje a las Mújares de Aztlán.” She was assisted by her Los Four pal Carlos Almaraz. The restoration of the mural was made possible through the efforts of art historian Isabel Rojas Williams who lobbied the L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs to fund the restoration of several vintage murals. The restoration project was completed in 2016.
“The best public art consciously responds to its audience’s interests, respects the existing social environment and is never arrogant enough to believe it is a gift to the community. The community will decide that.” Judith Hernández. 2016.
Hernández relocated to Chicago in 1984. Four years later she was selected as one of 16 artists for the initial, two-year-long exhibition of Chicano art in Europe: Les Demon des Anges. The exhibit traveled for two years to Spain, Sweden, France and Belgium.
The Women of Juarez (2011) by Judithe Hernández at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art
Seven women in Mexico are murdered every day” (The Huffington Post). Few of these crimes are ever solved or justice served. Juarez is located just across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas. Hernandez called attention to the assaults on women in Juarez with her 2011, dynamic solo show at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art. Although Hernandez has taken to heart the decades- long murder of women in Mexico, she is aware that Mexico is not alone in its degradation and murder of women. Upon seeing the Women of Juarez exhibit in Chicago, a Hindu woman from India published her own poem stressing the universality of women’s suffering. Note: See below poem by Divya Rajan.
IMMIGRATION is a heartfelt topic with Hernandez. Her “Chupacabra” depicting the symbiotic blood relationship between the immigrant and America is a powerful, positive statement on the subject. Chupacabra was on the cover of Aztlán magazine.
CHUPACABRA GOTHIC
Judithe Hernández’ statement on immigration: “Which way does the new blood flow?”
When I asked Hernández about Chupacabra Gothic, she told me that she put separate ideas together. She was dismayed by official anti-immigrant rhetoric. In this piece, Hernández combined the Puerto Rican urban myth of a blood-sucking cryptid preying on livestock, especially goats, with Grant Wood’s famous American Gothic.
THE BEGINNING OF SIN
Hernández continues to add to her “Adam and Eve” series of this Biblical couple. Her drawings depict the dynamics between men and women, the tensions, temptations and the basics of good and evil. Adam and Eve are recognizable symbols of ever- young people seeking relationship.
According to Dr. Karen Mary Davalos of Loyola Marymount University, Hernández’ drawings “consistently portray the universal human figure, rather than an individual portrait, and emphasize the visual vocabulary of human struggles over love, trauma, memory and Christianity’s interest in human ecstasy and grace.”
The artist told me that her parents and grandparents reminded her that she could be whoever and whatever she wanted to be and wanted to do with her life. She listened well and has accomplished much.
Great Wall by Judithe Hernández and nine others, Los Angeles, 1976
| Reina de la Primavera by Judithe Hernández. Collection: The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. |
Mercado: “Hernández’ women do not smile. Most of them are adorned by traditional dress and head coverings; none reflect any mirth or merriment. Even her brides are solemn. Their bodies, however, are perfect. The artist speaks eloquently on the state of Latino women on both sides of the border. It is through the feminine figure that Hernández represemts visual stories; from the dismembered Coyolxauhqui (Aztec Moon Goddess) to Murderous Secrets, in which she depicts a woman tattooed with flowers as she closes her eyes to an assassin’s imminent attack..”
Bank of America Touring MIRADAS Exhibit
| Requerdos de Ayer, Sueños de Mañana / Memories of Yesterday, Dreams of Tomorrow
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This mural celebrating the 1981 City of Los Angeles’ Bicentennial took Hernandez two months to complete. She was aided by her father, Peter Hernández who was not an artist. The mural was located on the Brunswick Building’s three-story garage. The building has since been demolished to make way for the Los Angles Plaza of Culture.
In Chicago, Hernández was associated with the University of Illinois (Chicago), Triton College, Rush University and The School of the Art Institute. From her near South Side studio, she could watch boats along the Chicago River.
During 2011, together with her Juarez exhibition at Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, Hernández was named “Artist in Residence” by the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. She lectured faculty and students on the role of visual artists in social-political movements. The same year DePaul University, chose Hernández to deliver a lecture on the feminist issues that she explored in her work.
The year 2012 was a memorable one for Hernández. Topping the list was the commission for 24 glass mosaic panels for the Los Angeles County Transit Authority’s the Expo Line’s new Downtown Santa Monica Station. A work was acquired by the El Paso (TX) Museum of Art for its permanent collection and she was awarded an individual artist fellowship by the City of Los Angeles. Hernandez was a recipient of the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship for 2012-13
In 2018, MOLA will feature a solo exhibition of Judithe Hernandez’ work. It will be the first solo exhibition of work of an American-born, Chicana artist at this Long Beach, California, institution.
“Afternoon Tea,” one of a 24 Hernández murals for the Metro Expo Line station in Santa Monica,, CA.
On display in 2016 are 24 Hernández- created murals above the Expo Line Downtown Santa Monica Metro Station. These metaphysical murals depict day and night and the four seasons. They reflect the myriad of cultures inherent in the area’s residents and tourists. The artist’s pastel-on-paper drawings were translated into glass mosaic panels by the Perdomo Studio of Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico in Cuernavaca, Morelos. Hernandez told me that “Afternoon Tea” is set in a Los Angeles park in the center of the Japanese-American community before December 7, 1941 after which its residents were “relocated.” The symbols are Mexican.
Major collections including the work of Judithe Hernández:
Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA), Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA), Max Factor Collection, Gerald Buck Collection, United Farm Workers Union, Chicano Studies Research Center, University of California Los Angeles, Chicano Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara , The Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), the Bank of America Collection (Charlotte, NC), Vincent Price Art Museum (Monterey Park, CA), Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA.), National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago, IL), and the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Tx. Also, many private collections.
Divya Rajan a Chicago poet and editor, was so moved by Hernández’ Juarez exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art that she composed the following poem speaking of women everywhere.
The Weight of Silence by Divya Rajan
Your scarf speaks nine tongues,
I failed to know the purpose, seek the language
Of splinters, shards, lazy salsas.
I thought the skies bowed to you even
as they turned mauve. Awe
filled my lungs, I breathed.
Shards slow danced, I felt your smile.
It smelt of something else.
Your ducking shadows traded with liquid limelight.
“You were born to silence,” sang whispers
Of the one who bore me for ten crescent milk moons.
And so I breathed in the silence
Of the damp Oaxacan earth
the silence of nopals, moriche cacao fields,
the silence of achiotes as they painted my soul
and I yearned for harvest;
the silence by the creek
after cowbirds flocked to nests
silence in the pauses of a distant merengue,
silence in the nook of an ancient
pottery tavern where gods were made
by hands.
Silence…
I felt the cold of asbestos
Much after, as I shuddered
on a sore bit of land
that reeked of sewage, puddles
of worm-infested waters
inching into my mouth slower than a drip, I dreamt
of barbed wires, nine unspoken red fire fangs, fumes
from a neighbor maquiladora. I even dreamt
of the kneader I was meant to be. My heart
felt the weight of silence
C
AJ's Crossing Borders 