S.D. Border Art Leaves Folks in Ohio Unmoved

The blend of art and politics is big in San Diego. But, when a group of well-known San Diego artists were invited to show their art here recently, gallery patrons in this small Ohio town of about 35,000 people greeted the works with curiosity and puzzlement.

Many of the works by Raul Guerrero, David Avalos, Deborah Small, Louis Hock and the members of the San Diego-Tijuana-based Border Art Workshop have caused comment and even controversy in the artists’ hometown, but they didn’t seem to bother audiences here.

Exhibited as part of this antebellum community’s annual arts, crafts and music festival, the artists’ works focus on the border between San Diego and Tijuana, and include both historical material on the repression of Mexican Indian natives and commentaries on the problems of contemporary undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States.

Despite the topical issues in the work, political art from San Diego did not appear to speak to Middle America.

It wasn’t what Marlana Keynes, the owner of the local men’s clothing store, expected when she and MIT’s David Jocelit decided to bring the “Living on the Border: Art and Activism in San Diego/Tijuana” to the gallery above her store. She feared that the show, which runs through next Saturday, would bring out some strong reactions from Lancaster’s predominantly conservative populace.

“I just hope they view it with an open mind,” Keynes said. “They don’t have to like it.”

Michael Schnorr, a member of the Border Art Workshop whose “The Conversion of Columbus” is the centerpiece of the installation, said he hoped people here would apply the messages in the art to their own

lives.

“I think the people in Ohio may not address the larger question we deal with in terms of international relations, but I think it begins with interpersonal relations anyway,” Schnorr said in a telephone interview from San Diego.

“Anybody looking at it, if they give themselves the time, is going to come away thinking more about their own reality than they did when they walked in. Or at least have two or three more questions about the Mexican-American border.”

Deborah Small’s “California Mission Daze,” for example, is a mosaic of images and text that attempts to debunk the image of the 17th-Century Spanish missionaries as benign civilizers. Another version of the same work is on view at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Small said she hoped Ohioans would look at her work and “rethink our collective history and see it from more points of view, and not see American history as this triumphal line of progress.”

No such luck.

Though Columbus Dispatch art critic Jacqueline Hall praised the installation and Keynes for daring to bring a confrontational exhibit to a small, middle-American town, few of the opening-night patrons thought the art had any relation to their own experience.

They had no previous knowledge of the artists’ works, including some that have received significant national attention. They had never heard of David Avalos’ “San Diego Donkey Cart,” which was removed from a public square in San Diego by a federal judge’s order, or the two billboards by Avalos, Small, Hock and Elizabeth Sisco labeling San Diego as “America’s Finest Tourist Plantation.”

Most viewers even appeared to be unaware of San Diego’s immigration problems.

“This doesn’t really have anything to do with us here in Ohio,” said Dan Harkins, a retired businessman from Columbus.

“It is rather jarring. . . . I think of San Diego as a Navy town and an attractive retirement area. I don’t think of the mixed culture at all.”

Avalos’ “Father Serra’s Next Miracle: Turning Blood Into Wine” brought the strongest reactions. The sculpture features a leather hand with the word bingo spelled across the fingertips and a pierced heart in the palm that pours blood through a funnel and into an empty bottle of Thunderbird wine.

“It’s a crime what has happened to the Indians,” said Sandy Romano, a Lancaster housewife. “But this offends me as a Catholic and as a person. This is the sort of thing I would be against the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) supporting.”

Still, Romano stressed that she did not think such art should be banned from the festival, and applauded Keynes for providing an opportunity to see something different.

Those entering the darkened room containing a large installation titled “The Conversion of Columbus” appeared to be more fascinated with the medium than the message.

The floor was covered with six tons of dirt spread between a photo mural of Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad and a charcoal mural of the canyons to the north. The idea was to re-create the infamous Soccer Field on which would-be immigrants assemble before making a dash north. Four video monitors played scenes of some of the guerrilla theater staged on the field, interspersed with ominous shots of U.S. Border Patrol vehicles.

Regular audiences for events like this one prove that there is an interest in art in this small town. This annual festival is a chance for locals to import art and music denied them the rest of the year--normally Lancaster audiences have to travel 30 miles to Columbus or elsewhere for culture. As a result, they turn out in large numbers to nearly all the events and exhibits in the festival and generally appear willing to accept subjects they might find objectionable in another context.

But many appeared baffled by the messages depicted in the work here.

There were exceptions. Bill and Marilynn Boone stayed to watch a series of artful videos about Mexican immigrants.

“It’s made us aware of something we didn’t know was going on,” Bill said.

“It puts you right there on the border,” Marilynn said. “It’s a shock that this happens in our country. What do these people do? Is there some help for them when they’re here? I want to read some objective articles about the problem to learn about it before I decide how I feel.”

Informed that the cantaloupes and grapes on special at the neighborhood Kroger’s store may well have been picked by people such as those they watched running cross the border, the Boones seemed stunned.

But most reactions were in line with those of a Lancaster matron descending the stairs of the gallery.

“Well,” she sighed to a friend. “That was weird.”