Chicano Artist Alters Stereotypes : Art: Luis Jimenez brings a human dimension to undocumented workers and lowriders. Some of his work is showing in Venice.

“I hope that I’m not just producing propaganda,” says Texas-born Chicano artist Luis Jimenez, who depicts working-class Mexican and Chicano folk and seeks to bring a human dimension to stereotypes such as undocumented workers and lowriders.

“At one time I felt a real dilemma about just doing my work and not working real actively with social change,” says Jimenez, whose lithographs and etchings, along with two mammoth outdoor sculptures, are on view at the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice. “I guess my way of dealing with that was to try to work with social change in the realm of ideas and working toward changing people’s minds.”

One such attempt is his “Illegals,” a haunting 1985 lithograph depicting five Mexican family members preparing to flee across a busy road. Although the work deals with a scene typical of the very stereotype he is fighting to change, Jimenez hopes his depiction of an entire family will lend humanity to the perception and help viewers to “really see (illegals) as people.”

Jimenez’s resume includes exhibitions at top venues such as New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (he was selected for the museum’s prestigious Biennial in 1991) and Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; large public commissions for cities in Texas, California, New York, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and North Dakota, and numerous awards including a mid-career fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was the subject of a PBS documentary focusing on the making of his gritty 1983 lithograph “The Rose Tattoo” (which is featured in the exhibition) and is regarded as one of the country’s top Chicano artists.

“He’s been around the longest of the Chicano artists and activists, and is perhaps the most successful--he’s legendary for the Chicanos,” said SPARC gallery curator Marietta Bernsdorff. “And he didn’t just stick to the multicultural community; he does show at cultural centers, but then he also shows at the Whitney.”

Jimenez, who lives in a converted WPA schoolhouse in the New Mexico countryside, dispelled the notion that he has gained more recognition than other Chicano artists. But such a perception may have come about, he said, because he went to New York in 1969 and pursued his career there instead of in Los Angeles. But, after a good deal of success in the Big Apple, Jimenez left in the early ‘70s to pursue public art.

“I’ve always thought that I got a big jump with my art early on and went downhill ever since,” he said with a laugh.

The artist has drawn much attention--and sometimes fire--for his fiberglass public sculptures, including San Diego’s controversial “Fiesta-Jarabe” at the U.S.-Mexico border, an 8-foot-tall, dark-skinned Mexican couple performing a traditional folkloric dance.

Two of his huge sculptures are on view on the front lawn at SPARC: “Border Crossing/Cruzando el Rio Bravo” (moved here because of reconstruction at its original MacArthur Park site) depicts a strong Mexican man with his wife and baby hoisted on his shoulders, and “Southwest Pieta/Pieta del Suroeste” is a takeoff on a common Mexican calendar image depicting an Aztec legend that holds that the volcanoes outside Mexico City were formed when an Indian warrior took his wife to the mountains and held her as they died together. Lithograph images for both sculptures, including four separate versions of the passionate “Southwest Pieta,” are included in the gallery show.

“A basic philosophy of my work has always been one of taking popular images and working with a popular material and trying to make high art out of it--using the people’s materials and images,” Jimenez said. “I’m from working-class roots, and I grew up with working-class people--whatever status their family might have achieved in Mexico, they had to enter (the United States) working at the bottom of the ladder.”

Much of Jimenez’s work deals with highly personal themes, including “Illegals,” dedicated to his father, who crossed the Mexican border in 1922. Also partially dedicated to his father is a series of lithographs and etchings dealing with the theme of la muerte, or death.

“The etchings are dealing with some very personal stuff--I printed them myself as a way of dealing with these issues and working them out,” Jimenez said of the works, which depict a skeleton in various scenes with a weak, elderly man.

“I’m 51 years old now, and I guess I think I’m starting to fall apart. I’ve had four eye operations this year and I’m feeling my own mortality. Plus, I’ve had a friend in a coma for three years, in limbo between life and death. . . . But the real catalyst is my dad, who’s in a similar situation. My feelings are very personal, but I look for a universal core that will be of interest to more than just myself.”

* “Luis Jimenez” at the SPARC Gallery, 685 Venice Blvd., Venice, (310) 822-9560, through Saturday. Bernsdorff will conduct a free tour of the exhibition Thursday at 11 a.m.