CITY ARTS : Art to Feed the Soul

When he was growing up in El Sereno, Jose Ramirez’s initial exposure to art came from the murals and graffiti that surrounded him. And being plucked out of the city and placed in a Sedona, Ariz., boarding school helped him find his direction in life as an artist.

Ramirez took what he learned at Verde Valley School and continued his art education at UC Berkeley, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in art, finishing last spring. Now he teaches a bilingual second-grade class at Ascot Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles. “I try to show (the children) places they’ve never seen, to open up their world,” said Ramirez, 26.

His works incorporate Mexican history and images created by muralists David Alfaro Siquieros and Jose Clemente Orozco, but he puts them in a contemporary context.

His professors, Ramirez recalled, “would say that my art was ‘too Mexican,’ and if I were going to do the stuff I was doing, I should open up a food bank because it had nothing to do with art but with helping people. They failed to see that Chicano art deals with both.”

A collection of Ramirez’s works will be on view at Troy Cafe and Gallery starting today. There will be a free reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Afterward, the Eastside band Quetzal will perform.

Troy Cafe and Gallery, 418 East 1st St.; today through Dec. 11; noon to 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, noon to 3 a.m. Fri.-Sat. (213) 617-0790.