Valley Group Honors Latino Culture Through Art

In a sense, Cesar Chavez brought together the eight artists who call themselves Artino.

On April 1, they ran into each other in a park showing their work as part of the city of San Fernando’s annual celebration of Chavez, champion of farm workers.

Some, such as Joe Bravo and Sergio Hernandez, knew each other before the event, having met in the 1970s when they studied art and Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge. And through the years, several of the artists had talked of starting an art collective. A few months later, they got together to make it happen.

“I saw Joe Bravo’s work [at the Chavez event],” said Agustin Bravo, no relation to Joe. “I hadn’t seen him in years, and I was knocked off my horse.”

The seven men and one woman who make up the collective kicked around names, and Joe Bravo came up with Artino, a memorable bit of shorthand for what they do and who they are. “We thought of something with Chicano, but we didn’t want to close the door to South and Central American artists,” said Agustin Bravo.

The brochure for Artino that Joe Bravo, a freelance graphic designer, put together includes brief biographies of the seven men--both Bravos, Hernandez, Lalo Garcia, Frank Martinez, Ricardo Ortega and Felix Perez. Martinez, 77, whose paintings have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, is the senior member of the group, while one member is barely 30.

Diane Correa de Rempel, so far, is the only woman in the group. A dancer as well as a painter, she often does self-portraits. Her biography was submitted too late to appear in the brochure.

Artino reflects a growing appreciation of Chicano art and the emergence of more and more collectors, according to Gilbert Lujan, 61, a Pomona-based pioneer Chicano artist who works under the name Magu.

“There’s more interest than ever before,” Lujan said. “A lot of my collectors are Jewish, Anglo, a few blacks and a growing number of Chicanos.”

Chicano and other art rooted in ethnic identity, Lujan said, “counters the alienation of urban centers.” He and the artists of Artino are saying, in effect: “We have something really good, and we want to celebrate that. It’s not a militant posture. We think we have a good song . . . and we want to sing it,” Lujan said.

Artino has an answering machine in Sylmar, and meets every Wednesday night at Agustin Bravo’s San Fernando home to talk about art.

“We want people to know there are some great artists here in the San Fernando Valley,” said Agustin Bravo, 46.

The artists work in different styles and have achieved varying degrees of success. Joe Bravo has painted murals as an artist-in-residence for the California Arts Council and was art director of Lowrider magazine before starting his graphic design business. Recently, he has been paying homage to his Mexican heritage by painting portraits on tortillas.

Agustin Bravo is doing a series of paintings and prints called “The Vanishing of a People” that gives visual expression to the disappearing daily life of the Mexican village where he spent much of his boyhood. Hernandez is a political cartoonist and painter whose work reflects his love of Mestizo culture, with its Spanish and Indian roots. Ortega’s work has a spiritual bent.

When Perez worked at General Motors, he painted murals and portraits of retirees. He now does dark scenes of urban street life and paintings that refer to traditional Mexican culture.

Lalo Garcia is probably the best known of the group. A director, dancer, choreographer and production designer as well as a visual artist, he designed the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the new Catholic cathedral in downtown Los Angeles as well as some of its ironwork.

Although the artists have international aspirations, they are firmly grounded in the Valley, where many grew up (four of them graduated from and a fifth attended San Fernando High School). “We want to have a foundation, roots,” explained Joe Bravo. “The northeast San Fernando Valley, this is primarily where we live and work.”

All Artino members have a strong desire to give back to the community, they said. Many got their first boosts as artists in elementary or high school, and they make it a point to speak regularly to young people.

“I’m at the age when I’ve had my career, and I want to pass on a legacy,” said Joe Bravo, 51, of his urge to be a mentor.

Hernandez, 53, said he began to think of himself as an artist after he won a PTA scholarship to Otis Art Institute.

His wife, Diane Velarde-Hernandez, has been a teacher for 25 years, and he has watched as the arts have been all but eliminated from public school curricula as budgets have shrunk. He knows how important mentors can be, and he said he would like to see Artino “kick-start the public school art programs again.”

Earlier this month, the artists had a weeklong show at San Fernando High School, where 98% of the students are Latino. Velarde-Hernandez, coordinator of the school’s math / science / technology magnet program, organized the exhibit with librarian and media teacher Karen Gonzalez.

At the artists’ insistence, student work was featured as well as their own, and the artists spoke to students throughout the week. The students wrote about what they saw. Solangel Campos especially liked Hernandez’s painting “Night Crossing,” which shows immigrants crossing the desert with Death hovering in the background.

“The reason that I like this picture so much is because I can see my family in [it],” she wrote. “They did the same thing to come to this country.”

Agustin Bravo took the opportunity to ask the students if any of them doodled. “With a spray can,” one answered.

Bravo told the tagger about a recent show by graffiti artists: “Here’s these guys who are putting their graffiti on canvas and they’re getting six figures for it,” he said.

The student seemed to get the point. These are the moments the artists live for, when they have the sense that they may be changing a youngster’s life, just as their own lives were transformed by art and the advice of concerned adults.

At their Wednesday night meetings, the eight talk about their passion. Often, one will bring in a recent piece and the others will critique it. All dream of working full time as artists some day, although most still have day jobs.

No matter how long the workday has been, the evening reminds them of who they really are.

As Agustin Bravo said: “We leave that meeting so inspired we want to run home and paint.”