|
Barbara Carrasco (1955) is a Chicana artist and activist who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is considered to be a "renegade feminist" whose work critiques dominant cultural stereotypes involving socioeconomics, race, gender and sexuality. Carrasco is as equally comfortable as an artist in creating large-scale works, like murals, as she is with detailed, small-scale pen and ink work.〔 Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was part of the important Chicano art exhibit, Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA).〔 Carrasco continues to create art and teach others about art today. == Biography == Carrasco was born in El Paso, Texas to Mexican-American parents. She was the second-oldest child and oldest girl in her family.〔〔 She had two brothers and two sisters growing up. When she was around a year or so of age, her family moved to Los Angeles.〔 They lived in government Veteran's housing in Culver City since her father was a Korean War Navy veteran.〔 She recalls that they were poor and lived off of food stamps.〔 Carrasco's childhood growing up in the predominantly Mexican-American and African-American community of Mar Vista Gardens was sometimes painful, because she was teased for having lighter skin than her peers and stood out for her green eyes; being called "white girl," "green eyes" and "''güera''."〔 Her experiences with being simultaneously perceived as not truly Mexican-American and being told to "take advantage of being light skinned" makes up of part of her artistic subject matter later on in life.〔 Carrasco said that her father encouraged her to broaden her horizons, go to college and encouraged her artwork.〔 He had appreciated art and he was considered artistic.〔 Her father, who worked as a bus driver for Santa Monica Bus Lines said that "anybody could be a bus driver but not everybody could be an artist."〔 Carrasco's father died of a heart attack when she was twelve and it was difficult for her because she was always close to her father.〔 Carrasco's mother, who also volunteered as a Girl Scout leader, was also artistically inclined.〔 Her mother admired Japanese art and decorated the house with it.〔 Carrasco felt that growing up with Japanese images influenced her sense of line.〔 She also felt that her mother was a personal role model because she was a strong woman.〔 Her mother was also, however, very protective of her girls, and she expected Carrasco to act as a role model of traditional femininity for her sisters. Carrasco attended Catholic school from first to eighth grade.〔 At school, like in her neighborhood, Carrasco felt that there was racism practiced there and that Anglo and white students were "treated better."〔 She often drew on the tables at the Catholic school instead of paying attention to her lessons.〔 Because she was so often in her own "little world of drawing," she repeated first grade.〔 Some of the nuns, however, noticed and encouraged her talent, including Sister Mary Ann, who continued to stay in contact with Carrasco after she left school.〔 In seventh grade, when she made her confirmation as a Catholic, Carrasco chose Saint Joan of Arc as her confirmation name because she was inspired by her leadership.〔 During the summers, she and her sisters were part of a program that helped young people from the projects attend classes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Carrasco credits the program with also expanding her horizons and encouraging her to apply for college.〔 Carrasco attended Venice High School.〔 Her high school art teacher, Mr. Shakagi, challenged her to try different mediums, including ballpoint pen, for creating art.〔〔 Carrasco was very involved in both journalism and art in high school, but at the time hadn't started becoming very politically active yet.〔 Carrasco received her BFA in art from UCLA in 1978.〔 She was the first person in her family to graduate from college.〔 At UCLA, she was the first woman editor of the campus Chicano newspaper, the ''La Gente''.〔 Carrasco deliberately chose demanding art professors, like Jan Stussey, at UCLA who gave her a solid background in drawing.〔 Carrasco was one of the first artists to join with Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers (UFW) movement. She heard him speak at UCLA when she was nineteen and she says that she "volunteered right after the speech."〔 She did volunteer artwork for Chavez for fifteen years because she believed both in his movement and in Chavez himself.〔 Occasionally, Chavez was able to reimburse her for art supplies, but most of the work Carrasco did was unpaid.〔 Carrasco helped create "monumental banners" for the United Farm Workers movement and protests.〔 Right after graduating from UCLA, Carrasco helped work on art for the Zoot Suit play, which later opened on Broadway.〔 She also became involved with the Public Art Center (Centro del Arte Publico) after UCLA.〔 She was one of a number of women invited to join the Centro. In the mid-1980s, Carrasco was commissioned to do a mural, ''The History of Los Angeles: A Mexican Perspective'' which led to a great deal of controversy. The publicity generated from the controversy, however helped Carrasco in some ways: she was chosen to go with a group of artists to the Soviet Union in 1985 and paint a mural in the Children's Museum in Yerevan, Armenia.〔 She went on a second trip to the Soviet Union the next year and also took Dolores Huerta's thirteen-year-old son, Ricky, with her.〔 She also went to Nicaragua in 1986 with a UCLA program called the Chicano Delegation to Nicaragua.〔 It was during the Nicaraguan Revolution and the experience affected Carrasco deeply, making her think about death in a different context.〔 Carrasco received her MFA in art from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1991. After graduating from CalArts, she didn't feel inspired and stopped producing art for about two years.〔 In addition, the death of Cesar Chavez in 1993 created a sense of deep depression in Carrasco: she felt that there were not enough Chicano leaders and that few people could take his place.〔 In the mid 1990s, Carrasco married artist, Harry Gamboa Jr. Gamboa and Carrasco had been good friends first for some time, and Carrasco liked him especially because he was "supportive of women artists."〔 In 1994, she had a daughter, Barbie. In 1995, she was diagnosed with lymphoma and in 1996 had a bone marrow transplant to treat the disease.〔 After the transplant, Carrasco felt that her hand was less steady for detailed work.〔 She is a founding member of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and serves as a Board Member. Carrasco was a UC Regents Professor in 2002-2003.〔 She was recognized as a "community champion" in Los Angeles in 2014. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Barbara Carrasco」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|