Red, Brown & Blue

I sometimes question my path. I question it because, sometimes, the path we walk is wide and has big beautiful trees lined along its borders that give off miles of fresh air. You breathe deeply and you know life is right. It’s where you’re supposed to be.

Then the path narrows, the light and the trees disappear and nothingness surrounds it. Nothing surrounds you. You breathe deeply and you’re short of breath and you know life is confusing.  It’s not where you’re supposed to be.

My path has widened and narrowed several times. My path recently widened and there were no trees, just hip-hop. Brown hip-hop. Latino hip-hop. Instead of trees, rappers lined up along my path’s borders. They’re staring at me and I don’t know what it means. They represent thousands of songs, millions of lyrics, billions of beats.  Their music is a manifestation of the streets. My streets. They tell a story and it’s mine. But I question my path. Why me? Why am I here?

"Los Cantores"

Reflections on the art of Carla Veliz, featured in the Instituto Cultural de México’s “Remarkable Paradigms” exhibit for International Women’s Month.

Staring at Carla Veliz’s Los Cantores, I swoon with the rhythms implied in its curves and undulating lines. I yearn to tap my feet in unison with the festive percussion of a geometrically rendered pineapple pattern in the background. I am inspired by the pair of lovers interlaced and framed within the voluptuous and fiery heart of a Latina, represented by a ruby mane shaped like a corazón. The two dance and jointly hold a malleable guitar as their figures intertwine indistinguishably. Who is strumming? Who is playing? Who is watching? None of it matters as the cantores fuse into one kaleidoscopic being, two Latinos singing, dancing and loving as one vivid manifestation of culture and passion.

I sit in another room, and yet again I cannot help but stare, fighting back my strict, traditional upbringing. My eyes open wide as a fascinated child’s, absorbing a vast landscape of muted tones, ochers and browns, rust and hints of the pale blue sky of yet another in a seemingly endless series of melancholically squandered afternoons fading into dusk. A swath of tattered screen spanning the vertical length of the canvas transports me to moments trapped behind a closed porch door, listening to the adults converse outside and yearning to be heard. The words grooved onto the canvas – “Tenia tanto que decir, pero nadie me escuchaba” – lament the unrequited desire for expression, for acknowledgement, for validation. “I had so much to say, but no one would listen.”

They say it’s not polite to stare, but in this case it’s okay because in studying Carla Veliz’s works of art you are taking a long, hard look at your self. Her works speak directly to the diverse soul of Latino culture: capturing a dazzling range of emotions and imagery, from figurative to abstract, from celebration to sorrow, from longing to loss, from shimmering beauty to foreboding darkness. But in her ambitious artistic odyssey, something magical happens amidst swirls of paint, explosions of wax and fragments of found objects colliding and fusing: Carla Veliz transcends her roots and her context. She taps into currents that run universally through all of us. Love, danger, joy, tragedy – at times surely experienced as a Latina raised along the US-Mexico border, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend – are presented in such a way through Carla’s paintings that we are reminded that the common truths that bind us together outweigh the nuances which render us unique.

A wise friend recently said to me that healing doesn’t happen in silence. It’s ironic that he used that choice of words because he was dead on. He was talking about a phenomenon that is opposite of silent, created by a community that sorely needs to heal. It is a phenomenon splattered on t-shirts, incorporated in rap videos and woven into lyrics of underground rap artists all over Texas. Yet, it isn’t giving the right message.

But I think it’s time someone does.

The phenomenon my friend was referring to was the “Free SPM” movement.  If you’re wondering if it has anything to do with jail, it does. In fact, it’s a rallying cry by mainly Latino Texas hip hop followers to free a rap legend know as South Park Mexican, a.k.a. Carlos Coy, who is serving a 45-year prison sentence for aggravated sexual assault of a child.