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[[image - painting]] ON EXHIBIT: Cesar Martinez's "Remolino" is included in an exhibit with local artist Mel Casas at the Jansen-Perez Gallery. Contemporary Art Month gets into gear Contemporary Art Month kicks into high gear this week with exhibits opening all over town, including "Blue Star 6," "Mutual Influences" at the Mexican Cultural Institute and "Oaxaca: Four Contemporary Artists" at Milagros Gallery. In this season of "Splendors," several exhibit explore Chicano art. Chicano art, which came to the fore in the '60s and '70s in the Chicano Art Movement, continues to celebrate the artists' tie to their Mexican heritage while speaking to the issue of surviving in the United States, with its Anglo values. Chicano art is steeped in references to Mexican culture: pre-Columbian icons, images of Mexican Revolution, a commitment to social issues as outlined by Diego Rivera. Since about 1980 however, Chicano art has crossed the border and begun influencing contemporary Mexican art. "Mutual Influences," co-sponsored by the Mexican Cultural Institute and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, explores the complex artistic relationship between Mexico and the United States. Scholar Esperanza Garrido Reyes points out that "both Chicano and Mexican painting during the '80s have a common source of iconographic inspirations, which was the Mexican painting of the 1920s and 1930s... The use of this iconography is not solely in response to the desire to rescue the past, but above all else, to give new meaning in the present to certain popular images. (However) it is at this juncture that the two groups part..." Reyes goes on to point out that while both Mexican and Chicano painters seek to define themselves and their cultural identity in their work, Chicano art is fueled by a sense of struggle - what Sylvia Mirsky calls "the reaffirmation of a Chicano way of life in the midst of Anglo values." Reyes will speak at a symposium exploring the issue of "Mutual Influences," set for 10a.m. Saturday at the Guadalupe Theater, 1301 Guadalupe. UTSA art historian Jacinto Quirarte and Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Director Pedro Rodriguez also will speak at the symposium. The exhibit, opening Friday at the Juan Rulfo Annex of the Mexican Cultural Institute, features works by artists from Texas, New Mexico and California, including David Casas, Diana Cardenas, Cesar Martinez, Jose Luis Rivera, Luis Jiminez, Rupert Garcia, Ester Hernandez, Yolanda Lopez, Gilbert "Magu" Lujan and Malquias Montoya. An opening reception with a performance by Casas is set for 7-9 p.m. Several other exhibits explore contemporary Chicano and Mexican art as well. "Chicano Metaphor" continues through the month at the Expresion Gallery in Las Palmas Mall, and an exhibit of new paintings by local artists Cesar Martinez and Mel Casas - as well as a show of graphic works by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros - opens Thursday at Jansen-Perez Gallery downtown. At Milagros Gallery, an exhibit explores the contemporary artistic landscape of the Mexican state of Oaxaca, focusing on four artists: Adriana Alanis, Arnulfo Mendoza, Maria Elena Jimenez and Felipe Morales. The artists' work is inextricably tied to Oaxaca itself, a land where mostly Zapotec Indian residents see everyday life as a mystic ritual. The big Blue Star blowout this year is set for Friday evening, with more than 60 local artists showing new work. May of the city's finest artists will be exhibiting, including Jesse Amado, Susan Cheal, James Cobb, Princess Cook, Jane Dunnewold, Heather Edwards, Gene Elder, Don Evans, Larry Graeber, Jose Guadiana, Mark Hogensen, Leslie Koptcho, Dianne Mazur, Glenna Park, Anita Valencia, Andy Villareal, Susie Vogel and Beck Whitehead. Local artist Henry Stein, who makes sculpture from other people's junk, has the whole Blue Star Art Space to himself. It is the first time the Blue Star centerpiece show has been a one-person exhibit during Contemporary Art Month. Stein's show promises to be both beautiful and thought-provoking. [[image - painting]] LOFTY ART: This detail is from Susan Cheal's "Labyrinth I," a work in oil, sand and straw that will be in the Blue Star Loft Complex. [[image - painting]] GROUP SHOW: The work of Adriana Alanis is among four artists from the state of Oaxaca being displayed at Milagros Gallery.
