Chicano-Boricua Art at the Union Gallery

Chicanos and Boricua are coming together in Ann Arbor this month to express their creative and diversified experiences with paintings, drawings and photography. Boricua is the Indian word for what the Spanish named Puerto Rico. The Union Gallery is exhibiting works by  five artists until October 19.

Roberto Flores, of Adrian ; Julio Perazza, of Ann Arbor; Felipe Reyes, of San Antonio; Leory Segura, of Las Vegas, New Mexico; and Jorge Vargas of Ann Arbor are bringing their interpretations of art, artists, color, movement, technique, style and individuality.

Each describes how his life style in fluences his art. They feel it is based on their elemental nature as artist. But each feels Chicanismo and Boriquen has influenced the subject matter greatly. However, they stress that viewers will reach into themselves to decide what Chicano and Boricua art is.

Perhaps Felipe Reyes, the most widely known of the group, expresses it best when he talks of "nuevas hondas" (new ways).

"I understand myself as an artist, a Chicano. The two are inseparable. We have a very peculiar vision. We bring something very rare to art," he explains.

His pastels, ink-crayon, and creepage abstracts are microscopic views of the serape colored universe.

Flores, a junior in photography, displays landscapes, black and white composites, and Chicano still lifes. "The art exhibit will have a lot of impact," he says. "No matadors or toros, there is nothing like that."

Boriquen representation comes in 15 color and motion prints by Julio Perazza, a senior in photography. Although his subject matter is not exclusively Chicano-Boriqua, Perazza feels he has captured "raza" motif in color, background, individuals and movement.

Segura, who is now pursuing a career in higher education, is displaying two abstract pastels. He stresses privacy.

Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god, figures heavily in the paintings of Jorge Vargas. His studies of the sun are bright spiral abstracts of oranges, reds and yellows. They echo the core of light and power which has influenced man and woman for ages.

His massive "Huitzilopochtli Otra Vez" is a very symbolic piece which brings to play Indio, mestizo, mejicano, migrante, eagle and farmworker. All point to the birth of the Chicano.

--Jesse Gonzales