De la raza

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

By PJH Staff

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Jackson’s first Latin American arts and culture festival, it is not, but Celebracion! has awakened a community-wide affection for valley residents from south of the border.

“Celebracion! keeps growing,” said Lisa Samford of Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, which is organizing the event. “It speaks vitally to how deeply committed and connected community organizations are to the Latino community, and how involved the Latino community is in many aspects of our lives.”

After consulting with the Center for the Arts, Samford and Steve Shultz, executive director there, decided that the Center would take over the event for next year, making it an annual celebration. Shultz said that Celebracion! demonstrates his goal to have the arts hub, officially owned by the Town of Jackson, seen as more of a “center for the community.” Area Hispanics are certainly a part of that community, he said, but the way this event has drawn interest from residents of many races has made it particularly important.

Nearly 20 area nonprofits and businesses are involved in the festival, which now includes art exhibitions, music, dance and soccer demonstrations, film screenings and food. Moreover, everyone involved is working for free.

Normally, we might think that printing all of their names would be gratuitous, if not overindulgent, but a quick glance at the list demonstrates the widespread enthusiasm for this festival:

Partially funded by the Wyoming Arts Council, Community Foundation of Jackson Hole and First Interstate Bank, Samford said, Dancers’ Workshop, the Teton County Library, the Center of Wonder, the Art Association, the Teton County School District, Teton Mentor Project, Teton Literacy Program, Latino Resource Center, Jackson Youth Soccer, Off Square Theater Company, and Center for the Arts and Snow King Resort have all have donated time and supplies.

The local families of Pablo Arellano and Martha Arribillaga have donated their time to make tamales and other traditional foods and drinks, backed by Bistro Catering, The Kitchen at Pai’s Place, Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole and Pica’s. The proceeds will benefit the Jackson Food Cupboard.

Among the many exhibitions and demonstrations offered at Celebracion! Planet JH is particularly excited to see the work of Angel Hernandez hung during the festival. It will be his first show in Jackson, and we think you’ll find his story as interesting as his work.

Also previewed in this feature section are the film Caged Bird by local high school ELL students, the NOVA film Incredible Journey of the Monarch Butterflies, the Mexican Consulate’s children’s art contest and a photography exhibit, Continental Divide: Borderlands, Wildlife, People and The Wall.

Celebracion! is free,  Saturday, for everyone in Jackson Hole (see schedule on the adjacent page). We hope to see you there. PJH
– Matthew Irwin

Mexican artist takes root at Art Association
Angel Hernandez appeared one night in the Art Association Painting Studio late this winter, met some artists who offered him supplies, and started painting. He has been there nearly every evening since, working hard on landscapes after clocking out at Albertson’s.

Hernandez is a stocky man with a friendly smile who hails from Sahajun, Mexico, a town in Hidalgo state about an hour’s drive from Mexico City. He moved to Jackson around eight months ago to find work and be near his five sons that live here.
Before he began working in the studio, Hernandez was across the hallway taking an English class, where two instructors told him the role The Center for the Arts plays for the residents of Jackson. He asked permission to paint there, but a language barrier kept him from understanding that he was supposed to pay. He is now applying for a scholarship.

Jackson is a good place for Hernandez; hanging out with his family gives him a strong sense of freedom that ends up on his canvas, he said. He loves to paint landscapes, so Jackson is an inspiring place.

His work has an expressive quality reminiscent of some of America’s well-known folk artists – it is representational, but full of personality.

Hernandez spent most of the 80s and 90s in Hidalgo, studying under two painters, Jesus Mora and Miguel Angel Herman, who taught him technique and style, he said. His paintings often use rich colors to bring out the mystical effects of light in landscapes – like a moonlit sea or a mountain sunset – with hues in the foreground that evoke those of the sky. That could be the freedom he says Jackson provides.
“Art is something that never ends, something that never stops moving,” he said.
Hernandez might very well be the only member of the Latino community currently working regularly in the Art Association’s studio space.

He is in the process of securing the scholarship so he can continue to use the space, though it will cover only a relatively short time. Beyond that, he will have to figure out another way to stay, Art Association staffers said. The money, available to any artist in need, is provided by private donors specifically for class and studio scholarships.

Carmina Oaks, director of the Latino Resource Center, helped facilitate communication between Hernandez, who is a beginning English student, and the Art Association. She said that there is a lot of interest in the Latino community for the arts, something that Hernandez agreed with. But money and language can be huge barriers.

“We have people that want to participate in art and cultural things,” Oaks said. “But sometimes getting their foot in the door is the difficult part, and now it is even more difficult with the economic situation.”

Oaks hopes that programs will develop where the Spanish- and English-speaking communities meet one another and share cultural knowledge about food, music, language, art or life. It could be like a “barter,” or a trade, where everyone benefits. She spoke inspirationally about that, but also very realistically.

Some programs in the past have integrated cultures, but were slow to  find momentum. A permanent funding source would be difficult to find, especially now that the economy is worse, Oaks said. But the Celebracion! is a step in the right direction, she said.

Instructors and organizers at the Art Association have discussed having a demo day with Spanish translators, but no date has been set for such an event.
Hernandez, who has a sick mother in Mexico, may have to return there, but he would like to come back to Jackson in the future. In the meantime, he will be painting.

His first show in Jackson will be Saturday, in the Art Association’s Painting Studio. PJH
– Henry Sweets

Festival highlights
Bookended by traditional Mexican dance performances, Celebracion! brings Hispanic culture to Jackson Hole through visual arts exhibitions, art-making classes, dance demonstrations and classes, films by local kids and international directors and music by a local Latin band (full schedule below). Everything is at the Center for the Arts, and free, except for the food.

Ballet Folklorico Citlali opens Celebracion! with a dance demonstration and class for all ages in the Center Theater. Some readers may recognize the group from local Cinco de Mayo parties past. The Salt Lake City performance group formed to promote and preserve the culture and spirit of Mexico in and around Utah.

All day in the Center, art exhibitions will provide ample brain fodder between the day’s scheduled screenings and performances. The Mexican Consulate brought its children’s art contest to the Conference Room; photos from the U.S.-Mexico border region will hang in the Center Theater Gallery and local artist Angel Hernandez (see story, page 10) will have his a show in the Art Association’s third-floor painting studio.

Este es mi Mexico is a worldwide drawing contest, brought to Jackson by Salt Lake City’s Mexican Consulate. Children, ages seven to 11, from any nationality, have drawn their interpretations of Mexican culture, history and people. In 2008, more that 5,000 thousand children submitted drawings.

Local photographer Jeff Foott is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers, the group responsible for “Continental Divide: Borderlands, Wildlife, People and The Wall.”

As its name suggests, ILCP promotes an understanding of humanity’s impact on and relationship with wildlife and natural landscapes. Continental Divide stays close to the border wall to see how it affects people and animals on either side.
Scheduled events continue in the Black Box Theater, where children will hear traditional folktales in Spanish and English, and will make their own art.
In the lobby, Pablo Arellano and family will give tamale-making demonstrations throughout the day; and Manny Sanchez will host a late-morning dance-fitness class, as well as a salsa dancing class, in the Center Theater.

Calle Mambo, a local band that introduced itself to Jackson at the Silver Dollar Bar’s Cinco de Mayo celebration, will provide a mid-day uplifter, also in the lobby.
The NOVA documentary Incredible Journey of the Monarch Butterflies will screen in the Center Theater. More than 100 million monarchs fly across North America to a small Mexican village, each year. The film spots them as caterpillars in Southern Canada and then follows them using helicopters, ultralight and hot-air balloons as they make the 2,000-mile journey across fields, forests, cities and deserts to the mountains of central Mexico. Butterfly habitat, there, is threatened by illegal logging.

Caged Bird by English Language Learning (ELL) students at Jackson Hole High School will screen later in the same location.

Carrie Noel, from the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, had ELL students adapt Maya Angelou’s poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” using claymation, doing all the work themselves from creating clay characters and filming frame-by-frame to piecing the images together with editing software.

The projects help break the cycle of frustration that many ELL students face, Noel said.

The three-minute film will screen before the premiere of Atletico San Pancho in the Center Theater. In Spanish with English subtitles, Atletico San Pancho features a small town where soccer reportedly originated in Mexico. Now mostly forgotten, the town is the location of a Bad News Bears-like comedy about youth whose love of the game takes them to the championship in Mexico City.
And then, like this preview, Celebracion! will end with a performance by Ballet Folklorico Citlali. The one-hour performance promises to send everyone home – tired, satisfied and somewhat acculturated.
-MJI and HS

Courtesy JEFF FOOTT
An image from "Continental Divide"


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