Art With Intention: A Q&A With Ruby Chacon on Community, Teaching and Social Change

 

By Claire Le Gallo

 

For most of her life, Utah-born artist Ruby Chacon has used art to understand her identity as a Chicana woman. Art was a personal exploration, a material expression, a way to make sense of the world. That impulse remains, though her intentions with art have grown far beyond herself. Now, she is using art to serve and advocate for the greater Chicanx community and understand how she fits into that community. 

 

“I want to do art with intention, with a purpose,” Chacon said. “I felt like I was given this gift for a reason, whether it be working with the community and using it as a tool for social change and activism or mentoring youth.”  

 

Chacon said made sense of her visual world growing up in Salt Lake City through art; it was the only language she knew how to express herself with. Although she would not relive her childhood, she spent many years making the Chicanx presence visible on Utah walls. “This whole thing of being an artist is intricately connected to how I grew up as a young person,” she said.

 

Her murals and paintings are known for being bold and intimate, highlighting elders, women, families and everyday people. Faces glow with vibrant reds, greens and blues and have eyes so emotional that one can almost see the memories that live inside them. 

 

Her artistic process, she said, starts in these quiet, collaborative exchanges with commissioners, researchers, artists, community members—whoever the piece calls for. Images begin to flood her mind. She jots down the vivid images swirling around in her head, and soon, she is drawing. Then painting. Everything is not perfectly mapped out before she grabs the pale wooden handle of her paintbrush and brings the bristles, glopped with acrylic paint, toward the cloth canvas or the exterior of a building wall. 

 

Chacon’s paintings and murals refused to be missed. Colors as deep as the emotions and motifs in her paintings can cut into any passerby’s eyesight.

 

Having lived in Sacramento since the end of 2013, she said she has found community in teaching—a space where she believes she can develop both as an artist and educator. Chacon sat down to talk about leaving Utah, finding new mentors in California’s Chicano art tradition and using her work as a tool for social change.

 

You spent decades making Chicano presences visible on Utah walls. What made you leave Salt Lake City?

In Utah, I was always around people. I'd go to the store and run into people. I was never anonymous because it's such a small community. That’s one of the things I lost, but also what I gained, at the same time, was just being able to be anonymous in a place, being able to take space that I need for myself. But at the same time, I had to earn my way into doors again, all over again. When I moved to Sacramento, I had to prove myself again. It was almost like being a beginner, just launching my career in a new place. Whereas in Utah, I didn't have to work as hard after a while. I mean…I worked, not that I didn't work hard, but what I mean by that is I didn’t have to prove my ability. I built my own reputation there. I had to do it all over again, moving to a new place, but I don't think I really lost. It's just different. It's just kind of transformed.

 

Does ‘Utahn’ still feel like the right word for who you are now that you live outside the state?

 I still have Utah inside of me. I still tell people that I'm from Utah. For example, I won a competition for the anti-ICE painting. They ended up exhibiting it in Pomona and I told them, “I'm originally from Utah, and I live in Sacramento.” I just told them the whole spiel. I’m kind of embraced as a California artist here, but I don't want to lose that Utah component of myself, because that's what defined me and my path. Why I do the things that I do is just my experience living in Utah. I can't ever erase all the things that I went through, especially growing up as a young person. That’s always defined my work. I wouldn't say that I've ever lost that sense of my identity being from Utah, because that's who I am. I also feel, at the same time, moving to new places, that I'm a global citizen.

 

California has a deep, established Chicano art tradition, including Judith Baca, Royal Chicano Air Force and decades of work created by muralists. How did it feel to create within that legacy? 

It's kind of the first time that I've ever been able to have mentors who are my elders, who are artists. That was a really different experience because I was always used to being the mentor. I feel like that community embraces me and my work; regardless of where I originally come from, they still embrace me. That is a nice thing. Then at the same time, there's so much more that was done here. You're kind of like a small fish in a big pond, rather than a big fish in a little pond. So, it has its pros and cons, but I kind of like it this way. It feels like it's a middle ground for me.

 

You posted about anxiety around the current immigration policy. What are you seeing and hearing from people in your community right now?

 I am connected with people who've been doing this MigraWatch, and I get those notifications all the time. Just seeing the stories all over the news, the people just being afraid, being deported—there's a real fear. The part when children are affected, when children are being impacted, that's the part that really just hits my gut and makes me want to cry. At the same time, when we had the high school walkout at my school, I just saw my students walk out. I was so proud of them. I know that they're feeling those anxieties. They’re really quiet about it, but I try to keep those images or those messages in my classroom open so if they wanted to talk about it, they could. So, when they stood up and walked out, it was just beautiful to see that they are standing up for their families and they're standing up for their community. So, yeah, there's a real fear, but there's also a real courage of a lot of people who are standing against it.

 

Your art has always rejected dehumanizing portrayals of Latinx people. Has the current rhetoric around immigration changed how you think about that work? 

Actually, no. My art has been this way since SB 1070, the Arizona bill. I look back and I have images clear back in 2010 that are still around immigration and immigration rights. Each piece is different, but the theme is still similar. I do still remember that I was really anxious around that time, too, but I feel like it's a little bit more threatening now…I'm going to still create what I'm going to create, but I feel like that's something that probably could have backlash. Whereas before, I don't think that was on my mind. I will have to prepare myself because you just don't know.  

 

How has your narrative and voice as an artist evolved?

Even as a child, all through my young adult life, I was mainly trying to figure out my identity. What is my identity within this really white context? Where do we come from? It was mainly that, trying to ground myself into something, like, “who am I?” Then later, in life, it started to become how is my identity connected with the greater context, with a greater Chicano community, with other people of color… Now, if I'm going to do a piece, it's going to be super intentional. I'm going to pick and choose projects that really serve the community, that advocate for the community in ways that you can't really do in books. Art really speaks to someone right away, and it doesn't matter the language or educational level. So that's what it is now. It's more about social issues, social justice. And it might change later in the future. Who knows? I might do a pretty landscape one day.  

 

When did you realize you could use your art as a tool for activism, or was that always clear to you?

It started when I had my first show. I had painted a lot about my family and my family history… I did a painting of my grandpa on the side of Blue Mountain. My dad was at the show and started talking to me about sheep herding with his dad. I could tell his eyes were kind of tearing up. That was the first time I realized we belong, too. We exist. I had to make it visible.

From the position of being an educator and a teacher, how do you handle the political climate?

 I want my students to feel safe in class. There's a lot of visual messaging in my class to help them know they're safe. But I also don't want them to feel anxious or have it be always on their mind. I want them to be able to escape a little bit through art. So students know, whoever you are, this is a safe class for you. It's really an interesting, fine line that you have to walk with young people. You do want them to feel safe, and you don't want to talk about fear all the time. But you also want them to know that you can talk about it if they need to.

 

What is it like sharing your art with your community?

It’s a solidarity of all these things coming together, but in celebration. I really love just being with the community and everybody supporting the work — celebrating each other…through art. That's a really important aspect, connecting with people and being able to talk about these things through your community. And you never know, new projects can come out of it and definitely new connections. I feel like this is a very healing component — to be able to create your art and put it all in there, put all the anger, all the emotions, all the anxiety into it. That's part of the healing. You can't just keep it inside.

   

What do you hope people carry with them after seeing your work, whether it’s a mural, painting or a post on Instagram?

To inspire them to be able to create their own art, see themselves to be able to do the same [and] use their own talents as a tool for social change…I want people to be able to… see themselves humanized and connected…especially people who feel marginalized and unseen and invisible.