Artwork / Apple Pie / This Looks Like a Job for a Chicano! (Mexican-American, Luis)
This Looks Like a Job for a Chicano! (Mexican-American, Luis)
2008
acrylic on bird’s eye piqué
19 x 25 inches
I’m not always convinced that writing and images go well together. The way that our brains key into writing to decipher it without consciously being directed to do so can easily interrupt the way our brains might otherwise engage with a visual work of art.
That said, sometimes writing is necessary, as it is in the piece featured above or as it is when marking a special occasion for a couple who met in the French archives reading wedding certificates and other documents in old French. Then it seems like a good idea to write out their wedding certificate in old French in the background of their portraits.
Below is the subject’s answer to this question: what does it mean to be an American?
Citizen
My new borders
Are these
Loud orders taken
By the men
Of my father’s...
No, of our
Sour and neglected nation
I wake, my own neighbor—
The loud, large family or
The silent, solo man.
My old home
Is this:
A colorlous cul-de-sac
So quiet
That riot is near,
And sounds
Like mariachi.
I sleep, a citizen old,
Who bold writes dreams
And scenes
And schemes of two
Nations,
Tongues,
And homes.
