TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1999

Chicano artists reflect on their colorful pasts

By John Putman

On-Line Forty-Niner

When artist and writer Harry Gamboa Jr. walked through the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the early 1970s and could not find a single painting by a Chicano artist, his indignation was so great that it helped launch an art movement.

Later that night, Gamboa and companion artists Gronk, Willie Herron and Patssi Valdez returned to the museum and spray painted their names on a wall to protest their exclusion from the institution. Though their names were erased the next day, the defiant display established the group's notoriety as urban guerrillas who could no longer be ignored.

Though now pursuing individual careers, the four founding members of Asco, as the group called itself, reunited Wednesday afternoon for the first time in a decade to deliver a slide show and lecture to about 150 Cal State Long Beach students and faculty.

The group members grew up in the violent and depressed community of East Los Angeles, and reacted to their surroundings by forming Asco, Spanish for "nausea," to push the artistic boundaries of their community. The artists took their message to the streets, staging daring and elaborate public demonstrations.

"In East Los Angeles in the early 1970s it was probably one of the most riot-torn areas in the United States," Gamboa said. "Basically, for several years, it was paramilitary martial law.

"It was an attempt to control your life within the parameters of what was possible because everything else was out of control," said Gamboa, referring to Asco's colorful, elaborate dress, which was as much a part of the four's artistic expression as their painting. "You were up against so many laws, so many different kinds of situations that were beyond your control. It was a response to fascism, basically."

Asco's members could have easily been drawn into their violent surroundings but saw a need to assert their anger in a positive fashion.

"I could relate to [gangs] because I was around them and grew up with them but it made more sense to just help myself to create something positive," Herron said. "There was nothing you could relate to, so it was almost our destiny to become role models for the next generation."

Herron, who painted murals for the 1994 World Cup and the Los Angeles Olympics, began by painting murals that incorporated pre-existing graffiti, which lined his neighborhood.

He collaborated with Gronk on a number of murals, including "Black and White," a series of 36 panels that became, according to Herron, the second most famous Chicano mural in the world. The most infamous, which he painted in 1972, was recently whitewashed by officials who misinterpreted it as neighborhood graffiti.

Gronk, taking his name from an indigenous Brazilian word meaning "to fly," specializes in on-site murals where he paints directly on gallery walls. The murals are subsequently painted over after the exhibition.

"When I do an on-site piece, yes, I'm working inside the structure of a museum, but I'm doing a piece that that museum can't collect nor can anyone buy nor sell because it's owned by the viewer who comes in to look at it," Gronk said.

Although Asco disbanded in 1987, its members have incorporated the group's history into their own individual work, which often goes beyond the stark nature of their early artistic experimentation.

Valdez, the subject of an exhibition opening Saturday at the Laguna Art Museum, currently focuses on expressive paintings whose vivid color and skewed perspective evoke the dreamy nature of childhood memories.

"Now I'm trying to go to the other side where there's a balance in my life," Valdez said.