Local Artist Valdez Preserves Culture
Posted Mar 18 2006
How about the murals in southwest Detroit?
There was the restoration on an 18-year-old mural on the façade of the Citizens District Council building at Bagley and Ste. Anne’s. Across the street on La Jalisciense tortilla factory warehouse I did a mural that depicts a scene with a cornfield and the workers who work (it), going into the mountain.
How does bring overseas compare to the U.S. in terms of the art and people accepting your work?
(Overseas) they love the idea of meeting a Mexican from Detroit and they liked the aspect of the “urban artist themes” and most of my work dealt with those themes. Kind of urban friendly type work with the influence of Chicano art. A lot of them are figurative, abstract works, dealing with relationships between men and women. Kind of “blood and lust,” but not blood lust (laughs). I’ve been accepted very well in the United States, but it does seem that art gets more respect in Europe.
Where can people see your work in Michigan?
Zeitgeist Gallery on Michigan Ave. (2661 Michigan Ave., Detroit, 313-965-9192) and on my website. My work has also been displayed in Detroit Contemporary Gallery.
What’s coming up in the future?
I have and idea that I came up with while living in El Paso. I was going back and forth, border to border, the Detroit-Windsor border, which is the largest international port of entry into the United States, and the other border between El Paso and Mexico. I found it kind of ironic that here at the Windsor border, what do they come into? Mexicantown! So I started to do some projects that dealt with that theme, the international border and I plan on doing some type of exchange show with El Paso artists. Maybe youth and mature artists, where some of them up here go down there and they can exchange the ideas and work of artists that live on borders. The idea is there, but it’s going to take some time to work it out. Currently, I’m preparing for an upcoming show in Havana, Cuba in May. I’m going with a group of artists from Detroit for a cultural exchange of ideas and art as guest of the United Labor Workers of Cuba.
For more info on Vito Valdez, check out www.akadetroit.com/collective/valdez
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