Died 19 July 2009 | ||
Rubén Trejo (January 7, 1937 – July 19, 2009) was a prominent 20th century sculptor and painter and a professor at Eastern Washington University. His work addressed issues within the Chicano and Latino community, but also discussed more universal motifs such as culture, race, history, and faith. His work can be found in many exhibits, and is part of the permanent collections at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, IL, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M.
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Personal life
Trejo was born in St. Paul, MN in a Burlington railroad CB&Q boxcar. His parents were Tarascan Indians from Michoacan, Mexico, and came over in the 1910s or 20s to do railroad work. He had 11 siblings, 4 who died soon after birth. His mother never learned English, and so he spoke Spanish at home and English in school. As a child, Trejo traveled around the country performing temporary farm work with his siblings until the early 1950s. In Minnesota and Indiana they picked potatoes, onions, and sugar beets and tomatoes.
They lived in a primarily white community; in fact, Trejo and his siblings were often the only Mexican Americans in their classes and often felt left out by their classmates. The lack of representation in his surroundings led Trejo to look for self-identification through other sources, especially art, which became the main source for his self-identification. Trejo earned his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Minnesota in 1969. He also earned a minor in Latin American Literature which really helped him learn about his culture and language. In his art classes, he often felt like he lacked representation. His professors often asked him to look to the prominent white artists of the time for inspiration, but instead he felt influence by artists and writers such as Octavio Paz and Guillermo Gómez-Pena, who helped him explore his worldview and identity.
Career as an Educator
Trejo moved to Spokane, WA in 1973 at the age of 36 after being offered a job to teach Art Humanities (Western Civilization) and Drawing at Eastern Washington University (EWU). When the position became available, he also taught sculpture and later Mexican art.
Upon arriving at EWU, Trejo led a week long sit-in with the students at the President’s office to emphasize the need to support Latino students. As an educator, Trejo worked very closely with his students, especially his Latino students as he recognized that many of them were striving to become first generation college graduates. He was a huge advocate for the Latino and Chicano students, and welcomed hundreds of them from EWU and neighboring universities to his home and studio. In 1977, he co-founded the Chicano Education Program which strives to provide and increase the career and higher education opportunities offered to Latino students, as well as educate the general population on Latino heritage and the Chicano Movement. His efforts at EWU were well recognized among the faculty and staff alike, as he was awarded the EWU Trustee Medal in 1987. Trejo also has a scholarship offered in his name, called the Ruben Trejo Hispanic Scholarship which is granted annually to a qualifying Latino or Chicano student pursuing an undergraduate degree in art.
Career as an artist
His move to Washington really helped his identity flourish and transform as he became more in touch with the Chicano Movement and Latino issues. To him, Chicano meant the mixing of Mexican and United States culture, and he thrives on this sense of duality and a lot of his artwork reflects that. As part of that Chicano duality, Trejo was invited to meet the first ladies of Mexico and the US at the Art Institute in Chicago. Trejo looked at is an "opportunity to bring cultures together, acknowledging the fact that many of the immigrants in this country are Mexicans, and they come here to contribute in diverse ways. It’s not just about cheap labor, but about generations that have redefined American culture." Much of artwork reflects this duality, and tries to highlight the influence that Latinos that have had on all aspects of United States society.
As an artist, Trejo was a well respected member of the Chicano and Latino community. Ben Mitchell, senior curator of art at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, says Trejo was included in virtually every major Hispanic or Chicano art exhibition in the past 25 years. Trejo was a very versatile artist, who according to Mitchell "was absolutely unafraid of any medium…[he worked with] brushed aluminum, paper collages, welded constructions, bent railroad spikes, and bronze-cast underpants". As a Tarascan Indian, Trejo was very inspired by his pre-Columbian heritage, and a lot of his artwork reflects this aspect of his life and strives to connect it with his identity in the United States as well. He painted a mural in his kitchen displaying his love for Mexican folklore and history. "Parts of the mural were taken from Paradise of Tlaloc (the water god), one of the first murals in Teotihuacan, but Ruben - in typical fashion - updated it with images from popular culture and personal references to his family".
He also likes to connect his artwork to his humble beginnings. His piece Mandalas uses railroad spikes in remembrance of his father’s time working in railroad years. His artwork also tends to use everyday objects like farm tools, chili peppers, and sweet potatoes. He wants to make his work accessible and recognizable to everyone, so he tends to put shapes and objects in his work that everyone can identify with. He used everyday objects, underwear and a jalapeño, in his Calzones series, one of his more political works. The bronzed underwear and jalapeño are meant to challenge the Spanish machismo culture. Also a part of this series is Alacrán, a piece that recreates underwear to be a mask. It is meant to represent the masks that people wear, both literally and figuratively, during Halloween and the Day of the Dead, and is meant to highlight the mixing of Latino and United States culture as well.