KTLA News: "Chicano artists at the Goez Art Gallery & Studio in East Los Angeles" (1973)

most of the artists are already professional artists who are volunteering their time to help the non-pro and uh establishing you know the the the artist getting the youngster to get better with his artwork so that he could become proficient just like the professional now these men that we see working on their particular projects are they preparing them for sale or exhibition how will the uh end product be used they will be they will be sold and others are commission Works in other words the artist comes in and we if we have a commission for him we give it to the artist that we feel is capable of doing such work so we'll start how much time do you oh we'll talk four or five minutes Mr Gonzalez from where do all of these artists come well most of the artists originate from here from East LA they were either born here and raised here and have now moved around the area but they're still within the east LA area are they going to school are they learning or are they accomplished artists and browse as they would in an art gallery definitely yes this is this is why this is a purpose for our Gallery here we started the gallery with the intention of getting the Mexican-American artist to expose his works and thereby encouraging the artist to you know once he sells a piece of work he will be able to get the encouragement to want to produce more and the better he produces naturally the better the more he'll sell now most of them are of a Mexican American theme yes uh is this done purposely is the better Market here for that well the fact that we're in uh in a minority area the East Los Angeles area which is predominantly Mexican-American we have uh had occasion to um to experiment or to you know make analysis on on what uh people really want around here and we have discovered through the past three years that people do want Mexican themes and they come from various parts of the United States as a matter of fact they have come from New York to buy things that pertain to the Mexican-American theme and they want things that are being created today by the artist of today they don't want anything from the past they want what's happening right now in other words they are not interested in preser preserving the rich tradition of the country no see the thing is that the artists here are are preserving the the Heritage and the culture by bringing things in that pertain to the Mexican okay the the origin but what they're trying to do is paint things that pertain to today to now um we might say that some of the artists are trying to produce works that will eventually be classified as a Cho work of art or a Mexican-American work of art the word Cho naturally deres from the fact that the Mexican-American born here has to classify himself as somebody so he classifies himself as a chico so that's the reason we call him a Cho that's a person a Mexican descent born here in the United States now the works that are trying to be created here are are done with the skill of a professional artist but they have the theme in mind which is the Mexican theme this is what they're trying to create right