We recently connected with Linda Vallejo and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Linda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights  with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One of the most meaningful projects I’ve worked on was a series of earth-based sculptures that I  produced from 1980-1990 entitled “Tree People.” The Tree of Life is a symbol found in many  cultures of the world, from the universal family tree, to the Mexican tree of life, to the Biblical tree of  life found in Revelations. 

I began working on a Tree of Life Installation as a response to a community invitation to participate  in an altar exhibition. I am not an altar maker but hoped to respond to the invitation with a work  that would share symbols from the Chicano/Mexicano cultural and ceremonial calendar. I invited  friends to decorate a tree I arranged in a community gallery. I received objects in the mail along  with offerings from visitors during the installation. After the installation of this first Tree of Life, I  began receiving gifts of branches and trees. In my work, I do not judge or make decisions which  confine, so I took the gifts and began my series of sculpture. 

Between 1980-1990 I completed over 100 Tree People sculptures; figurative mixed media  handmade paper sculptures. My foraged the city and traveled to the mountains to collect wood that  had good form. I do not analyze the wood fragments or make artistic decisions for the forms. I began  with a feeling and an image. Carried by this impression, I allowed sculpture to evolve without  judgement. I used the found tree fragment as armature onto which I molded cotton rag paper pulp.  A finished sculpture could be a larger than life face with the roots of a tree growing from out the top  its head. The original configuration of the wood dictates the final image. 

At times these pieces embody the “human” face of nature – fire, water, earth, and air, as well as the  Mesoamerican gods Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the region of death, and Quetzalcoatl, the  Mesoamerican poet king whose symbol of the feathered serpent. 

The 21st Century has inundated with images “morph” human and machine, i.e., artificial  intelligence, replicants, the Bionic Man, and Darth Vader. Tree People returns us to the pre-historic  images of human “morphed” with nature and animal. 

These works have now found a place in history of feminist environmental tenet and arts with the  support of my new gallery parrasch heijnen in Los Angeles.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly  introduce yourself to our readers.

My early years were spent traveling and studying in far-flung locations throughout the United States  and Europe. During my artistic grounding, I became increasingly immersed in Chicano art and  indigenous communities—experiences that have informed my cultural perspectives and, by  extension, my art practice. It has taken my entire artistic career to fuse an image that defines my  multicultural experience of the world and my place in it. 

I was born in Boyle Heights and lived in East Los Angeles, just a stone’s throw away from Self Help  Graphics & Art, until I was three years old. I was very fortunate to have six great-grandparents and a  large extended family in those early years. My father, Adam Vallejo, was studying political science at  the University of California, Los Angeles, and my mother, Helen, worked for a prominent doctor on  First Street. My father’s family was blessed with several musicians, including my paternal  grandfather, Aniceto, as well as talented singers and dancers. My great-grandparents hailed from  Mexico and Texas, having migrating to work in the fields of California in the first decades of the  twentieth century.

After my father graduated from college he entered the US Air Force as a commissioned officer and  we moved to Germany, just outside Munich. As a young girl I didn’t understand the changes I would  experience in moving from one place to another. Over the next ten years I lived in Arizona, Missouri,  Texas, and Sacramento, California, where we stayed for seven years. In the mid-1960s I found  myself in Montgomery, Alabama, where my high school was integrated for the first time in its  history. The tension was palpable, and violence seemed imminent. The knowledge of myself as a  person of color, standing outside the lines of fire, scorched me indelibly. I have memories of “white”  and “colored” bathroom stalls and fountains, of the tragic marches from Selma, of burning crosses  and lynchings, and of the hopeful speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King. I began to realize that the  world did not see me as I saw myself, that color was a defining point in how the world judges us and  fixes our place in it. 

In 1967 my family moved to Madrid, where I graduated from high school. I traveled, studying art,  architecture, and art history. As I traveled I fell in love with European history and culture, and with  the classics. I wrote music, designed clothing, and painted, searching for a language that could  express universal equality and acceptance. I imagined an image that could open a dialogue of  understanding among all peoples. 

The artwork I created during these years came from my experiences in El Museo Nacional del  Prado, where I studied El Greco’s elongated and floating images of the pantheon of heaven, Goya’s  gruesome portrayals of humanity’s folly in pain and suffering, and an astounding collection of  Bosch, with his imagination-filled landscapes of the glories of heaven and the humiliations of hell. I  visited ancient Roman sites, falling in love with the ethereal gods and their mythologies and with  the history of the great 

Western cultures. These experiences fed my desire to create an image that could speak a language  of compassion and respect. In 1975 I returned to Los Angeles to begin my master of fine arts studies  in printmaking at California State University, Long Beach. I also returned to be close to my family.  Two of my grandparents were still alive, and I had several cousins living in Los Angeles and the  surrounding areas. 

It was then in 1976 that I found my way into a job with Sister Karen Boccalero as a printmaking  teacher for Self Help Graphics’s Barrio Mobile Art Studio, immersing myself in “my own” classical  culture, Mesoamerica. I became involved in the burgeoning Chicano arts community as well as in  Chicano Indígena and Native American ceremonial circles. Again, I found myself surrounded by  stories of cultural misconceptions based on color, class, and creed. My experiences in Indígena led  me to create fantastic realism landscapes focused on spiritual awakening. As the years passed I  continued to travel, study, and paint. 

This is a brief story of my early life experiences and influences that have inspired my work as an  artist.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is expressing your own personal vision and statement.  Having the freedom to share your image and its meaning is a great gift.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

The job of the fine artist is to produce an image that reflects, describes and chronicles the times in  which we live. A fine artist must study, research and experiment to find their personal message to  share with the world. The artist must have privacy and silence to find their message and to create  the art image. Imagine the world without music, poetry, dance, painting, and performance!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lindavallejoart.com
• Other: https://www.lindavallejo.com (archves)
• • Other: https://www.parraschheijnen.com/artists/linda-vallejo
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindavallejostudio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/linda.vallejo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atozgrantwriting/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmuyvM4Kza5eL4irdzEXtVQ

Image Credits

@parraschheijnen