Reflecting on childhood in the fields
In “A Reflection Worth Looking Into,” ceramist Juan Vallejo reflects on his youth and his family’s work as migrant farm workers.
He’s also hoping that the show puts a literal face on those who pick produce in this country.
“When I first came to San Antonio, I really didn’t want to talk about my work,” said Vallejo, 39, a graduate student going into his last semester at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “Where I’m from in the (Rio Grande) Valley, it’s one of the three poorest counties in the country. Everybody around me was a migrant worker, so we really didn’t talk about that.
“But coming up here to do my graduate work, I was asked about it — people would ask for more information about it. So I felt like I needed to share more.”
The Dock Space Gallery Annex installation is framed by large burlap sacks, slipcovered and battered from use. The sacks, which are suspended from the ceiling, are the real deal: Vallejo’s family held onto them, though they no longer work in the fields.
“I went and asked my dad, ‘Why didn’t you get rid of them? They’re so old.’ He would always say, it’s his sense of humor, ‘Well, if I ever need to go back to work, I will have them so I won’t have to buy more,’ ” he said.
Vallejo grew up in Weslaco, but his family picked produce across the country.
“Every summer, middle of May, we would pull out of school and we would work — Idaho, Indiana, Michigan — and return around September or October, and catch up with school,” he said. “But they, my parents, would work year-round. In the Valley, there’s a lot of agriculture. If it wasn’t watermelons, it was oranges, grapefruit — everything that you could grow in the Valley.”
Small, round ceramic pieces that suggest any number of fruits and veggies are arranged on wooden pallets. And black-andwhite photos of family members working in the fields — including Vallejo’s parents and his brother — have been transferred to ceramic plates and are hung as if
they were being seen in the rear view mirrors of vehicles.
“It’s way of looking back as I’m moving forward,” he said.
The exhibit is the first in the space to be curated by Ann FitzGibbons, Robert Wurzbach and Emily Kinder. The team will be curating the space going forward, and their approach for it reflects how they plan to do things for every show.
“Someone said this show was breathing, that it breathed. So that’s how we want it to be,” said Wurzbach, who also is an artist. “We want to elicit an emotion when you come in, to step into a vignette or a memory or a concept of that artist.”
The team intends to showcase works by a wide range of artists working in all kinds of media. They’ve been visiting artists’ studios and galleries to get a feel for who’s doing what.
“Instead of doing a call for artists, we’re trying to reach out,” said FitzGibbons, whose background is in curating.
Many exhibits also will have a longer shelf life than in the past, when shows went up for the Lone Star Art District’s Second Saturday art walks then came down.
The team had an immediate response to Vallejo’s work when they visited his studio. They were taken with the quality and the timeliness of what he’s doing.
“I think his message is very strong,” FitzGibbons said. “When we visited his studio, he had the concept, but it hadn’t been 100 percent developed. And we sat and talked to him about it. He wanted to do more of the rear view mirrors, but he wasn’t sure about how he would pull that off. So we said, we’ll go to Pick-N-Pull (wrecking yard). And then we talked to him about actually hanging the mirrors with the bags in the studio space.”
Working on the pieces in the show brought back a lot of memories for Vallejo.
“Being in the hot sun working, and thinking about, ‘I don’t want to live this life. I want something different. I want the American dream,’ ” he said. “Because we were surrounded by farms and houses, you would see how the other side lived, and I wanted that. I wasn’t satisfied living there in that moment. I wanted to better my life.”
The hard work of previous generations — as well as their decision to move from Mexico to the United States in search of more opportunities for their children — made it possible for Vallejo, his siblings and his cousins to achieve that.
“Now, at my age, we have better lives because of the sacrifices they made,” he said. “I have a cousin who’s a doctor and another cousin is a teacher. So we’ve become very educated because of the sacrifices our ancestors, our parents, did.”
He’s starting work on the final exhibit of his studies at UTSA. It, too, will draw on his heritage.
“I’m trying to continue this path of sharing not just my memories but my family’s background as migrant farm workers as an acknowledgment that we’re not just random people you never see,” he said. “We’re people who came for a better life and were not just invading this country. We want the same opportunity as anyone else.”
“A Reflection Worth Looking Into” can be seen through Monday at the Dock Space Gallery Annex, 107 Lone Star Blvd. Info, dockspacegallery.com; 210-723-3048.