Spotlight Sundays: Exploring Intergenerational Chicanx Dialogue around Art and Practice

Elyse Doyle-Martinez is an Artist, Educator, and Brown Issues Advisor from Woodland, CA. After graduating from California State University, Northridge with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Gender and Women’s Studies with a focus on Chicano Studies; Elyse moved back to Woodland and found a place in education and youth advocacy. She started participating at TANA (Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer) in 2017 to learn the silkscreen process and build community with other Chicanx artists. Since then, she has worked at Cesar Chavez Community School, the Yolo County Juvenile Hall, and at Cache Creek High School. She works on campuses with system-impacted youth to creatively cultivate the next generation of Brown leaders through Healing, Civic Engagement, and Narrative Change. She uses the creative process as a whole to empower young people, strengthen them as individuals, and develop communities. 

Israel graduated with a bachelors from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2011 and acquired an MFA from the University of Wisconsin‐Madison in 2015. His work is in the permanent collections of the Kohler Art Library, the UCSC Digital Art Research Center, the Zuckerman Museum of Art, and the Oregon College of Art and Craft. He has exhibited in venues across the country, including the ArtHelix Gallery in New York City, the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art in Portland and is an active member of the Vox Pop printmaking artist collective and the California Society of Printmakers. He also runs and operates Chayote Press.

Born in Artesia, New Mexico Juan R. Fuentes’s was been awarded with an Honorary Membership to the California Society of Printmaker’s for his contribution to the world of printmaking. He has exhibited Nationally and Internationally and is in the permanent collections of the Mexican Museum, San Francisco, the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles, Legion of Honor, San Francisco. As well has a personal archive dedicated to his work at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives, University of Santa Barbara. His studio, Pajaro Editions is part of Consejo Grafico, a national collective of Latino print studios.  

A UC Davis Professor Emeritus, Malaquias Montoya is credited by historians as one of the founders of the social serigraphy movement in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960s. He has lectured and taught at numerous colleges and universities including Stanford, UC Berkeley, the California College of Art, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Texas, San Antonio. Montoya’s unique visual expression is an art of protest, depicting the resistance and strength of humanity in the face of injustice and the necessity to unite behind that struggle. Montoya is co-founder of Taller Arte del Nuevo Amanecer, a community-based art center in Woodland, where he continues to teach. In 2011, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center published a full-length monograph about Montoya and his work.

Dr. Martina Ayala is a curator, educator, filmmaker, and visionary leader. For over 35 years, she has curated art exhibits, produced concerts and cultural events, and led innovative programs, schools, and organizations serving inter-generational multicultural communities. As a scholar and activist with a Doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco, her life’s work has focused on Chicano cinema, community, literacy, and spirituality. She is currently committed to preserving, developing, and promoting Latin American and Chicano(a) art history, specifically protecting the print poster archives created by Latinx artists at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA) over the past 46 years. As a transformative leader and coach, she supports folks seeking to understand their purpose and truth. Earlier this year, Dr. Ayala became the Executive Director of the MCCLA.