Juan Manuel Carillo to Angel's Center for the Arts ~ 12/2023
The following is a dedication written and presented to Angel's Center for the Arts in Sacramento by Juan Manuel Carillo. While written by one member of Escritores, Juan has captured the fire that burns in all of our hearts. We have a responsibility to be present in the art community in Sacramento, defend our right to be there, and mainta
The following is a dedication written and presented to Angel's Center for the Arts in Sacramento by Juan Manuel Carillo. While written by one member of Escritores, Juan has captured the fire that burns in all of our hearts. We have a responsibility to be present in the art community in Sacramento, defend our right to be there, and maintain an inclusive mindset as artists to our fellow artists. We endeavor to lead events, take part in events, and be a positive force of creative expression for ourselves and our posterity.
This space is dedicated to music, visual arts, and poetry. The Angel’s Center for the Arts is dedicated to the furthering development of Del Paso Blvd and the surrounding neighborhood through the arts. Owned by Carmela Castellano Garcia and Angel Garcia, we are grateful to them.
Space for art is fundamental. A center for the arts is a vehicle established to introduce, educate, and present art to its participants and audiences. It does much more than that.
I have had the opportunity to serve and be part of the Chicano Art Movement from its inception in the mid-1960’s. Through the belief that the arts help to develop a community in a positive way I became an educator, an artist, and an arts activist. I have spent a career in the world of education, arts, and politics. I have seen the transformative role that space for the arts in communities throughout California and the nation plays for raising the quality of life for people. When I went to work for the California Arts Council in 1978. I met Gary Snyder, the first chairman of the agency and an honored, Pulitzer Prize winning poet. He had given deep thought to how the arts agency could serve such a large and diverse state. He drew upon his long investigation and thoughts on the natural world in which we live. He saw the world as distinct regions. He saw spaces across the state as distinct spaces carved out by mountains, grasslands, deserts, rivers,
forests, and seashores. He had come to understand that the Western World had largely ignored the value of nature, and driven by its economic construct, destroyed much of the value that nature provides. He saw that the various regions of our state had provided for people’s survival and fulfillment over thousands of years.
Each place, space, or bioregion gave its people its food and shelter, its wonder and spiritual needs. People in their places honored life and each other, along with their consideration for animals and fish, theforests, the rivers and creeks, the mountains and plains, the stones,grasses, and vegetation. Diversity in nature was present. For public policy to drive the state arts agency programs, the cultures of each bioregion were considered and added. I was excited. For a decade we had been fighting for much the same principal. It was then known as "multiculturalism."
We can walk out these doors and consider Sacramento’s cultural and biological regions. Certainly, diversity is a reality. Del Paso, Midtown, Oak Park, Land Park, Natomas, Rio Linda, Arden, Meadowview, andother locations are diverse. Each neighborhood is different withdifferent ethnic populations, economic profiles, architectural landsca
We can walk out these doors and consider Sacramento’s cultural and biological regions. Certainly, diversity is a reality. Del Paso, Midtown, Oak Park, Land Park, Natomas, Rio Linda, Arden, Meadowview, andother locations are diverse. Each neighborhood is different withdifferent ethnic populations, economic profiles, architectural landscapes, languages spoken, and each with their own cultural activities and offerings.
So, what is space and how do we use it when it is a designated spacefor the arts? We can point to Art Museums, symphony halls, operahouses, theaters as spaces for the arts. Chicano and Latino artists historically have felt excluded from many arts spaces. Locally, the Royal Chicano Air Force was established over 50 years ago, followed by LaRaza Galería Posada. Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol is now 30 years old. We established our own centers where our histories, our stories, ourtraditions, our aesthetics were primary and foundational. Many places where we danced and listened to music and saw our films 50 years ago are now gone. Even our neighborhoods have been destroyed. We learned sustaining our spaces has been difficult. Unlike most of our ancestors of many generations ago, who were born and buried in thesame place, we now are people who move from place to place, space tospace in our lifetime. We move from Country to country, city and townto other cities and towns, neighborhood to other neighborhoods.
We know our state has grown rapidly. Some people faster than others. Today, Sacramento Latinos represent 1 in 4 residents.Think of the diversity of the 1 in 4: immigrant and native born; fromMexico, Central America, South America, the Caribbean; We are 1st generation, 2nd , 3rd 4th 5th; we speak monolingual Spanish, monolingual English, bilingual Spanish–English, Spanglish, Caló, Indigenous languages; Some of us have only elementary school education, others are high school graduates, others college graduates; we are rich andpoor; we are Mixed race; Tejano, Manito, Spaniard; rural/urban;Morena, guero; citizens, aliens, Dreamers; Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,Pentecostal,; male/female, lesbian, gay, transgender.One could continue, but the point here is the necessity to find ways to live together, to see each other’s worth, to respect our differences.
Sharing a space helps to bring that about. The arts speak to something within us. Art moves us by touching our intellect, our emotions, our experience. Art helps to define who we are by our response to the work offered and shapes us by the nature of the work we create. To create is to draw from what is within us, so often shaped by the world thattouches us and leaves its imprint. An art space creates the possibility of that binding act to occur. We will leave here today closer as a community of people for having shared thisspace and the art of the word. I leave you with this Gary Snyder poem:
"As the crickets’ soft autumn humis to us,
so are we to the trees,
as are they to the rocks and the hills."
*Juan Manuel Carrillo*
Escritores del Nuevo Sol
December 2022