Artist Profile
The Life & Art of Ruby Chacon

By Mikael Cal Romanoff
Recently, with the opening of a new gallery on the West side, Mestizo, a group of artists and poets have come out of the woodwork bringing a new vision to Salt Lake City filled with vibrant colors and a South of the border flavor. One of the people spearheading this movement is local artist Ruby Chacón. I met with her for a few hours at her new gallery on 5th West and 2nd South. As Buena Vista Social Club played on the radio in the background, we drank coffee and spoke about her inspiration and the roots of her artistic vision.

Ruby Chacón's art career began long before the University. As a child she had a fascination for painting and drawing. It was her way of escaping and entertaining herself. When there were problems in her life, during the pre-internet and pre-play-station days, she turned to coloring. Late at night, hidden in some corner of her mother's small house, among the noise of ranchera music, television, and several rowdy kids she found solace in drawing pictures of La Loquita from low-rider magazine. "I loved to draw her," she says, "They were the only pictures I could find of people who looked like me and my brothers and sisters. They were beautiful to me." These late nights with crayons led her to win coloring contests that brought home prizes such as a Christmas turkey from the local grocery store. She was a natural. She saw the world in lines, shapes, and shades of color. However, the art world, she felt, didn't belong to her. It seemed a place for "those" people from "other" neighborhoods, from "other" experiences.

There have been many studies that indicate at-risk children do better in school and life when they are exposed to art in their education. Ruby definitely fit into the definition of "at-risk" but her early art education didn't come from schools or early intervention programs; it came from her uncle. He lived in an abandoned house on the West side of town. Whenever he had money he spent it on paints. When Ruby went to his house she was able to paint freely on the walls. He was her first art teacher. "He didn't teach me techniques, that came much later in life, but he taught me to be free with it. He gave me the stamp that said it was okay to do what I was doing. I mean... he wasn't the best role model. In fact, he died of pneumonia in that house. But people change your life often without knowing it, and I guess it was like that. I think, that if I hadn't been exposed to art, early on, I would have found other ways of expressing myself, the way many people I knew did. It wouldn't be too far to say that painting and drawing protected me." Chacón used art as a hobby, as a way of entertaining herself, but the idea of a career didn't occur to her until much later.

Chacón had taken art classes and music classes in school. She excelled in these areas, but still there was a mental barrier that seemed insurmountable, "not only art, but education in general seemed out of my reach. Whether it is true or not, there were times that I didn't feel welcome. I felt often that I was discouraged by my counselor. One told me that I couldn't graduate and I should just give up. I know it sounds ludicrous and blatant. But remember, the "Latin invasion" only began ten to fifteen years ago. There have been a lot of changes in the last fifteen years in this state. It's easy to turn away from people who don't like you though, the hardest part was that I didn't see others like me doing things like that. I couldn't see myself as a paid artist, musician, whatever. The people I knew were cleaning houses, hospitals, and shopping malls. That seemed to be the choice available to us." It wasn't until she finally graduated and traveled to Santa Barbara that she began to see the world in different light. All over the campus she saw teachers and students who were Latinos succeeding in a variety of different roles. "It was an eye-opening experience. The counselor was helpful. He was kind. They helped me register, I felt that for the first time I was being counseled."

Chacón came back to Utah to finish her last years of college. It was then she decided to pursue art as a career and transferred, after a couple of semesters at the Community College, to the University of Utah art program. Carrying an old-world work ethic certainly helped, she insists. She fully committed to painting and drawing. While in the art department she took a class in Chicano Studies. There she became further opened to the experience she felt in Santa Barbara. She took off to visit with her grandparents, to learn her history, to learn where she came from. "It was amazing. I learned so many things. I learned that we were from here. That was a surprise. I learned that mi abuelo (my grandpa) was a sheepherder and a poet. His brother was a sheepherder and an artist. I learned that there was this artistic seed running through my family, that I wasn't the first, but I was in a long line of artists, musicians, poets, etcetera. I wondered why none of my family knew that. We had been told a bogus story about who we were...and I believed it! I wanted everyone to see my family, not the way they were portrayed by other people, but the way I had seen them. I guess that was why I painted them so much. It was a way of looking at them close, then having others look at them, hanging on the walls of galleries. It was important to me."
continued on page 4

Exhibition Review
Nude in SLC
Celebrating Our One Year Anniversary

A year ago this week, 15 BYTES posted its first two-page issue. Since that time the magazine has grown, along with Artists of Utah, to become a major vehicle for promoting the visual arts in Utah. On the occassion of our one year anniversery we would like to celebrate by highlighting an organization and an exhibition that we feel has come closest to our own goals of developing new relationships within the visual arts community. Fables Art Gallery’s exhibit, “Celebrating the Human Form,” which opened last month, was a collaborative effort that resulted in a bold and engaging exhibition that brought together a number of Utah artists as well as presented a challenging exhibition to the viewing public.

We thought its subject matter provided a great vehicle for discussion about important issues in Utah...

So we invited contributions from two people, one a visitor to the show and one an insider who helped develop it....

Their stories and perspectives are on page 2....

Public Issues
What's All That Noise?
There is a lot going on in downtown Salt Lake City and thankfully it is relatively devoid of bright orange cones. Mayor Rocky Anderson's attempt to continue the cultural momentum generated by the 2002 Olympic Games has resulted in a number of outdoor concerts, including the recent Jazz festival at Washington Square. Even though -- due to noise ordinances -- the ampliphied concerts must close by 10:00pm, "Sights & Sounds Downtown" has successfully attracted the attention of large numbers of people who continue to flock to the downtown area.

A recently passed city ordinance now makes it easier for visual artists to become part of the party. The Sidewalk Performance and Art Display ordianance, recently passed by the City Council, gives unprecedented freedom to street performers and artists to occupy public areas across the city to perform and display. The ordinance allows artists relative freedom to display and sell their artwork on public sidewalks and in designated areas of public parks. Artists are allowed to sell their work on the streets up to twelve times a year for free, while a fifty dollar permit is required for those who wish to sell their work more frequently.