A proud daughter, granddaughter, and great granddaughter of agricultural workers, Ismelda Garza says she was not looking to be an artist; art found her.
Originally from Santa Maria, CA, Garza, who is graduating this May with a Bachelor’s of Fine Art, recently presented her work with other art graduates in the “Affinity” exhibition at Francis McCray Gallery on the WNMU campus.
While much of her work has been in paint, she is not a single-media artist, exhibiting a bronze sculpture in addition to her paintings. What ties all her work together is her thematic concern with representing her family and her Mexican American culture. Her aim is to communicate “my culture, my love of life, [and] how my family is a very happy, traditional family.”
One way this theme manifests in her work is through repeated floral imagery. Her family worked to harvest roses on the farms near Pasadena, CA, and so roses are present in many of her paintings. She also favors a handkerchief motif because when working out in the fields, she and her family members would each use a handkerchief to wipe sweat from their brows. But the handkerchief is also important to her because in traditional Mexican households women used to embroider handkerchiefs with symbolic designs. Before mechanized textile printing became common, women would “sew all this deliciousness” into an everyday object, said Garza. Throughout her work, she said, she chose to include “items that were very, very personal to my family and to me as I grew up.”
Garza sees her work as very much a product of the Covid-19 era. While the pandemic took a great deal from tight-knit families like hers, the restrictions on what one could do also allowed time for reflection. Said Garza, “It took me time to remember my roots, the reason I am here today.”