artist lecture response- Deliliah Montoya

Delilah Montoya showed us a virtual tour of her show Chicana bad girls, which was a collection of 18 different artists, somehow showing empowerment and courage in women. She had hoped to inspire and show people the strength of Chicana women, and their true “bad girl” side. She wanted people to see that being a bad girl wasn’t necessarily a negative thing. It was a way of empowering ones self, and standing up for yourself and what you believe it.

The only piece of work that I clearly remember was the very first piece she showed us of an interpretive dance around tree of life. The costumes of the dancers resembled Adam and Eve. I wish I would have been able to see the actual dance, it seemed very provocative, but respectable at the same time, and ended with the forbidden fruit being eaten.

There was one artist that stood out to me by Paula Lopez. She was a colorist who never went to art school. I thought it was inspiring that she became a famous artist without any schooling. She opened her own art store, and would become familiar with the supplies on her own, and would then ask customers who were also artists. There was one picture where she was remembering a time as a child. Her teacher would always criticize her work and tell her to paint in another color other than red. But she refused to do so and still became a famous artist. A lot of her work stood out to me because of the bright vibrant colors that she used, it was hard not to look at it, and see the way she mixed colors and contrasted them. I also really liked the one artist who paid her way through school by stripping, who mixed self portraits with cartoons.

I was honestly dreading going to one of these talks so I had to go to hers because it was the last one, and unfortunately I procrastinated. I thought this talk would be pretty interesting. It’s always good to see women photographers who have made a name for themselves. But going in I was expecting to see some of her work. I’m not a very “artsy” person, but I enjoy looking at photographs because it’s something I like doing, and being in photography this semester I could have connected with some of her work. Needless to say I was a little bit disappointed in the fact that I didn’t get to see any of her work. I really didn’t like any of the other work that she showed, but I feel like if it were presented better I would have taken more of an interest in it. I wish she would have thrown some of her own work into the mix as well.