Art Is Awesome with Emily Wilson

Mixed Media Visual Artist Patrick Martinez

Episode Summary

In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with visual artist Patrick Martinez.

Episode Notes

Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Today, Emily chats with Patrick Martinez, a mixed media visual artist from Los Angeles.

About Artist Patrick Martinez:

Patrick Martinez maintains a diverse practice that includes mixed media landscape paintings, neon sign pieces, cake paintings, and his Pee Chee series of appropriative works. The landscape paintings are abstractions composed of Los Angeles surface content; e.g. distressed stucco, spray paint, window security bars, vinyl signage, ceramic tile, neon sign elements, and other recognizable materials. These works serve to evoke place and socio-economic position, and further unearth sites of personal, civic and cultural loss.

Patrick’s neon sign works are fabricated to mirror street level commercial signage, but are remixed to present words and phrases drawn from literary and oratorical sources. His acrylic on panel Cake paintings memorialize leaders, activists, and thinkers, and the Pee Chee series documents the threats posed to black and brown youth by law enforcement.

Patrick Martinez (b. 1980, Pasadena, CA) earned his BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in 2005. His work has been exhibited domestically and internationally in Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Miami, New York, Seoul, and the Netherlands, and at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian NMAAHC, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Buffalo AKG Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Rollins Art Museum, the California African American Museum, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Museo del Barrio, among others.

Patrick’s work resides in the permanent collections the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Broad Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), the Rubell Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the California African American Museum, the Autry Museum of the American West, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Tucson Museum of Art, the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, the University of North Dakota Permanent Collection, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Crocker Art Museum, the Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University, the Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, the Rollins Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art, among others.

Patrick was awarded a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, FL. In the fall of 2021 Patrick was the subject of a solo museum exhibition at the Tucson Museum of Art entitled Look What You Created. In 2022, Patrick was awarded a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. This year, Patrick’s suite of ten neon pieces purchased by the Whitney Museum of American Art is on yearlong exhibition installed in the Kenneth C. Griffin Hall in the entrance of the Museum. In September 2023, Patrick opened a solo exhibition at the ICA San Francisco titled Ghost Land and in November of 2023 Patrick will exhibit in Desire, Knowledge, and Hope (with Smog) at The Broad Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Patrick will be the subject of an expansive solo exhibition at the Dallas Contemporary opening in April 2024. Patrick lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles.

CLICK HERE to see more of Patrick's work. 

Follow Patrick on Social Media: @Patrick_Martinez_Studio

For more info on his Ghost Land Exhibit, CLICK HERE. 

--

About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:

Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California MagazineLatino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.

Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil

Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast

--

CREDITS:

Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson

Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions

For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com

Episode Transcription

2023-1107 - AIA - EP013 - Patrick Martinez

Artist Patrick Martinez: [00:00:00] I wasn't painting with brush and paint then and it was satisfying to trying to learn a new medium manipulate it onto a surface because we would paint on walls and paint it big and colorful and trying to uh get something on like a flat drawing on a surface 

Host Emily Wilson: That's artist Patrick Martinez and how graffiti led him to become an artist

Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host Emily Wilson. As a writer in San Francisco covering the arts I see so many hardworking artists doing interesting work here in the Bay Area, and I wanted people to know about them.

So I came up with Art is Awesome.[00:01:00]

Patrick Martinez is a Los Angeles artist whose work is in the permanent collection of, among others, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the National Museum of American History in Washington, D. C. Patrick's work is immediately recognizable. He's known for his multimedia landscapes of the city, documenting erasure, and his neon signs that say things like, “We're rooted here nd they can't pull us up.” He's done a series of Pee Chee folders, those orangey yellowish ones with inside pockets you may have had in school. Those are usually illustrated with high school athletes, but the ones Patrick makes have images related to police violence. In this show, Ghost Land, at the Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA in San Francisco, Patrick has created a large sculptural installation made of cinder blocks, topped by breeze blocks.

The [00:02:00] work has murals representing both the Bay Area and L. A. There's a painting of Patrick's cousin, real and painted Bougainvillea, Oakland's Black Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and an homage to a 1980 Chicano Art Collective's mural in Boyle Heights that was destroyed by shell oil.

Patrick talked about how he got into art through graffiti. His time at the Art Center, and how his art comes out of materials he sees in Los Angeles. We talked at the ICA right after they'd finished installing his show. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: Had this idea to do this sculptural piece that felt like a painting that you could walk around and also just kind of like sits on the floor rather than the wall. It was just kind of like, uh, sketches at first for that piece and then it kind of developed in this idea of a ghost land. And the images that started appearing on it were paintings [00:03:00] of a cousin that I was losing at the time when I was making it, literally visiting him at the hospital after the studio.

I didn't know what the piece was about yet. That kind of presented itself like the city provides materials for me. The ideas come along right after that. 

Host Emily Wilson: Patrick didn't sketch out Ghost Land first. Images came to him while he was making it. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: I discovered them right in the process, and that was through like my cousin that I was losing is actually also inspired by a 1980 East Los Streetscapers mural that was painted in 1980s and was knocked down in Boyle Heights. So that happened. I was like, this looks like sculpture, you know, and there's painting the center block knocked down. You know what I mean? So I was like, Oh, amazing. Like this is a new way that I want to communicate painting or everything I know about painting in a sculpture.

So that kind of informed me. And then I connected that to my cousin that I was losing during that time he lived in Boyle Heights. So I was like, [00:04:00] Oh. And then he passed away. Then I was like, I'm going to paint kind of this memorial kind of profile of him. And that the Streetscaper mural had this profile of this Brown kid that was transitioning into a Mayan sculpture.

So I was like, Oh, I'm going to do my version of that with my cousin, same kind of nose profile and connected that to this Mayan sculpture that kind of connected back to this, uh, warrior painting that I would kind of, uh, typically reference in some of the older paintings that I would do. So I had that profile transition that kind of paid respect and, uh, homage to the Streetscaper mural, but also paid homage to my cousin. And then the rest of it kind of like revealed itself in, in due time, the back of it was kind of, um, connected to the Bay area and my connections to it. Meaning that the text La Raza is connected to my cousin's brother that used to do silk screening at La Raza silk screen in 19, late 1970s, early [00:05:00] eighties.

Huey P. Newton, founders of the Black Panthers, being painted, imagining them on the surface somewhere in the bay, painted their They're, they're portraits being painted and then me painting in my version of it. Just all this stuff kind of culminating together, kind of combining and finding connections on both sides and kind of a patchwork quilt, you know, in, in a sculptural kind of form that I'm kind of, uh, weaving together.

Host Emily Wilson: Patrick wants to document how the place where he grew up. Is changing. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: Typically, I find materials in the city. Um, I try to pay attention. They present themselves and the cinder block was something that was always kind of on my mind as a surface. And the way that I can make sculpture from it was something I was playing with.

And how could I do that? So the building, the knocking down of the city right now in LA, [00:06:00] what we're seeing is kind of like this in between, right? Like, you know, developments going up, old aesthetics kind of being broken down or kind of seeing the tail or, you know, the last bits of it, like the next five years, it won't be there anymore.

Those discounted kind of push to the side aesthetics are what I'm interested in. Community aesthetics that have been there for a while. And the Cinderblock is one of those things. Especially with the breeze blocks that look like they're almost like Aztec, um, you know, kind of, uh, references. 

Host Emily Wilson: He got into making art through graffiti.

Artist Patrick Martinez: I think it was like my first introduction to painting. I wasn't painting with brush and paint then, and it was satisfying to try to learn a new medium, manipulate it onto a surface. Because we didn't have train cars around us, so we would paint on walls. And paint it big and colorful and trying to, get something on, like a flat drawing on a [00:07:00] surface of like of a wall. And that was big. I was more interested in painting in what we would call yards and taking my time and trying to manipulate color shapes, trying to blend color, all that stuff. That was satisfying. It was like unintentional way. I kind of stumbled upon painting now that I look back at it at 43 years old.

I think about a lot, not that it's like a direct kind of like, it informs all my work is just in the toolbox. And I think about those times and how they relate. 

Host Emily Wilson: Patrick's landscapes don't use traditional materials. Instead, he uses iron window bars, banner ads, neon spray paint, ceramic tile and distressed stucco.

Artist Patrick Martinez:.

I'm using a palette that I'm finding on my own and arranging that to compose stuff that I'm seeing. The, the energy, the feeling of it, the ideal of it, not specific. It's not like photojournalism like a [00:08:00] photo. It's the feeling and, and, and idea and energy of a place. Patrick 

Host Emily Wilson: wants people to pay attention to things around them and what is disappearing.

He talks about one of his pieces in the show, Zapata Landscape, a painting of a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, alongside a pink banner tarp with a phone number and LED lights. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: Look again. Check this out. The LED sign, the neon, is just as important as the painting next to it of the person, Zapata, or, you know, the portrait that I'm painting next to it.

All those materials are super important, and I'm using it because I'm thinking about that this stuff, these materials won't be around much longer. If any, like the way that they're arranging them in the community that I'm, you know, kind of sampling from. 

Host Emily Wilson: In high school, a teacher encouraged Patrick to apply for a special arts academy.

He got in after showing them his book of [00:09:00] graffiti. That's where he learned about the Art Center College of Design. He went to classes there while still in high school and eventually earned a BFA with honors from the school. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: The low enrollment classes, they would let us into those classes. So I was going there when I was like 15 years old, 16 years old, just peeking in and like taking one, whatever.

I think it was like advertising or something, something I wasn't into, you know, but I was still there and they were trying to. Engage us like we're college students. So I was like, Oh, this is crazy. So I was checking things out. It was the main campus up in the hills by the Rose Bowl. I was blown away.

Host Emily Wilson: Patrick says the art center gave him an opportunity to learn technical skills and about what kind of art he wanted to make. It's there. He started the Pee Chee folders about police violence. 

Artist Patrick Martinez: I was developing this idea of like youth and authority and thinking about my experience in high school, right.

Having those PG folders in middle school and high [00:10:00] school, but then also having police presence in high schools and thinking about that dynamic and how I can kind of combine those things and art centers like kind of the first time I did it, I made it as a print, a silkscreen print. It was a drawing at first and then I created a silkscreen print from it.

It was very generic back then because we didn't have, you know, cameras on our phones, video. You know, like recorders on our phones and we couldn't capture some of this, some of these things that were happening now that are just so apparent and fast forward. I was still making the work like that and just developing it, but I kind of put it down, fast forward to like 2014, 15, all these images come up, uh, video, things like that, and there's a lot of it, right?

So slowing that stuff down, painting that stuff into importance and cementing those happenings into these paintings that I was making when it kind of came together for me with that work. 

Host Emily Wilson: Patrick has [00:11:00] memorialized people killed by the police on Pee Chee folders, such as Eric Garner, who in 2014 was choked by a police officer in New York for selling loose cigarettes in 2020.

Patrick made the Racism Doesn't Rest During a Pandemic Peachy with hand painted portraits of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Proceeds from the sale went to social justice organizations. Patrick says he saw the inequality and racism around him, and addressing that in his art has always been important to him

Artist Patrick Martinez: From my upbringing, like, seeing, understanding, like, why are there policemen at my high school? Why is my brother getting pulled over right now? Like, why are Is this cop putting a gun in their trunk and you these narratives come up and then you just kind of scratch your head and you just like, well, what's going on?

Am I crazy? And then you get to a place. Like, I feel like that's like, um, like a [00:12:00] starting point to kind of like, I don't know, like if, if I wanted to speak about something visually that I felt connected to, or just felt like, you know, kind of like, uh, moved by, it's going to be something like that. Right. And it started from those happenings.

And just knowing like stories, my father would tell me seeing the 92 uprisings happen and just all these things happening, the soundtrack being rap music and them saying, you know, like that, like we, we listened to rap music and the 92 uprisings happening. My, you know, like things happen with friends and family, um, you got to say something, right?

And that's, that's what it is. That's, that's all it is. Then that's where it started from.

Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show, three questions. Where I ask the same three questions to learn a little more about the artists. The questions are, when did you know you were an artist? What work made an [00:13:00] impression on you, and what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area? 

Artist Patrick Martinez: I knew I was an artist when I was maybe six years old, and it was because I was so engaged with drawing.

And just finding everything I can draw with on white pieces of paper that I can find. Something that really made a big impression on me when I was young was going to the Norton's Simon Museum in Pasadena. And everyone was in that space. The work was important, obviously, Manet and Picasso and looking at these paintings when I'm young, right?

But then the importance, like there's so many people there and I understood why they were. There, because it was like a, almost a time capsule and, and connecting with these artists from the past now was, was, um, it was teleporting them. So I knew why they were there at a very young age. And that really kind of, it made me think about that a lot.

A creative [00:14:00] space that I've seen in the Bay Area's Mission District, like just murals and things like that from the past just kind of resonate and, and kind of connect to Los Angeles for me.

Host Emily Wilson: Thanks for listening to Art is Awesome. And thanks to our guest, Patrick Martinez, known for his mixed media landscapes, neon sign art, and his peachy folder series. His show, Ghost Land is at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco through January 7th admission is free, please subscribe to the show and join us next time when multimedia artist Javiera Estrada will be talking about her show back to the future life in Technicolor at Jonathan Carver Moore on Market Street in San Francisco. 

Art is Awesome is a [00:15:00] bi weekly podcast dropping every other Tuesday. It was created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotu of Gotu Productions. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music. Be sure to follow us on social media or visit our website.

Till next time.