Harry Gamboa, Jr.

Harry Gamboa Jr. (born 1951) is a Chicano essayist, photographer, director and performance artist. He was a founding member of the influential Chicano performance art collective ASCO.

Biography

The first of five children born to a working-class Mexican American couple, Gamboa grew up in East Los Angeles, California, "an urban area tormented by poverty, violence, and racial conflict"Stanford University. [http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=tf1f59n51w&chunk.id=bioghist-1.8.3&brand=oac Guide to the Harry Gamboa Jr. Papers, 1968-1995. Biography.] Retrieved September 17, 2008.] . Despite the "inadequacy of the East L.A. public schools", Gamboa was encouraged to value education and did fairly well in school, and he was active in community organizations and politics as a teenager. As a high-school student (graduated 1969), Gamboa was active in student government and an organizer of various student-initiated reforms, most significantly the 1968 "East L.A. Blowouts"—a series of protests against the inferior conditions of public schools in poor, non-white areas.

Gamboa's extra-curricular activities were not, however, limited to politics. Already a developing artist, it was at Garfield High that Gamboa met Gronk (Glugio Nicondra), Patssi Valdez (then known as Patsy), and Willie Herrón, three of his closest associates in his later career. After the "Blowouts" of his senior year, Gamboa dropped out of the political scene to dedicate himself to his education. Thanks to these efforts and with the help of the Equal Opportunities Program (EOP) for disadvantaged minority students, Gamboa was able to attend California State University at Los Angeles.

From this point, his career as an artist—both solo and with Gronk, Valdez, and Herrón in the art collective ASCO (Spanish for nausea)—"took off". Among other "urban interventions," Asco sprayed their names on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art [Smith, Roberta. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/arts/design/01vida.html When the Conceptual Was Political.] "New York Times", February 1, 2008.] .

Gamboa's work as a writer, photographer, film-maker, performance artist and multimedia creator of "things" is diverse, but in all his efforts (including those as a member of ASCO) his focus has been to reveal the absurdity of urban life and to confront both the dominant white culture and various perspectives within Chicano culture, pointing to the pain and alienation caused by both. This is often achieved by altering the media of the art itself, as opposed to just the subject matter. Gamboa's most significant works include mail art of the 1970s, ASCO's "no movies," and the "urban operas" "Ignore the Dents" and "Jetter's Jinx".

Gamboa has one son, Diego Gamboa (b. 1978), from his first marriage. In 1993 Gamboa married his second wife, Chicano muralist Barbara Carrasco, after seven years of romantic and professional involvement. Their daughter, Barbara Gamboa, was born in 1994. Gamboa has two grandchildren, Gabriel Gamboa (b. 2003) and Catalina Gamboa (b. 2005).

He has received numerous awards from institutions including the Durfee Artist Award (2001), the Flintridge Foundation Visual Artist Award (2000), the Gluck Foundation (1998-1999), the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts (1990), the California Arts Council (1996), Art Matters, Inc. (1996), and National Endowment for the Arts (1987 and 1980).

He has taught at various universities and art institutions, including California State University, Northridge, University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, Riverside, University of California, Irvine, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, San Diego, Otis/Parsons, UCLA Extension, and California Institute of the Arts.

His lithographs are in the permanent collection of Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, University of California, Los Angeles.

A permanent collection of his media works/papers has been established and archived at Green Library, Stanford University.

Works

Writings

*Gamboa, Harry Jr.; edited by Chon A. Noriega. "Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr." Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, c1998. ISBN 0-8166-3051-8 (hardback), ISBN 0-8166-3052-6 (paperback)

Multimedia

* [http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/media/gamboa.asp "Harry Gamboa, Jr.: 1990s Video Art, Volumes 2 and 3".] DVDs released 2004.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDqhdDYr9wU "Red Line".] Online video released 2007.
* [http://thecandidframe.blogspot.com/2006/08/candid-frame-14-harry-gamboa-jr_27.html "The Candid Frame #14 - Harry Gamboa Jr.".] Podcast released 2006.
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=8vw7pUwrwmI "Paper Cut".] Online video released 2008.

References

External links

* [http://www.harrygamboajr.com www.harrygamboajr.com]
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/gamboa99.htm Smithsonian Archives of American Art oral history interview with Harry Gamboa]
* [http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/Jouvert/v613/gamboa.htm Harry Gamboa and the Contemporary Avant-Garde, Jouvert 6:3]
* [http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=2348 Harry Gamboa Jr.: Early Video Art, Education Media Reviews Online]
* [http://theguide.latimes.com/general/latcl-phantom-sightings-at-lacma-article 'Phantom Sightings' at LACMA, Los Angeles Times]
* [http://sicklyseason.com/dialogo/delaloza-gamboa.htm Artists in conversation: 'Phantom Sightings' at LACMA, Sickly Season-Notes From Mictlan]