top of page
Writer's picturesamanthaxnieves

S1EP01: My Journey Into Spaces

Updated: Oct 4


Hola Raza, welcome to the first episode of Spaced Out Audios. I’m your host, Sam, also known as Spacedoutarte on Instagram. Before we get spaced out in conversation I want to acknowledge the space in which I am recording. That is Espacio 1839, which is located on 1st St. a few stores down from historical Mariachi Plaza. Espacio 1839 is an apparel and bookstore representing the collective culture in Boyle Heights. They offer resources to community be it from paper machine workshops, printmaking workshops, a gallery space, to even a community radio station, Radio Espacio.

 

I am thrilled to share space here with you and invite you all to engage if you're ever nearby. Thank you for tuning in. I'm really excited to have this podcast because if you've ever met me, you probably recognized I can talk, a lot. For those of you who have not met me hello, hi. My name is Sam, I identify as a social practice artist based in Unincorporated East Los Angeles. Essentially I find out cool stuff related to arts and culture and chisme about them.

 

The spaces I have explored and felt comfortable in have inspired me to discover resources that enhance my love for community engagement. I’m going to be naming a lot of organizations for this episode, because I’m just so grateful for all these spaces that have given me the mentorship, the tools, the cohorts that have reflected back to me my leadership values and my process, my artistic process.

 

Spaced Out Arts is a concept I created to embrace the space of you go both mentally and physically. I think about the way that we interact with the art and culture that surrounds us on the surface level it's things like public art and your relationship to them. On a subconscious plane it's the curiosity that takes one of the questions that might lead you on to a scavenger hunt. Wherever you go, I encourage you to not only explore the physical and mental space you're in but bring us to where you go when you're spaced out. This podcast is an extension of where I and the guest have on the show go when we explore the spaces and places around us, its influence on our collective future in the Eastside of the Los Angeles River. I intend to have conversations that promotes cultural and artistic consciousness and autonomy. My hope is that you become inspired to activate your local resources and achieve the collective goals that we share.

 

For this first episode, you’ll get to learn about me, the community I come from, how I fell in love with both art and community engagement. Before we get into that I will share that the transcripts to these episodes along with the resources and places I discussed will be available on a blog format from my website spacedoutarts.com.

 

I was born blessed to be Mexican Salvadoran in the culturally rich community of unincorporated East Los Angeles. from an early age the East LA County Library was a second home for me. My mother told me stories of how she manifested she’d worked there when she saw them break ground 20 something ever since they opened, I had a second home. If you were wondering I am a book hoarder, you're right. I'll take this opportunity to say that if you own books to the library don't be afraid to still go! If you have booked these from L.A County it's more than likely they have been forgiven as of three 3 years ago, which is so cool. And if you're still worried, they actually also offer a program where you can read your fees away. So that's pretty cool right? Just read until you don't gotta pay. So anyways I like to compare the library to a forest given that we live in the concrete jungle. I can vividly recall a time where I couldn't even reach the faucet in the bathroom and hopped in so someone felt bad and pressed it for me. Even the moments where I would unapologetically distract my mother while she worked at the front desk, pretending I was taking an elevator or an escalator while creating the illusion of movement. I think it's largely part due to the place where my mother has worked, the local library and the local highschool, it was only a matter of time that I became outspoken and openly curious about the world around me.

 

I started to notice that I was pretty outspoken, very ambitious most importantly, inspired by the world around me. The more spaced out I went the more I wanted to shift I found myself in in part and connection to color the reality that is my systemically underserved community. Before I got into my current type of art practice, which is multimedia arts, I explored various art forms such as drawing, printing, film production, and more to build my artistic toolkit. Before all of this it actually started in 3rd grade. My school would transport my classmates and I to an artistic nonprofit, Inner-City Arts. Returning years later as a teen, overcoming the resistance of turning my brain on so early on a weekday, I discovered a space that was transformative in how I utilized art to a degree where my emotions, no matter how complex were validated. I took poetry classes which opened the metaphors for me to exist in words, and took me to worlds I created. A transformative experience a moment in which you sense a shift in your thinking patterns, your creative process, or even how you perceive thing. I can recall the moment it happened. Black pieces of tape were around the room pasted students. The question was proposed, ‘What do you see?’, and that question of all opened so many doors within me. This moment made me feel seen, validated in any abstract thoughts that came to mind. Before I can control it, creative thinking was taking over my life and continues to inspire how I engage in my own art practice. I want to shout out my teacher, Mindy Lee, a graphic design teacher who fostered countless transformative experiences in me and how I approach my creative process. I think that was the power felt behind the ability to contextualize something so totally random yet it made me feel so proud knowing that that was what I saw in my own artistic eyes and that's what the transformative experience is.

 

A couple years later after some years in high school, I became an intern at my local Chicano Resource Center. Supported by the funding of the Public Library Association. This opportunity enhanced understanding of the library practices and discussions of access. The moment I realized that my library served the top three largest population out of the whole nation shocked me. Engraved in my brain from this moment on is thinking about what resources are offered and how they are distributed and utilized by community members. My summer internship resulted in an event called Eastside Speaks where we offered music, archives, florkorico, and of course, a mariachi, to really see ourselves in our community and Chicano resource collections. If you check out the website you can see a photo gallery of this day. You’ll notice that it’s all smiles, there's healthy food, there's chalk on the floor. This event changed how I perceived community engagement and my practice as it relates to engaging in my community’s collective identity.  So since this time I have been gravitating towards spaces and people who have enhanced my definition of community engagement.



 

It wasn't long so I found myself engaging with the amazing nonprofit organization Self-Help Graphics & Arts. I was in their first youth committee in 2019 which was such an amazing experience I mean when you think about it in hindsight, I'm so grateful that that opportunity prior to the pandemic and it was just so inspiring to be in a cohort of amazing artists amazing youth who all share the collective goal towards using the arts as a tool. When I think about my experience in the Self-Help Graphics Youth Committee, I think about how new that program was. It was a learning process for all of us I remember every week being introduced to another artist from the community, new vocabulary terms such as, socially engaged art, that was the first time I heard that term and I was very intrigued because of the fact that I recognized myself to be person who thrives in socially engaged learning environments. In other words conversations, hands on approaches, and practices, so seeing that introduced to me in both the art field and having to do with community engagement, I was so inspired. I recall having a workshop where we collected all the sounds from the community and made a collage of sounds in which I was able to hear the sounds of my community and be aware of them for a moment. I tend to think of living in East LA as a concrete jungle, a place where it's never necessarily quiet. We are surrounded by freeways. I always think about the hums of cars. It’s never a moment of silence and I think that practice really allowed me to think about the way I engage with my environment in a subconscious level.

 

Going back to where the whole concept of space that came from I think it was around this time where I decided that's going to set forth on a path towards developing what it means to be spaced out and I'm just very happy to come a long way where I can talk about what that means to be spaced out and it's how we interact with our spaces, places. There is so much power and autonomy comes from these conversations to the point where policies can be moved departments can be made. That leads me to talk about the Invest in Youth Coalition. Their Social justice Internship really prepared me to take on the political roles needed at the time. The pandemic hit it started and I was asking myself what am I going to do how can I continue to hold this fire within me because there's actually a couple months ago where, I mean I'll talk about my educational journey at another time it's too long for this episode, but I was definitely at a point where I was needing something to keep me engaged and activated during the times of isolation. Their Social Justice Internship prepared me to take on the political roles needed at the time especially for something like advocating for a youth department in LA City because we did not have that prior. I learned a lot, I learned about how to facilitate group conversations, listening sessions, which is so inspiring for me because I recognize that there's so many tiny parts that go into these considerations in a concise format to where LA City Council can respectively agree and be held accountable. Coming from a working class community you really want everybody's voice to be heard, you really want an intergenerational approach to these workshops. I am just so grateful for the Invest in Youth Coalition. I learned how to get the public comments which is so important to me because even now I recognize that typically I'm the youngest person giving public comment in LA City Council which is something that I hope to change and advocate for as the months come forward.

 

Another organization I engaged during this time was Pulso de Boyle Heights, Boyle Heights Beat. An amazing nonprofit journalism training organization for high schoolers. I started with them during the fall 2020 during the pandemic. I was figuring out how to stay engaged and reached out to them expressing my interest in wanting to write journalistic articles as they relate to issues in my community Boyle Heights Beat was such an amazing space for me to exercise my journalistic voice and really think about the type of writing style have and so it was in the process of writing the article, ‘Not much has changed for women muralists over the years’, that I was able to interview artists such as Sonia Romero, Pola Lopez, as well as art historian Isabel Rojas Williams. This article was really fun for me to put together as it allowed me to think about arts and gender, arts and access. I think overall I recognized the desire I had to find out the narrative behind public art and the way in which I relate to them. It challenged me to think about things I wanted to write about and honest about that so something I really wanted to focus on is the concept of gender in the community and how it looks as it relates to public art not just subject matters that we're seeing but the artists who are putting up the art. I wondered if they were coming from the same background as I was, if they've faced the same ‘isms’ I have as an artist and you know, this was such an insightful experience because I gave these artists the space to really think about their own artistry as it relates to their gender and praxis. Shout out Boyle Heights Beat for giving me this opportunity to write that article. I'm grateful for what's mentorships and spaces that help me build that capacity and have the patience for me to learn a new type of art format with respect to it.

 

Eventually I found myself coming into contact with another nonprofit organization I have the privilege to engage with and still engage with it's called Art Division. They are an amazing nonprofit arts organization located in MacArthur Park and I say again I do actually mean one block over, but you could pretty much walk there from MacArthur Park. In that space, they supported me artistically and gave me that outlet to continue to foster the artist in me meanwhile in school doing a lot of thinking, but as far as hands on approaches to arts and art classes art division really supported in the most phenomenal ways. I took classes from drawing to filmmaking to art history and museum studies which actually foreshadowed the educational journey I ended up pursuing. Art Division really allowed me to explore the various types of arts that creates the social impact. One amazing experience particularly when they invited me as well as three students to go to Oaxaca Mexico for an Arts residency. Every day we were exposed to things like papermaking printmaking sign painting ceramics I can go on but I just want to give a shout out to Art Division for supporting me in this artistic path that I've been exploring and navigating and I do want to emphasize that they support artists who are over the age of 18 and that is something so important to discuss because I noticed in my journey to accessing artistic resources there's always a limit or barrier, whether that be money perhaps age, geographic barriers however Art Division supported me in the best ways possible. So shout out Art Division, get engaged with them, definitely donate to them they are 100% nonprofit. I even suggest visiting their gallery space which is located on the corner one block away from a MacArthur Park on 6th St.


As I mentioned I took a museum studies course at Art Division, and that was totally the precursor to what I started noticing in East Los Angeles College. I actually started at East Los Angeles College right when the pandemic hit, yes. That was a journey and I think that the educational journey I have had should be its own episode so tune in for that episode eventually. Before I found the museum studies program offered at East Los Angeles College, I found myself taking classes that varied from Chicano Studies, Sociology, Art History. I recall taking Chicano Studies classes and learning about student organizations especially as they relate to strengthening the success of first generation college students. I started asking, ‘OK well what club would I join?’ The answer was not hard, ‘M.E.Ch.A , M.E.Ch.A , M.E.Ch.A,’ was whispering all over my mind, until it came out of my mouth into the professors’ face when I asked, ‘Where is M.E.Ch.A ?,' The response to that question was simply there is none. That really shocked me and at the time I didn't know how to start a club, I didn't know how to restart a club, I don't know anything but I didn't know that this is something students need because we are all just through resocializing again, getting out of isolation. So if anybody were to start M.E.Ch.A , it’s definitely me. About one year after I asked about M.E.Ch.A, I was one of the first to hear there is going to be a M.E.Ch.A meeting. I was just so excited because finally there is this space where likeminded first-generation Chicano/Chicana students can come and talk about issues related to college, the community, more specifically to the values that we currently have as contemporary Chicanos/Chicanas. Before I knew it I was Co-Chair of M.E.Ch.A . I facilitated all things related to building community in M.E.Ch.A , making sure we were a club, shout out shut out ASU, shout out the persistence needed and patience needed to create a club and to sustain a club that's really hard but I will say only time that Mechistas showed me such a beautiful definition of community and engagement that made me feel like I could truly trust them and the legacy that we're creating just by simply existing. I do want to shout out M.E.Ch.A , if you’re at East L.A College right now, definitely consider joining M.E.Ch.A and supporting the projects that they have going on.

 

While although I wasn't necessarily interested in having a career in the museum and more so interested in how people connect with art people engaged with art, I found myself applying to be Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship. As I was searching for internship to apply for, I saw the Vincent Price Art Museum which is a museum right on the East L.A Campus. They had the Community Engagement & Education Internship so as I went on for the last various minutes about my passion for community engagement, this internship seemed like it was made for me like it’s been waiting for me so of course, I did not hesitate and I applied and luckily I received that internship. It's still such an amazing experience to think about because what I took away is concepts of what I now call invisible barriers. I thought about how is this, the Vincent Price Art Museum, the closest museum to my house. Yet the engagement is suffering. My role as an intern was to think about who are we engaging, how are we engaging, and what barriers are existing that prevent people to utilize this free resource this amazing museum that I think deserves its own episode in itself. I think about the relationship between people and the way they see these public spaces that have a lot of resources to offer. My experience with the museum was just so pivotal and inspirational and then considering my role in the museum field and what that looks like. I think it's always funny when I think about how this is when I started to consider myself in the museum and saying it just how I said it, myself in the museum, myself as a brown Chicana in the museum, what does that mean and what purpose do I have been in there. My experience at the museum solidified and affirmed my passion for community engagement through the arts but this time with a conscientious approach to these public institutions that perhaps have barriers that they may not even recognize themselves. It was towards the end of this internship when I applied to another museum opportunity. I was accepted and found myself traveling to Washington DC. I was selected to intern at the National Gallery of Art which is the nation's first art collection. So that was really fun and it was for a month where I was culture shocked, luckily not so much because there was Salvadoran food over there, there but yeah the first time I was working in a predominantly white institution.

 

So when I came back from the National Gallery of art I took the last class I needed to take the Museum Studies Certificate program. It was a lecture and it was during that class where I was able to think about my museum experiences and put them into a thesis where I challenged, of course I have to, I challenged the approach museums have to their diversity, equity, inclusion and how that is really dependent on the trust museums cultivate with their audience and their returning community. It's such a complex thesis, but it made me realize that I was ready for the next step and that is to take my studies into a liberal arts college.


Four years after starting at ELAC during the pandemic, I now recognize that I'm ready and it's pretty exciting and definitely a lot of navigating through impostor syndrome and perfectionism and procrastination however I love challenges that I am ready to take on college and more especially if it's for the sake of bettering my community. Also for two years I participated as one of the only trombone players in the East LA college marching band, so hey if you play trombone, definitely play with ELAC Husky marching band. My experience that he's telling college came to a pomp and circumstance and as I eventually before I knew it I was off to a vacation in Costa Rica that I have been paying off for a couple of years I come back. I am taking the fall off to heal my nervous system and all the stress that came from school and to take charge on my educational journey and my path towards higher education. I've been analyzing the challenges I overcame, you know as POC it’s easy for us to block out the challenging moments and survive. The whole writing process has been very cathartic and therapeutic for myself. I am so sure of what I want and I'm very happy that I can formulate my narrative with a firm voice and a willingness behind obtaining the goal.

 

The goal is community engagement through art, healing through creativity. I mean I'm always applying to professional development opportunities and by the time I came back from the trip I was ready to start Teaching Artist training Series with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). I experienced an amazing eight week camp behind how to sustain engagement for students as they engage with art. This is a pretty challenging opportunity to get into as it was open for anybody who identified as teaching artists to apply for and truthfully in my application, I emphasize the lack of resources that exist in my community and I emphasize how everything I take from these trainings I’m going to put back into my community. I'm just so grateful that I've been able to learn through a museum on my own artistic foundations in the sense where they gave me tools I can use and I can use them however I want to use them. That's just really important for me because I recognize once again that museums can curate senses of invisible barriers meanwhile there's people like me you want to promote this this approach towards engaging with not just art and space and community.

 

Now since we are here in September, I want to share that to the last 7 to 8 months I had the privilege to obtain a mentorship opportunity through Arts for LA, which is an amazing artistic policy advocacy organization in Los Angeles that promotes arts education in the larger California State. Through them I was able to obtain a mentorship and solidify three goals I wanted to pursue for the duration of the mentorship. The first goal I created was in relation to enhancing the way the community I live in engages with public art and the approach I had to doing this is through mosaic art walking tours. And this project is such a learning project it is so beautiful I created this idea about a year ago and it wasn't until this year where I started putting actionable steps towards them and seeing the process create itself specifically through collaboration and community engagement. So that was one of the goals I had to curate a sustainable audio and visual self-guided tours so working class families can engage and have these conversations about the legacies of Latino Latina leaders. The second goal I had is to self-publish a poetry that is full of my own poetry and it's been a long time coming I've been sharing my poetry and my poems for the last handful of years however I never created a poetry book so that is a goal that I am so happy I checked off. The third goal I had was to promote the civic autonomy of my community in unincorporated East Los Angeles that being said I recognize that it is in my capacity to offer public comment workshops. I referred to the Invest in Youth Coalition earlier and I'm so grateful that I was exposed to public comments through them but I did start questioning ‘Where is that in my immediate community?,’ Unfortunately it's nowhere to be seen. I'm definitely the type of person to create the opportunities and resources that I don't see existing and I'm just very fortunate that through this mentorship I was able to build the capacity for achieving my goals shout out to mentees if you're listening I'm so happy I was able to be inspired by you and in the TATS group as well there's so many amazing artists and people I've been fortunate enough to share space with so thank you thank you.


As you can hear I have many things going on, I did want to share that most recently my engagement has been extended to volunteering with the Eastmont Community Center. If you haven't heard about the Eastmont Community Center now you have. Since 1967 the Community Center would respond to communities needs and offering that as a result. Meeting the staff on board has been so heartwarming as well because you get to see the faces that truly care about community. The farmers market has been hosted by the Eastmont Community Center for the last 20 plus years as long as that library has stood so has the farmers market. I invite you to join the farmers market that's the East LA Civic Center every Saturday 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM so very grateful for my engagement with the Community Center, my engagement here at Espacio. And this is a really good time to sign off for our first episode of Spaced Out Audios. Thank you so much for listening explore the resources photos and transcripts discussed on this episode on the spacedoutarts.com a website Al rato!



61 views0 comments

Komentar


Post: Blog2 Post
bottom of page