Spirit: The Life and Art of Jesse Trevino 2018024166, 2018026360, 9781623497101, 9781623497095, 1623497108

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SPIRIT

SPIRIT

The Life and Art of Jesse Treviño

Anthony Head With a Foreword by Henry Cisneros

Texas A&M University Press College Station

Copyright © 2019 by Anthony Head All rights reserved First edition This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Manufactured in China through FCI Print Group

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Head, Anthony, 1968– author. | Cisneros, Henry, writer of introduction. Title: Spirit: the life and art of Jesse Trevino / Anthony Head; with a foreword by Henry Cisneros. Description: First edition. | College Station: Texas A&M University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018024166 (print) | LCCN 2018026360 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623497101 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623497095 | ISBN 9781623497095 (cloth: alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Treviño, Jesse, 1946– | Mexican American artists—Texas—San Antonio—Biography. | Artists—Texas—San Antonio—Biography. | Artists with disabilities—Texas—San Antonio—Biography. | Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Veterans—Biography. Classification: LCC N6537.T676 (ebook) | LCC N6537.T676 H43 2019 (print) | DDC 759.13 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024166

Dedicated with love and appreciation to Juan and Terry Vasquez. From the time they became a part of this project, their enthusiasm, knowledge, and encouragement have meant the difference between success and failure for me. And, truly, I am indebted to them for so much more.

Contents Foreword: Prospect Hill—The West Side’s Foundation, by Henry Cisneros   ix Introduction: In Country (February 23, 1967)  1

Part One The LBJ Years  3 Chapter 1. Mexicans and Americans (1946–1961)   5 Chapter 2. West Side Graffiti (1962–1965)   21 Chapter 3. The Best in New York (1965–1966)   35 Chapter 4. Vietnam 1966 (1966–1968)   46

Part Two Aztlán de San Antonio  59 Chapter 5. Black Canvas (1968–1972)   61 Chapter 6. Chicano Spring (1971–1974)   74 Chapter 7. “Who’s Going to Buy That?” (1974–1979)   86 Chapter 8. Let’s Get on with It (1979–1989)   102

Part Three West Side Storyteller  137 Chapter 9. Museum Peace (1990–1995)   139 Chapter 10. Spirit and Loss (1996–1999)   155 Chapter 11. Of Murals, Mexico, and Immortality (1999–2012)   170 Afterword: Hay mas tiempo que vida  201 Acknowledgments  209 Appendix: A Partial Chronology of Jesse Treviño’s Artwork   211 Sources  215 Index  229

Foreword

Prospect Hill—The West Side’s Foundation

Jesse Treviño grew up at 2706 Monterey Street in San Antonio’s West Side neighborhood of Prospect Hill. I grew up at 2906 Monterey and have known the Treviño family all my life. Across the span of years I saw the Treviños at the mom-and-pop grocery store midway between our homes. I saw Jesse’s brothers riding bicycles as our explorations of the neighborhood overlapped. I saw Jesse’s mother, Dolores, walking on her errands through the neighborhood, and I always thought she was tireless in her efforts to raise her family after her husband passed away. I respected how Jesse’s brothers grew into serious workingmen and couldn’t help but notice as his sisters grew into examples of Latina ideals of beauty, bearing, and responsibility. And of course, we all saw Jesse evolve from a teenage drawing prodigy into a globally respected artist and a genuine pride of the neighborhood. The near West Side of San Antonio was long referred to as Prospect Hill. This area of modest bungalows, built in the early 1900s, grew

westward from downtown to the rural area around Elmendorf Lake. Because of the nearby Missouri Pacific Railroad depot, Prospect Hill developed a vibrant network of schools, churches, and family social institutions and played an important economic role for the families of railroad workers, many of whom were of German heritage. After World War I, many of the original German families moved to new subdivisions and neighborhoods on the North Side. This opened housing opportunities for Hispanic families, who moved into the West Side, and by the 1930s it was unmistakably identified as a solid neighborhood for San Antonio’s Mexican American working families. Prospect Hill was the perfect place to grow up and to enjoy the benefits of stable residential life. While there was discrimination and housing segregation in the city at large, life within the supportive structures of our neighborhood buffered much of the painful bias that others experienced and made it possible for many sons

and daughters of Mexican American families to acquire good educations and eventually develop strong careers. Jesse and I grew up in a community of hardworking families who were proud of their Hispanic heritage and conveyed that pride to their children. Ever since, I have often described Prospect Hill as the classic American growing-up experience. There was an abundance of boys and girls our own age within a few blocks, so it was only a matter of walking out into the street and whistling to get together a baseball or football game. Many of those boys and girls that I grew up with later assumed impressive roles in our city, including an All-City football player, the president of the San Antonio Firefighters Union, a university president, several doctors, the CEO of the city government, and many other positions of distinction in business and civic life. One aspect of the Mexican American community nationally (which many Americans may not have encountered or understood) is its contributions to America’s armed forces. The Prospect Hill area, along with the rest of the West Side, had a strong record of participation by its Mexican American residents in World War II and in the Korean War. In the Vietnam era, many Latino sons of the World War II generation made their own patriotic statement by selecting those units in the armed forces that would place them in the most difficult and dangerous combat roles. Many earned medals for valor. Unfortunately, the number of Mexican Americans who served in combat also resulted

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in a steady stream of funeral corteges driving through our neighborhood, en route to the funeral homes and cemeteries.

— When word went out that Jesse was going to the Art Students League of New York, the news was met with pride and respect. At that time not many Latinos were leaving San Antonio for the best institutions of higher education in the country. We all attributed Jesse’s success to his evident talent, but also to the constant hard work and diligence of his mother and the support of a unified Treviño family. Likewise, when Jesse was drafted, he served courageously in dangerous conditions. When he was injured, we all felt the loss of a promising talent. It was heartbreaking, unfair, and sad. Against daunting odds, though, Jesse struggled and showed his commitment to an almost impossible recalibration of his mind and body. His art went to deeper levels as he applied his vision to the truths that he saw in our community. He saw not just deteriorating barrio buildings; in his eyes they were historical and sacred places. He saw not just poor and hardworking neighbors, but visible evidence of the heartfelt aspirations of the Mexican American people. His experiences allowed him to fully comprehend the striving soul of a people and elevate that struggle onto canvas. Naturally, the neighborhood was proud of him—of such a stimulating talent, of such a courageous response to a devastating experience,

Jesse Treviño in front of La Troca en La Calle Commerce (“The Truck on Commerce Street,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 48˝), 1993. Photograph by Franco Cernero. Artist's archive.

of such an awakening before our eyes. Jesse’s work conveyed the smells, sounds, heat, feel, and indeed memories of our community. Many of us are able to look at Jesse’s work and instantly recall the precise corner, the building, the house, the show window that he portrayed—because for many on the West Side those places represent personal experiences.

In my case, I remember when I first saw Jesse’s painting La Panadería, a colorful depiction of a bakery on Zarzamora Street. It was the corner on which I stood as a school crossing guard in elementary school. I instantly remembered the smells of the bread, the happiness of going in to buy pastries, and the many family moments involving Mexican pan dulce. But for me that

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corner will also be the place that I always associate with my first public responsibilities: assigned to attend to other people’s safety and having to be completely focused on the dangers of automobiles rushing by a few feet away from children waiting impatiently to cross a busy street. Each of Jesse’s paintings has an evocative effect for someone. It is always a significant achievement to enhance human connections through pride and understanding. As his talent took root in Prospect Hill, Jesse did just that with his work.

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Today his is an artistic contribution that transcends political rhetoric, secular teachings, and even family counsel. It reaches deeply into our individual consciences. It allows us to decide for ourselves whether we want to be blessed with gifts of remembrance and gratitude. Jesse’s personal passage, his example, his struggles and redemptions, make this aspect of his art possible. We owe Jesse Treviño appreciation and respect. Henry Cisneros

SPIRIT

Introduction

In Country (February 23, 1967)

He was twenty years old and had been stuck in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta for seventy-three days when the explosion blew Pvt. Spec. 3 Jesus “Jesse” Treviño fifty feet through the air and into a rice paddy. Every stitch of clothing— already well seasoned from three days in the field on another search-and-destroy mission— suddenly became heavy with warm mud. He couldn’t move much, but when he lifted his head and saw dark blood mixing with all that mud around his half-submerged body, he knew there was nothing to be done but wait for help or death to find him. It was February, and the warm evening still brimmed with humidity. Two or three others from his company had been running near him, trying to reach the evacuation helicopters in the clearing a couple of hundred yards away, but Jesse didn’t know their fates. And he had no idea how many Vietcong snipers remained in the jungle, calculating distance and wind conditions between themselves and where he’d landed.

His rifle was gone. His right leg was torn up with shrapnel and lay broken across his body, covered in blood. Someone might have called out, “Jesse, you good?” but he couldn’t hear clearly through the echoes from the blast. The nerves in his right hand burned while he waited in agony, losing his life. It took time, but a combat medic finally advanced to Jesse’s location in the rice paddy. After staunching the gushing of blood from behind the right knee with a tourniquet, he injected Jesse with morphine, and then he and two others carried Jesse on a stretcher to the helicopter and secured him aboard. As the narcotic flowed through his body, Jesse’s mind—already fatigued from two and a half months in country—drifted from the battlefield until he was home with his mother and family. Eva, his sister who had loved him as her own child, was there. He felt young and scared, but it was going to be okay now. The chopper’s blades turned with tremendous power. Jesse

felt the chill of snow cones on his tongue while riding the bus downtown with his mother. They passed the men painting the weekly specials on grocery store windows. The chrome on the cars cruising Zarzamora Street blinded him in a terrific way as it reflected the sun shining down from the great Texas sky. It was all beautiful— the colors of the buildings, the people’s faces, kids playing in the streets—and it was all worthy of an artist’s passion.

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While flying high over South Vietnam Jesse recognized the beautiful character of San Antonio’s West Side—his home—and as he lay dying on a stretcher in the sky his mind formed a single thought: What would I do if I got another chance? Jesse looked at his right hand, clenched and burning within, and for the first time in his life he didn’t know if his spirit had the answer.

PART ONE

The LBJ Years

Chapter 1

Mexicans and Americans (1946–1961)

Jesus was born at home on Christmas Eve 1946 in Monterrey, Mexico. He was the ninth child of Juan and Dolores Treviño. Home was humble, one room with stucco walls, a tin roof, and a dirt floor. Against one wall was a kerosene stove, while blankets and thin mattresses in the back marked the sleeping area. There was no electricity, but there was an outdoor water spigot, distinguishing the tiny Treviño house from many of its neighbors. On chilly nights, like the night Jesus was born, the family warmed the front room with a small fire and steam from a large tub of water drawn from that spigot. During the few years that this was home to the Treviños, Jesus was too young to accurately survey his surroundings as inspiration for future works of art. However, decades later he’d tell his friend, troubadour rock-and-roll photographer Tom Wright, that he never forgot the aromas (he remembered them “more vividly than colors”) of freshly made tortillas coming from nearly every house in the neighborhood, including his own.

Such comfort-food memories provided a warming, happy foundation for his early childhood. And it’s not a far leap to say that such evocative, nearly tangible sentimentality became a signature element to many of his most acclaimed works. Plus, he never lost his affection for homemade tortillas. To feed his family, Juan drove a truck, hauling gravel and building materials between construction sites and quarries around Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo León, near Mexico’s northern border. Following a decade of civil war earlier in the century, this important industrial capital had strengthened its economic ties to markets in the United States and weathered the worldwide Great Depression. Work remained steady, and Juan logged long hours, eventually earning enough to get electricity to the house for lights— another first for the assortment of one-room homes on the edge of this city of 200,000. Throughout the 1940s, however, as Monterrey’s population increased rapidly, its infrastructure buckled under the sudden boom while labor

relations between workers and owners soured. All of which could have affected Juan’s decision to leave in 1950. The town of Sabinas Hidalgo, where he had been born in 1906, was not far away, and there was still family there to help Juan find work. Instead, with their ten children, some extra clothes, and a few household belongings, Juan and Dolores boarded a bus and headed back to Texas.

— Dolores Campos was born in 1915 and grew up on the west side of New Braunfels, Texas, where Mexicans and Mexican Americans were a sizable minority. Like many of the families in Dolores’s ramshackle neighborhood, the Campos bloodline dated back to when the region was part of Spanish Texas, before the United States reached this far south. New Braunfels, like much of Texas, did not have a sizable African American population, though some black families had located within its segregated city limits. The population was mostly Hispanics and Anglos; the Anglos, predominantly of German descent, controlled the local government and set the rules for business, which never favored minorities. For example, while some restaurants sold food out the back door to customers of color, only whites could eat inside; other stores stated their policies with signs in the windows: “No Dogs, No Mexicans.” Schools were segregated, but according to several of her children, Dolores never attended school. Like the other Mexican American girls

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living in Texas (and just about anywhere else in the country), educated or not, she faced extremely limited options in life. Lost to time and memory are the details of Dolores and Juan’s courtship, but it must have begun sometime in the late 1920s after Juan had migrated from Mexico and was working at a garage in San Antonio, some thirty miles south of New Braunfels. Juan had brothers living in New Braunfels, which is where he and Dolores most likely met for the first time. After celebrating a Catholic wedding at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the couple lived in New Braunfels, welcoming their first child, Evangelina, in 1930, followed by Elvira in 1933 and Pedro in 1934. Perhaps during any other decade of the twentieth century it would have been possible for the Treviños to continue to put down roots in New Braunfels. But the effects of the Great Depression gripping the rest of the country finally reached Texas in the mid-1930s, and the opportunities for many thousands of unskilled and semiskilled laborers began drying up. Additionally, because dreary economic conditions often led to xenophobic responses, thousands of Mexicans living in Texas, California, and throughout the Southwest were being pressured to repatriate to Mexico through a focused program of intimidation and job denial. Federally sanctioned deportations officially targeted only undocumented immigrants, but Mexicans living in the country legally—and even US citizens of Mexican ancestry who might never have previously stepped foot in

Mexico—were forced to move south of the border. Several of the Treviño children believe that Juan and Dolores, along with Evangelina, Elvira, and Pedro, left the United States voluntarily in 1935. In the one-room home on the outskirts of Monterrey, Dolores gave birth to Jesus and his siblings, Armando (1936), Ramiro (1939), Mario (1941), Juan (1943), Alicia (1945), and Roberto (1948).

— On their return trip to Texas in 1950, the Treviños intended to live in San Antonio, where some of Juan’s family could help them settle. During the 1920s, when Juan first moved from Mexico to San Antonio, Mexicans could typically pay a small fee to receive legal “resident alien” status in the United States. In 1950, however, there were tighter immigration controls at the border, which might have influenced Juan’s decision to forgo the closer, busier crossing into Laredo, Texas. Instead, their bus headed to Reynosa, 150 miles east of Monterrey, from which the Treviños would attempt to enter McAllen, Texas. “I’ve heard that my father’s older brother told him it would be easier to cross there,” said Juan “John” Treviño, who was Juan and Dolores’s seventh child. John, who was five at the time of the crossing, remembered playing with his brothers at a motel courtyard in Reynosa: “Something jumped on my back and wrapped its

skinny fingers around my eyes. As I pulled away, yelling and screaming, I saw it was a monkey tied with a chain to a pole. My mom grabbed me, took me to the room, and gave me a spoonful of sugar and water to calm me down.” John was fine the next morning and, apparently experiencing no problems with the paperwork at the border, crossed with his family of Mexicans and Americans into McAllen, where things suddenly changed again. Dolores and her three oldest children were US citizens while Juan and the seven youngest children, including Jesus, became resident aliens in a foreign country. Although the federal documents issued to the family listed them as “Caucasian,” the Treviños were officially a minority family again. They could expect lower levels of legal and judicial protections, limited participation in the local economy, physical intimidation, and social isolation. And as far as Texas’ majority Anglo population was concerned, the whole family would simply be lumped in with anyone else with Latino lineage or a Spanish surname: in 1950 they were all just “Mexicans.” In McAllen they boarded another bus, this one heading north 250 miles through the Rio Grande Valley to San Antonio. While Juan and Dolores were familiar with the way things worked in South Texas, it’s less likely they realized upon their return that the area was increasingly under the political control of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had been elected US senator two years earlier.

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Johnson was certainly fluent in the racist language of the times and felt an innate moral superiority over other races, but according to one of his biographers, he didn’t hold the same ferociously prejudiced attitudes against Mexican Americans as many of his fellow Texans did. He believed that education and economic opportunity could help elevate the lower-economic and minority classes. It’s a lesson he first learned while teaching fifth, sixth, and seventh grades at Welhausen School, the “Mexican” school in Cotulla, a town between San Antonio and Laredo, after he graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in San Marcos. Indeed, Johnson felt some fondness for Mexico itself, choosing to honeymoon in Monterrey and Mexico City after his wedding to Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Taylor in San Antonio in 1934. After Johnson was elected a US congressman in 1937, however, he voted against every civil rights bill that came before him. Every single one. Despite that record, while asking for the support of minority community leaders for his senate race, Johnson assured them that he was working hard for their causes. He also promised political patronage and, sometimes, cash to South Texas Anglo ranch bosses and urban neighborhood political organizers, who, in turn, promised a significant turnout of voters for Johnson. Come Election Day in 1948, such practices proved somewhat ironic when compared to what was happening elsewhere in the state. While most minority Texans were being

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systematically suppressed of their right to vote through Jim Crow laws, in a few key Texas precincts, including the Rio Grande Valley and the sprawling West Side barrio of San Antonio, minorities were driven to the polls and had their poll taxes paid for them. After voting, they might be given a dollar for their loyalty and perhaps a shot of tequila. Two years before the Treviños’ bus pulled into San Antonio, the city’s West Side voters had done their part to elect Johnson to the Senate and, ultimately, set him on the path to the presidency.

— In 1950 San Antonio’s population was just over 408,000, the third largest in Texas and twenty-fifth in all the forty-eight states. There were two television stations, more than a dozen radio stations, and several daily newspapers. Some downtown buildings stood more than fifteen stories tall, and taller ones were on the way. The city’s economy was growing, in no small part because the Department of Defense was one of the area’s largest employers. Military pride and American patriotism were serious components to the city’s character. Because it was a major stop along the historic Camino Real, a network of roads dating back more than a century that were used for trade and immigration between Mexico and the southern United States, many San Antonio streets and neighborhoods reflected deeply rooted cultural, historical, and architectural influences from Mexico.

But it was a segregated city. Growth was being directed north, where wealthy Anglos developed modern neighborhoods away from downtown. San Antonio’s eastern and southern sections, which included the working classes, small African American populations, and many Latino families, experienced the boom of healthy economic times on significantly smaller scales. Hispanics made up around 40 percent of the city’s overall population, and the great majority of them—over 100,000—lived west of the city center in the “Mexican quarter.” Traditions and laws had forced immigrants, arriving mostly from Mexico, to settle in this sprawling, mostly undeveloped barrio for decades, which remained persistently neglected by the city government. The West Side was historically a place of widespread poverty, rickety housing, and unpaved roads. It was prone to annual, often devastating flooding. Indoor running water lines were sporadically and infrequently installed, and the neighborhoods had been repeatedly ravaged by tuberculosis and other diseases as more families relocated from farms and ranch communities. Spanish was spoken more prevalently than English, whether at home, conducting business, or praying at church. There had always been an eager workforce, though, as well as strong feelings of loyalty for the United States. When San Antonio’s minority soldiers returned home, many of them took full advantage of the federal G.I. Bill to finish high school or develop a vocation into a business. They also built better homes and fought deter-

minedly to improve their schools. In some pockets of the West Side a middle class had slowly been evolving. Into these conditions landed the Treviños in 1950—although they didn’t necessarily land in the West Side as much as they bounced around at first—moving from rental house to rental house, trying to acquire the right space with enough space for a still-growing family. Briefly, they rented a house with an outhouse in the back on the South Side, where Juan grew corn on a half acre of land and raised chickens and where Dolores gave birth to Jorge in 1951. The following year, returning to the West Side and a house on Beso Lane, the Treviños’ final child, Ernesto, was born. Juan and the older children worked while Dolores ran the household and made sure the school-age children made it to school, no excuses accepted. Everyone was responsible for the babies. If Jesus wasn’t born already hardwired with the skills to accurately draw the world around him, he began developing them very soon thereafter. He could see a tree, or a bottle, or a man’s fedora, and his right hand could convincingly reproduce what it looked like with a pencil or crayon on a piece of scrap paper or whatever canvas was handy. There were also hand-lettered signs and hand-painted advertising common throughout the Mexican Quarter, and while his mother shopped, Jesus often sat on the sidewalks watching men paint vivid, colorful images—a bullfighter on a grocery store window, for example—creating art where there had been

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none before. Back home, he recreated from memory what he’d seen, and by age six he was regularly being reprimanded by Dolores for drawing cartoon characters on the walls. (The walls already had pictures of some kind on them, and he was simply adding his own contributions. To a young artist, it seemed a logical conclusion.) As another example of such artistic imprinting, even though it would be years before he actually visited the Alamo, Jesus was constantly sketching the mission’s iconic façade because its depiction could be found everywhere throughout the city. Many years later, he’d complete a portrait of the Alamo and present it to the most powerful man in the world. Neither Juan nor Dolores demonstrated any overt appreciation for the visual arts, but while their ninth child grew increasingly drawn to the displays of colors and eye-catching pictures of his West Side world, someone else in the family took notice. As several of her siblings recalled, Evangelina —Eva—was a “very beautiful” woman in her late teens and early twenties, with a “caramel complexion and long dark hair.” She had been educated in Mexico and learned English there (perhaps ironically, considering that she was born in New Braunfels). When the family returned to Texas, she worked various jobs, including at Leeds department store and the YWCA, where she taught Spanish. Intelligent and outgoing, Eva was also the responsible type, often acting as a surrogate parent to the younger children.

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Most importantly for Jesus, Eva appreciated the fine arts, even when they were represented as cartoon characters scribbled on the walls of the family home. She encouraged Jesus’s artistic inclinations, and in a full house like the Treviños’, getting any special attention was supremely satisfying. Eva occasionally purchased charcoal pencils, tempera paints, and pads of drawing paper for her little brother and even took him to the Mexican consulate to see his first art exhibit. The Mexican artist’s giant abstract paintings made as much of an impression on Jesus as the unexpected realization that other people became excited when they looked at beautiful pictures, too. Soon Jesse’s artistic abilities attracted attention outside the family. His constant doodling and sketching didn’t escape the notice of a firstgrade teacher at David Crockett Elementary School, who encouraged him to enter an art contest sponsored by the Witte, a local museum. When Jesus drew two doves on a manila sheet of construction paper for the contest, it’s quite probable that he didn’t grasp the concepts of “winning” and “losing,” but he did, in fact, win, and on the day of the awards he discovered that winning was important enough for his very busy mother and a few of his siblings to attend the ceremony. There, on the stage of the Witte Museum’s auditorium, his drawing had been displayed on a little easel. This was no classroom chalkboard— this was a real exhibit, like what he’d seen at the Mexican consulate, and he felt like a real artist.

Jesus heard his name announced, and he walked nervously up the three wooden steps to the stage, goose bumps rising on his skin, the Anglo women of the museum society clapping politely. When he was given his first-place plaque, he saw how proud his mother looked, and he had all of her attention, just for that moment. This is what I want to do, he thought as the applause continued and the nervousness slowly left him. It seemed as clear to him as the doves he’d drawn. This is what I want to do forever. Elvira Treviño Limón, the second-eldest child, attended the ceremony and remembered her brother in a state of overflowing excitement: “He kept repeating afterwards, ‘I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go home.’ He was very excited, talking so fast. He was always talking so fast. It was hard to understand him sometimes.” Along with the plaque, Jesse was given a check for forty dollars, his first “professional” prize money. In a few short years money would play a more significant role in his artistic endeavors. For now, it made him an earner, just like his older brothers and sisters, just like his hardworking papa. It also played a not-so-insignificant part in igniting the spirit of competition as Jesus quickly recognized art as a way to gauge his skills against others. Art and competition: they had fused together within him before his family could drag him from the Witte’s auditorium. Together they formed a spirit that burned its way into his every effort—whenever art was concerned, at least.

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From Beso Lane, the family moved a short distance to a rental on Martin Street, close to Escobedo Dairy, where Juan found work as a driver. For Jesus and his brothers, Martin Street represented boyhood exploration and independence because Alazán Creek ran not far from the back of the house. They spent summer afternoons hunting and fishing and cooking up their catches right along the creek’s bank. “That creek became our adventure land,” said Roberto “Robert” Treviño, the tenth child, about the wooded area with high grass, running water, and wildlife just beyond their backyard. “It was vast back there,” recalled John. “There were all sorts of birds. Some people had horses and cows. The creek was filled with crawdads and perch and snakes.” Because of the city council’s long history of negligence toward minority-populated neighborhoods, Alazán Creek also represented the dangers of living on the West Side. Flooding was an annual threat as the Alazán and nearby San Pedro Creek often overran their banks. Even though the Treviño house on Martin escaped flooding, whenever it rained the family (and the entire neighborhood) paid close attention to the creeks and their quickly rising waters. Perhaps it was such an unsettling recognition—that the same thing in life could be both wonderful and dangerous—that contributed to Jesus’s somnambulism as a boy. His brothers and sisters frequently awoke at night to discover him talking, walking around, hammering away at some unfinished art project—all the while

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remaining fast asleep. One night his mother jerked him back by the arm just as he stepped barefoot onto Martin Street. Of course, there were plenty of other possible triggers for his unusual subconscious activity, including the fact that Jesus was no longer “Jesus,” at least not when he was attending school. Crockett Elementary was populated primarily with first- and second-generation Mexican American children who, like the Treviños, spoke Spanish at home; and yet only English was tolerated on campus. This English-only decree was backed by state law and apparently applied to the children’s own names. Soon after starting school, all the children’s Spanish first names were Anglicized. “I remember very clearly when we went to Crockett, my name was Roberto and they said, ‘Your name is now Robert.' Jesse’s name was Jesus, although we usually called him ‘Chuy’ [his nickname] at home, and then [the school] said his name was ‘Jesse.’ All my brothers’ names were changed. We didn’t think there was anything wrong with that at the time; after all, we were learning to write English,” Robert said. “Throughout the state of Texas, it was called the ‘No Spanish’ rule, and some of the teachers were really harsh on the kids and would spank them,” said Joe Bernal, a teacher at David Crockett Elementary in the 1950s. “If you instructed in Spanish at the time, you could be charged one hundred dollars a day, and they could take away your [teaching] credentials and they could fire you.”

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Jesse slipped up and got caught speaking Spanish at school one day. And although he would later remember being spanked by Bernal, a man of Mexican heritage, the teacher did not recall disciplining Jesse with corporal punishment, saying instead that his practice was to charge the offending student a nickel or a dime, saving the money for a class party. Still, Jesse’s sleepwalking could also have been some manifestation of anxiety over the changing family demographics. The oldest son, Pedro—“Pete”—had joined the Marines and was serving in a gunnery division in Korea, and Jesse regularly walked with his mother to a small, nearby church to light a candle and say a prayer for his oldest brother’s safe return. Also, Eva had a fiancé and wasn’t home very much. Elvira, an accomplished seamstress who sewed (and modeled) for Sol Frank Uniforms, was putting in long hours away from home. “We were making suits for [Senator Lyndon] Johnson,” Elvira said. “He preferred the Western coat. I used to take the measurements of the coat, and I put the pearl buttons on. They had a machine, but I put the pearl buttons on. I’m the only one who did that. And he used to lose weight and gain weight and they’d give me the pants so I could fix them. I always fixed his clothes.” Whether for work, school, or love, Jesse’s older brothers and sisters were absent from the home for longer periods of time. By 1954, the Treviños had moved again, this time to a rental house at 2706 Monterey Street. The wooden house would be the final place—

for a short period of time, at least—that all fourteen Treviños would call home, including Pete after he’d returned from Korea. The front door entered into the living room, which led to the dining room and kitchen. To the right was the parents’ and the girls’ bedrooms. The back

section of the house, essentially a screened-in porch with a double bed and two sets of bunk beds, was the boys’ bedroom. There weren’t enough beds, so some of the boys slept on the floor. There was also no air conditioning and only one small heater other than the stove. But

The Treviño family at their home on Monterey Street, November 1954. Left to right, back row: Ramiro, Armando, Pete, Mario; middle row: Jorge, Alicia, Ernest, John; front row: Jesse, Eva, Dolores, Juan, Elvira; center, on floor: Robert. Artist’s archive.

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there was a backyard with a very small garage as well as a covered front porch, allowing the family members some space to spread out. Perhaps most importantly, the house was located in Prospect Hill, a long-established neighborhood, filled with families and relatively insulated from the worst living conditions associated with the westward sprawl of the Mexican Quarter. Juan and his children continued to work as a family to maintain the house, although logistically the living conditions could be a tight fit. Mornings on Monterey could be especially challenging. Most days Juan left before dawn to work at Cream Crest Dairy on the South Side. The older kids were up early, too, preparing for their jobs before the younger ones began readying themselves for school. As Alicia (“Alice”), the eighth child, remembered some five decades later, schedules tended to conflict: “There was only one toilet, and so if it was busy [one of her brothers] would get on a bicycle and pedal to the corner gas station to go to the bathroom.” And then there was Dolores, always up before the rest of the house to shop at Mrs. Garza’s grocery store before orchestrating morning maneuvers at home. Some days Jesse made the trip to the grocery. In addition to receiving his mother’s good wishes, he may have netted an extra bite or two of the morning’s sweet pan dulce before his brothers descended on the kitchen for breakfast. Although no one in the family ever really went hungry, with so many mouths to feed, competition for food was real. Each morning Dolores

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greeted the various waves of hungry kids with oversized pans of beans, eggs, and potatoes and freshly made tortillas, sometimes flinging them like Frisbees across the kitchen before turning back to the hot stove. There were fights, of course, and screaming matches over the occasional intercepted tortilla, but such was life with so many Treviños and a limited food budget. At the very bottom of the food chain, Ernesto (“Ernest”) always thought the chow line before him stretched hopelessly long. More than fifty years later, while recalling those mornings, he said his mother always instructed him to remain patient. “She’d tell me, ‘You’ll eat later. There is food, but the grownups eat first. They have to go to their jobs. You’ll eat later.’” As if feeding the troops before they shipped off wasn’t a formidable enough task, Dolores also prepared their lunches. Most days, that meant packing sacks of tacos for both students and workers before they headed out the door; in keeping with the breakfast protocols, the older kids typically received a few more than the younger ones. Once they left the house, the Treviños joined thousands of fellow Westsiders pursuing the American Dream. Even though the movie Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, came out in 1956 and helped to reinforce the national consensus that Texas was all ranchers and oil barons, Jesse’s neighbors covered a broader spectrum—civil service workers, electricians, lawyers, and business entrepreneurs. They were fruit-and-vegetable vendors, janitors,

waiters, and construction workers. They were printers, musicians, bar owners, and men selling raspas (snow cones) from street carts. And there were always soldiers in uniform on the streets, on the buses, in the restaurants. Jesse joined the ranks, too, walking barefoot most days to school, paying attention to any newly painted billboards or signs, noticing how sunshine made storefront windows reflect images differently when he passed them, and staring at so many blank walls on the sides of buildings that he wished to make beautiful with colorful depictions of some kind. It was also his habit to constantly reimagine the houses on his route with new, cleverly designed façades and painted with bright colors of his choosing. In time, he would come to embrace his childhood neighborhood as muse, model, and canvas. At school, Jesse stood out for two attributes. One, he typically talked at an energetic pace. (“All of us are fast talkers. We have so much to say that we’re going to run out of time. We’re excitable. We all talk over each other. We’re happy, we’re anxious,” said Alice Treviño Rodriguez of her family.) And, two, his art projects regularly showed up on classroom walls, office windows, and other spaces as his skills continued to show remarkable development. Girl with Poinsettias (1957, 10˝× 12˝, tempera on paper), for example, is a painting of a pretty brown-eyed, brown-haired girl wearing a blue blouse and striped shawl and holding two poinsettia branches. There is confident execution —while delicate shading reflects shadow across

the girl’s straw hat, for instance, there’s restraint in overdetailing the work as a whole. There’s also mature, emotional warmth toward the subject, who looks to be only a year or two younger than Jesse was at the time he painted it. Here was an early example that he was good, not simply better than most other ten-year-olds, but good enough to think and execute his ideas at advanced levels. If he had a pencil or a crayon or a little jar of paint and some kind of canvas, Jesse would never find himself bored at home. “Sometimes you don’t need very much to do art. I grew up drawing on things you threw away. My brothers would work at jobs that required they had to wear crisp, starched white shirts,” Jesse said. “They had a laundry service that came to the house; my brothers would pay for it. And the shirts would come back with a piece of cardboard inside to prevent wrinkles or whatever. They were perfect for drawing on.” When Jesse attended Washington Irving Middle School, he received structured art classes, including ceramics and watercolor painting, and he approached them all at full throttle. He also met fellow students who shared his enjoyment for art, some of whom even showed talent. But Jesse wanted to be the best, and his competitive nature blossomed when the class’s works were going to be displayed and judged. He waged his art against theirs, spending time developing great concepts in order to best show off his advanced technical skills, and he won a lot of the contests.

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During one summer, Irving’s art teacher, Enrique Ramirez, invited Jesse and another student to join him at work on a large painting. He showed them how to prepare the four-byeight-foot canvas (actually, a piece of plywood) and taught them how to mix oil paints with a spatula. Together they sketched out the placement of each of the subjects on the canvas, carefully considering the angles, the depths of space, and an audience’s perspective. When they had finished, Ramirez taught them to take pride in their finished work—a colorful depiction of dogs playing baseball—by signing their names to it. When the school year commenced, the other students returned to admire Jesse’s contributions. Here at last was an audience, one of the rewards for making good art. Another reward was money, and he produced some traditional landscapes and seascapes with such recognizable quality that faculty members purchased them. Of course, he gave away many more paintings than he sold, but the young artist was learning to apply value to his art—and understanding how others agreed or disagreed with that value. At home, despite (or perhaps because of) the enormous population living under the same roof, Jesse spent a considerable amount of time alone. He’d roam the neighborhood, retrieving caches of discarded art supplies from the trash bins of print shops and art supply stores to bring home. As for that garage in the backyard, it was too small to be useful for much of anything if they tried putting a car in there. Instead, it became more of a workshop where Jesse could

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become absorbed in making stained glass pieces, or mixing plaster of Paris, or teaching himself leather craft and carpentry. He was by no means reclusive, though. Taking after his father and older brothers, he loved playing baseball and once pitched a no-hitter in Little League for the Max Martinez Funeral Home Braves. The neighborhood was filled with kids, and on summer nights they stopped by, calling to Chuy to chase the ice cream truck with them through the streets. There was fishing at Elmendorf Lake and bike rides around the block. Even when the family got a television set, Jesse remembered, it wasn’t turned on all that much. “We were outside. We were too busy playing games, making holes in the ground to set up our own golf course, building tree houses, or we’d just use the garage as a clubhouse.” Sometimes Jesse organized footraces and other athletic competitions, and afterward he’d present the winners, including himself, with ribbons that he’d made from scraps of material he’d scavenged. There were new movies and variety shows regularly on stage at the Alameda and the Majestic theaters and annual trips downtown for the carnival and parades of Fiesta, San Antonio’s signature multiday commemoration of the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the crucial fight leading to Texas’s independence from Mexico. Whatever he occupied his time with, he paid no attention whatsoever to the tremors and reverberations from events taking place outside the neighborhood. With the Korean War over, military tensions were rebuilding in

another remote Asian country; but the majority of Americans were simply unaware of Vietnam in the mid- to late-1950s. Instead, the country was facing a rising tide of anger and mistrust between Anglos and minority populations after the Supreme Court issued two decisions on civil rights: Hernandez v. Texas, which ruled that prohibiting Mexican Americans from sitting on juries denied them their constitutional rights, and Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared public facilities separated by race as inherently unequal. In a rather calculated way, Senator Lyndon Johnson “took no stand on the Brown decision,” writes Julie Leininger Pycior in LBJ and Mexican Americans. But he also didn’t display any such passivity when addressing his home-state crowds because, Pycior points out, “Three out of four Texans opposed the ruling, so their senator continued to criticize ‘forced integration.’” However, with his focus solidly on becoming president some day, Johnson began slowly, quietly making his case for adopting more tolerant, progressive attitudes toward minorities. Although he was met mostly with tremendous rejection from his fellow legislators from Texas and the South, he persisted and even strengthened his public stance for equal protection under the law for African Americans and, depending on the crowd, Mexican Americans. His gambit paid off. When the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles gaveled to a close in 1960, Johnson was the party’s vice presidential running mate to Senator John Kennedy

from Massachusetts. Their campaign around the country against Republicans Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge included a ten-stop tour of South Texas. San Antonio’s West Side was on the itinerary and was dutifully plastered with “¡Viva Kennedy!” yard signs and “LBJ for DC” bumper stickers. Together, the Democratic contenders promised to stand with and fight for minorities during their struggle for civil rights. The JFK and LBJ ticket won the state of Texas by such a narrow margin that San Antonio’s Mexican American voting bloc proved essential for victory. Kennedy was Catholic, like most (though definitely not all) Mexican Americans, which proved important within the voting booth. And even though the vice presidency was not Johnson’s prime goal, the West Side had propelled him to within a heartbeat of his ultimate desire. Having passed desegregation ordinances in 1954, San Antonio’s Mexican American voters were becoming more empowered for reshaping their own local, Anglo-controlled political environment. In 1956 Bexar County (in which San Antonio comprises the majority of the population) elected organizer and activist Albert Peña to county commissioner; and city councilman Henry B. González became the first Texan of Mexican heritage elected to the state senate behind solid West Side backing.

— Things had not been going so well for Jesse’s father. Whereas once Juan had been the one to

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gather everyone to see a baseball game or take a train to visit Monterrey or go fishing or pick pecans, by the mid-1950s he was not as robust as he’d once been. He was a steady beer drinker and smoker and suffered from high blood pressure. He’d worked long, physically demanding hours for most of his life. Out of concern for his health, a doctor once urged him to stop working altogether. He didn’t, and in 1955 he suffered a stroke, which was enough to separate him from his job at Cream Crest Dairy. (Armando, his fourth child, quit high school and took over his route.) “He always insisted on working,” Robert Treviño said of his father, adding that, despite enduring some paralysis on one side of his body, Juan bought a Model T truck and sold fresh produce out of the back. “He would buy bunches of watermelons and cantaloupes at the farmers’ markets and drive back to the neighborhood. He’d put the tailgate down and put up signs [often painted by Jesse]: ‘Fresh Watermelons’ and ‘Fresh Fruit.’ I remember helping him. We’d be there half a day. And then we’d eat the leftovers.” On March 21, 1957, Juan suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was taken to Santa Rosa Hospital, where he died. “I was in the backyard after it happened,” John Treviño said. “They had already taken him to the hospital, and then I saw Armando’s car come back to the house—my mother’s just crying and crying. I knew. I was so scared that I took off and walked around the neighborhood for about an

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hour. When I came back, friends and relatives were there.” “My father passed away when I was nine years old. I can still picture him. I know what he liked,” said Alice Treviño Rodriguez. “He’d been having difficulty walking and talking. But he used to love sitting and watching wrestling on television.” Onto the shoulders of forty-one-year-old Dolores fell the responsibility of heading the family. But even before Juan became ill, her children called her jefita, the little boss, because she was the foundation of the family: a fourfoot-ten driving force that kept her kids safe and ran a tight ship. She was firm, and she always remained a fixture of cohesion because the Monterey household was her dominion. “My mother was the glue,” said Robert Treviño. “If my brothers got up at six, she got up at five and started cooking. If they came home at eight at night, she stayed up preparing dinner. Whatever it took—mending clothes, washing— whatever it took.” Although Jesse would always remember his father as a good provider and a good man, they had not formed an exceptionally tight bond. Juan’s long work hours, along with the number of people living under one roof, became obstacles to having a very close relationship. And so while Juan’s passing was no doubt a sad, scary event for Jesse, he found comfort and strength, as always, in his mother. “I wasn’t afraid of my mother, but she was the boss,” says Jesse. “I couldn’t tell her that I didn’t feel like going to

Amor Indio (“Indian Love,” 1960). Oil on masonite, 36˝× 48˝. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography; copy of a painting by Jesús Helguera.

school. I’d go to school sick. My neighbors, they had a bunch of kids, too, and they were always absent. I owe it to my mother. I needed that guidance.” And that would not change after Dolores’s husband’s death. Of course, Juan’s passing did impact Dolores and her children in many ways, not the least of which financially. There were still three children under ten at home, including Jorge, who had been born with a heart murmur and was physically developing at a slow rate and needed extra medical attention. Dolores didn’t go to work; instead, the oldest brothers and sisters worked more hours to make up for the deficit of household income and sacrificed more of their time to make sure the younger kids were dressed properly, went to school, and stayed out of trouble. Eva had been engaged when her father died, but her mother insisted she wait a year, a suitable period of mourning, before getting married. Eva honored her mother’s wish and a year later was married; her picture in her wedding dress appeared in the social pages of La Prensa. The new couple drove to Monterrey in her brother Pete’s new Ford Fairlane for their honeymoon, but on their way back to San Antonio their car collided with an eighteen-wheel truck parked on the side of the road with its lights off. Although her new husband survived the impact, Eva died instantly. The same photo of Eva in her wedding

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gown was used in the paper to report her tragic death. It was an enormous blow to the whole family, but it would never be easy for Jesse to accept. He would always keep his sister’s memory and the memories of her encouragement close to his heart. Eva was “an angel, guiding me,” he would say years later. “She was the first person who really believed in me. And that made a difference.” Despite such tragedies, as the 1950s drew to a close, Jesse was growing up healthy and happy. He was roughly of average height (or maybe an inch or two shorter) and weight when compared to the next preteen on the block. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and brown skin, like most of the boys and girls he counted as friends. He was pretty good in school and sports and capable of making small repairs around the house, like fixing a broken window and a leaky sink. And he was excitable: it seemed his tongue could never keep up with his thoughts, which were a constantly swirling mosaic of art projects, both current and future. Along with the rest of the nation, Jesse turned the corner into the 1960s without the first thought of how upended life would be just a decade later. But when he completed the ninth grade at Irving, the writing was clearly on the wall: Jesse was about to get very serious about his art.

Chapter 2

West Side Graffiti (1962–1965)

In the spring of 1962, César Chávez, Dolores Huerta, Fred Ross, and Manuel Chávez (César’s cousin) founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in Delano, California. Their goal was to organize farmworkers against the unchecked power of owners and growers in the commercial agricultural industry of California’s Central Valley; membership was composed of mainly small-community, permanent-resident laborers who were predominantly of Latino heritage. Under its newly designed flag—a black eagle within a white circle on a red background—and backed by a motto of ¡Viva la causa! (“Long live the cause!”), the fledgling NFWA fought to secure livable wages, safe working conditions, and other fundamental rights that it felt any workforce should expect to have. This wasn’t California’s first farmworkers union, but its founding was recognized as an early defining event for the Latino civil rights movement. Nationwide, the fight for civil rights for Mexican Americans had not yet gained the

same traction with the American consciousness as it had for African Americans, but times were changing. Along with California’s growing influence from organizations like the NFWA, San Antonio was also becoming an important center of Mexican American culture in Texas and throughout the Southwest. Although it was not a model for racial harmony and justice, San Antonio in the early 1960s was also not a powder keg about to explode from racial tensions. Perhaps such relative calm resulted from well-established de facto racial borders, though confrontations did flare up, of course, especially where the races mingled, like downtown. Even there, however, the business community didn’t maintain consistent discriminatory practices. While Sears had integrated its lunch counter without incident around 1955, Joske’s of Texas refused food service to blacks for five more years; by 1960, some theaters had begun to treat customers equally, but the Majestic Theatre still enforced a separate “colored” entrance for African

Americans and restricted them to balcony seating. It took months of consistent, nonviolent protests to force a change to the theater’s policy. In general, the city’s traditional discriminatory practices tended to favor Hispanics over blacks; and Mexican Americans and African Americans mainly fought their own battles, not often working together en masse to overcome the city’s remaining outposts of segregated life. Although Mexican Americans had gained some ground within the closely intertwined city council and private business sector, there was no possibility for them being hired for some jobs, nor much hope for advancing beyond a certain level in the jobs they could get. They were also prohibited from buying or renting property in certain neighborhoods, which meant the West Side continued to swell and pop at its seams. The continuing Cold War meant that, along with more nuclear bomb fallout shelters opening in San Antonio, the budgets remained healthy for the US Army post Fort Sam Houston and the area’s four US Air Force bases, Kelly, Lackland, Brooks, and Randolph. Those bases had integrated before the rest of San Antonio, opening the door for more civilian minorities to find white- and blue-collar jobs, but it wasn’t enough to reach the vast majority of residents living west of San Pedro Creek, enduring some of the worst urban living conditions in the country, including chronic hunger. With widespread unemployment and abundant civic neglect, the West Side was victimized by crime and violence under the same gang culture that had been around for decades.

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Historian and former West Side resident David Montejano observed in Quixote’s Soldiers, “Although the great majority of barrio youths were not in ‘conflict gangs,’ the notoriety of the latter dominated the image of young Mexican Americans. From the mid-fifties through the mid-sixties, gang warfare had broken out on the Mexican side of town every few years.” With about twenty known gangs operating on the West Side, their individual territories consisted of a city block or two at most, and “barrio residents only had to read the graffiti to learn which gang held their turf.” The closest gangs held turf several blocks south and east of the Treviño home, but there’s no indication that any of Jesse’s brothers or sisters were actually in gangs or took part in gang activity—which is not to say that individual gang members were unknown to the Treviños. Some may have been acquaintances, and possibly even friends. Jesse found no attraction to gang life, not even the artistic aspect of it: the graffiti. Besides, his bond to his mother had only strengthened after his father and sister died; there was loyalty to her as well as love, and so if he wasn’t old enough to earn a living to help financially support her, he would at least steer clear of trouble and not break her heart. Instead, fifteen-year-old Jesse lived pretty much like most teenagers in the country—concerned about his appearance more than just about anything else. He stood about five feet tall and weighed around 100 pounds, but being a bit

on the short side wasn’t much of a teenage distress for Jesse. His angst was reserved mainly for the color of his skin. Dolores had fairer skin than Juan, and the children were a dozen nuanced shades of that genetic combination. When he was very young, Jesse noticed he had his father’s dark skin; after starting school he discovered himself to be darker than many other kids. When he asked his mama about his dark skin, he was told that being born on Christmas Eve provided more than just the inspiration for his name. “Santa Claus was trying to bring you down the chimney,” Dolores told her son. “With all that black soot, you got dark.” For a while that explanation made him feel better until he remembered (or perhaps was reminded by one of his brothers) that the house in Mexico didn’t have a chimney. Growing up, Jesse felt little direct discrimination leveled against him from Anglos. Yet he realized that skin color meant something within his own community, and being “darker” was perceived by some as a negative physical attribute. The taunts from classmates hurt, but they cut deeper when coming from family members with lighter complexions, like Elvira, who Jesse believed was outright ashamed of his color, and brothers like Robert, who might call his brother “Negro” (or worse) during especially heated arguments. To Jesse, a “Negro” was a person who lived in a different part of town and used different doors and bathrooms. So when his mother told him that playing outside in the sun so much would

darken his skin, he often retreated indoors to draw or paint. By no means was Jesse antisocial, but worries over his skin color slapped a light coat of shyness onto his personality, and those introverted tendencies fit snugly alongside a desire to devote more time to his art projects. Withdrawing from others didn’t necessarily feel isolating if the time was spent creating something beautiful. And when Jesse began high school in the fall of 1962—despite his cultural insecurities—he didn’t necessarily expect it to be a nightmare. San Antonio’s students had several high school choices. John chose Thomas Jefferson High on the northwest side of town, and Alice would follow him there. Ramiro and Mario had gone downtown to Louis W. Fox Vocational and Technical High School, and Jesse followed them there. Its curriculum included standard academics as well as training in machine shop, garment manufacturing, auto shop, engineering drafting, and other skills that were particularly valuable for acquiring civil service jobs. Whereas Irving had offered art classes, Fox Tech provided art training and was recognized throughout the city for the success of its commercial arts program. So for the next three years, Jesse walked several blocks to catch a city bus for downtown, the ride taking him near the territories of several gangs before reaching Houston Street. Then he’d walk the rest of the way to the three-story stone building where he got to spend half of each school day in the commercial arts department on the top floor.

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Once he’d dreamed of being the “artist” painting signs for bakeries and grocery stores. Now, sitting among the drafting tables, he learned how much work went into producing billboards, advertising circulars, and other visual sales tools. He designed greeting cards and stationary, and he became particularly adept at fashion illustration, which made sense after watching Elvira design and sew clothes for years. He could imagine himself sketching women’s fashions in the art department at Frost’s or Penney’s department stores or perhaps illustrating for an advertising agency. Although he was a good student for half the day in math, history, and English, he became a dedicated commercial arts student. And even though he still had dark skin in those commercial arts classes, he could balance any anxiety with the satisfaction that comes from being really, really good. The commercial arts room became an arena for Jesse, where he worked alongside juniors and seniors and competed with them for awards. His confidence was justified, too: At a statewide vocational education convention near the end of his first year, he won second place in both the “notebook” and “technical information” categories and was named Outstanding Commercial Artist. Along with refining his drafting skills, Jesse began maturing as a painter. In one piece, LBJ (1962, oil on canvas, 22˝× 28˝), a portrait of Lyndon Johnson, there’s warmth within the small details, like the pensive wrinkles above the

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eyes, the individual strands of dark hair combed back against a graying tide, the moody stare. Jesse’s portrait was based on a black-and-white photo from a newspaper, probably the same shot Boris Chaliapin would choose three years later to illustrate a cover for Time, for it matches Jesse’s portrayal right down to where Johnson’s fingers touch his face. It should be noted that, although the advanced skills used to produce the portrait are noteworthy, the painting itself wasn’t undertaken in admiration for Texas’s number one politician. Like a young baseball pitcher endlessly practicing his curve ball to the exclusion of nearly everything else, Jesse was simply practicing his portraiture while paying little if any attention to national politics.

— Many past residents of Prospect Hill paint a rather lovely picture of what the neighborhood was like during the middle of the twentieth century. There were many modest but wellconstructed two- and three-bedroom houses, and the area was fairly self-contained with plenty of markets and other businesses lying within walking distance. “Growing up on Prospect Hill was a Norman Rockwell experience, except all the faces were brown,” said Henry Cisneros, whose family lived two blocks from the Treviños and often crossed paths with them at Mrs. Garza’s grocery store. Cisneros recalled his childhood neighborhood as one undergoing a “classic baby boom experi-

LBJ (1962). Oil on canvas, 22˝× 28˝. Courtesy of LBJ Presidential Library and Museum.

ence” for the times. “There were many veterans who had served and had come home and were having families. Every head of household on the block where we lived worked at the military bases. These were working families, middle-class families living in good housing, raising lots of children.” Those children, like their mothers and fathers, were experiencing quite a transition in societal attitudes in the 1960s. As American pop culture shifted its attention to younger audiences, including those living on the West Side, Prospect Hill pivoted from a Norman Rockwellesque illustration to scenes out of George Lucas’s movie American Graffiti. Neighborhood restaurants, like the Malt House and Paul Marie’s, remained places for dads to take families for hamburgers and fried chicken, but they were also student hangouts after high school football games and on weekends where teenagers, including the Treviño teens, could exercise a little independence from their families, spend their allowance on root beer floats, and feed the jukebox. In some ways, the local jukeboxes told the story of an evolving West Side culture at the time. They played songs by American superstars, like Ray Charles, Connie Francis, and Elvis along with Mexican singers Jorge Negrete, Angélica María, and Johnny Gabriel. Country songs were popular, as were Mexican folk ballads, California surf, Detroit rhythm and blues, and a whole lot of rock and roll. More importantly, as the decade unfolded, there would be more music produced by bands formed throughout San Antonio, like

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George Jay & the Rockin’ Ravens, Doug Sahm and the Sir Douglas Quintet, the Royal Jesters, Little Jr. Jesse & the Tear Drops, and accordionist virtuoso Flaco Jimenez—all finding enthusiastic young audiences on the West Side. The music did not all sound alike, either. It was an interchanging mix of rockabilly, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country, and conjunto (a Texas-born musical style starring the accordion). There could be guitars, drums, pianos, brass horns, keyboards, stand-up basses, and sometimes all of that on-stage at once because this live music scene was developing around a moderate racial atmosphere, where many local musicians felt free to interact with and borrow from other musical traditions. Many bands performed and recorded in both English and Spanish because language was fluid on the West Side. Young audiences at venues like the Patio Andaluz could sing along when Sunny & the Sunglows performed “Carino Nuevo” in Spanish as easily as when they performed “Talk to Me” (a single that became so popular the group performed it on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1963) in English. Collectively, it was the sound of the West Side and part of the soundtrack to Jesse’s generation growing up in Prospect Hill. More importantly, perhaps, it was a model for a creative, cooperative society, one without borders. In keeping pace with broader American culture, the West Side was also rife with car clubs. These were not gangs but rather auto enthusiasts spending evenings and weekends restoring,

maintaining, and washing their jalopies, hot rods, and lowriders. Regularly they’d meet with members of other car clubs and do more of the same. At night, the Road Dominions, King Cobras, Loafers, and other clubs took their machines to the streets to show off their investment of both time and money. Cruising was not about territory but about demonstrating appreciation for craftsmanship and pride for mechanical skills gained in vocational programs, the military, auto garages, and detail shops. Jesse’s brother Ramiro had studied auto mechanics at Fox Tech before becoming an army mechanic stationed in Germany. After he was discharged and back home, Ramiro helped form the Road Griffins with his brother Mario and friends from the neighborhood. As with many activities with the Treviños, the car club was a family undertaking, including Jesse, who appreciated the aesthetic appeal of cars as much as, if not more than, the engineering aspect. Naturally, he became the Road Griffins’ resident artist, designing the logo—a gold griffin with checkered flags on both sides—which club members had embroidered on jackets and cast into little metal plaques to hang from their rear bumpers or in the rear windows. To make money, car clubs regularly held dances, and so, using his skills from commercial art class, Jesse silk-screened posters and handlettered signs announcing the days, locations, and bands that would be playing for the Road Griffins’ dances. One dance in particular demon-

strated how the Treviños often worked together as a family to engineer success. It started when several local car clubs decided to hold one big dance at downtown’s Municipal Auditorium. Among the events planned, the first citywide “Queen of the Car Clubs” would be elected, and so each club tried to find the prettiest girl to run for queen. With only days before the dance, the Road Griffins had come up empty. “I was fifteen,” Alice Treviño Rodriguez remembered. “My brother Mario said, ‘We’re looking for somebody to represent us, and we want someone from the neighborhood.’ They were running out of time when he saw me at home, standing in the corner in my pigtails, biting my nails, and he said, ‘Maybe we can rebuild her.’” Alice had grown up trying her best to play sports and climb trees and hang out with her brothers, who often scoffed at her attempts. Her sisters were so much older and too preoccupied when they lived at home to chaperone their little sister through adolescence. And even with a smaller number of Treviños living on Monterey, Dolores remained at the center of a maelstrom, with mouths to feed and laundry to wash and shopping to be done, and she was usually too busy to dote on her youngest daughter. So Alice carried her tomboy tendencies well into her teens, and dressing up like a queen was not her idea of a good time. To help out her brothers, though, she reluctantly agreed to take part. Wearing a lime-green gown embroidered with yellow flowers that Elvira sewed especially for the dance, Alice joined the other girls in front of

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a thousand car club members and their friends. “The municipal auditorium seemed ten times bigger than it was. They had twenty candidates, and I was number twenty. So by the time I got on stage, my knees were knocking.” Elvira had taught Alice to walk slowly, like a model, and when she reached the edge of the stage, she lowered her head, almost to the floor, with her arms stretched wide like a swan. The kids in the auditorium went wild. “Then they announced my name, and I was so happy,” Alice recalled. “Mario, of course, said it was the dress that won the contest.”

— As a preface to his class sketchbook for his junior year at Fox Tech, Jesse wrote of his plans to “make the commercial artist trade [his] livelihood and [become] owner of his own shop.” He was already quite familiar with print shops, having scrounged through the trash bins for scrap materials. When he began earning money through odd jobs for neighbors or by winning art contests, he became a regular customer. He also regularly passed Munguia’s Print Shop, opened by Henry Cisneros’s uncle, Ruben Munguia, on his way home from Fox Tech and could imagine himself working there. Munguia’s was an important institution to the neighborhood and the city, especially for would-be politicians. “Democracy means nothing if people don’t want to participate. Print shops were where people went to get that started,” said Henry

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Cisneros, noting that his uncle’s print shop was critical for getting support to the KennedyJohnson ticket in 1960 and that Ruben Munguia had risen to such prominence that candidates for office, local and otherwise, sought his benison before taking their stump speeches to the West Side. “If you wanted to run for election, you needed yard signs, bumper stickers . . . it was where literacy thrived, where ideas thrived. The technology allowed for the distribution of ideas. Design, literacy, advertising, persuasiveness— all those things come together in a print shop.” Despite his dreams and dedication to his craft, Jesse hadn’t really known any professional artists and didn’t have a mentor. He had largely guided his own artistic direction until Fox Tech, where his commercial arts teacher for all three years, Katherine Alsup, became increasingly important for his ambitions. His admiration for her stemmed from her broad knowledge of the art world, including fashion. She exposed her students to many types of art, including fine art, and she had trained many students who went on to successful careers in graphic and commercial arts. Alsup did not want her students simply learning; she wanted them doing. By developing relationships with companies around the city, she not only found real opportunities for her classes to be exposed to professionals at their work but also obtained paying work for her students. Jesse explained: “If you needed some commercial art, instead of going to a big company you could come to [Fox Tech] and you could get that

for practically nothing. And I remember that . . . certain companies needed a logo, and they would actually pay. And I would do four or five logos— see which one you like, you know—and I remember getting paid for that.” It was absorbing work for Jesse, who spent much of his free time at home plotting out more ideas and projects, so much so that his other classes became mostly unbearable to sit through and much of the world outside of commercial art became mostly uninteresting. So he was not particularly captivated, for instance, when President Kennedy arrived in San Antonio on November 21, 1963, with tremendous fanfare to help dedicate the new Aerospace Medical Center at Brooks Air Force Base. Vice President Johnson and Congressman Henry González shared the dais with Texas governor John Connally and other dignitaries while Kennedy spoke to a crowd of about 10,000. When Kennedy was assassinated the next afternoon in Dallas, Jesse received the news while he was in art class. Before he returned home to Monterey Street, Lyndon Johnson was his president.

— In the first months after becoming the thirtysixth president of the United States, Johnson’s goal was to maintain stability in office. Instead of radically altering course, he stuck mainly with Kennedy’s agenda, including a progressive stance toward civil rights. In January of 1964, during his first State of the Union address, he

also pushed for legislation that included what became known as the “War on Poverty,” in which he aimed to turn around the fortunes of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. A few weeks after that speech, the streets of San Antonio’s West Side were flooded again from winter rains. Like the rest of Prospect Hill, Monterey Street was paved and had curbs, and because the neighborhood was slightly elevated (hence the name), the rainwater ran downhill toward less fortunate neighborhoods. So flooding no longer concerned Jesse unless it somehow delayed his bus for school. Alsup recognized not only Jesse’s dedication and talent but also his competitive nature, and she constantly brought contests to his attention and helped him put together his portfolios to be submitted. Her young commercial artist was turning into a very competitive artist, with the goal of winning every contest, whether sponsored by the National Maritime Administration or the Texas State Historical Survey Committee or any organization with prize money to offer. Everyone likes a winner. It was a life lesson understood by Jesse from the moment he walked off the Witte Museum’s stage. So, while some might believe “art” and “competition” should be considered mutually exclusive of one another, that wasn’t Jesse’s understanding of the way life worked. If art could be judged, then there were winners and losers, and Jesse always intended to be a winner. “I didn’t win all of the contests. But I won a lot of them,” he said, explaining how he didn’t

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try to outdraw his competition as much as he tried to outthink their ideas. “Whatever it was going to take. I always approached the contest thinking, ‘I can beat these guys. I’ve already won that contest.’” While pursuing and winning competitions on behalf of the commercial arts department, he also found ways to be involved in other parts of school. He silk-screened ribbons for the Fox Tech Buffalo pep rallies and designed posters and decorations for dances and plays, but that was typically the fullest extent of his participation. Jesse said he never attended football games or dances or plays. And even though he was certainly interested in girls, he remained shy and never went on a date. But by early 1964 his name had already appeared several times in the city’s newspapers, which sort of made up for the lack of any love life. The San Antonio Light and San Antonio Express ran headlines like “Five Students Win Hallmark Prizes” and “Poster Contest Winners Named” above short stories mentioning Jesse (“a student at Fox Tech High School”). Not infrequently, the articles also cited Alsup and her record for teaching contest winners. Jesse was becoming a newsmaker for the whole city to read about. His accomplishments appeared on the same pages that major world events were being reported. On Wednesday, May 27, 1964, for example, readers of the San Antonio Express learned that the upcoming performance at San Antonio’s Teen Fair by the Rolling Stones would be historic (if not at least somewhat over-

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sold): “The ‘Rolling Stones,’ who seem to have gained international adoration from the younger set by avoiding barbers, will be the first English act to appear in person anywhere in Texas.” On the same page the paper announced that Jesse had won first place in the Civil War Centennial Poster & Essay Contest, sponsored by the Texas State Historical Survey Committee for secondary school students. There were, of course, weightier issues commanding the front pages of newspapers across the country, such as New York City’s and San Francisco’s growing student demonstrations against the worsening conflict in Vietnam. And in Mississippi the “Freedom Summer” campaign was underway to register voters and mobilize African Americans against the remaining but persistent Jim Crow culture of the Deep South. As the papers reported, many participants endured violence and had their churches and homes destroyed in retaliation. Some lost their lives. Then, on July 2, after a contentious battle in Congress, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Johnson, making it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. This was a continuation of Kennedy’s work, but it was legislation that was not completely out of character for Johnson. Despite his abominable record as a congressman and senator against civil rights issues, he had, in his own way, intimately known discrimination. He came from very humble beginnings in the impoverished Texas Hill Country and knew both the pain of poverty and the sting of insults levied

his way from his better-off neighbors, classmates, and, eventually, congressional colleagues. Despite his determination to succeed in Washington, DC, he’d felt less comfortable traveling and living outside Texas and the Deep South because of the shame he was made to feel for having the temerity to represent—and defend—the southern way of life. He was often mocked and excluded by the northern elite, including by many in the Kennedy administration who had loudly opposed Johnson becoming part of the ticket. But signing the civil rights legislation—as the president of the United States—was a victory for Johnson as much as it was for the country’s minorities it sought to help. It would not solve the problems of the country. It would not end any struggle. But it was significant. And while most of the country associated the concept of “civil rights” with African Americans, Mexican Americans also counted it a victory (although their true victory would still take more than a decade to achieve).

— Later that summer, the naval destroyer USS Maddox reported that it was under attack by patrol boats off the coast of North Vietnam; the destroyer fired on the boats, killing several North Vietnamese sailors. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, named for the waters where this brief but critical event took place, emboldened Johnson to rally Congress and country behind escalated military action in Southeast Asia. America was at war again when Jesse began his final year at Fox Tech. And he started pretty much

where he had left off, winning. That fall, under what might be the first time his name appeared in a headline (“Trevino Wins Poster Contest”), the San Antonio Express reported Jesse’s firstplace result in the Bexar County Tuberculosis Association’s annual poster contest. The art was to be used in one of the association’s ad campaigns, and Jesse won a twenty-dollar check. It might not have been enough to contribute much toward the family fund, but like all the other tenand fifteen-dollar checks that he’d been winning, it meant less of the house’s money needed to be spent on him in the first place. He could put his winnings toward more art supplies or maybe some fried chicken at the Malt House. He was also making small amounts of money from outside-of-school projects, often set up by his teacher, and he approached the work for private companies the same as for contests: others were bound to have good technical skills, so his ideas needed to be better. By February of 1965, the prize money was beginning to get pretty serious. Using his entire name in the headline, “Jesse Trevino Wins Art Contest,” the Sunday San Antonio Express-News reported that Jesse pocketed one hundred dollars for being a finalist in the Central Texas Regional Scholastic Art Awards, further noting, “Only one portfolio of art was nominated for the college scholarship, that being Trevino’s. The portfolio will be sent to New York City where it will be judged again in competition with applicants from all over the United States.”

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Statewide and even nationwide contests weren’t new to Jesse, but he was now old enough and experienced enough to enter competitions with larger payouts and more meaningful prizes, including art scholarships. He’d never ruled out the possibility of pursuing the life of an artist—a fine arts artist, that is—although he hadn’t seen any real path to that objective until now. With his skills and with his connections, a job as a commercial artist was practically guaranteed. But perhaps, he thought, such work could wait for just a while longer while he explored fine art. With that possibility in mind, he produced and assembled portfolios with a champion’s determination and calculation. “My ideas were going to be better,” Jesse said. “When I did my portfolios that went to the national level, I thought, landscapes? Still lifes? No.” In fact, Jesse would choose a theme that he would smartly resurrect later in life, too. “I’m going to hit them right in the heart: Children. Kids. The subject matter mattered.” In mid-April, a letter arrived from New York: Dear Mr. Trevino: We are happy to tell you the good news that you have been selected by the Scholarship Jury of the National Scholastic Art Awards for the scholarship to Art Students League of New York. . . . Congratulations on your success in having won a scholarship through the 1965 Scholastic Art Awards!

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The competition was very keen, and winning a national award is indeed an honor. Please extend our congratulations also to your teacher. Sincerely yours, Jennie Copeland Executive Director Scholastic Awards The Art Students League was a well-respected institution that had been at the forefront of the New York City art scene since the late 1800s. Artists who had enormous influence on America’s cultural history—Winslow Homer, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock—had studied and taught there. Now that institution was opening its doors to Jesse. While the Treviños considered whether moving one of their own to New York was even financially possible, the San Antonio Express ran a small black-and-white reproduction of Jesse’s “Stay in School” poster, which won first place in May of 1965 in another nationwide contest. Sponsored by the Art Instruction Schools, which boasted alumni like Charles Schulz and Morris Turner, this scholarship offered studyat-home art courses, and that meant the opportunity to live at home and work as a commercial artist while studying art from books. Meanwhile, President Johnson continued affixing his signature to landmark legislation to protect and bolster the rights and opportunities

Announcement that Jesse Treviño’s “Stay in School” poster (casein on illustration board, 14˝× 18˝) won a national competition for a scholarship from the Art Instruction Schools. From The Illustrator 54, no. 4 (fall 1965): 18. Artist’s archive.

of minority and poor Americans, including the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination within the voting process. Despite this being another significant advancement for disenfranchised citizens, it wasn’t enough to prevent continued eruptions of violence across the country, including in racially segregated Los Angeles, where a six-day explosion of unrest in August would come to be called the “Watts Riots.” Passage of the Voting Rights Act also didn’t impact the decision of Larry Itliong, a Filipino American, to organize hundreds of farmwork-

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ers into the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee and begin a strike against grape growers in Delano, California. After eight days of striking in early September, Itliong was joined on the picket lines by César Chávez and the NFWA. The strike would not end anytime soon, although it would help catapult Chávez into the national spotlight and help advance the cause of civil rights, most especially for Mexican Americans. But all that was happening in someone else’s world. Jesse Treviño was on his way to New York.

Chapter 3

The Best in New York (1965–1966)

Jesse had never flown on a plane before his late-night trip to New York in September 1965, but there he was—another Treviño leaving the family home to test himself against the wider world. He’d been alone before. In fact, he’d relished solitary time spent working on his art. But whether he was at school or home or Ray’s Drive Inn or the Malt House or fishing at Elmendorf Lake, family had never been too far away. His only companions on the flight to the East Coast were his drawing pad and a few charcoal pencils, so he passed the time impressing the flight attendants by sketching their portraits. He’d realized since he was young that art drew people to him, and it helped him engage and communicate in return. In this case, his skills also rewarded him in a practical way: after the plane landed, those same flight attendants helped this very lost young man from San Antonio to secure a taxi to Brooklyn. For, as it turned out, family was close by— even this far from home. Jesse’s brother

Armando had a sister-in-law living with her husband and two children in Brooklyn. The place was small, but Jesse was used to cramped quarters and he would stay with them while he found his bearings. Like so many kids of his generation, Jesse grew up getting to know New York City from television programs, movie screens, and newspaper photographs. And like so many who finally saw the city in person, Jesse’s eyes were opened to an entirely different world—constantly looking skyward, not believing the height of the buildings as well as the sheer number of them. Back home, San Antonio boasted some tall buildings, but New York was street after street of skyscrapers that tested his old habit of reimagining his surroundings to his particular aesthetic—where to begin with so many incredible structures like these? There were so many blank walls around, but he was also eager to check out the numerous galleries and museums, like the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim.

Even with family for Jesse to come home to, New York was filled with unfamiliar people from all over the world, along with their unfamiliar languages and cultures. Like many of the thousands who streamed onto the island every year to live, he could be consumed by feelings of awe one moment and worried about being perceived as unsophisticated the next. It was an adventure, sure, and it was also a bit overwhelming. “I was homesick when I got to New York,” he said, remembering how different he looked, how small the Mexican American population seemed to be, and how he couldn’t even find a good Mexican restaurant. “I missed my mom’s food and tortillas. The closest thing I could get was a can of chile con carne from a store.” Despite the void of his mother’s cooking to send him off each morning, Jesse remained undeterred—especially when he saw the Art Student’s League of New York for the first time. Located at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, between Broadway and Seventh Avenue and just around the corner from Carnegie Hall, the fivestory building may not have been as imposing as some others he’d seen, but it held his imagination like none other when he arrived for his first day of class on the morning of September 16, 1965. It had tall windows on the ground floor, where works by current league artists and instructors were exhibited. Those canvases, and the idea of having his own work exhibited there some day, concentrated his ambitions. And then there was the inside, where he found large, high-ceilinged studios with tall windows

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and skylights. Decades of paint coated the wooden floors, and wooden easels; canvases and sculptures in various stages of completion lined the walls; the smell of turpentine, molding clay, and oil paints filled the spaces. Art, artistic tools, and artists were everywhere, like something out of a dream. It felt historic and dynamic. At the center of America’s art culture was New York, and the Art Student’s League had long been instrumental in deciding what that culture would look like. At the same time, artists who burnished their reputations at the league often returned as instructors, keeping alive an elite artistic lineage and continuity dating back to the league’s founding in 1875. Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein, Norman Rockwell, Peter Max, Helen Frankenthaler, Al Hirschfeld, and Georgia O’Keeffe (among so many others) had already studied or taught at the league while also dramatically evolving the character of American art before Jesse had ever truly developed his talents. The same studios of those American masters awaited him now. So, too, did the sea of serious and eager and anxious faces he encountered in the hallways. “There were artists from all over the world at that school. I knew that I was in the right place. People just like myself, but from different countries, all over the place,” Jesse remembered. Arriving for his first class, Life Drawing and Portraiture, Painting and Composition, he found the studio was packed. Could they all be as good as me? he thought. Or better? Were they the best from wherever they came from? Jesse’s attention would

soon be focused exclusively on his instructor, a thin man with a high forehead and glasses, neither particularly striking nor displeasing. But he had a strong, quiet confidence that immediately held the room when he entered. While quite unaware at the time he’d signed up for the class, Jesse was about to tap into a rich vein of American art legacy. The instructor, William F. Draper, carried the knowledge and secrets from a singularly impressive lineage of master painters, one that dated back almost to the founding of the league itself. That lineage began with William Merritt Chase. Born in Williamsburg, Indiana, in 1849, Chase studied at New York’s National Academy of Design before continuing his training in Munich, Germany, in 1872. At that time, Europe’s art society was in a state of transition—really, it was chaos—as painters like Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, PierreAuguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne broke with the schools and galleries that strictly followed the traditions of romanticism. Instead of depicting heroic images (oftentimes battle scenes) and elevated subjects (royalty, lawmakers, etc.), which had dominated figure painting for just about long enough, these artists portrayed the working classes in scenes far removed from the castles and parlors of the rich. Just as important, they explored more relaxed, loose styles of painting that didn’t necessarily re-create portrayals in exacting detail; instead they captured natural light and the way it constantly affected colors in the natural world to evoke movement

of both light and subject while expressing the artist’s perception of the moment. By the time Chase visited Paris in 1881, a different approach to painting was in bloom. This new style was called impressionism, and many European painters throughout the mid- to late 1800s, including those not considered to be strict impressionists, like Edouard Manet and Vincent Van Gogh, found that the freedom from traditional rules of art emboldened them to find more self-satisfaction with their craft. Chase, too, absorbed impressionism’s lessons during its early to middle period. Though Chase didn’t categorize himself as a strict impressionist, he is believed to be among the first major American painters to exhibit impressionist canvases domestically. Being a trailblazer suited him financially as well as personally, and along with enjoying the publicity that came with strong art sales, he used his celebrity status in New York’s art world for a greater purpose. In The Art Students League of New York: A History Raymond Steiner writes, “Chase did more than blitz the social set with glitz, however. . . . [H]e had an agenda that included not only selling his own work but that of reversing public opinion in its stubborn disregard of American art and artists.” He was also an enthusiastic teacher at the league, first from 1878 to 1896 and again between 1907 and 1911. “Chase drew an enormous following and students fought to get into his classes, swore by his pronouncements and hungered for some of his well-publicized success to rub off on them,” Steiner wrote.

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It would take someone of tremendous talent to carry on Chase’s legacy, and one of his assistants, Charles Hawthorne, did just that while also becoming one of the premier colorists of American art. Hawthorne studied at the Art Students League in 1896 and later in Shinnecock, New York, where he became Chase’s assistant. In both locations Hawthorne observed Chase’s skills for applying rich colors with loose brushstrokes while spending less time sketching images beforehand. After painting in Europe for a time, Hawthorne opened the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899 in Provincetown, Rhode Island, where he further developed his methodology of using color to capture the spirit and beauty of an image, while also deemphasizing the need for accomplished draftsmanship and precise brush control. At its most basic, Hawthorne’s technique meant putting “the color notes in their proper relation” and doing that first. He admonished his students that “no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true. Get them true and you will be surprised how little else you will need.” Hawthorn’s influence on future generations of American painters is really incalculable. Like his mentor, Chase, Hawthorne was greatly admired by his students. His instruction, though challenging, was friendly and engaging and attracted large numbers of artists to both Provincetown and the Art Students League, where he also taught. Some students would go on to advance his work to wider acclaim; among them was Henry Hensche.

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Born in 1899 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Heinrich “Henry” Hensche arrived at Ellis Island with his family in 1909. About a decade later, having discovered that he had a talent for painting, he attended the Cape Cod School of Art, eventually becoming one of Hawthorne’s assistants. Diligent and meticulous, Hensche worked hard within the colorist framework, always seeking to find the purity of color, especially how it was affected by natural light. In his lifetime he was considered by many to demonstrate unparalleled skills. He also shared Hawthorne’s (and Chase’s) devotion as an instructor, although his reputation was perhaps one of being more direct with his students: No matter how precise an artist’s draftsmanship, it did not accurately convey an image the way correct color did. One of Hensche’s later students, Clayton Buchanan, remembered an early encounter with his new instructor during his first summer in Provincetown: “I had taken a painting I had done of my girlfriend and I showed Henry Hensche. And he said, ‘You have drawing capability and proportion, but your color is not good. . . . I want you to shelve everything you’ve learned up to this point. And we are going to concentrate on how light affects color.’” Many students balked at this approach, including (initially, at least) Buchanan, who remembered how Hensche could be quite assertive and frank with his students, which is why some never accepted the approach and left the school. “When I first started off I thought I could do it, but I couldn’t let go what I had learned up until

that day—drawing the shapes and filling them in with color,” said Buchanan. “It took me several summers to do it. It was extremely frustrating. He was a dominant teacher, but if he hadn’t been, I don’t think I would have gotten it. It’s not an easy transition. At least, it wasn’t for me.” Along with Hensche, another of Hawthorne’s students, William Draper, would adopt the principles of color theory and take them to a wider audience, even though, as a young art student, Draper felt certain his life would be that of a concert pianist. Born on Christmas Eve in 1912 in Hopedale, Massachusetts, Draper grew up attending private schools and enjoying family vacations in Hyannis Port. He began playing piano when he was five, often practicing up to six hours a day. But he also found enjoyment in painting and was given private lessons from a family friend, who persuaded him to visit Provincetown, where he met and studied with Hawthorne in 1929. Perhaps Draper’s youth allowed for more flexibility (he was only sixteen that summer) because he quickly, though with some difficulty, fought his instinct to sketch an image before coloring it in. Before departing Provincetown, he had demonstrated a remarkable ability and enthusiasm for working within Hawthorne’s color parameters. Although Hawthorne died in 1930, Draper returned to Provincetown to study with Hensche, whom Draper referred to as “a big influence” on his education. While at Harvard, chronic wrist pain ended Draper’s professional ambitions for the piano,

and he soon returned to art, studying at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. He gained enough confidence in his skills after a year in Paris to return to the States and open his own portrait studio in Boston. At the outbreak of World War II, Draper volunteered for the navy and served as a combat artist, landing with the Marines at Bougainville, New Guinea, and later covering the invasion of Saipan and Guam. Many of his works are done with a somber palette of muted blue, battleship gray, olive drab, and umber, enlivened by brilliant bursts of color, such as the flames destroying a village in Saipan (Inferno, 1944) or the sunlight across the face of a wounded soldier being lifted by stretcher onto a landing ship ( A Warrior Homeward Bound, 1944). He also painted portraits of several high-ranking officers, including Admirals Chester Nimitz and William Halsey, skillfully applying his relaxed brushstroke techniques to more traditional portrait execution. Draper left the service in 1945 with the rank of lieutenant commander and the Bronze Star award. As a private citizen, he quickly reestablished himself as an accomplished portraitist; his commissions grew so notable that Jackie Onassis Kennedy eventually commissioned him to paint her husband, the president, in 1962. And just like Hensche, Hawthorne, and Chase, Draper found increasing satisfaction in instruction, returning when possible to teach at the league. Fondly called “maestro” by his students,

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Portrait from life from William Draper’s class at the Art Students League (1965). Acrylic on canvas, 30˝× 36˝. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

he was kind and flexible, recognizing how artists find their own paces and styles. It was in the fall of 1965, for the ninetieth regular session of the Art Students League, in the Life Drawing and Portraiture, Painting and Composition class, that the maestro began the process of dismantling Jesse Treviño’s artistic instincts. “I was taught first to think, where are you going to place that head? Once you set it, you can’t really change it. So I’d sketch it in lightly with a little pencil and see how far I could take it in detail,” Jesse said. “The way Draper paints is that he takes a big brush and puts down a color, and I hadn’t seen that color on the model before he put it there. Then I saw that color. He was a genius at building with color. He wouldn’t even have to clean the brush. I was attracted to the way he painted everything. Although I’d painted very different, my whole approach changed when I met him.” This technique of going right to the paint and skipping most of the sketching appealed to the pragmatic, if not also impatient, artist growing within Jesse. He enjoyed the ability to get to the composition without so much preliminary activity. “I’m going to paint over it all anyway, why not go right to the paint?” as he explained. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time drawing. The way to attack it was to go directly to the color.” Sam Barber was in that class and remembered Jesse always jockeying to be near the front, nearest to Draper. “He was also a very aggressive painter. He was very loose. Quick.

He used to get the likeness before anyone else,” Barber said. “From day one, I remember he used to get the likeness of the models right away— after ten different strokes. Amazing.” The studio environment emboldened Jesse, just like when he was in commercial art contests back at Fox Tech; the prize now was Draper’s public critique and approval of an artist’s work. “He’d give us a project and I asked questions— my project was going to be the best,” Jesse said. Although he would always recall Draper with great fondness and credit him with having a tremendous influence on this period of his career, Jesse studied with other instructors who enjoyed their own fame inside and outside the league, including Earl Mayan, who published several books on anatomy and illustration and who would become curator of American paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Robert Beverly Hale, who, according to Steiner, “had an enormous following, many squeezing into the halls outside his classroom to catch his ‘act.’” These instructors brought a classical aesthetic to Jesse’s education, complementing Draper’s growing influence. After classes Jesse walked the streets, becoming familiar with the galleries where he hoped his works would some day be exhibited. Other painters and artists—the best in the nation, world famous—walked these same streets, maybe even bought paints and canvases at the same stores he did, and so he grew restless for greater artistic opportunity. Writing to Robert in September, he thanked his brother for sending

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money and for looking after their mother, and he stated his intention to visit Newsweek, Seventeen, and other magazines for employment. “New York is full of Artist[s], and there is a lot of competition. But this is the only place that you can find out who is the Best.” Jesse didn’t find work with any magazine, but his drawing and illustrating instructor, Earl Mayan, secured him a job with the publisher Grosset & Dunlap, where he learned how to paste up and put together paperback books. It wasn’t really artistic work, but it paid, which helped with the decision to move out of Brooklyn. Originally from Damascus, Syria, Samir Abdul was also taking classes at the league and, after becoming friends with Jesse, asked if he wanted to split the cost of his apartment in Greenwich Village. It was tiny, but the rent was low, it was close to school, and, besides, Jesse was used to cramped quarters. If what Jesse had first seen in Brooklyn and Manhattan was enough to give him a constant state of whiplash, what he saw in Greenwich Village nearly spun his head right off his shoulders.

— People of certain artistic, social, and political leanings have been drawn to Greenwich Village since the turn of the twentieth century. It developed a reputation for acceptance as the ethnically diverse neighborhood became home to bohemians, nonconformists, and political progressives. Ironically, in the 1960s, with the Village streets

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absolutely electrified with the battle cries for women’s rights, gay rights, civil and voting rights for minorities, and opposition to the escalating war in Vietnam, the House Un-American Activities Committee was there, too, infiltrating the neighborhood to root out communists and subversives. Just mixing with the wrong crowds could lead to dire personal and career consequences, as many from the artistic and performing communities discovered when they suddenly found themselves blacklisted and unable to find paying gigs. Beat poets like Alan Ginsberg and writers like James Baldwin and Jack Kerouac sharpened their chops during their time as Villagers when writing the wrong thing could mean litigation and jury trials. The nightclubs, theaters, cafés, and coffee shops showcased musicians like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, José Feliciano, Richie Havens, Judy Collins, and Lou Reed. On weekends the crowds swelled in Washington Square Park to hear up-and-coming singersongwriters and tomorrow’s troubadours. The songs of Woody Guthrie, the Weavers, and Pete Seeger were still as ubiquitous on the Village streets as guitars and bongos, and everyone’s lyrics were being scrutinized for subversion. Those same Village streets were also lined with painters selling their canvases directly to the tourists. Few of them would achieve much if any commercial or financial success, unlike more notable Village artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. But Jesse respected how these workingmen and

Samir Abdul (1966). Pastel on paper, 12˝× 18˝. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

workingwomen were earning some money with their artistic talents and understood how they had the same emotional sizzle running through their veins that flowed through his. It was New York City. It was the Village. It was art. Abdul’s friendship proved beneficial again when he secured Jesse a job at the Village Artist, a portrait studio for tourists where he worked. Inside were ten stations with easels for artists to produce charcoal and pastel portraits for fifteen to twenty bucks apiece, with the owner taking a generous cut to cover expenses. On Jesse’s first day he was stationed in the back row, but he noticed customers always stopped at the first artist they came to up front. He quickly summed up the problem: “The whole idea was to be doing a drawing, and people come by and see what’s going on.” And then he devised a solution: “So I go get some of the hippies hanging out on the street and I’d ask them if they would sit inside for a while so I could do a drawing. As soon as I started drawing, someone would look and ask, ‘Can I be next?’” Although still shy in social situations, Jesse learned to summon the confidence to engage people professionally, and he learned to hustle for opportunities, like getting strangers to pose for portraits. After a week he moved up to the front of the studio, where he hit the gas and never let the tank go dry, often working until two in the morning and smoking cigarettes all the time (a habit he began covertly in high school). And even though it wasn’t a requirement (because there

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were always plenty of artists on hand needing work), he showed up to work every day. He excelled at the league as well. While still years away from honing his skills and style to such masterful levels, as Jesse’s training continued, he could feel the paintbrush becoming an extension of his right hand; he demonstrated technical control and precision on the canvas as clearly as his growing fluency in color placement—such proficiency was enough to warrant a personal invitation to visit Draper’s professional studio with some other students. He was immediately impressed by the presence of a doorman at the Park Avenue building where Draper kept his studio. In fact, the studio was the penthouse, with angled windows allowing natural light to bathe a small staging area. The space was accented with a bearskin rug and a baby grand piano. Even if those specific accouterments weren’t to his personal tastes, this was the space Jesse wanted for himself, and it reinforced the notion that art could, and obviously did, bring financial rewards. The maestro demonstrated advanced techniques for the assembled group and showed them some of his own works. He even quickly painted a few of their portraits. Jesse wasn’t chosen to pose, but he remained enthralled by his teacher and felt that a kinship had grown between them since the semester began. They were separated by thirty-four years, but they shared the same birthday, and they were both working artists living in New York.

By spring, the notion of not returning to San Antonio had not only crept into Jesse’s mind, it was spreading. He still regaled his family with letters and shipped them New York knickknacks and some of his paintings. They sent him clippings from San Antonio newspapers that ran short “hometown boy does good” stories about the “Fox Tech grad” attending art school in New York. But this new life was a sudden fulfillment of a dream, and as his artistic outlook expanded, so too did his personal style. With his wages he started buying bell-bottom jeans and colorful print shirts and a black Nehru jacket that he favored. And since this was the time of the Beatles and the British Invasion, he let his hair grow, just a bit. He spent more time than ever working on his art. His portraits matured with lessons learned both in the studio and on the street. They were looser, more relaxed, reflecting an artist in transition, showing the precision and craftsmanship of a well-trained commercial artist with the emerging style of a fine arts and color movement devotee. Not every experience was necessarily a lesson to be repeated, such as the day Jesse witnessed surrealist painter Salvador Dali in action. Before an exhibit of his works at the Huntington Gallery of Modern Art, Dali visited the Art Students League. From a window, Jesse watched

with dozens of other students as Dali appeared in their midst, his dark, waxed moustache curled into short handlebars. Carrying a silver-topped walking stick and accompanied by a camera crew, he entered the league, retrieved a plaster of Paris bust from an administrator’s desk, and returned to the front doorstep. Then, in a scene that had been set up and (one can presume) approved beforehand by the powers that be, he emphatically threw the bust to the sidewalk, shattering it to pieces. Then he climbed into a taxi and left. (Later the same day, for a magazine photo session, Dali would lie inside a coffin while assistants poured cash on him and ants crawled over his face.) Such eccentric self-promotion—where the artist becomes the art—didn’t actually appeal to Jesse’s more traditional tastes. He intended to let his art speak for itself, and, with his scholarship ending, he began thinking about how to attend the next fall session. However, as prestigious as the Art Students League had become during its first ninety years in operation, it was still not considered an institution of higher learning. It was not eligible for education deferments from the Selective Service, so in the late spring of 1966 it could not shield Jesse when he received his order to report for induction into the armed forces of the United States.

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Chapter 4

Vietnam 1966 (1966–1968)

Jesse sat at the kitchen table on Monterey Street, smoking a cigarette, thinking about the hippies hanging out at work, the music in Washington Square Park, and all those late nights in the Village. He was a Villager, like Bob Dylan, like Andy Warhol, and the Village was the most exciting neighborhood in the most exciting city in America. He was a New Yorker, like William Draper. He was a working artist and a student of the fine arts eager to exhibit his work in the front windows of the Art Students League of New York. Dolores moved quickly around her kitchen. Less than a year after Jesse had flown away to New York, he’d returned, and she once again brought fresh tortillas and eggs and hot coffee to the table and listened to his stories about Salvador Dalí and penthouse studios and the subway and the food and the Empire State Building—she could hear how fulfilled he’d been while away. He’d grown up in many ways, some easier to accept than others. His hair hung

a bit scruffy around his neck, and his clothes were different. And he smoked. “I remember asking her if I could smoke a cigarette in her kitchen,” Jesse said. “It was almost like I was grown up. I felt more mature. But I’d never smoked a cigarette in front of her.” To Jesse, the house felt a little smaller than before, though much less crowded than when his papa and Eva were alive, back when his brothers and sisters all crowded around the kitchen table for whirlwind breakfasts. John, Robert, Jorge, and Ernest still lived at home; the others were married and beginning families and opening businesses, though they dropped by whenever they could to spend time with their mother. It was not unimaginable to think that this might be the last time Jesse would ever see the house or his mother. Patriotism was running high on the West Side. While some Mexican Americans who had suffered discrimination and felt like second-class citizens believed that fighting for their country

was the best way to be treated better and claim that they were true Americans, others simply felt national pride in their hearts. Many recent and soon-to-be high school graduates were enlisting—some feeling gung ho to fight communism, others anticipating upward financial mobility through the military. Still others were just craving adventure. Despite such healthy volunteer rates, Johnson’s escalation of military activities in Vietnam required conscription. There simply had to be more boots on the ground, including the disinclined kind. Jesse did not want to go to Vietnam, and he was not alone. Other young men left the country to evade the draft, and as a Mexican citizen Jesse could have repatriated himself south of the border for the duration of the war. His brother Ramiro had faced the same situation after he’d been drafted a few years earlier and had reported for duty; the army sent him to Germany, where he served as a track vehicle mechanic. Jesse felt just as American as his brothers and any other son of San Antonio, and so he’d decided that he, too, would wear the uniform. Less than a year earlier, Jesse had kissed his mother good-bye before climbing aboard a jet airliner bound for New York and his destiny. This time, after kissing Dolores good-bye and promising to be safe, he boarded a bus for Louisiana. He dreamed of Greenwich Village the entire ride.

—

At Fort Polk, near Leesville, Louisiana, the army’s basic training consisted mainly of convincing new recruits to think less like individuals and more like a unit with their fellow soldiers. This was accomplished through pushups, sit-ups, squat thrusts, saddle-hops, running, climbing, cleaning the barracks, endless marching, boot polishing, and gun cleaning. And there was endless talk of war and “Charlie” while Jesse and his fellow grunts awaited word of their ultimate assignments. Jesse was a million miles from Park Avenue and penthouse studios, but he harbored a small hope of becoming a combat artist like Draper. The army saw things differently, assigning him infantry duty and shipping him off for combat and weapons training at Fort Riley, near Topeka, Kansas. There was no doubt in his mind that his next trip would be to Vietnam, carrying a rifle instead of a sketchpad. Pvt. Jesus Treviño joined the 9th Infantry Division, the “Old Reliables,” as part of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 39th Infantry. There was more marching and drilling, and the chatter about “Charlie” turned more ominous as more soldiers returned from combat with their stories. While completing his weapons training, Jesse kept his mind and hands occupied by sketching portraits of his buddies to send to their girlfriends back home and even drawing a few of those girlfriends from photographs for his fellow soldiers to take with them into war. Fast-talking, clearly talented, and front-loaded with the same sales charm as when he worked at the Village

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Artist, Jesse soon had a waiting list for his portraits, at twenty bucks a pop. In late November, the 3/39th took a three-day train ride to the California coast, where everyone boarded three merchant marine ships. Twentyone days later, on December 19, those ships landed at the beaches of Vung Tau in South Vietnam. The 3/39th was delivered by truck to the village of Rach Kien, about an hour south of Saigon, in the Mekong Delta. Life reported that the village of Rach Kien had been practically a ghost town before the Americans arrived. But once a base camp was established, occupying many of the village buildings for housing and other operations, former residents began returning from the countryside. Most days Jesse saw the old farmers, with their skin wrinkled from the sun, coming and going from the rice paddies. Women shopped the village markets. Teenagers and children begged for candy and coins from the soldiers or sold them handmade trinkets. It would likely have been better for the Amer­ icans had Rach Kien remained a ghost town instead of becoming a bustling village again. The soldiers called the enemy “Charlie,” and he lived everywhere, even in this village of barbed wire and sandbags. Those same farmers and women and even children dressed like civilians and acted like friends in the daytime but could also be Vietcong and fight as guerillas at night. The jungle landscape around the village and the base was especially thick with booby traps and landmines set by the Americans. Even before the

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3/39th saw any heavy combat action, its soldiers felt the dark anxiety of war. To cope with such a high-alert environment, Jesse fashioned a desk from an empty ammunition box and set it up beside his bunk. Although there was little time for making portraits, he kept a sketchpad, pencils, and three or four little jars of paint and a brush. From one of Dolores’s care packages he’d saved a large sheet of brown butcher paper and flattened out the creases as best as he could. Whenever he had a moment, he fell as deep as he could into the comfort of his work, lightly, loosely sketching from memory the portrait of a woman and her baby he’d seen several times in the village. Working with a limited palate of brown, black, and white, he would block in the shadows of her face, the dark fabric of her peasant blouse, the baby’s crisp white shirt. On December 24, 1966, as his commander in chief, President Johnson welcomed home wounded soldiers to Kelly Field in San Antonio, Jesse turned twenty, and he believed William Draper would find favor with the progress of his latest work. Soon thereafter, he and the rest of the 3/39th would enter the conflict for real.

— The Mekong Delta, about 15,000 square miles of fertile grasslands, jungles, and rivers, was an important front in the widening war. In the first days and weeks of the New Year, Jesse and the 3/39th began search-and-clear missions in country, which meant humping it through

swamps and marshes, bamboo forests, and fields of eight-foot-tall razor-sharp elephant grass. The watery mud in the rice paddies might only be calf deep, but it was thick like oatmeal. Elsewhere, the streams and rivulets that had to be crossed might bring water up to the shoulders. “In country” was also a place of elephants and water buffalo, stinging insects, and snakes. But, most of all, it was where Charlie waited. It was where he built his tunnels and bunkers, planted his landmines, and waited to ambush the Americans. “Search and clear” meant that after finding these tunnels and caches of weapons and food, they’d be blown up before Charlie could use them. The jungle could be dense. Vision was limited. Suddenly the air could fill with explosions of grenades and Claymore mines. When gunfire erupted, it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Helicopters dropped ammo and rations and landed in small clearings to evacuate troops when the action got too hot or to carry away the wounded and the dead. In a letter to Robert dated February 4, 1967, Jesse reported that his company had joined operation Big Springs, close to the Cambodian border. “This is a clearing and destroy operation. We found a Cong base camp, we found several tons of Rice and bunkers . . . We also uncovered some tunnels. I don’t know how long [we’ll] be here.” Although he had time off coming, Jesse kept banking the days for a more extended stay away from combat. Which is why on February 23, when

the 3/39th was waiting to be evacuated back to the base after another three-day operation, Jesse was sweating it out with the rest of his fellow men. It was part of operation Enterprise, initiated on February 13 to clear Vietcong out of Long An Province, around thirty-five miles south of Saigon. After seventy-three days in the Mekong Delta, Jesse was exhausted from lack of sleep. He smelled of the jungle as the warm, humid evening approached. Choppers waited in a clearing a couple of hundred yards away, but Vietcong snipers had the company pinned down. They were running out of water, running out of ammo, running out of daylight. On the signal from his commander, Jesse and two other men began running toward the clearing, legs heavy, hearts racing, eyes sweeping the trees for snipers. Like something in a nightmare, Jesse felt a pair of crushing explosions nearby, and then a third thundering blast suddenly lifted him from the ground and flung him about fifty feet into a rice paddy. He couldn’t move much when his vision cleared, but he saw dark blood flowing from his half-submerged body, mixing with the mud. There was the smell of gunpowder and whitehot metal. His ears were ringing. His right leg lay bent across his left leg and didn’t respond to his panicked demands to move. His right hand felt like it had been lit aflame from the blast. Jesse didn’t know the fates of his fellow soldiers, but his rifle was gone and bullets were punching into the mud inches from his body—

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The photo shows Jesse Treviño’s medical evacuation from the Mekong Delta, February 23, 1967. From Stars and Stripes; March 14, 1967 (©1967, 2018 Stars and Stripes, All Rights Reserved).

he might have already been shot. As he waited for death or help to arrive, someone might have called out, “Jesse, you good?” but his hearing remained dull with the ringing echoes of the blasts. Finally, the tropical evening air stirred as corpsmen advanced to his location. A medic, Joe Kuhn, staunched the gushing of blood from behind his right knee with a tourniquet, injected him with morphine, and helped carry his dying body on a litter to a waiting helicopter. Morphine flowed deeper into his body, and Jesse’s mind left the realities of the battlefield. He saw himself back home, in Prospect Hill. His mother was with him. His brothers and sisters were happy that he was home. Eva, who had loved him as her own child, was there, too. He felt young, like a kid, and scared of dying alone in Vietnam. The helicopter’s blades turned with tremendous power while he rode the bus downtown with his mother. He took another bite of a snow cone and looked out the windows. He saw men hand-lettering the week’s specials right on the grocery store windows, creating colorful signage for local businesses, and painting billboards for new movies. The polished chrome flashed from Ramiro’s car as it cruised Zarzamora Avenue, blinding Jesse as it reflected the sun shining in Texas’s enormous cerulean sky. He had never realized how beautiful the colors of home really were—the shadows on the buildings, the faces of the kids playing in the streets, the many images of Our Lady of Guadalupe throughout his neighborhood. These were all worthy of the canvas, worthy of an artist’s passion.

But he also knew he was dying. “What would I do if I got another chance?” Jesse thought while flying high over South Vietnam. The blades overhead chopped the evening air, taking him farther away from the battlefield. He felt exhausted. Despite the morphine, the fiery feeling in his right hand persisted while the fingers were closing into a painful claw. For the first time in his life he had doubts about his future. And as his question haunted him, his spirit remained silent.

— “I remember the Western Union telegram,” Ernest Treviño said, recalling the afternoon when the family was first informed of Jesse’s injury. “I was on the porch. My mother was crying. He was still alive. He’d been wounded real bad— my mother was crying a lot. My brothers kept consoling her: ‘He’s alive, he’s alive. He’s going to be okay.’” In fact, the army provided little information to the Treviños beyond the fact that Jesse was in a hospital in Yokohama, Japan. After about ten days and with no clear indication of his brother’s condition, John wrote to Congressman Henry B. González, asking for help in getting Jesse transferred to the United States; his letter included a photograph from several years prior of González holding one of Jesse’s contest-winning posters. González replied that he would do what he could to get Jesse back to San Antonio, and he came through on his word. On May 8, 1967,

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Jesse’s plane arrived at Kelly Air Force Base, though President Johnson was not there to welcome him or any other soldier that day. He was off the field of battle, but there were many, many terrible days to come. His family knew this after their first trip to Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, where Jesse would spend more than a year in recovery at Beach Pavilion, a warren of hospital buildings named for George Corwin Beach, the former commanding officer of the hospital. Despite a misleading breeziness to its name, the realities of Beach Pavilion could prove quite arresting for visitors, including thirteen-year-old Ernest. “I’ll never forget. . . . I held my mother’s hand. They had these wards of troops, wounded, and I never turned my head or my eyes but I could see everything. There were troops without arms and legs and with burns. But what got to me was that there was no curtains or dividers between the beds. I just grabbed my mom and we walked until we got to Jesse.” The sight of his brother among dozens and dozens of other soldiers recovering from extensive combat injuries would not be a comforting one for Ernest or anyone else. Following his injury, Jesse had endured about sixteen hours of surgery in a field hospital, where he was presented the Purple Heart. In Japan, a procedure meant to block the pain in his hand only resulted in a collapsed lung, causing more agony to go along with that of his shattered femur. In his bed at Beach Pavilion, he weighed about ninety pounds and was in a cast from the waist down.

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Shrapnel wounds marked his chest, back, and right arm. He had 300-plus stitches and a steel pin in his right leg. The nerves in his right hand continued to burn. Dolores took two buses every day from the West Side to the base hospital, far to the northeast, to see her son lying in constant pain. She wouldn’t say much, and that was fine because Jesse didn’t feel much like talking anyway. Just her being there provided him with strength in this place with very little color, very little hope. His brothers and sisters also took turns staying with him while his surgeries continued, including the drilling into his right leg a second time to replace the metal pin, only this time he was given merely a local anesthetic during the procedure. Wide awake as the surgeon pushed the hand drill through his skin and bone, Jesse experienced what he would always refer to as the worst pain of his life. Despite these ongoing surgeries and rehabilitation, the medical staff was unsure whether Jesse would walk again. One day a package arrived from Rach Kien. Rolled up inside was a piece of brown paper; on it was a beautiful painting of a woman, her skin tanned, the hard life of the village reflected in the expression of her eyes. She’s holding a baby in white, who leans across her to drink deeply from a bowl. He would later title it Vietnam 1966 (1966, tempera on paper, 18˝× 25˝), and it was the last thing Jesse painted with his right hand— an elegant, exciting, unfinished finale and a bittersweet tease of an artistic future he believed lost forever. His right hand couldn’t even grip the

Vietnam 1966 (1966). Tempera on paper, 18˝× 25˝. Courtesy of Rosemary Kowalski; Kirk Weddle Photography.

brown butcher paper, much less a paintbrush; it only served as a scorched reminder that any hope of returning to New York had slipped away like a rivulet from a dream after being shaken awake. He couldn’t even sign his name. “When I was in the hospital, I went through pretty hard times in the beginning. I was very bitter,” Jesse said as a way of explaining how he’d suddenly found himself a different person, almost a stranger, with a different perspective. “I was very anti-government. The chaplains would come and pray and try to say something, and I was like, ‘Please, just leave me alone. I never did anything wrong. I feel like I’m being punished. I thought God gave me all this ability to paint and all that. Now I can’t do anything.’” With his days spent in agony and depression, he didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything, even another wounded G.I. from the West Side who had begun dropping by his room. But the soldier, Armando Albarran, recognized Jesse’s withdrawing spirit and his growing anger, and so he kept reaching out. Albarran himself had something of a fighting spirit within him, and he wasn’t so easily deterred by Jesse’s constant rebuffs. Albarran and his twin brother, Alberto, grew up on the West Side with plenty of friends, basketball games, and family vacations to Disneyland. There was church every Sunday and catechism classes during the week. A few months after their graduation from Lanier High School in 1965, they were both drafted and both reported to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for basic training. Albarran

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remembered seeing a presentation on becoming a paratrooper that caught his attention: “When I was younger I’d see soldiers on leave, walking by in the neighborhood. I was intrigued by the paratroopers because their uniforms were different from regular army. They had the real cool jump boots. My wish was to become an army paratrooper, so [after the presentation] I told my brother, ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He said, ‘Oh no. You better not do it. Mama’s going to get upset at you.’” (After declining the paratroopers, Alberto would end up serving his hitch in Germany.) Albarran was not deterred. He was going to fight for his country and do it wearing those jump boots. Following basic training he was sent to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for airborne infantry training and then jump school. When his orders came through, he caught a fifteen-hour commercial flight to Saigon, where he expected to join the 173rd Airborne. Instead, the next morning, he was ordered to grab his M-16 and a grenade launcher and was sent humping with the 25th Infantry Division, a non-Airborne unit. Albarran got hit about a month and a half later during a multiday search-and-clear operation in the Ho Bo Woods, northwest of Saigon. Charlie had waited for the rear of the company to pass before launching an ambush. As the Americans took constant sniper fire, the last of three detonations from a Claymore mine lifted Albarran through the air. When he landed, he still held his rifle, but he saw his boot lying a short distance away, smoke rising from the leather. After the medics reached him and shot

him with morphine, he heard one of them say, “You get the right one and I’ll get the left one.” He assumed they were speaking of his boots. Days later, in a Saigon hospital bed with a Purple Heart in his possession, while talking on the phone with his brother-in-law, he suddenly put down the receiver. He had been asked how badly he’d been injured. “I was covered by a sheet. And I raised the sheet and that’s the first time I realized that I didn’t have any legs,” Albarran said. “I picked up the phone and said, ‘Tell mama and everyone else I’m okay. Tell them I lost my legs. I don’t know when I’ll be home.’ I hung up and broke down. I guess you could say it was traumatic for me at that moment, seeing what my injuries were.” Ten days later Albarran was lying in traction at Beach Pavilion, facing the most uncertain time of his life. His family stayed with him constantly for three months while he was confined to bed. When he grew strong enough to get around by wheelchair, he began making rounds with Harmon Bardwell, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans, to help other men apply for all the benefits they were entitled to. He now saw how many wounded soldiers there really were and how many were worse off than he was. “I just started helping them. I’d write letters for them and read for them. Get a soda. Get a candy bar. Anything I could do, I would do it. It helped me. It helped my recovery. I was a soldier helping other soldiers. I was still one of them.” And he wanted to help Jesse. The two had slowly become familiar, though not totally

friendly. As Jesse’s physical therapy sessions continued, he remained angry and withdrawn, but Albarran eventually pulled a little bit of his story out of him. They talked about growing up on the West Side, their rival high schools, and the way things used to be. They didn’t talk much of war, of injuries, or of death. Jesse told stories of New York but had nothing to say about the future. One day Albarran asked, “Jesse, why don’t you start painting again?” Jesse looked away and replied, “No. I’m not going to paint anymore. I can’t paint anymore. I’m not going to do it again.” Albarran then requested an easel, some canvases, and paints for the occupational therapy center. “I kept telling him, ‘Jesse, you could do it. You could,’” Albarran said. “Sometime he’d get upset at me. He’d get upset because I was talking too much. Finally, one of the times we were both at occupational therapy, I was doing my routine over here, and I saw him get up and go over there and just look at the [art] supplies. Then he came back and sat down.” The Treviño family had the same idea—get Jesse painting again—and kept trying to get the tools of his trade back in front of him. Some of his siblings would bring them, others would have them sent over. “I was working at Herweck’s, delivering art supplies,” Jesse Villarreal recalled for the San Antonio Express-News in 1995. He had been dispatched to Beach Pavilion, where he encountered Jesse for the first time. “I walked in the room, and I knew he couldn’t use them—he couldn’t

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even move. But I put them on the table. I would come back to visit him, and they’d still be there.” Villarreal and Jesse stayed friends, but the brushes, paints, canvases, pencils—they all remained untouched. Despite what his brothers and sisters would tell him, despite what his mother would tell him, he was gripped with doubts and darkness. And yet some remnant of his artistic spirit still smoldered. One afternoon, after staring at the box of brushes and canvases for what might have been hours, and when no one was watching, Jesse took hold of a paintbrush with his left hand. It didn’t feel natural. It didn’t feel right. He felt hopeless as the colors drained from his ambitions. “Jesse, if you want to start painting again, I’ll be your model,” Albarran persisted. “Paint me.” Jesse refused for days until he felt a flicker of that spirit burn strong enough that he finally felt something like hope. Albarran wore his uniform at his sitting. He watched the young artist concentrate with his left hand and get angry and frustrated, with only brief, fleeting moments of satisfaction. Jesse worked admirably to capture his subject’s resemblance, but the composition remained crude, lacking complexity, depth, and bravura. The lines are tight, the colors lack verve. It would not look out of place in a high school art fair, but it would win very few of them. Even while working, Jesse kept insisting it was a failure. “Ugly. I don’t paint like that,” he complained. He finally put down

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the brush and refused to sign his name to the finished painting. Yet the portrait is of significant merit—if only for the fact that it rescued a flame that had been all but extinguished within the artist. The spirit within had somehow survived, even where flesh and bone failed.

— On March 31, 1968, in a voice dripping with deep personal agony, Lyndon Johnson announced to the country that he would not seek reelection as president. It would not solve the problems of the country. It would not end any struggles. The war in Vietnam continued, escalated, worsened. On July 27, Johnson signed three bills to bolster standards of care and benefits for the tens of thousands of returning servicemen, including for the time after they left the service, stating, “America does not forget the long legion of brave men who have served in freedom’s cause. We care for all of them: . . . These three bills will help provide and sustain decent standards of care and imaginative programs of help for the men who have fought our wars. . . . With them we make another payment on a debt as real, and as honorable, as any national obligation. . . . We will not rest until we have done all we can to satisfy that debt.” Two days later, on July 29, Pvt. Spec. 4 Jesus “Jesse” Treviño was officially retired from the army.

Armando Albarran (1968). Acrylic on canvas, 16˝× 24˝. Courtesy of Armando Albarran; photo by Anthony Head.

PART TWO

Aztlán de San Antonio

Chapter 5

Black Canvas (1968–1972)

Michelangelo has been attributed with leaving the world, among other beautiful things, this keen observation: “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” Certainly he meant the intellectual labors of conceptualizing and refining a piece of art, agonizing over why it should exist, and how it might be received once it does exist are far greater than the physical efforts exerted during its creation. But the great Italian master never faced life without the use of his dominant hand, the one he could use some day to perhaps paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. And so, while Michelangelo’s wise words invoke the reality of an artist’s neurological sweat, they don’t acknowledge the very real tactile ordeals that must be undertaken before an artist’s hands are able to complete the brain’s bidding. In the fall of 1968, creating art was about as far from Jesse’s mind as it could get as he fought for control over his life. He’d been discharged from the hospital and sent home with a pair of

crutches and a prescription for the painkiller Darvocet. His heart felt heavy for the men he’d once known from the 3/39th, although he rarely spoke to anyone of his time in Vietnam. And the longer he was back in San Antonio, the more he heard about men—boys, actually— coming home from the war in body bags. Or, like him, they were passing through Fort Sam Houston. He knew the Beach Pavilion was filled with the wounded, more arriving all the time, with life-changing injuries like his own, like Armando Albarran’s. He also knew something of the struggles that lay before them, the pain of surgeries and rehabilitation, the heavy periods when progress doesn’t meet expectation, the realization that life can never be the same again. “Those were the longest days of my life,” Jesse said of his hospital stay. Dolores had placed a bed in the front room so he could look out onto Monterey Street as he rested. She cared for him constantly, listened to his anger, and prayed every morning and every

night for his physical recovery as well as for some peace to settle upon his soul. But she understood that her son, who dreamed bigger dreams than she could even comprehend, was lost and coping with significant trauma. He looked the part, too. Not that he was disheveled or unkempt, but different—somehow more world-wise and weary because of it. His features were gaunt. A dark moustache and sideburns accented his face; his dark hair hung past his shoulders. But long hair on men was considered radical and unpatriotic for the time and was not always welcome on the West Side, where the military remained a hometown hero. “All the ladies there in the neighborhood knew that I’m home from Vietnam and are wondering why my hair was so long, like a freak or something,” Jesse recalled. “They say to my mother, ‘¿Cómo está su hijo? How’s your son? ¿Porqué tiene su cabello tan largo? Why is his hair so long?’ She says, ‘Él hizo una promesa a Dios. He made a promise to God that he would grow his hair long if he could live longer.’ I never said that. She just made it up. It was just a way to get them off her back. She just wanted to quiet them down. Nothing bothered my mother. She was a really unique individual. She understood what I was going through.” Indeed, Dolores had just made it up, although, because of her deeply held Catholic beliefs, she wished it were true—that Jesse was talking with God. In reality, Jesse had been bitter toward God since his injury. Even though he hadn’t been a regular churchgoer for more than a decade, he’d been told so many times over those years that

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his talent was “God-given.” So in the hospital, whenever a chaplain stopped by his bed, Jesse let him have it. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to talk to God,” he shouted. “I was always a good little boy and look at me now. I can’t do anything. And you’re going to come over here and tell me everything is all right?” At home, Jesse’s frustrations were far from over as he realized that God had basically designed the world for right-handed people. There was right-handed bias in the design of everyday objects like scissors, can openers, wristwatches, spiral-bound notebooks, cooking utensils, jar lids, and bottles of painkillers. Everyday actions, like shaking hands, presuppose the right hand is the dominant one. It wasn’t just that Jesse was suddenly lefthanded—it was that he was essentially onehanded. He still had mobility in his right shoulder and elbow, which meant he instinctively kept trying to reach for life’s necessities with his useless right hand, always coming up short. Because the doctors had found no way to repair the nerve damage, that hand simply remained a burning reminder of what was lost. Tying his shoes, driving a car, doing a simple sink repair for his mother, and countless other tasks had to be rethought and practiced over and over again. Still, in all that chaos of reconfiguring his life, he’d enrolled in San Antonio College (SAC), a two-year school, in the fall of 1968. He wasn’t all that eager to return to school, but it was a reason to get up in the morning and get some-

thing done. His decision was made possible by his veteran’s benefits, which covered tuition and supplies. He thought perhaps he would earn a degree and become a teacher, probably of Spanish. He signed up for a full academic load, using a tape recorder to replace class notes, but he didn’t take a single art class—too afraid of how little he could accomplish left-handed. Yet every morning when he woke up, he found that art was still on his mind. Although he was mostly unaware of many of the great Mexican painters at the time, a quote from the famous muralist Diego Rivera could sum up the emotions and desires slowly welling up inside Jesse: “To be an artist, one must . . . never shirk from the truth as he understands it, never withdraw from life.” The next semester, to satisfy a requirement for an elective, he enrolled in a beginning drawing class. It was not an easy decision to make, nor was it a pleasant situation to endure because, contrary to how easily he’d once produced thousands of drawings and sketches, Jesse felt like a beginner again. Most in the class were true beginners just trying to satisfy graduation requirements. Because of the mixed level of abilities, lessons were conducted in a very relaxed atmosphere. The competitive spirit Jesse previously summoned was, for the most part, left untapped during this retraining phase. He allowed himself to progress with less self-inflicted criticism while letting his left hand catch up to the technical skills his brain expected and his right hand once possessed.

His compositions began very abstract and loose but soon evolved with precision and complexity. “All that information I had since I was a kid—it was still there. It was frustrating to not be able to do lines on a piece of paper or on canvas. That was difficult,” Jesse said. “But all the positive things [other students and the instructor] were saying about my work reinforced my confidence. It was just a matter of time.” By the end of the semester, Jesse’s left-handed skills had surpassed those of his classmates. With a growing sense of confidence, he signed up for three art classes for the fall semester of 1969: Life Drawing, Pottery and Sculpture, and Basic Design. The pottery and sculpture classes helped further develop his left hand’s sensitivity and dexterity, and he quickly earned the praise of his instructor, Virgil Hagy. “He can do it,” Hagy told a local newspaper of Jesse’s ability to work the potter’s wheel while throwing clay, traditionally a two-handed operation. “I’ve already seen him turn a bowl on the wheel, using one hand.” It was in the drawing classes, though, that Jesse’s confidence came racing back, despite plenty of struggle. Standing at the easel with a pencil in his hand, just like he’d done countless times before, he quickly studied the model posing before him. In his mind he clearly saw how best to capture the overhead light in her hair, the shadow under her chin, the glints of gold in her otherwise neutral eyes. He’d sketched plenty of models at the league, where’d he’d come to recognize that their eyes projected only a false

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expression of disinterest; how could he not see how flattered she felt to have so many eyes upon her figure, and he knew how to put that on paper. He knew exactly how to convey the tiny, almost invisible beginnings of a smile on the left side of her mouth, even as she kept fighting to control it. He saw how to do it all, just like his teachers had taught him in New York. Just like he’d done while working the front easel at the Village Artist. Just like he’d done countless times before on his own. But things were different. Jesse was still fighting for control of his left hand. This meant he needed to stand at an angle to the easel that was different from the way he’d been trained— his left shoulder leading instead of his right, his left foot slightly advanced instead of his right, the muscles in his neck contracting and relaxing toward the left side of his body instead of the right. Even after so much pain and effort to build enough endurance in his legs to stand for longer periods of time, his right leg and lower back, which would never again feel normal, grew sore much too quickly, making time at the easel challenging. His posture still felt unnatural—as unnatural as holding a pencil with his left hand. Hanging at his side, the fingers on his right hand curled slightly inward, basically unresponsive. And yet there he was, fighting back a small smile. In spite of any physical discomfort, he was finding it easier to sketch the model without looking down at the canvas so often. His left hand was responding better. It was beginning to

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feel more comfortable. It was beginning to feel natural.

— Jesse Treviño didn’t feel any different toward the United States of America when, having passed the required tests, he received his citizenship papers. That is to say, on the afternoon in April 1969, when they arrived in the mail, Jesse truly loved America as he had since he was a child. It was more important than ever to be granted all the rights and privileges of being an American. Life itself was feeling pretty different because Jesse was a newlywed, having married Anna Davila, a cosmetologist as well as a Fox Tech graduate, in June 1969. Although it is not insignificant that Jesse got married, nor that he had two daughters, Jessica and Jackie, with Anna, perhaps it is important to note that the house that the young couple soon moved into would actually be Jesse’s home during three marriages plus another long-term relationship. This first attempt at hearth and home was undertaken when Jesse was still relatively frail and in a vulnerable emotional state. Family and friends pointed out that Jesse’s depression and anger continued for many years and certainly played a role in his rocky marriage with Anna. They also acknowledged that Jesse’s increasing use of Darvocet and beer for the constant burning in his right hand and the pain still wracking his body contributed to the young couple’s problems.

Armando Albarran remained Jesse’s friend after their time at Fort Sam Houston and became godfather to one of Jesse’s daughters. He said that, as a family they were happy a lot of the time, but he knew there were problems between Jesse and Anna and was witness to behaviors that would become a regular pattern with his friend. “Artists are self-centered, if I may. And when they become good artists, it’s more them than anybody else. And I think that’s some of the root of his problem with getting together and committing himself to others,” Albarran said. He quickly added that he also knew at the time that he was witnessing a young artist trying to make an unlikely comeback while living with the stress and trauma from his time both in country and in recovery. “That’s what ultimately made Jesse a hard man to live with.” Albarran helped Jesse get the most out of the benefits he was entitled to as a wounded combat veteran, including a $16,000 loan to purchase a house in 1969. Located at 1518 Mistletoe Avenue, it was about two and a half miles north of his mother’s house. The twostory, 2,200-square-foot house, originally built in 1930, had a steeply pitched roof, a fireplace, and, as Jesse saw it, enormous potential for renovation. Most tools and power tools are designed for right-handed people, but Jesse still used what he could to reshape the house to his sensibilities. He renovated the kitchen and the ground-floor master bedroom. The second floor was mostly unfinished, so he built a staircase and, with help

from his brother Mario, installed a new roof. “That really opened it up to create more space. It was sort of like a penthouse up there. It was very different from the rest of the house,” Jesse said. Despite memories of Draper’s penthouse studio in New York, Jesse would not choose the top space for his studio. With great enthusiasm he converted the large front room with the fireplace into his studio. It would become something of an emotional sanctuary and where Jesse truly began rebuilding a dream.

— Striving to regain prominence as an artist, and because of his additional physical challenges, he had to focus on himself. Although he was appearing in the newspapers again, the stories didn’t convey the same optimistic tone of a young artist winning competitions at Fox Tech and receiving scholarships. Instead, they mostly conveyed how Vietnam “stole” his right hand and “cut short a promising career.” “I went through a lot of stages,” Jesse told the San Antonio Light at the time. “When I learned that I would not have the use of my right arm, I felt bitter and sorry for myself.” He also vowed to teach if he couldn’t become an artist again, then added, “But I want to paint, and I am learning to use my left arm.” It would take more than skill and talent to find success, though. At this point, he was more reliant on the faith he still found in himself to get through most days. But he looked outward, too, for inspiration, and there was no individual

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more important at this period of Jesse’s development than SAC’s design class instructor, Melesio “Mel” Casas. Casas emphasized pop art, a fine arts style that appropriated popular consumer products, labels, and logos for the canvas. It had burst onto the British and American art scenes in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Greenwich Village resident Andy Warhol and his renderings of Campbell’s Soup cans are always cited in any discussion of pop art, others, like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine, were significant artists of the movement as well. There is strong commercial art sensibility to pop art, and Jesse’s technical skills from high school returned as he experimented and then improved, and then, just as before, he stood out. He was trying to stand out, too, just like he did for Katherine Alsup at Fox Tech and William Draper at the Art Students League. And he was paying close attention to the other lessons at the heart of Casas’s class, lessons that went beyond the canvas. Born in El Paso, Texas, in 1929, Casas grew up on the “south side of the tracks. The poor side of town,” as he called it. He was first-generation American from Mexican parents. He’d had a desire to be an artist since he was five years old, influenced to some degree by his father’s fondness for drawing. Drafted into the army after high school, Casas served in the Korean War and was injured by an exploding landmine, scarring permanently the right side of his face and torso and his right hand. He was awarded the Purple Heart.

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Casas used his G.I. Bill benefits to study art and education at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso). He then moved to Mexico City and received a master of fine arts degree from the University of the Americas in 1958. Back in El Paso, he taught high school art and painted extensively, including a thorough exploration of abstract expressionism, a highly cerebral and reflective style using form and color to express concepts rather than depicting objects figuratively. It was essentially what New York City demanded of American artists—at least if they intended to be recognized by New York City—but after many years of abstract study, Casas returned to more figurative imagery. In 1961 a former colleague from Mexico City helped Casas secure a teaching position at San Antonio College. Casas was thirty-two years old, and his first college teaching experience was fraught with challenge: “When I tried to find the syllabi for the courses there were none. So I had to write up all the courses for the syllabi. I gave the department a sense of structure and organization, and goals.” Unfortunately, he found the “Anglo administration” to be of little help to him, and they seemed unsure of their new hire. “I got the job only to realize that I’m in a very bigoted environment. I started my classes and had the administration looking in the little windows. That’s ridiculous. That’s absurd.” The outspoken Casas was very engaging in class, raising issues and encouraging discussions about the artistic means of dealing with contem-

porary issues, especially those issues faced by his students, who came from all over San Antonio. He had a biting sense of humor and was a keen observer of the rising importance of mass media as a platform for controlling political and cultural information and perception. Art, he felt, should not only reflect that phenomenon but also play a role in creating (or, at the very least, reacting to) those perceptions, especially as they related to sociopolitical and economic realities of minority populations. “I was teaching design, so in a sense you could say I was teaching the grammar of art. The other part was strictly me doing political evaluations,” he said of his classroom lectures and projects. Casas could be shocking with his “political evaluations” and his cultural accusations. The year before he met Jesse, the San Antonio Art League had named Casas Artist of the Year. During his acceptance speech he undressed a Barbie doll while pivoting his remarks toward media bias and societal privilege shown toward Anglos; his award was quickly rescinded. On canvas, the accomplished Casas could provoke just as bluntly. His 1970 Humanscape 62 is one of a long series lampooning stereotypes that were, if not media-made, then at least media-supported and media-spread. Known colloquially as “Brownies of the Southwest,” this six-by-eight-foot painting spoofs the portrayal of “brown” cultures with images of “The Frito Bandito” (a pistol-packing Mexican “outlaw” mascot for Fritos Corn Chips), the young girls of a Brownie scout troop, women representing indigenous cultures of Mexico and

the American Southwest, and a plate of chocolate brownies. The symbolism was heavy-handed— and meant to be that way in order to provoke a reaction. (It was also ultimately headed to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, where it became a part of the permanent collection in 2012.) Within the classroom environment, where Casas engaged his students in both the mechanics of art as well as its purpose, Jesse found almost immediate gratification. His work from that first semester includes a modern landscape, Alamo Exit (1969, 2 panels, acrylic on canvas, 42˝× 32˝each); it’s what Jesse has sometimes referred to as his “first San Antonio painting” and is actually a pair of canvases sharing adjacent perspectives from under a freeway overpass. The immediate perspective is mostly in shadow, but there’s a sunny, bright blue sky in the background with an empty road leading to the expansive countryside. Jesse also experimented with different materials in a piece reflecting the fondness he’d had for cars since his days with the Road Griffins. For Pontiac (1969, mixed media, 47.5˝× 47.5˝), he mounted the front grille from a Pontiac GTO onto a canvas and then painted the rest of the bright yellow car behind it; he fitted small frames beneath parts of the canvas to push it out slightly and provide depth and dimension; finally, he added a sheet of glass to give the illusion that the car lies just on the other side of a car dealership’s showroom window.

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Casas recognized Jesse’s advanced skills and commended him on his progressive concepts, but as he later told Hispanic Magazine, “The main thing was his drive and his intensity in trying to accomplish things.”

— As Jesse’s artistic drive intensified, he also paid closer attention to Casas and others (inside and outside SAC’s classrooms) as they advanced awareness of the growing Chicano movement. The Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s had done little to actually improve the lives of Mexican Americans in the United States, but there was a continued, concentrated push for more social equality throughout Texas, the Southwest, and California. Under the bold colors of the Aztec Eagle flag and chanting “¡Si, se puede!” (“Yes, we can!” or “Yes, it can be done!”), César Chávez and organized labor had completed a five-year strike in 1970 and dealt California’s agricultural industry a blow by successfully organizing and promoting a middleclass consumer boycott of grapes. When the owners and growers conceded to most of the UFW’s demands, it became a rallying moment for more efforts to fight for better living conditions for many Americans living at society’s margins. Some in the Mexican American community— but certainly not a majority—were using the term “Chicano” to self-identify. Being a Chicano or Chicana meant representing the cultural binationalism of Mexican Americans, an acknowl-

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edgement of being a citizen of one country with unbreakable ties to another. But it also meant liberation from stereotypes, defiance against discrimination, and, ultimately, the belief in self-determination at the expense of the majority population’s traditions and customs. Even in San Antonio, where Mexican Americans made up nearly half the population, this remained no easy mountain to climb. “They’re fine people. They’re home loving. They love beauty. They love flowers. They love music. They love dancing.” That’s how San Antonio’s Mayor W. W. McAllister described the Mexican American community to NBC News in July 1970. As the camera rolled, he continued: “Perhaps they’re not quite as, uh, let’s say as ambitiously motivated as the Anglos are to get ahead financially, but they manage to get a lot out of life.” For Jesse, such an offensive statement held no meaning. It certainly couldn’t apply to him, or the rest of the Treviño family, or to so many of his neighbors from Prospect Hill. And yet hearing such entrenched, persistent racism coming from the mayor—about his own constituents— can eventually cause a lot of anger, and anger can be a terrific motivator. There was certainly a vocal minority within the Chicano movement that was also open to violence to achieve self-determination. This minority advocated fighting “the gringo,” the “blue-eyed devil,” the white majority that oppressed and marginalized brown-skinned populations, and on occasion this militant wing of the organization got its way. For most

Anglos, as well as many middle-class Mexican Americans who were not so bent on shaking up the status quo through “any means necessary,” Chicanos were agitators—as bad as communists and long-haired hippies. At the spiritual center of the Chicano movement was the concept of Aztlán, the ancestral homeland of the Aztecs before they migrated to and settled near present-day Mexico City in 1248. As a factual geographic place, Aztlán remains to be established historically, but theories exist for its location to have been in Nayarit, Mexico; Goleta, California; and myriad points throughout the American Southwest. Questions have been asked and theories posited about life in Aztlán, supposedly a paradise, including why the Aztec’s left in the first place and how their journey impacted the development of presentday North America and Central America. (Just as intriguing but nonetheless just as mysterious is the question of where exactly the Aztecs came from before they arrived in Aztlán.) In spite of, or perhaps because of, the historical mysteries and geographical possibilities, Aztlán assumed a mythical mantel for some Chicanos and was used (though not exclusively) to justify claims of territorial rights to land throughout America’s Southwest. For other Chicanos, Aztlán represented a unifying cultural identity, a lineage for Mexican Americans, and was co-opted as a symbol for cultural awareness and solidarity as well as for political change. Still very new to the fluid principles of the Chicano movement, Jesse took some unfamil-

iar steps in a new direction. His time in Casas’s classroom had instilled the notion that his art should have meaning and not just look beautiful, and his work began reflecting social and political issues for the first time in his career. Although keenly aware of the technical work that he still needed to master in order to take his paintings to an advanced level, he thought even more about esoteric issues. “[Mel Casas] didn’t really care much how you did your painting as much as what you were painting about, what you were saying with it,” Jesse recalled. For one assignment, which was to depict a hero, an antihero, and a villain, Jesse’s work Zapata (1969, acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 99˝) demonstrates a progressive Chicano perspective growing within him. He chose turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata as hero, food stamps as the antihero, and Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, appearing as the face of a Mickey Mouse–style watch, as villain—a lineup certainly worthy of vigorous sociopolitical debate. In broad context, the piece is significant for a couple of other reasons, including the fact that it is one of the rare divisive images that would ever appear in Jesse’s catalogue. Unlike Casas’s attempts at provocation, Jesse craved a different, if just as enthusiastic, response from his audience. His art would always have meaning, just not anything too caustic. Also, it’s worth noting that the oversized dimension of Zapata—three feet wide and over eight feet tall—was Jesse’s first real stab at larger pieces. He continued produc-

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ing smaller, more conventional sizes of paintings and portraits, but his major works would soon begin to take on greater proportions, eventually reaching almost unimaginable scale.

— By mid-1970, the muscles in Jesse’s right hand and wrist had atrophied significantly. With its useless, limp fingers, the hand was just getting in the way, actually making most tasks harder to accomplish. To cope with the constant pins-andneedles sensation snaking under his skin and up his forearm, he swallowed more Darvocet and wrapped his arm tightly with an Ace bandage, though both actions only slightly muted the pain. His hand was driving him crazy and it was good for nothing, so Anna drove Jesse to a veterans hospital in Temple, Texas, to have his right arm amputated just below the elbow. He stayed for nearly two weeks, passing the time with a sketchbook, trying not to dwell too much on the loss of a limb or on the memories of what had robbed him of it in the first place. Back in San Antonio, a local doctor fitted him with a split-hook prosthesis, attached to the arm with a fitted cuff and held in place by a harness slung across the shoulders. This new “hand” was actually a pair of hooks that opened and closed to grasp and hold a large variety of objects. By extending his arm and otherwise manipulating his shoulder position, Jesse could adjust a cable that operated the hooks. At first it was difficult, clunky, unnatural, and he again needed to retrain

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himself to accomplish many everyday tasks. There was a lot of improvisation, but slowly Jesse recognized his new right hand’s functionality and durability. That is not to suggest that Jesse’s period of adjustment was easy. Phantom pains where his right hand and forearm used to be awoke him in the middle of the night. The pins and needles were still there and, in fact, would never leave. He continued taking painkillers and drinking beer to offset the constant sensation. Having been self-conscious about his dead limb before the operation, he suddenly felt the eyes of Texas staring at the mechanical contraption at the end of his arm. “I did care about the way people saw me. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I have, at times, tried to keep this part of my body hidden,” Jesse said of his prosthesis. “I’ve always felt people weren’t going to accept me. When I was a little kid, I was afraid of people with deformities.” Now he was one of them. Such anxiety only increased problems at home, where his marriage to Anna was failing. He tried to be a good father, though school took up a lot of his time. But the real truth was that art had begun to consume his thoughts to the exclusion of most everything else, and he was working harder and spending more time than ever alone in his studio. But it was still not enough, at least not yet. In a 1970 San Antonio Express article about local Mexican American artists, Gerald Ashford pointed to Mel Casas as a “maverick” painter using humor and satire,

and then went on to mention by name eighteen “recognized San Antonio artists” of Mexican American heritage, and Jesse—formerly considered one of the city’s most promising artists— was not among them. One day in class, Casas (who was still to play a larger role in Jesse’s evolution as an artist) showed his students a simple technique that produced a unique look to a final work: he first painted the entire canvas black. Jesse tried this technique and found that a black canvas added “serious” and “somber” undertones and “a touch of mystery” to his paintings, but there was something deeper at work. A black canvas was a dark emptiness, a void into which he needed to stare and to acknowledge in order to begin. Any blank white canvas could have served the same purpose, essentially, but black better matched his mood. It felt right. If art needed meaning, Jesse first needed to recognize himself—his new self, his postwar self, his post-right-handed self—in order to claim meaning for his work. He began his search in earnest by painting one of his bedroom walls entirely black—and not just once. He coated the wall again and again, waiting for a vision to come, waiting for something to stir his imagination. Each night he stared at the wall, and it was still not enough, so he covered the window and door with black felt to extinguish any external light. The room itself became as dark as his heart while he lay bleeding out in a rice paddy. Then days or possibly weeks later, he aimed a small spotlight at the wall and switched it on. He

picked up a thin paintbrush and faced that great black abyss. He mixed his colors, holding tight to an image that had flashed across his mind in the dark. And with one confident brushstroke after another, he began to paint a split-hook prosthesis clutching a Purple Heart medal. Finally, he understood: it was going to be a self-portrait. It would be titled Mi Vida (“My Life,” 1972, acrylic on gypsum board, 9´× 14´), and it would become Jesse’s first great work of art. It was a mural (which simply meant artwork applied directly to a wall or ceiling), and it was meant for an audience of one. As the weeks stretched into months, he kept working, often painting at night, when the phone didn’t ring, the children were asleep, and no one was stopping by the house. Other items appeared within the black space: the Ford Mustang that he bought with a VA loan (he was permitted to drive cars with automatic transmissions); a ghostly depiction of himself as a soldier in Vietnam; a plate of pan dulce, the sweet bread that he’d bought for his mother early mornings as a child. The details were precise, the colors rich, the symbolism even richer. His vices appeared, too: a pack of Viceroy cigarettes, a can of Budweiser, a capsule of Darvocet—all floating in the inky black oblivion. He knew each night that something beautiful was happening in the bedroom, but it was not with his wife. Anna and the kids weren’t always living at the Mistletoe house. His marriage was heading inevitably toward divorce, which is why the main focal point of the piece—a woman’s face, and not Anna’s—became the painting’s

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Mi Vida (“My Life,” 1972). Acrylic on gypsum board, 14´× 9´. Courtesy of Inez Cindy Gabriel; photograph courtesy of Kirk Weddle Photography.

central mystery. Her dark complexion and long, flowing hair dominate the space; her expression is stolid and as unknowable as the void. But who is the woman of Mi Vida? Jesse proved cagey about her identity from the start. He told one friend who saw the mural but who didn’t know Anna that the woman was his wife. Some of Jesse’s siblings and friends posited that she could be a high school sweetheart, or at least someone he’d dated at Fox Tech, even though Jesse insisted he was no lady’s man

growing up and simply hadn’t dated. Ultimately, the woman’s identity didn’t matter that much—she was obviously selected as a stand-in for love, sex, passion. The rest of the self-portrait reflects the nexus of being an American and a Mexican, a soldier and a disabled veteran, a man with a destiny and a man blown, at least temporarily, from his path. The floatingimage composition looked unlike anything he’d painted before. It was fine art with elements of pop art. It was surreal. It was Jesse Treviño.

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Chapter 6

Chicano Spring (1971–1974)

On television, in newspapers, on the streets, and in many schools, a sense of urgency and anticipation was growing. The ranks of those opposed to the Vietnam War had been swelling, especially after members of the Ohio National Guard shot and killed four unarmed students during an antiwar protest at Kent State University in early May 1970. Although a majority of the country still backed the war, that event became a significant rallying point for the peace movement at the same time more soldiers were returning from the front lines with personal stories that didn’t always jibe with official news from the White House and the Pentagon. More Americans, including more Mexican Americans, openly questioned the war and the toll it was taking on minority and poor families, whose sons had significantly fewer opportunities to obtain deferments from the draft than the sons of wealthier Anglos. In San Antonio, including within the hallways and classrooms of San Antonio College, the ongoing struggle for civil rights for Mexican

Americans was strongly allied with the antiwar movement. Political organizations and social activist clubs sprang up all over the West Side. There were guitars and banners and walkouts and social engagement. There was long hair everywhere. It was grassroots and, yes, there was an awful lot of grass passed around, too. The rush swept up Jesse. Although he had started paying more attention to antiwar and Mexican American demonstrations since his time in Beach Pavilion, now he began participating. At first, this meant attending protest rallies and speeches, which were becoming more com­ monplace on campus. More importantly, while working slowly but consistently on Mi Vida and finishing his associate's degree, Jesse took to heart the lessons of Mel Casas, who kept emphasizing how art can be—must be—an important part of any dialogue on social and cultural issues. Casas’s perspective was not unique, and as Jesse met more artists, whether in school or elsewhere, he soon recognized that it was at the core of what was being called the Chicano art movement.

It has been proposed that the Chicano art movement began in California’s Salinas Valley in the mid-1960s, when Mexican American farmworkers would perform theatrical skits about life and working conditions. There followed a period of time during which a patchwork of music, literature, painting, and other art forms reflecting both urban and rural life in Mexican American communities spontaneously appeared in pockets of the country, eventually congealing into the legs of a more cohesive, recognizable shared experience. In late 1971, Casas invited Jesse to join a group of artists trying to gain traction and raise their profiles within San Antonio’s Anglo-established, Anglo-centric museum and gallery community. On canvas, and through their own individual styles, these men actively addressed current issues by creating art from the point of view of being Mexican American—or, more specifically, being Chicano. These were often scenes from their neighborhoods, images of blue-collar life; some were working in abstract forms, others more figurative. They were historical in nature and modern. Some celebrated life, love, and family in the barrio, while others reflected a harsher, grimmer reality of poverty and neglect. Like the artists themselves, some works, like Casas’s Humanscapes series, proved to be more inflammatory than others. The group had been formed several years prior by Felipe Reyes and Jesse Almazán, who invited other artists to join and then exhibited as a group under various names, including Los

Pintores de Aztlán, Los Pintores de la Nueva Raza, Tlacuilo, and El Grupo. Their works were often depictions of and reactions to local cultural and geopolitical concerns. One watershed moment for the group, according to Ruben Cordova, author of Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas, was 1968’s nationally televised “Hunger in America” program, which described San Antonio’s West Side barrio as among the worst living conditions in America, claiming that 100,000 of its residents went hungry year-round. Just after Jesse joined the group, a new name was adopted: Con Safo. The phrase (along with the initials “C/S”) is often recognized as an artist’s plea for respect for the artwork toward anyone tempted to graffiti over it; but Casas explained that the expression is more nuanced. “Con safo is an old term of barrio talk, which meant, in a sense, to have a way out, to be able to slip away from a bad situation.” When it came to including “C/S” on a canvas, the artist had essentially denied future vandals any gratification. It declared, I have freed myself from anyone maligning the work. For this pioneering West Side artist group trying to gain wider respect, the name proclaimed, Our art has value, no matter what you say. Older than the others, a more experienced artist, and an accomplished teacher, Casas quickly assumed a leadership role in Con Safo. In his “Brown Paper Report,” which he presented to the group, he described “Chicano” as another word for “dignity, self-awareness,

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survival, humanity, identity, messianic goals. People in harmony with themselves,” and he encouraged the group to engage philosophically on concepts of “Chicanismo” and “Chicano Art,” to explore what the two meant and what they had to do with one another. At its heart, because Con Safo identified as a Chicano collective, it meant that the group selfidentified as being outside of the mainstream, and not just the Anglo mainstream. While “Mexican American” was perceived as an identity built on the inclusion of two different nationalities, “Chicano” was accepted as neither fully Mexican nor fully American—thus, accepted entirely by neither culture. As was declared in early Con Safo literature: “There is resistance, from the Chicanos, against assimilation into a ‘pure’ Mexican society and Anglo-American society. Chicanismo is the process of synthesis of these cultures in varying dosages as suits personal and group tastes.” Most Mexican Americans considered “Chicano” to be low-class barrio slang, including and especially Representative Henry B. González, who repudiated the word and its cultural-heritage argument. González, who, it could be argued, fought harder for the rights of Mexican Americans and other minorities than any other Texas politician of his era, still had to represent all San Antonians; he encouraged minorities to assimilate and work within the government system and the social compact to cooperatively, albeit gradually, achieve progress.

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But just like the African American exper­ience of the 1960s, younger Mexican Americans and those with higher education levels had lost patience while continuing to endure discrimination in the workforce, in housing opportunities, and within the educational system. A swell of college-aged Mexican Americans openly opposed González and supported ideas and social remedies put forward by people who identified, or at least empathized, with the Chicano movement, like Bexar County commissioner Albert Peña, who was among the first public officials in Texas to oppose the Vietnam War; José Angel Gutiérrez, who founded the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO); and Joe Bernal, Jesse’s sixth-grade teacher at Crockett Elementary, who had been elected state representative and then state senator. Bernal coauthored Texas’ first bilingual education act in 1969, eliminating the English-only requirement at public schools. (The same year, Bernal also voted to establish the University of Texas at San Antonio, where Jesse would eventually attend graduate school.) Though he considered himself a Chicano, Jesse never felt much inclined to wade too deeply into divisive political issues. For one thing, he liked Henry González, who’d kept tabs on the Treviños (as he had with many West Side families) for years. González had shaken Jesse’s hand several times when he was winning contests at Fox Tech and had personally intervened to get Jesse shipped home from the war. Even though Jesse remained angry and resentful about his

experience in Vietnam, he was much more interested in moving beyond that dark period, and it’s fair to say that, as an artist, Jesse’s sociopolitical attitudes at this time didn’t necessarily align with many of the more militant stances of the day. He was never going to be a provocateur, at least not that way. But early on, Jesse engaged heavily with the members of Con Safo as they unpacked their ideas, talked of their lives, discussed their philosophies of creativity. There were a dozen or so men in the group; most had grown up recognized as the best artist in his class. But they didn’t all have Prospect Hill upbringings, and, in turn, they had different visions for their art, whether it was meant to inform or chronicle, uncloak or denounce, show beauty or show abandonment. While many were fine artists, the articulation and reach of poster art was weighed against the power of fine art against the traditions of Mexican murals. There were many differences of opinion, and there was also plenty of beer and maybe a joint or two passed around, which meant that finding consensus for a group direction was, to put it simply, difficult. “Discussions were heavy. People would sometimes get upset. It was an exploration of who they were as artists,” said Ellen Riojas Clark, who wasn’t a Con Safo artist but often took notes for meetings and occasionally hosted group meetings at her house. Jesse, too, remembered some heated moments, but that was all a part of the charged atmosphere of the times. “Some of these people

were talking about a different kind of art that wasn’t mainstream. Sort of anti-establishment,” he remembered. “I got it.” “Art” was suddenly not just a flat piece of work. It came with questions and even shouting matches. It demanded that Jesse reevaluate his perspectives. He looked back to his childhood— undeniably happy and fulfilling—but perhaps the nice houses and paved streets of Prospect Hill had obscured his views of the injustice rampant throughout much of the West Side; perhaps his tight-knit family with hardworking siblings and devoted parents had shielded him from the realities of making a life out of the extreme poverty that lay just a few blocks away. Such issues weighed upon his mind, still heavy with resentment and anger. Something important was happening around him—something that called for action, and he intended to respond. But having that purpose didn’t turn around the fortunes of his personal life. About the same time that he was getting involved with Con Safo, he and Anna were divorcing. “I didn’t feel like she was supportive of my art,” Jesse explained. “At that time, for some reason, it was some negative thoughts she had about me. She didn’t trust me. One time I came home with this girl’s notes [from class]. She thought I’d been with someone else. It’s horrible being that way. I wanted to be dedicated to my artwork. I wasn’t very comfortable. I still loved my kids, but the marriage didn’t work out.”

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Pachucos (1971). Acrylic on canvas, 48˝× 48˝ . Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

La Fe (“Faith,” 1972). Acrylic on canvas, 52˝× 48˝ . Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

Having finished his degree at SAC in early 1972 and with financial assistance from the VA, Jesse began attending Our Lady of the Lake College (OLLC), a small Catholic college on the West Side. Many of OLLC’s faculty and student body were active in Mexican American issues. More important for Jesse were the small classes, especially the art classes led by Sisters Tharsilla Fuchs and Ethel Marie Corne. Not nearly as accomplished as Jesse, his instructors quickly recognized his advanced skills and often allowed him to work on his own projects. One of his first paintings there, La Fe (“Faith,” 1972, acrylic on canvas, 56˝× 48˝), is a tight composition of a man’s left hand, tattooed with a cross, reaching to pluck an orange from a tree. Produced on a black canvas, there is an obvious autobiographical allusion to the left-handed artist, but he was working on larger themes, too. “I remember wanting to show Mexican Americans without showing their faces, just the hand, the symbol of so many different things. The reaching upward, like hope, strength,” Jesse said. “I used my hand as the model, and I don’t have that cross, but I knew people who worked out in the fields had little tattoos. They were very religious people. That was part of it. It was a symbolic painting for all the people who worked in the fields.” La Fe can also be viewed as a devotional piece to his mother, who always said to her family, “You’ve got to have faith.” As Jesse recalled, “She

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meant faith in God, but also she meant faith in yourself.” There is a deep feeling of grace in La Fe’s composition, for it would be impossible for an artist like Jesse to resist the influence of the school’s religious environment. He’d grown up Catholic in a very Catholic part of San Antonio. Even if all the Treviños, including Jesse, had not been regular churchgoers, their house—with its crucifixes, rosaries, family Bible, and bulletins from Sunday masses—was nothing if not a Catholic home. So he was naturally drawn to the rich artistic traditions of the church, and at OLLC he learned even more of the great paintings and artworks it had commissioned and collected throughout history. Despite its overt religiosity, La Fe doesn’t actually represent any conversion moment for the artist. Another painting from this time reveals a more rakish attitude. The Gran Chile (1973, acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝) is a pop art still-life of a bottle of hot sauce and two plump tomatoes positioned in a not-so-subtle phallic composition. It was painted on a black canvas, with a large swath of the work remaining dark. In this case, the void hints at a gathering of power lying within the artist, while the condiments represent self-recognition that his mojo—both artistically and personally—is returning. Trying to move beyond his divorce, Jesse emerged from his social cocoon having all but forgotten his anxiety over his skin color. He’d grown into a rather handsome man and found it easier to approach women. For one reason or

another, women were approaching him, too— perhaps it was his long black hair and lean, mustachioed face, or maybe it was his growing attitude of chicanismo. It could also have been his prosthetic hook; although still self-conscious of some people’s reactions to it, he couldn’t deny it also attracted certain women. Whatever it was, Jesse wasn’t fighting it. Ysleta Northam took an art class with Jesse at OLLC and remembered how he was simply working on a completely different level than everyone else, and still quite aggressive toward the canvas. “We were all sketching but he was off to one side painting. I think he was working on his own project, and the canvas was just bouncing around he was going at it so hard. And so quick,” she said. “He sketched me one day while I was outside drawing a tree. He captured everything about me in such a short time. It was incredible how he worked so fast.” One day after class, Jesse approached Northam and asked if she would pose for him. “I wasn’t very outgoing,” she recalled. “He might have been flirting. I was still unsure of myself. I said no. But a few months later I asked him if he would do a portrait of me. He just looked at me and said, ‘Take a number.’” When Northam looked at him in disbelief, Jesse explained that he was too busy to paint her, adding with a bit of zest, “Remember, you were the first one I asked.” Jesse lived the life of a bachelor-student-artist, occasionally (depending on his mood) opening his house to friends. Northam, despite never

getting her portrait, remained his friend and occasionally stopped by the Mistletoe house with girlfriends to hang out, drink beer, and admire the ongoing work Jesse did, both on canvas and on the house itself. Armando Albarran would sometimes stop by to help with the latest renovation project or just spend time, though he remembered it wasn’t always easy to get Jesse to answer the door. “Sometimes I would knock on his door unannounced. Several times he wouldn’t answer,” Albarran said. (As the years passed, such reclusiveness would become relatively normal behavior for Jesse.) While Jesse’s mood increasingly dictated his openness to guests, at other times, Albarran recalled, he was simply too busy to stop working. “I remember one time he was putting a deck in his backyard. Another time he was putting blue tile in his kitchen. Another time he had built a wardrobe. Another time he was laying brick.” Jesse also stayed busy with Con Safo. A number of its members’ paintings had toured collectively at some Midwest colleges in the spring of 1972, and the group’s major goal remained organizing exhibitions. Several members, including Jesse, were determined to get into museums and galleries, but any interest in their works was welcome. They set up installations in alternative spaces, like members’ front yards, churches, community centers, and storefronts. Felipe Reyes and Casas tried to secure funding for more exhibitions and financial grants,

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but the logistics of wrangling the group to fully participate in the upfront legwork—especially the paperwork—often proved challenging. “I said, ‘Let’s divide this into packages, and everybody does part of it, and we can share the load,’” Casas recalled of his attempts to persuade members into writing grant proposals and press releases and otherwise developing an organizational infrastructure. “I asked for help, but I began to realize that they didn’t want to contribute, and I couldn’t afford it. I got told, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m an artist.’” Before the end of 1973, Casas resigned the presidency. Santos Martinez, who participated in Con Safo from January 1972 until the autumn of 1973, remembered that being with like-minded people gave him purpose as a young artist, but he said Con Safo had developed structural weaknesses over time. “For me, when I look back, I think it became too big and too businesslike. The artists becoming administrators didn’t work too well,” he said. Other members echoed those sentiments, including Jesse, who had absorbed a lot from the meetings and certainly benefited from the efforts made by Casas and others to advance the collective into a more formal and formative organization. There’s no doubt that Con Safo helped San Antonio become the center of Texas’ Chicano art movement, helping it find cohesion and momentum not experienced to the same degree in other cities. Just being in the presence of so many talented artists helped reignite Jesse’s sense of competi-

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tion. “Whether [the exhibitions] were in a high school or a gallery . . . wherever we took our paintings as a group, I wanted my paintings to stand out. It’s just my nature,” he said. As time passed, though, he lost enthusiasm for getting together and talking about art and philosophy and paperwork. He really just wanted to paint and he began missing more meetings—but he had a pretty good reason.

— The name Jesse Treviño was not unknown throughout the West Side. His artistic accomplishments and occasionally his photo had appeared in local newspapers since he was young. More recently, his Vietnam story and his battle to continue working as an artist was played out in print, so it was not unusual for him to meet people on OLLC’s campus who already knew, to some extent, his story. Which is why, as Jesse remembered it, a representative of a student association approached him “out of the blue” with the idea of producing a mural in the Student Union Building, the “SUB,” as it was known. And, as he also recalled, he balked. The size of the artwork being discussed—three full walls—was overwhelming. But his hesitation was short-lived and pushed aside by a familiar spirit of determination; even though he still doubted his ability to pull off such a massive work, he relented. He would push himself. No definitive design had been agreed upon in advance, but given the culturally charged times

it was understood that Jesse would address some issue important to Mexican Americans. Additionally, Sister Fuchs arranged for the time and effort he put into the mural to count toward his graduation requirements. Jesse thought of Mi Vida, hidden from sight from nearly everyone. But more importantly, because he’d painted it directly on his bedroom wall, it was trapped in that space. In the future it would be extremely rare for him to produce a substantial work that didn’t have some way of being removed and preserved in case of some unforeseen circumstances. Instead of painting directly on the SUB’s walls, the students raised money for not only paints and equipment but also 100 feet of canvas. It took a team of workers several hours to stretch the canvas onto frames that were then mounted to the walls. If the need should ever arise, the frames could be removed and relocated. He painted the entire canvas black while waiting for the spirit to move him. There was a fair amount of scholarship involved while he waited and then began homing in on a composition. The very “studio” in which he was working provided plenty of inspiration. Formerly a laundry building, the SUB was essentially a pub now, where students and nonstudents drank beer, played pool and table tennis, hung out, wasted time. It was also a place where cultural revolution was planned. A few years earlier, it was where activists like Rosie Castro, members of the Young Democrats, even Jesse’s older brother John, had planned voter

registration drives, organized student walkouts, and envisioned a brighter future for Mexican Americans. “Recruiting happened. The nuns welcomed that activism and militancy on their campus. All of a sudden, this college was facing the realities of the sixties and seventies and could create the people to move into leadership roles,” explained George Cisneros, a friend from Monterey Street who’d sometimes see Jesse painting in the SUB. Cisneros, an artist and musician and Henry Cisneros’s brother, said that talk of cultural pride and demands for advancement were simply “the politics of the neighborhood. Jesse was in the middle of all that, literally.” And it was not only at OLLC. Jacinto Quirarte, a preeminent scholar and author of works on Chicano history and culture that demonstrated his vast knowledge of Mexican American art and artists, would write in 1991 that San Antonio’s Trinity University was the site of “the first truly national exhibition of Mexican American and Chicano art.” The show took place in midNovember 1973 and included works and talks by local artists (including Mel Casas) as well as others from Arizona, California, New York, and elsewhere in Texas. Despite being shut out of most galleries and museums, San Antonio’s Chicano artists found themselves on the front lines of representing the modern Chicano school of art to the rest of the nation, and there’s no way that reality escaped Jesse’s notice. When it came time to finally sketch out a concept and put brush to canvas, Jesse began with

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the element that bound together all Mexican Americans. It was part of a concept that took him every bit of the next two years to complete. What would eventually be titled La Historia Chicana (“The Chicano History,” 1974, acrylic on canvas, 100´× 57˝) covers six centuries of Mexican American history beginning with the Aztecs, though after they had left their homeland of Aztlán. Somewhere in what became modern-day Mexico, an Aztec warrior confronts a Spanish conquistador, beginning a bloody clash of cultures that birthed a new nation. The eye follows the action to a rather gripping scene with dying peasant-soldiers, their crisscrossed bandoleers connoting the grim violence of the Mexican Revolution, which left over a million people dead in its wake. The decade-long civil war compelled a large migration of Mexicans to the United States, depicted in the mural with long lines at the border. Religious totems are included, like a Catholic rosary and the Virgin of Guadalupe, both symbolizing how this new generation of new Americans—Mexican Americans—clung to their heritage and traditional faith while making their home in a new country. There are workers in agricultural fields, a fat bunch of table grapes, and the United Farm Worker’s flag, with its bright red background and bold black Mexican eagle proclaiming hard-fought victories for laborers. As the mural progresses, there is a family and a view of Our Lady of the Lake, emphasizing that the future success of Mexican Americans lies with education.

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It’s a dramatic, compassionate reading of Mexican American history, though by no means is it the complete story. There are no scenes of Mexican Americans serving in World War II, for example, which helped many first- and second-generation families to enter the ranks of America’s middle class; nor are there references to the decades of violence and discrimination levied against immigrants as they continued to arrive. Such bigotry, it could be argued, led directly to the Chicano movement, but, again, Jesse would never become a separatist and La Historia Chicana was no call to militant action. It was a beautiful history lesson, and with family at the core of great achievement, it was establishing high expectations for the future. As an autobiographical statement, it certainly mirrored the artist’s journey, from a beautiful beginning with his family, on through adversity and loss, and now standing with hope reclaimed through self-determination. When school ended in the spring of 1974, most of La Historia Chicana had been completed. A monumental undertaking, it allowed Jesse to stake an artistic claim in a fairly visible location. Around campus, he’d earned the sobriquet “the mural man” and had more than a few beers bought for him at the SUB while he worked. Still, there was no unveiling ceremony before the students left, and nothing official was planned for when he did complete it. One day, leaving a few small areas unfinished, Jesse packed up his paints and brushes and simply left.

“That painting was a good interpretation of where he was in his life,” said Jesse’s sister Alice Treviño Rodriguez, noting that the mural’s color scheme as much as its content revealed his mood. “It’s all grays and dark colors. Very beautiful, but dark. That was a reflection of his emotions at the time. The images are beautiful, but the colors are dark.” “I started feeling better about my life,” Jesse would say many years later about his time at OLLC, remembering that his depression and anger had been lifting with each passing day at work on the mural. “I wasn’t really pissed off at anyone anymore.”

He still saw blank canvases everywhere he went, like downtown, where the sides of the buildings were huge and empty and called for tremendous ideas in order to fill them. He was beginning to conceive of those ideas. The exact right colors, for instance, were needed to brighten those barren spaces. And while he still remained withdrawn at times, often recusing himself from social situations to focus on his painting, Jesse had essentially come to the end of his black period.

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Chapter 7

“Who’s Going to Buy That?” (1974–1979)

Jesse first met Gloria Martinez, originally from Laredo, when they were both students at OLLC. He thought she was beautiful and admired her intellect. After Jesse earned his bachelor’s degree with a major in art history and Martinez earned her bachelor’s, majoring in English, the two got married and lived on Mistletoe. It didn’t take long before cracks began to show. For one thing, money always seemed to be tight. Jesse’s VA benefits helped with many expenses, and he received disability compensation for his missing hand, but the bills of everyday life needed to be covered, and so, too, did those of his two children living elsewhere. A steady income was needed to survive. Some of his friends and Con Safo colleagues were working hard to balance their jobs with their dedication to art. He could have easily secured a commercial art job around town or even given private lessons. But Jesse had moved beyond any real desire for a career in commercial art, and he didn’t feel

any natural inclination toward teaching art, whether in a school or his studio. The idea just never really appealed to him. Instead, Jesse and Gloria survived financially by teaching Spanish and English, respectively, part-time to high school students. The experience was inspiring for neither, but the bills mostly got paid. More than anything, Jesse just wanted to paint, to make art. He’d proven to himself with Mi Vida and La Historia Chicana that he was capable of achieving great things and on a grand scale. With time in the studio, with concentration, with more effort, he would reproduce the visions that had taken hold of his imagination. It was his desire, his destiny, to use those visions to lift up the West Side—to elevate it out of its notoriety. What was yet to come from him, he knew, would be truly worthy of attention and even money. If everyone close to him could simply understand this goal, or at least not get in his way while

pursuing it, things would be fine. Things would be right, in fact. But outside the studio his impatient and self-centered yearnings often mixed with remnants of anger and depression until it was impossible to separate what he was getting so agitated about in the first place. With Gloria, trivial matters got overblown; small concerns moved from the background to the fore. The cracks deepened. He always spent time with his mother, helping with home repairs and driving her on errands. She cooked him meals. They sat at her kitchen table or on the front porch, talking about marriage, his kids, and his excitement over his future. He could never disappoint her, he thought, as they both looked onto the same street they’d known for twenty years. Dolores’s faith fueled his drive as much as anything else; her devotion had always allowed him, and urged him, to try his best, even if the idea of being an artist—while taking care of a wife, an exwife, and children on a painter’s wages—hardly seemed possible to her. It’s not that Dolores and the rest of the family couldn’t see or understand the extent of Jesse’s talent, much less his passion. That was indisputable. But Jesse often thought, and occasionally complained, that his brothers and sisters didn’t truly understand his ambitions, his motives. They couldn’t feel what his spirit was convincing him was possible. Whenever he showed them one of his new paintings, the ones he felt were of impending importance, they usually replied with

a familiar refrain: “It’s beautiful, but who’s going to buy that?” Dolores’s sons and daughters didn’t squander opportunity, as each pursued the American Dream in their own way. Elvira, for example, continued working for Sol Frank but had also opened a grocery store with her husband; Armando had also opened a grocery store and would soon open his first restaurant; Robert, who was good at math and later drafting, attended SAC after Fox Tech and then was graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a degree in engineering. He then joined the navy as an officer and attended flight school. John Treviño, too, had joined the navy after high school, and he’d served on the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La, which had been anchored at Guantanamo Bay when the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 unfolded. After returning to San Antonio, he attended SAC and OLLC, where the Chicano movement had gained serious traction. John participated in boycotts and walkouts, did some volunteer teaching, organized for local community groups, and became president of the Young Democrats. On October 15, 1969, he was the keynote speaker at the school’s Vietnam Moratorium Rally. About 500 students and community members participated in a candlelight March after the rally. “We were the young Turks,” John Treviño remembered several decades later. “We had come from the neighborhoods, went to college, and thought we could wake up the community.”

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Accepting a scholarship to Stanford Univer­ sity’s graduate school of education, John moved to Palo Alto, California, in 1970 and encouraged Jesse to check out the West Coast, which Jesse did in the summer of 1974. He loved the climate, the scenery, and the energy of the Stanford and Berkeley campuses: both were alive with social, political, and cultural activism, including for Mexican American causes, and both schools offered MFAs in art. Jesse felt tempted to make the move, but word had reached him that the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) was forming a master’s degree program within its art department. “I wanted to be a part of that new department,” said Jesse. “Not only that, I wanted to be connected to our city, our neighborhood. I didn’t want to be away from it. I wanted to be a part of everything that’s happening here. So that kept me here.”

— The MFA degree at UTSA required sixty semester-hours, and since his concentration was in studio art, Jesse was required to finish a lot of paintings. Just like at OLLC, Jesse’s instructors (Leonard Lehrer, Alvin Martin, Kazuya Sakai) played important roles in his research and scholarship as well as his overall development as a painter. But Jesse’s internal drive was more than sufficient, his talents undeniable, and his ambitions burning hotter than ever, so his natural inclination toward independence served him just as well.

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In his work he didn’t linger on the deep history of the Mexican American experience. Modern life was overflowing with inspiration. The political marches continued, as did clashes between militant Chicanos and the police, the Texas Rangers, the Anglo majority, and more moderate Mexican Americans. And yet, as he had begun in earnest to keep his battlefield promise to paint his San Antonio, there was never high drama unfolding on the streets of Jesse Treviño’s West Side paintings. Carrying an inexpensive camera, he walked the West Side, snapping pictures of kids playing, old cars, men and women making their way through the American Dream with determination and quiet dignity. Back in his studio, his work was looking like nothing he’d produced before because he had pivoted to photorealism. Essentially replicating the image from a photograph onto a canvas, photorealism as a painting style was hitting its stride in the 1970s behind the popularity of American painters like Richard Estes. Although the aim is to produce a painting nearly indistinguishable from a photograph, there are artistic adjustments to be addressed by the artist. For example, the human eye can see more details and more colors, including the colors of shadows, than consumer cameras (especially from the 1970s). In order to compensate for the camera’s deficiencies, Jesse often shot his subjects in a series of slightly different angles. Then, using a slide projector, a common tool among photorealist painters, he projected the images directly onto

the canvas, picking different elements from each and selectively editing and adapting the background and foreground to fine-tune the composition. He then put his colorist training to use, properly mixing his own colors by using fewer paints, which produced brighter hues and was crucial for capturing, say, the brilliant blue sky at noon or the sparkle of sun on a pickup truck’s chrome fender. For one of his first photorealist works, Los Camaradas del Barrio (“Friends from the Neighborhood,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 48˝× 36˝), Jesse posed his brothers Jorge and Ernest with a number of neighborhood kids on Monterey Street. Lined up in front of a latemodel car with its hood popped (suggesting at least some of them were engaged in an afternoon of turning wrenches on the engine), the boys’ relaxed postures reflect their close friendships. The colors of their T-shirts are slightly washed out from the afternoon sun; the shadows under the car and beneath the trees are cool and deep. Their lives are good ones, and they are content to keep them that way. It was just the kind of scene he’d envisioned lying on a stretcher in Vietnam, recalling the good old days when the screen doors used to stand open on the front porches all evening, when people trusted one another, and before he realized the world had such massive problems. Jesse’s professors urged him to continue exploring photorealism, though he wasn’t satisfied with at least one aspect of Los Camaradas del Barrio: at three feet by four feet, it was too small.

He knew both Draper and Casas believed that their subject matter—no matter how different the subjects could be—deserved large canvases. And what’s more, like the huge hand-painted billboards from his childhood in both Mexico and San Antonio, he wanted his paintings to get noticed. Size matters, after all. Jesse wanted to dazzle his audiences with the level of detail he could recreate, and the bigger the canvas, the greater the impact. Some paintings took months to complete. He was going for something else, too. These highly detailed paintings demanded to be noticed, not just because they could make the viewer do a double take and ask, “Is that a photograph?” but also because the right viewer might also ask, for example, “Didn’t I go to school with those kids?” Or perhaps they’d remark, “Hey, I know that guy!”—which was a common reaction from many of the first people who saw La Raspa (“Snow Cone,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 48˝), a portrait of a street-side snow cone vendor. He sits in a relaxed, almost tranquil pose, as if enjoying one of his icy treats on a hot summer day instead of selling them. Composed to include his bottles of colorful syrups, La Raspa appears to be a candid moment, although Jesse later said that the man shooed away his customers to pose with his self-pleased expression. Jesse loved it. It was real. “From Draper, I got a lot of sensitivity to the subject matter,” Jesse explained. “I wanted to treat my model like he was very important, like a

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No Te Acabes Kelly Field (“Don’t Close Kelly Field,” 1976). Acrylic on canvas, 50˝× 72˝ . Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

dignitary, like a statesman, a king. For the raspa man or a guy that works at Kelly Field, it was the essence of who they were.” In No Te Acabes Kelly Field (“Don’t Close Kelly Field,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 50˝× 72˝), a man sits in a swivel chair in front of a typewriter, the gray in his hair revealing that he’s old enough to have seen combat but now serves his country and feeds his family with a desk job at Kelly Field Air Force Base. He is doing his duty in an office cubicle, grounded in a world of file-cabinet grays and bulletin-board browns. It’s all quite unassuming, leaving the viewer to wonder at the man’s life, his happiness, his satisfaction with the status quo. He gives nothing away. Kelly Field was not just this one man’s story, but also tens of thousands of stories. The whole military industry had long been a mixed blessing for San Antonio’s Mexican Americans, offering the worst risks of war as well as economic stability, advancement, a path to the middle class. Jesse’s brother Mario, who’d loved being in the Road Griffins, worked at Kelly Field. Even when Jesse was in a hospital bed, his chances for walking again uncertain, Mario had volunteered twice as a civilian for airplane salvage missions inside South Vietnam. In Jesse’s words, Mario “started at the bottom and worked his way up. He went from blue collar to white collar.” Some artists would have stayed at Kelly Field and painted the guy in the next cubicle, and then the next guy. Some might have painted the same guy’s portrait over and over again, finding nuances from day to day. For Jesse, to see one of

his paintings was to know the whole story he intended to tell. “I kind of thought that artists . . . you get something and you just paint the hell out of it. You do 100 paintings on one subject, but they’re all different. . . . I don’t think so,” Jesse said. “I did one portrait. And I said, ‘That portrait says it all.’ I don’t want to paint the same thing over again.” Not limiting himself to people, he also chronicled the background material—the bakeries, taverns, flower shops, barbershops, automobiles, and pickup trucks. These were the familiar and otherwise invisible set pieces of West Side neighborhoods, but now they were on canvas in such vivid detail. The colorful hand-painted signage and crisp trim on the façade of Liria’s (1977, acrylic on canvas, 80˝× 54˝) and the deep, cooling shadows on the swinging screen doors of La Panadería (“The Bakery,” 1977, acrylic on canvas, 78˝× 54˝) are meticulously recreated in sharp focus. “And when I paint a building, for example, I’m not painting just a building. I’m painting a portrait, just like a portrait of a person, with a lot of faces,” Jesse told an interviewer in 2004. Returning to the subject many years after that, he elaborated, “[The buildings] had a life of their own. They were part of the landscape of the West Side, almost like landmarks, been around for generations. Most of them are gone now.” It wasn’t uncommon for a familiar face to appear in the work. Mis Hermanos (“My Brothers,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 70˝× 48˝) includes Jesse and his brothers (except Pete and John)

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Liria’s (1977). Acrylic on canvas, 80˝× 54˝. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

La Cita’s (1977). Acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 48˝. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

at a family gathering, arranged (perhaps quite symbolically) before a large tree with many branches. There is an almost dreamlike quality to the brushwork, compelling deeper gazes into the colored fabric of the shirts, the green leafy foliage, the Easter-egg-blue sky. It has been noted by various art critics, colleagues, and writers that Jesse’s paintings from this time period drifted into the realm of romanticism, in which his images appeal to viewers’ sentimentality and sense of nostalgia. It’s a charge that Jesse has never shown any inclination to dispute. He knew his first viewers—family, friends, Westsiders—would identify with the portraits. In fact, he was counting on their enthusiasm for seeing the people and places of their own neighborhoods to provoke strong, positive, warm emotions. Memories and Jesse’s paintings took viewers to a similar place, a place that they—and he—wanted to get back to. Most importantly, these paintings were windows into Jesse’s world, and, in this way, he was keeping his promise. “After Vietnam, who would have thought that something wonderful would happen to me? The awakening of all the beautiful things that were there ready for me to paint. I was glorifying all the people and places in my community,” Jesse said. “All my time as a kid absorbing the things in my community that were eventually going to be a big part of my painting—there is so much there. I could work the rest of my life and never do it all.”

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In 1976, Roberta Smith traveled to Texas to survey the state for Art in America magazine. Smith, who would later be an art critic for the New York Times, spent nearly two weeks being impressed with Texas’ immense size, engaging landscapes, and the warm, optimistic spirit of its artists. Eventually, within her article titled “Twelve Days of Texas,” she praises Mel Casas and El Paso sculptor Luis Jimenez for being both accomplished and influential Chicano artists, although it’s unclear if she knew of their existence before her arrival. One thing is certain: it took outside intervention for her to notice Jesse. Santos Martinez had left Con Safo, San Antonio, and Texas in 1973 to pursue an MFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After returning to Texas, he became a curator at Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum in 1976. When Smith arrived at the museum to gather material for her Art in America article, Martinez urged her to travel to San Antonio to meet various artists, especially those of Con Safo. “She was very cold to the idea,” Martinez recalled. “I think her perception was, if you’re part of a minority art group, your art doesn’t merit.” Smith eventually relented and Martinez took her to meet several former Con Safo artists, including Roberto Rios and Cesar Martinez, who both ended up receiving brief, bland mentions in the article. Smith and Martinez also visited Jesse at home, where Smith viewed Mi Vida and several current works. Jesse was charming, engaging, and poised during the brief but significant

meeting; he clearly made a good impression on Smith, who wrote, “I was particularly moved by a large mural executed on a wall in Treviño’s home concerning his experiences in Vietnam”; and “While [neither Treviño nor Martinez are] yet as formally distinctive as either Casas or Jimenez (or as old, either), their work is extremely professional.” A color photo of Mi Vida ran with the story, making Jesse’s Art in America appearance especially noteworthy. It was also meaningful because it praised his merit as an artist without mentioning his prosthetic, which writers had concentrated on in the recent past and which would remain de rigueur subject matter in the decades of stories to come. To be fair, Jesse’s war experience and rehabilitation was a good story, and he knew it could drive interest in his work. But while he would not shy away from the subject—in fact, he would become quite adept at leveraging any personal attention to his professional advantage—Jesse always preferred the spotlight to linger on his art, not his hook. Smith’s article was also a coup for other members of Con Safo, even if the group no longer officially existed. But Martinez wasn’t done promoting his former colleagues. He was on the verge of helping to change the paradigm of Chicano artists, including his friend Jesse, throughout Texas.

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Martinez had actually met Jesse several years prior to their days in Con Safo. Shortly after Jesse left the hospital, Martinez’s father read about the wounded artist’s return from Vietnam. Recognizing both passion and considerable artistic talent in his own son, he took Santos to visit the Treviño home. “My father told his mother that I liked to do art,” recalled Martinez, who had brought several sketches and other works along that afternoon. “He still had his right arm. He was limping. We talked. He showed me some of his work from New York.” Jesse wasn’t really in the mood that day to critique someone else’s work when his own career lay in ruins, but he told Martinez that he had real talent. Their time together was brief and somewhat awkward. They didn’t immediately become friends, but Jesse’s encouragement boosted Martinez’s confidence. After Jefferson High School, Martinez attended Trinity University, a local, private Presbyterian college, on a scholarship and majored in studio art. When the two met again at Con Safo meetings in early 1972, Martinez had become skilled as a realist painter and was pretty dedicated to chicanismo ideology. “For me, it all had to do with expressing a cultural identity through art,” Martinez said. “Art was political; some was overt, other not as overt. It was used as an instrument for social change. Con Safo was concerned about the ethics of art more than the aesthetic. We also wanted to let the art speak for itself, but new or radical art is undervalued and underappreciated at first.”

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It’s also underrepresented in the places that value fine art the most. In those early Con Safo years, San Antonio’s museum and gallery community—overwhelmingly controlled with Anglo money and Anglo business connections—wasn’t much interested in ideological art, especially when it dealt with the Mexican American experience. “In San Antonio there was a lot of institutional racism. There were lots of barriers put up,” said Martinez. “Even when some Mexican Americans were allowed into galleries, they had to do Western art and landscapes. That sort of thing.” Possibly the most prominent Mexican American painter in San Antonio was, until his death in 1973, Porfirio Salinas, whose Texas landscapes had caught the eye of Lyndon Johnson’s family. They were avid collectors of his colorful, evocative paintings, almost always bursting with bluebonnets and other wildflowers, which bolstered Salinas’s popularity with collectors and tourists but kept interest low in more conceptual art pieces. If not for Galería de la Raza and a handful of galleries dedicated to Mexican American and Chicano art, the city would be left to view public murals as the only works of young artists. It was mostly that way in Houston, too, Martinez quickly surmised after arriving in 1976 and getting to know some of the local artists. Joe Bastida Rodriguez, an artist who grew up there, remembered feeling that museums and galleries were pretty much out of his reach, which made getting publicity virtually impos-

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Jesse Treviño at Galería de la Raza, San Antonio, ca. 1977; he exhibited here in the late 1970s. Artist’s archive.

sible. “Before the mid-1970s, Chicanos were simply non-contenders to get into galleries here. So having one of our shows reviewed [by critics] —whenever we could find a spot to show anything—was unheard of,” he said. Frustrated with the lack of professional venues willing to offer exhibit space, Rodriguez had decided it was up to the artists to make their

own opportunities. But there seemed to be little enthusiasm—just as Mel Casas had discovered —by the artists to undertake the preliminary legwork. “No one else would do the work. Most of the artists I dealt with, well, I don’t want to say they felt that they had better things to do with their time, but that part of your brain that deals with things in a linear fashion—like organizing an art show—they just didn’t understand the creative mind as also having that kind of empowerment.” Up to Rodriguez, he organized an exhibition of works by Mexican American artists that traveled to Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, and Austin. Titled “Arte Tejano,” it received mentions in various local media while Art in America ran a half-page review. The show proved to be sort of an icebreaker between the artists, the public, and the media and was something of a prelude to the show Martinez intended to assemble at Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum. Having become friends, Rodriguez and Martinez traded ideas and approaches for curating and organizing exhibitions. At least in some ways they benefited from the fact that things were changing in Houston faster than in San Antonio. Part of that had to do with Jim Harithas, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum, who had green-lighted one-man shows of Mel Casas and Luis Jimenez in the past. Harithas supported Martinez’s efforts, even encouraging him to be one of the show’s exhibitors. Martinez chose Rodriguez as one of thirteen artists to show their works; eight oth-

ers, including Jesse, Casas, and Cesar Martinez, were former Con Safo members. Finally, on Saturday, August 20, 1977, Houston’s Contemporary Art Museum opened its doors to welcome visitors to a groundbreaking exhibition of Chicano artists entitled “Dále Gas.” Martinez selected the barrio phrase because of its literal meaning, “Give it gas,” as well as for its more colloquial use, the imperative and insistent “Let’s get on with it.” Martinez hired a local conjunto band for opening night (“probably the first time a conjunto band played in a major museum,” he said), and on Sunday he brought in Esteban “Steve” Jordan, a conjunto instrumentalist with the sobriquet “the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion.” Jordan’s command of the instrument, the psychedelic influences he brought to his playing, and the electronic innovation he introduced to his live shows were already legendary. “Steve would play the accordion, recording it in real time and then play the loop. Then he’d walk around, look at the art while the recording was playing, and then he’d come back to the stage and continue playing. He was a great performer,” Martinez remembered. “The energy in the building—they really transformed the space,” Rodriguez recalled. “I remember Steve’s son was playing drums, the people were enjoying the art, and really enjoying the music. It was exciting; it was a festive atmosphere. Not boring museum stuff.” The weekend was high energy, the attendance robust, and the exhibit’s title (and its subtitle,

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“The Continued Acceleration of Chicano Art”) became a correcting of the record that Chicano art was not only here, it was a reason for museum curators and gallery owners to take notice. For many of the artists, including Jesse, who exhibited several paintings, including La Fe, Los Camaradas del Barrio, The Gran Chile, and La Raspa, this would be an unforgettable, transformative point in time. Barriers were crumbling, and a generation of outsiders had finally been welcomed inside. “I think that’s what kept us together,” Jesse said of his Con Safo colleagues and the importance of their continuing their work after the group dissolved. They may not have been a blue ribbon panel of administrators and debate society members, but they were serious artists, producing serious work that was rarely being acknowledged. “When you’re not accepted, you try harder. They worked hard. We all did.” Although the arts writer for the Houston Chronicle, Charlotte Moser, called “Dále Gas” the “first large museum show of Chicano art in Texas,” she was clearly underwhelmed with the results. Individual artists were called out for producing works that she felt were nothing above “tourist art,” for taking “less accomplished” directions, and for having a career trajectory that “doesn’t reflect any artistic growth.” While pointing out how varied the Chicano arts community was becoming and how its individual artists were following suit with their works, Moser wrote: “Jesse Trevino, also from San Antonio, changed from a misinterpretation of the Pop

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Art Campbell Soup idea to a Chicano version of Richard Estes’ super realistic depiction of urban America. Though Trevino paints scenes photographed in the barrio, his ideas were not formed there.” As the aphorism goes, any press is good press. And as inscrutable as Moser’s reference is to, one presumes, The Gran Chile (How exactly does an artist misinterpret an idea?), the write-up certainly helped raise Jesse’s profile. So, too, did the photograph of Los Camaradas del Barrio, published alongside one of Casas’s Humanscapes in the Chronicle. Mimi Crossley of the Houston Post had a more favorable view of the show and a more sympathetic understanding of its relevancy, writing that the works represented “vital, colorful art that comes on strong, with the impatience of a held-up parade.” Crossley then singled out Jesse’s pieces, calling them “the heart of the show” and referring to his “purist method” as “so perfected.” The show, which ran for nearly two months, proved to be significant for Jesse for another reason. One of his paintings, El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora (“The Car on Zarzamora Street,” 1976, acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 52˝), was a photorealist depiction of a blue 1941 Chevrolet Fleetline Sports Touring Sedan, parked on the street, showing off all its sporty-smooth curves. Like his other portraits, it was skillfully produced but had typically provoked the same, familiar refrain from those who saw it: “Who’s going to buy that?”

El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora (“The Car on Zarzamora Street,” 1976). Acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 52˝. Collection of Linda and Fred Hofheinz; Kirk Weddle Photography.

The answer finally came. It was Fred Hofheinz, the recent mayor of Houston, who attended the show and quite admired El Carro. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off it and kept talking about it. “A friend who heard my comments waited until the end of the show and bought it for me as a gift,” Hofheinz said. “The purpose of the gift was to adorn my new office, which I was just decorating. The painting has followed me since then to about four different offices, always prominently displayed.” It was important validation for Jesse. He had set out to capture his neighborhood, to show how history had shaped its people, to show how familiar it all felt to so many people. Someone else—not even from San Antonio—had recognized value in his work and was willing to pay for that value to the tune of $2,000. (Today, that price would be around $8,300.) “Along with the show, that sale did a lot for me,” Jesse said. “It opened the door for me. It boosted my credentials.” He also felt sure there was a significant role for him to play—not only in capturing the beautiful character of the West Side, but in elevating it to be shown in museums. It felt something like destiny. “Everything changed after that.”

— Jesse and Gloria divorced a short time later. For him, a familiar pattern had run its course: “I wanted to be an artist. I thought I could paint more, and my whole house was my studio. I was

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a hundred percent working on school and my art. I was totally dedicated and committed.” And why wouldn’t he choose art? In his studio, during those moments of creation, the rest of the world fell away. He was all alone with the spirit. All that mattered was the work. No one could hurt him when he was in his studio. Of course, he felt the same emotions any other man feels when his marriage doesn’t work out, but he knew he was in a period of rebirth, and he could only put his faith in himself. Jesse received his MFA from UTSA in 1978, writing a thesis entitled “Art and the Family,” and he kept painting while contemplating his next move. He always had ideas for more works. Greater works. They were constantly being generated—sometimes they passed through his mind; other times they’d stick around, unable to be shaken. He still had that habit from childhood of reimagining walls of the city as blank canvases— and downtown he’d found a hell of a great wall. The Santa Rosa Hospital, on Santa Rosa Street, had nine stories of absolute nothing facing an empty, neglected plaza. What a magnificent canvas, he thought every time he saw it. And even if he had no idea what he’d put up there, he was sure he could produce a piece of art worthy of uplifting the entire neighborhood. He was so convinced of his mission that he consulted a local company dealing in mosaics, which advised him that what he had in mind would cost up to $350,000.

After putting together a formal proposal, including a picture of the wall, examples of his previous work, and a construction budget, Jesse began calling on city council members. He would too often look down as he gave his presentation, nervously running the fingers of his left hand around his prosthetic while never quite answering the question “What will it look like?” No doubt, he examined every bit of that hook’s surface while his mouth tried catching up with his thoughts. Henry Cisneros was a member of the city council at the time, and even though he was more focused on economics and job development, he respected the roll that the arts played in the city’s culture. He listened to the presentation and remembered that Jesse was engaging and driven, conveying a sense of urgency—that

this had to be done for the people of San Antonio. “Jesse was, you know, he had that nervous energy. Demanding. Exigente. It’s what drives him. He could be very adamant about his vision of what needed to be done.” Henry’s brother, George, said, “Jesse was always emotional, always passionate, almost always getting to the point of crying. He was very adamant about his vision of what needed to be done. He made sure you were part of a relationship between you and him, so how can you refuse? It was very good; it was admirable.” Well, the council members didn’t get on board for that project. Being private property, it wasn’t even within their jurisdiction to decide. Jesse figured it was probably a long shot to begin with. But he didn’t feel like he was done with that wall.

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Chapter 8

Let’s Get on with It (1979–1989)

Had someone told Jesse that before another ten years of his life passed, not only would there be something called the San Antonio Museum of Art, but also that his art would be part of its grand opening exhibition—he probably would have believed it. After the Houston show, interest in Chicano artists kept growing and he was more focused than ever on finding traction in San Antonio, however that might happen. Dále gas, he thought to himself about his career. Let’s get on with it. Had Jesse been told that before the 1980s came to a close he’d be shaking the hands of world leaders and presenting them with his art— well, he’d probably have believed that, too. And he might not have doubted that a documentary about his life was just a few years from being shown on television. Why should he have doubted any of it? That’s the kind of attention he’d been working so hard to achieve since he was a child. His attitude

about his success had become: It’s about time. It was 1979; he was thirty-two years old and almost irritated that proper recognition had taken so long. Let’s get on with it, indeed. What Jesse probably wouldn’t have believed at the time was that—even as he began bringing regular attention to San Antonio as an influential artist and an important cultural chronicler of the West Side—he would choose to leave the city altogether. Ambitious projects, public recognition, and money fueled Jesse’s career throughout the 1980s. He wouldn’t exactly lead a rock star’s life, nor were there to be excesses on proportion with those swashbuckling corporate raiders of Wall Street, but San Antonio was still a small enough place where a painter could achieve a certain level of notoriety, which is exactly what happened with Jesse; photos from this time show a confident man ready to embrace anything coming his way: his long hair now

trimmed up to his collar, a close-cropped beard lending a bit of gravitas to his appearance, his eyes cool but restless to get things going. He painted, often eight or more hours a day in the studio, preferring afternoons and late nights, and he showed his work as often as possible, wherever the opportunity took him. Two years earlier, an artists’ collaborative in Washington, DC, had mounted an ambitious exhibit, “Ancient Roots/New Visions,” in order to make a “significant statement of American Art and of Hispanic American artists of the US today representing both conflict and resolution between Hispanic traditions and contemporary art forms in the US.” Mel Casas, Cesar Martinez, and other artists from Con Safo had been invited along with other painters and sculptors from Texas and the rest of the country to submit works for the national tour; Jesse was not among them. The show stopped at museums in Tucson, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, before arriving on May 1, 1979, at the Witte Museum in San Antonio. But the show opened with a concurrent exhibit put on by the San Antonio Museum Association, “New Visions in Texas: Recent Works by Hispanic Artists in Texas,” which included two of Jesse’s paintings, La Panadería and Los Santos de San Antonio (“The Saints of San Antonio,” 1979, acrylic on canvas, 84˝x 56˝). The latter is a technically impressive demonstration of his photorealist skills: a view into a downtown drugstore window where religious

statues and other knickknacks are lined up as if to form an altar. With San Antonio’s skyline reflected in the glass, the effect is a crowd of holy icons congregating on the street, an implicit message of how Mexican Americans’ predominantly Catholic culture has long been woven into the fabric of the city. Despite his bitterness at having not been selected for the main exhibit, Jesse’s presence in this show was something of a homecoming. The Witte held the memory of his first artistic achievement when he was in first grade, and he told that story all evening at the opening reception. The show augured good things to come, too, even if his name was spelled “Jessy” in the official program. Still, most of his recognition continued coming from outside of San Antonio. Some of his paintings traveled to Mission, 245 miles away on the Mexican border, for an exhibition at the Xochil Art Center, curated by Santos Martinez, while other works went to the Galveston Arts Center, nearly a four-hour drive to the Texas coast. Mis Hermanos took second prize at the Amarillo Competition, which was held about as far north as Texas gets before Oklahoma appears on the horizon. Texas A&M University in College Station gave him his first true solo exhibition. Such one-person shows are meaningful because they allow a single artist to soak in all the attention in the room, which is what Jesse always preferred. In this case, though, he would have preferred “The Works of Jesse Treviño,” as

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the show was called, to be held closer than 170 miles from home. On occasion, he drummed up local interest by opening his Mistletoe studio for exhibitions and sales and the occasional interview. It’s important to realize that he wasn’t the only painter with a cultural focus on local neighborhoods and people, but his backstory certainly added a little more color to the stories as the press began singling him out more often. No doubt, a lot of recognition came about through his own efforts. He had hustled for a payday before and possessed a pull, an energetic way of explaining the importance of his paintings—how a certain building represented so much to the people of the West Side, how one of his portraits would be a sure bet for an investment because of the growth of Mexican American art, how important a painting was because it was a “Treviño.” Interest grew. On occasion, there was a sale.

— By 1979 the Chicano political and social movement throughout San Antonio and most of the Southwest had been undergoing an extended cooling period, although, as David Montejano writes in Quixote’s Soldiers, this was only after key victories: “One significant measure of local success is clear. After all ‘the fury,’ the Chicano movement can be said to have brought down the paternalistic political order to post-World War II San Antonio. In its stead, it ushered in a more representative political system that included input from working-class communities.”

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Although significant steps had been taken by Mexican Americans to achieve more representation in local government (in just two years the city would elect Henry Cisneros as its first mayor of Mexican descent since 1842), civic progress was slow in coming to minority neighborhoods, and much of the West Side remained deeply impoverished. So there was really no end of opportunity for activism on the part of public and semipublic personalities, including those who held the belief that people of color and people of limited income were still being treated as second-class citizens. Yet, deeming it wise for his career to continue to veer away from perceptions of conflict, Jesse most often used public media opportunities to push his art and to gain a wider audience. He wanted to be accepted as a painter for all of San Antonio. Which is not to say that, occasionally, a drop of annoyance concerning San Antonio’s arts culture didn’t get mixed into the narrative, like when he complained to SA magazine, “It is nearly impossible to make a living by selling your paintings here.” And even while emphasizing that he made the kind of art that larger audiences should embrace, he also made it clear that there were underpinnings of frustration within their compositions. “I’ve always wanted to paint the positive. Now I paint places people don’t stop to look at. I make them stop and see it with a painting. For what little bit our people have, that is important.”

It was to Jesse’s great advantage that he felt at ease in front of reporters. Eager to speak about his art and generous with his time, he’d first walk them through his Mistletoe house, showing off the craftsmanship and passion he’d put into it. Then to his studio, where he pointed out the finer points of his work, discussed the West Side’s cultural significance, and spoke about what it meant to be a Mexican American artist fighting for recognition. The exposure helped sell paintings, and his confidence grew along with their asking prices. He set a significant value to each piece, often between $3,500 and $10,000, and then stuck to it. “Early on, he put high value to his paintings. Maybe that was because he was so intent on developing his career as much as a lot of better known artists of that time,” said Elaine DagenBela, who opened the DagenBela Gallery in downtown San Antonio with her husband, Rick Bela, in 1978. DagenBela (which was her married name) was soon joined by friend and artist Lisa Ortiz in the partnership, and they set about attracting new talent, especially Hispanic artists, to promote at their two-floor, 3,200-square-foot space. DagenBela hadn’t heard of Jesse before moving to San Antonio from Pennsylvania but was familiar with his work by the time they met, sometime around the turn of the decade. “I think it was a social event,” she recalled, adding that it didn’t take much convincing to get Jesse on board. “It was pretty much, ‘We have a gallery.

You’re a great artist. Let’s talk.’ From that, we just started working together.” In addition to hanging some of his art in the gallery, DagenBela and her husband purchased La Raspa for $10,000. “It was a very conscious decision. We saw the incredible talent Jesse had. We believed in him, and we thought it was a good investment,” DagenBela said. When she began introducing Jesse to others in the arts community, she saw how effective he was as a self-promoter. “Of course, Jesse was so intense and passionate about what he was doing and expressing and how he was helping the community. You couldn’t work with him and not feel that same drive and passion. The flip side of that is that he was a very challenging artist to work with much of the time. Over the years, we’ve had our little ups and downs.” Always close to the core of those “ups and downs” were the financial arrangements, especially the poster money. The DagenBela Gallery’s upstairs design facilities could create a photo image of a painting, add other design elements, and then send it out to be printed into posters. Costing a fraction of the painting’s market value, posters are an important revenue source for both galleries and artists; DagenBela’s standard commission for designing and printing was 40 percent of each sale. Posters were nothing new to Jesse. After all, he’d produced contest-winning posters in high school that earned money for him and his family. But as far as he was concerned, the only moneymaking aspect of a poster was its image, and his

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La Raspa (“Snow Cone,” 1976). Acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 48˝. Courtesy of Rick J. Bela and Elaine DagenBela.

images were no ordinary artwork. He’d already poured months of work into each canvas—that was the hard part—and since his paintings were clearly going up in value, his cut of the sales should reflect it. Jesse could live with giving DagenBela 10 percent. “The biggest challenge was that he did not see other people being of value in the development of his career,” said DagenBela, an assessment that would be echoed by others who worked directly with Jesse throughout his career. “We were doing all the legwork to get it to market. Jesse didn’t see that. He didn’t want to really share financially.” But Jesse’s artwork did make money, and so despite continued disagreements, numerous limited-edition posters were made of his popular paintings for many years. DagenBela would also become instrumental in boosting Jesse’s fame through other avenues.

— As Jesse’s reputation grew, he felt it important to surround and associate himself with others who were admired and respected, like when he was a part of Con Safo. One of those people was Armando Sanchez. Though never a member of Con Safo, Sanchez had worked professionally as an illustrator since the early 1970s. “I was an illustrator and very interested in making money in design. I did paint some Chicano stuff. I marched. But that’s about as far as I went into that," Sanchez said. “I was mostly into the concept of art rather than the political movements

of the time. Me and my brother had a sign company named Super Graphics. I had to be careful for the customers.” In addition to illustrating, Sanchez was an accomplished and respected fine arts painter, and in the mid-1970s he and Jesse began to regularly run into each other around town, at various gallery openings, and at social gatherings. They became friendly—each respected the other’s talents and accomplishments—although when they got together, they wouldn’t talk too much about art. “We’d look at each other’s paintings, sure. About the concept of art . . . we didn’t get too much into that,” recalled Sanchez. Instead, “We’d get together, smoke a joint, drink a beer, and talk about women. It was that time of life.” Things never had to get too heavy; conversations didn’t need to erupt into philosophical salvos. Sometimes it was enough to just be with another guy, knowing he, too, was battling to make a career. Sanchez knew a lot of artists, which is one reason why he also fell in quickly with Jorge Cortez, son of a restaurateur and a burgeoning art enthusiast. In fact, to know Jorge Cortez is to know a little bit of the dreams of his father, Pete Cortez, who bought his first downtown restaurant, a three-table café, in 1941. He then opened Mi Tierra, which has achieved iconic status over the decades for its festive atmosphere and roving mariachi performers—the idea was to recreate the look and feel of a family restaurant found in Mexico. Pete Cortez eventually bought a downtown city block, once home to a thriving farmers

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market, in order to preserve the buildings and the cultural history of the area. “My father’s mission with Mi Tierra was cultural,” Jorge Cortez explained, almost thirty years after his father’s passing in 1984. “Preserving this part of town. The importance of the arts. My journey started there, with my father’s dreams. That’s where the arts came in more, in my spirit. I start meeting one artist, another artist, and I start identifying with kindred spirits.” “Jorge understands the arts. If it weren’t for him, there wouldn’t be much of the arts around Market Square,” Sanchez said. “He understands how important they are for the culture, for San Antonio.” That meant a dedication to honoring the pillars of cultural heritage: food, music, art, family. Jorge Cortez would commission various works for the restaurant and himself, and Sanchez essentially became Mi Tierra’s house artist (the restaurant’s logo is Sanchez’s portrait of Emiliano Zapata) while also introducing Cortez to other painters. “Then we wanted to do a show,” Cortez said. “I knew about Jesse Treviño before we ever met. And as a business person, I saw that it would be an opportune time to invite him to this art show.” Sanchez made the introductions, and, as Cortez put it, “We became very good friends” “Friends” is a bit of an understatement. Over the years, the two would grow very close, like brothers. But also, like many of Jesse’s friends, Cortez became Jesse’s patron, buying his art on occasion while also lending the type of financial

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and behind-the-scenes support that allowed Jesse to keep up with his work and also feel celebrated. If there was an out-of-town exhibition of Jesse’s work, for example, it wasn’t unusual for Cortez to load up a bus (or two) with musicians, cooks, and friends and travel to the venue, turning the gallery or museum into a fiesta. On a walk one night after dinner at Mi Tierra, they stopped about a block away, at a relatively desolate piece of land fronting the Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital. In the middle of downtown, this plot of weeds and concrete appeared to just be dying. Cortez told Jesse of his dream to turn it into a thriving, vibrant plaza, like those he’d seen in Mexico, where families traditionally gathered. There could be music and art festivals; it would be part of a larger cultural zone that included the Mercado and Cortez’s properties. When Cortez finished explaining his dream to bring people together in celebration, Jesse pointed to the front wall of the hospital, more than nine stories tall, and explained that putting a piece of art there would, in fact, draw people together. “It could change the very character of this neighborhood,” Jesse told him. These were halcyon days for Jesse. When he was around such like-minded people, his sense of creation soared; it also helped stoke his spirit of competition, though that was mainly reserved for the other artists. His ability to change the neighborhood through art was beginning to feel a little more like a reality, especially with the encouragement of others.

“There was a lot of camaraderie in those days,” recalled Tom Wright, a photographer who had by the mid-1970s toured with some of the biggest acts in rock and roll, including The Who, the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and the Faces, and the Eagles. Taking a break from his years on the road, Wright found himself in San Antonio, where he quickly fell in with the local art scenes, especially the one blowing up on the West Side. Although he preferred working in black-andwhite, the colors of San Antonio—via the artistic traditions of Mexico—were actually affecting his own aesthetics. He came to admire the boldness, the bravura of Mexican American art. Plus, the place was filled with the kind of magnetic personalities he’d encountered in the music world, including Cortez and Sanchez. “Jorge was the conduit to the local artist and local characters,” Wright said. “His father, Pete, introduced us, probably my second day at Market Square. He invited me to come down there and give him some feedback on some old buildings he’d purchased. I was working on a restoration project of the Southwest School of Art, on the river. Mr. Cortez was intrigued by what I was doing. He asked Jorge to show me around and take care of me. Jorge told me that I was the first gringo that he had talked to, other than a cop or a teacher.” Cortez introduced Wright to many artists, including Sanchez and Jesse; Wright characterized Sanchez and Jesse and “rivals.” “Armando was a very serious painter. And he had the movie star looks. Women would drop their . . . luggage . . .

when he came into the room. And Jesse’s story sounds like it’s right out of Greek mythology. He’s a fascinating guy and hero. Not just a war hero, but an artistic hero,” Wright said. He explained how these could be high-energy days of simply being a creative crew, moving throughout the city, high on their own minor celebrity status and sense of self-importance. And it was a time in society when they and the many women they encountered were constantly turned on because the spirit of the hippie era remained strong in their artistic circles. There was the promise of shaping the decade ahead of them with their machismo spirit. Collectively, they were a force to be reckoned with, although with Jesse and Sanchez, there could occasionally be the friction of alpha males rubbing up against one another. In Wright’s 2007 memoir, Roadwork: Rock & Roll Turned Inside Out, he wrote: “Jesse was another artist friend of [Jorge Cortez’s]. The two artists couldn’t be more different. Jesse does one or two paintings a year, usually sold before they’re even done, and he gets thousands of dollars for them. Armando, on the other hand, works like a man possessed for a couple of weeks, and then does nothing for the next two. Armando is spontaneous, reckless, exciting. Jesse’s thought-out and meticulous.” Later Wright recalled, “They were both in the same community, so if someone wrote a story in the paper or a magazine about Jesse, the others, like Armando, would be huffing and puffing about it. But they loved each other’s works. And they really were good friends.”

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At some point, Wright, who began teaching photography at Southwest, was given the nickname “the gringo” by Cortez because, in Wright’s words, “I was the only white guy in the group most of the time. I never took it as anything negative.” (Wright’s nickname for Jesse: “Captain Hook.”) By everyone’s account, the playful nicknames were simple acknowledgments of camaraderie based on mutual respect. “The gringo—this guy was flying high in the sky, and Armando was crazy,” Cortez recalled, clearly with fondness of the time. “When we all got together with Jesse, it was a promising feeling, lots of solidarity to the artistic visions of the group.” “One of the things about the gringo is that he’s a true artist,” said Jesse of his photographer pal. “And he recognized a lot of the talent of Mexican American artists.” And they weren’t fooling themselves: they knew there were other talented painters all around them. But they also recognized that it wasn’t so often that the stars aligned as they had for each of them—critical respect, public recognition, financial success, and the artist’s own sense of achievement. Let’s get on with it.

— In 1980, Jesse was approached to create an official poster for Fiesta San Antonio, an annual ten-day festival commemorating the battles that led to Texas’ independence from Mexico. Generations of San Antonio families, includ-

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ing the Treviños, have attended Fiesta’s parades, carnivals, and other events while also welcoming tens of thousands of visitors to their city. In terms of exposure, publicity, and economic impact, Fiesta is San Antonio’s Super Bowl. By aligning himself so closely with the city’s image, Jesse knew his poster was the opportunity to have more sets of eyes on his work than ever before. Even if the Fiesta crowds weren’t going to be buying his fine art, they could still be ambassadors of the Jesse Treviño name by purchasing his posters as keepsakes to carry back home, wherever that might be. The commission was $10,000, and in December 1980 the finished piece was unveiled to the press: a portrait of a young woman in a traditional Mexican floral-print dress, in mid-dance, with an expression on her face overflowing with the excitement of the moment. It was a definitive statement that Fiesta belonged to the city’s Mexican Americans as much as it belonged to the Anglos, who controlled most aspects of the festival. Although Fiesta has taken place since the late 1890s, there had never been an official Fiesta poster before Jesse created one, and there’s never been a Fiesta held since without one. The thrill of wading into such uncharted waters and being the first to break barriers was intoxicating, and he kept seeking opportunities for art that never existed before. One of the biggest opportunities was about to take place.

—

On March 1, 1981, the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) opened its doors on the renovated grounds of the former Lone Star Brewing Company. The $7.2 million undertaking included more than a decade of planning and financing to renovate the seventy-plus-year-old buildings. Located on the river, the 2.5-acre complex of buildings included eight galleries housed in two multistory towers, connected by a glass walkway. The artworks for its permanent collection were amassed from the holdings of the Witte Museum. It was being reported as the largest art museum in Texas. Kevin Consey, a gallery director and teacher at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, was recruited to be SAMA’s first director. “The first fifteen, sixteen months of my tenure were preoccupied with bricks and mortar matters, the design and construction of the museum,” he said. “When it came time to plan the opening show, I was interested in creating exhibitions of interest to a broader community—Texas and beyond. The concept for the [opening exhibit], though, was initiated by Sally Booth-Meredith and Alvin Martin. It was my decision to approve the exhibition.” Boothe-Meredith worked for the Witte and was already familiar with Jesse’s art, and Martin had been one of his professors at UTSA; their selection as curators of the show proved as fortuitous for Jesse as their subsequent choice of theme: Realism. Ultimately, some of the leading realist artists of the time, like Richard Estes,

Chuck Close, and Andrew Wyeth, agreed to lend paintings for the exhibition. After Martin visited Jesse’s studio, he told him his work was good enough to be included in the show, too. It was a major accomplishment for Jesse to be invited to exhibit, one that would certainly raise his profile again, and yet even before SAMA’s doors opened, the opportunity arose for even greater exposure, an opportunity tailor-made just for Jesse. The San Antonio Express-News wanted to commemorate the grand opening; Bill Minutaglio, who was the lively arts editor at the time, said he and others on the staff had long recognized the “extraordinary energy and art coming out of the east and west sides of San Antonio,” and that, when it came time to work with someone on the project, Jesse was considered “the ideal artist” for the job. “What I loved about Jesse was that his work was ‘of the people’ and it was ‘of the streets.’ He saw the deep magical realism that was in the city,” said Minutaglio. “Not to mention the pure, simple fact that his work was stylistically stunning—it was ‘of San Antonio.’” Jesse loved the idea. It would be art delivered to subscribers around the city and available to anyone else with fifty cents. He didn’t want it to be commercial art, not like a poster; he intended it to be fine art for the people who could never afford to own museum-quality paintings, especially his. He worked directly with the newspaper’s pressmen in the basement of the ExpressNews, a noisy, cavernous space filled with huge, rolling printing presses.

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“I have vivid memories of him talking to the ink-stained press operators—these were the oldtime guys who wore folded newspaper hats— talking about colors and inks. Industry meets art. A pretty cool scene,” said Minutaglio. The final image is a slightly skewed perspective from across the street of the new museum, looking up at its limestone towers and semicircular arched windows. There are no people, no vehicles—just the everyday point of view that so many passers-by became familiar with when the compound of buildings was a brewery, dating back to 1884. A swath of blue sky across the top of the painting indicates the long, silent passage of time; at the bottom, a peek at the sienna-colored striped awning above the museum’s front door suggests a renewal of life, like wildflowers popping up in spring. On opening day, the full-page artwork plus a front-page story on Jesse was delivered all over the city—200,000 copies. Later that day, Congressman Henry González formally opened SAMA and invited the public inside, where they found stacks of the Express-News free for the taking, guaranteeing that no artist’s work was viewed more often than Jesse Treviño’s. Even though the museum sold its own commemorative posters for the show’s opening, it was Jesse’s newspaper art that found its way back to the most homes that day. Titled “Real, Really Real, Super Real: Directions in Contemporary American Realism,” the show proved to be a popular and critical success. Jesse felt proud to be included and spent

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the day autographing newspapers while touring the new museum with the rest of the crowds and talking about his painting. Perhaps it was because he was a hometown artist, but even with collected works from some of the country’s high-profile artists lining the new gallery, Jesse’s painting of a downtown movie theater’s façade, El Alameda (1980, acrylic on canvas, 54˝× 84˝), received an enormous amount of attention. The Alameda Theater opened in 1949 on West Houston Street as the largest Spanish-language movie palace and vaudeville stage in the country. For more than two decades, in terms of its cultural importance to San Antonio’s Mexican Americans, the 2,400-seat Art Deco theater was often compared to Harlem’s Apollo Theater and its significance to African Americans. The Treviños were among the Alameda’s legions of admirers. “It’s iconic,” explained Alice Treviño Rodriguez. “Growing up, on Saturdays, we all would go downtown and see two movies, a cartoon, and a newsreel.” There were also variedades, variety shows, featuring stars from Mexico. On one occasion, one of Alice’s favorite singers from Mexico, Amalia Mendoza, was scheduled to appear. “The story was that she had fallen in love with one of the other performers and they were supposed to get married onstage at the Alameda. I called [the theater] and asked when she was going to be married, and I was told, ‘She will be getting married at 3, 6, and 9 p.m.’” By the late 1970s, the golden days of movie palaces were long gone, and the theater’s significance dwindled. Portrayed in the daytime,

El Alameda (1980). Acrylic on canvas, 54˝× 84˝.

Jesse’s El Alameda displays nothing of its former opulence. The sidewalk in front is empty and in shadow. The towering, landmark eighty-six-foottall neon sign isn’t lit up. One panel is missing from the marquee. The building looks lonely, neglected. “The year I painted it, it seemed like no one cared about it. That’s why I painted it,” Jesse recalled. “The Alameda had lost its luster.” But he had come to believe that a single piece of artwork could have the power to transform such a building into a place that holds thousands of memories, thousands of stories to tell. This was the strength of realism, and by showing how the passage of time had robbed the theater of its former importance and then exhibiting it in his hometown’s newest museum alongside recognized masterpieces from elsewhere in the country, Jesse’s Alameda came to life again. “I specifically remember the Alameda because it was one of the highlights of the show. People were enormously attracted to it,” recalled Consey. “It was unspoken for; I thought it would be a great work to have for our collection.” Of course, when Consey floated the idea to Jesse, he was in full agreement. “I do not recall talking to Jesse about price. I remember being enthusiastic about it and taking the idea to my boss, Helmuth Naumer, the executive director, who ran the San Antonio Museum Association. He pretty much rejected the proposal. I’m not sure it was ever brought to the museum association’s board,” Consey said. Angry and insulted, Jesse would carry a grudge against the museum for many years. It

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wasn’t necessarily the money for the sale of the painting that he was upset about losing out on: it was the honor to have likely been the new museum’s first high-profile purchase from a local artist, and that honor should have gone to him. Within a few weeks of SAMA’s opening, however, the Institute of Mexican Culture in San Antonio’s HemisFair Park sponsored a one-man show for Jesse. It was his first real solo exhibition on his home turf, and the large, enthusiastic turnout (and subsequent positive reviews) helped to cushion the blow of what Jesse’s perceived as SAMA’s rejection of him. Surrounded by his works, answering question after question about his career and journey, autographing programs all night, telling everyone that this was only the beginning of what he had planned for the people of San Antonio, Jesse knew he was giving it all the gas he had—and it looked like nothing but open road ahead of him. Suddenly, a lot more people were counting him as their friend, including women admirers, some drawn to his charisma and charm, others to his celebrity. The attention and adulation were intoxicating. Reporters were constantly asking him about his opinion on art and his level of satisfaction with San Antonio’s cultural engagement with the arts, which he could always discuss at length. Politicians and business leaders wanted to befriend him. There were better dinners enjoyed at better restaurants. There were a few velvet ropes pulled aside. And when Jesse had money in his pocket, everyone around him had a good time, and he was beginning to have a

lot of money in his pocket. One paper reported the sale of Los Santos de San Antonio to a private collector in April 1981 for $12,000 (adjusted for inflation, at the start of 2016, that would be more than $33,000). One of the people Jesse met around this time was Lionel Sosa, who grew up on the West Side before starting Sosa and Associates advertising agency, which would eventually grow into one of the largest Hispanic ad agencies in the country. “I was at [SAMA’s opening exhibition] looking at all that art. And wow—boom—I saw the Alameda Theater. That’s my neighborhood,” Sosa remembered thinking, “in a museum like this? All of a sudden, my neighborhood had been elevated into this magical place that included the best of the best in the country. I felt so much pride. Who painted this? Who is Jesse Treviño? I asked around.” When Sosa tracked down Jesse and asked the price of El Alameda, without hesitation Jesse replied, “$17,000.” To which Sosa replied, “Goddamn! I don’t have $17,000!” Rarely flexible on price, Jesse could occasionally play nice with payment plans, and he agreed to take $1,000 a month until it was paid off. Plus, he personally hung the painting—prominently—in Sosa’s office. “He also hung the $15,000 Progreso Drugstore,” Sosa said, referring to Progreso (1977, acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 50˝), Jesse’s photorealist depiction of a popular West Side drugstore at the corner of Brazos and Guadalupe Streets. Under a signature bright blue sky, his mother stands waiting for a bus. “I’ll be damned if Jesse

wasn’t a great salesman. Every time he came by he’d tell me how his paintings would look better in the office than what I already had hanging by some other artist. And he’d say, ‘Let me just put this one of mine here,’ and in a couple months I couldn’t part with it. So I ended up buying five on behalf of the firm. All on the easy payment plans. What a hustler he was of his paintings.”

— Sometime in early 1980, Ed Ortiz, president of the Exchange National Bank, saw photos of La Raspa and Progreso published in a newspaper and, thinking that a magnificent piece of art would distinguish his bank lobby, asked whether Jesse was interested in the commission. Jesse knew the bank. Located near Kelly Field Air Force Base, it was a well-known institution and was often referred to as the “Kelly Field Bank.” He met Ortiz there, where he saw the wall—sixty feet long and over twelve feet high, right over the teller stations. It was overwhelming. What image could command such a canvas? “I don’t have a concept ready,” Jesse admitted as he accepted the offer, but neither did Ortiz. In fact, he had only one directive: “Do something on San Antonio.” The contract gave Jesse six months to complete the work in return for $12,000, a relatively low wage for such a project, but if he could pull it off, he knew it meant prestige, publicity, and additional commissions. Never forgetting the lesson of Mi Vida, he ordered a fifty-four-by-twelve-foot canvas of Belgian linen; it took twenty men to stretch it

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Progreso (1977). Acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 50˝. Collection of Katherine and Lionel Sosa.

onto a frame. He then built a scaffold over the teller stations and had the frame mounted to the wall. Alone on the scaffold, his head a few feet from the ceiling, he turned on the spotlights he’d brought to illuminate the canvas. He faced the enormous wall of white linen with no clue what to fill it with. Practicality dictated that it wouldn’t be photorealism, nor, for lack of training, should it be abstract. It would be figurative, a mural of San Antonio, but he didn’t want automobiles, or neon signs, or utility poles, or gas pumps. Clearing his mind to imagine his hometown, he thought first of the river, which brought the earliest people to its life-sustaining location. And then the missions, the heart of San Antonio’s historical foundation. From there, he imagined how so many different people arrived at the same place, over different eras, to develop the city into a patchwork of cultures. Suddenly, he saw the concept—the people, the colors, the nature, the dynamic intersection of life—and he began to work. Even as more private portraiture commissions came his way, he showed up at the bank at night, on weekends, and sometimes during banking hours to continue painting. After six months he still faced a whole lot of white canvas. But the entire time he was showing off his Fiesta poster and appearing at the SAMA opening and having his solo exhibition, he kept working. And even as he was enjoying his growing celebrity, even as—if he was letting himself be honest—he was falling in love again, he kept working on the mural. After another six months he was still not

finished filling the 648 square feet of canvas. It took a total of fourteen months before he could step back, clean his brushes, and dismantle the scaffold. When he did, he knew he had created something special. At first glance, the missions command a great deal of the canvas’s real estate. But it’s the bustle of life around them that soon attracts attention as the story of San Antonio unfolds. And it’s an enormous story, filled with colorful, rugged terrain, vaqueros, cattle trails, covered wagons, families and fiestas, all surrounding the San Antonio River. The story fills the space. “When you think about a mural, it’s got to have movement in almost every direction—up, down, out, in—so it keeps your eye almost moving around constantly because of the direction and placement of everything,” is how Jesse explained his process. It’s certainly hard to lay eyes on the woman in the bottom center of the mural and not only imagine her tangerine-striped skirt twirling with the movements of her folklorico dancing, but also to feel her joy. The mural possesses the space—it feels like something epic, like a sweeping establishing shot for a great western movie, extending a landscape of color and activity and history across the entire bank lobby. There are modern buildings, such as the 750-foot-tall Tower of the Americas (finished in 1968), but they’re shown farther toward the horizon to better emphasize the city’s storied history. The painting had already been seen by thousands of people over the fourteen months it

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took to complete, so the bank held a contest to name it. Jesse approved of the winning entry from Martin T. Sanchez: Imagenes de Mi Pueblo (“Images of My Town,” 1982, acrylic on canvas, 54´× 12´). In a public ceremony on June 29, 1982, the mural was formally dedicated. The packed lobby included family, friends, the press, local council members, and Henry Cisneros, Jesse’s friend from Monterey Street who had been elected mayor a year earlier. As the photographers’ flashbulbs popped, it was hard deciding who was beaming brighter, Jesse or the man who hired him, Ed Ortiz.

— On an unusually chilly fall morning, Jesse sat by himself inside La Fogata, a favorite Mexican restaurant, enjoying a breakfast taco and holding several thoughts in his mind. His next two or three projects needed quick attention because he needed the payments. But he found himself mostly thinking about a woman he’d been seeing a lot of lately. Theresa Ladshaw had been working at the Witte when Jesse spoke there for a panel discussion, and she might have found herself a bit star-struck when he asked her out. They began dating, only casually at first, but he soon found himself wanting to see more of her. He’d even introduced Terry, which she went by, to Dolores, who was pleased with his choice and made it a point to tell him so. As he sat with his coffee and taco, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he’d found love again, a stranger interrupted his thoughts.

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There were only a handful of tables inside the restaurant, and with all the other seats taken, this stranger was asking if he could sit at Jesse’s table. Jesse barely acknowledged his presence, muttering gruffly, “Well, if you have to.” Juan F. Vasquez sat down and introduced himself to Jesse. He was a tax attorney who had recently left government work for private practice. He was on his way to his new office. Trying to be friendly, Vasquez kept trying to get a conversation going and finally asked Jesse what he did. “And I think he was indignant that I didn’t know who he was,” Vasquez recalled. “Jesse huffed that he was a ‘famous’ artist because he’d studied in New York. I said I was a famous attorney because I’d studied at the New York School of Law. I wasn’t famous, but that broke the ice.” Over breakfast they talked about New York before realizing they were both Fox Tech alums, although Vasquez was two years younger. Vasquez didn’t ask about Jesse’s prosthesis, and Jesse didn’t offer a word of explanation, but that morning they parted with much more friendliness than when they’d met. The next morning, Vasquez dropped in to La Fogata and saw Jesse sitting alone. The two essentially picked up where they’d left off, talking about families, of having grown up on the West Side, and of venturing beyond San Antonio for their careers. They met the next day, too, and for many days thereafter. Eventually, Vasquez and his wife, Terry, would grow close to Jesse. They were invited to his Mistletoe studio, they went on double dates with Jesse and Terry Ladshaw, and

after a while they were introduced into Jesse’s expanding circle of powerful and colorful San Antonians—the artists and the affluent businessmen, attorneys, and politicians who supported them. “Jesse knew people, and we did not,” remembered Terry Vasquez, also a native Westsider. “Having just moved back, we felt quite new to some of the larger community. But it seemed like everybody in town knew Jesse. He was fun to be with.” Like her husband, she had never demonstrated much interest in fine arts before meeting Jesse, but the longer they remained in his orbit and the more knowledge and excitement they absorbed, the more they realized that they simply had to own a Jesse Treviño painting. They knew just the one they had to have. When it wasn’t being lent out for exhibits, Guadalupe y Calaveras (1976, acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 48˝) was usually prominently featured in Jesse’s studio. It’s a portrait of a West Side gas station, at Guadalupe and Calaveras Streets, where the neighborhood gathered, shopped, and picked up news and gossip from customers passing through. It just called out to both Juan and Terry, and it cost $9,000. “We never had anything to do with art, and then one day [Juan] comes to me and says he wants to buy it. And I say ‘yes,’ but the only reason I said yes was because one of my dad’s jobs was at a gas station. And it looked like that,” Terry said. “Nine thousand dollars. That was a heck of a lot of money. And there was no way I could pay

him,” said Juan Vasquez, who quickly learned that Jesse began and ended most negotiations with the same offer: you will pay my asking price. In this case, Jesse extended his friends the option to pay in installments. As Vasquez’s private practice grew, he introduced colleagues and friends to Jesse and his work. Some ended up purchasing paintings under Jesse’s terms; others walked away emptyhanded. The Vasquezes found themselves becoming art enthusiasts and eventually collectors, joining Elaine DagenBela, Lionel Sosa, and a few other key individuals who not only promoted the arts in San Antonio but also took a special interest in Jesse’s career. In turn, Jesse met more wealthy arts benefactors. And when those people met Jesse, they didn’t soon forget him.

— With money coming in more regularly, Jesse kept chipping in, along with the rest of the family, to cover Dolores’s finances and continue fixing up the Monterey Street home, including remodeling the kitchen and doing other interior work himself. He thoroughly enjoyed the satisfaction of the physical work, probably as much as he enjoyed receiving his mother’s gratitude. In 1982 he convinced her to be photographed for a portrait, Señora Dolores Treviño (1982, acrylic on canvas, 84˝× 52˝). His mother stands in her backyard, where a breeze dries laundry hanging on a line. Dolores wears an apron she sewed herself and, holding a full laundry basket, reveals quiet strength, resolve, and dignity. The deep

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Guadalupe y Calaveras (1976). Acrylic on canvas, 66˝× 52˝. Collection of Juan and Terry Vasquez; Kirk Weddle Photography.

Señora Dolores Treviño (1982). Acrylic on canvas, 84˝× 52˝. Courtesy of San Antonio Museum of Art.

lines of her face and the muscles of her forearms expose the many decades of housework, child­ rearing, cooking, and supporting her family. Her expression seems to imply that we should all just do our work and get on with life as best we can. “I wanted to capture her as she was,” Jesse explained in July 2004. “When I did this painting, she said, ‘Well, you know, let me—’ She always liked to do her hair, her eyes and everything. I said, ‘No, no, no. This isn’t what I want.’ . . . And then she thought I was going to give her the painting. It’s a huge painting like that. She said, ‘Well, where am I going to put it?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to put it anywhere because I want to put it in a museum.’ I told her, ‘I’m going to show it and everything, and eventually you’re going to be famous’ . . . and sure enough, she’s more famous than me.” The painting did receive attention. It was often loaned to exhibitions, including “¡Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour,” first launched in 1984 at the Museo del Barrio in New York. When the national tour visited Texas, Michael Ennis in Texas Monthly referred to Jesse as “a local legend” and called the painting “the best portrait of an artist’s mother since Whistler’s.” “It’s a painting about her, but it’s also about ladies like her,” Jesse further explained in 1995, wanting to emphasize the strong role of family in his work. Years later, when Arturo Alameda, a professional photographer who would become the art specialist for UTSA, first saw the painting, he

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remembered being tremendously moved by the familiarity of the subject matter, and he believed it was Jesse’s way of expressing, “Here’s your culture, in your own backyard. Don’t just walk past it. Celebrate it. It’s here to share with others because it’s worthy of cherishing. It’s about being proud of where you come from. I think he touched the community.”

— The eighties was an era of Jesse expanding his artistic boundaries. He’d never forgotten the tactile satisfaction of throwing pottery while retraining his left hand at SAC. So he purchased a kiln and the materials to paint, glaze, and fire his own ceramic tiles. He eagerly experimented with colors and tested the durability of the tiles. By good fortune, DagenBela secured him a commission for a tile mural for a local office building. In January 1984, Congressman Henry González and other local dignitaries gathered in the lobby of the Avante Plaza building to give congratulatory speeches to Jesse for his many years of chronicling the West Side. Then Mayor Cisneros unveiled Jesse’s first ceramic tile mural to enthusiastic applause from the overflow crowd. A mariachi band played, and Jesse posed for dozens of photographs and beamed again in the bright glow of the public spotlight. Composed with 180 glazed tiles (each 8˝× 8˝), La Feria (“The Fair,” 1984, hand-painted ceramic tile, 12.5´× 7´) is a historical depiction of the thriving Mexican American business district at the very street corner location of the building

Jesse Treviño setting tile for La Feria, ca. 1983. Photograph by Elaine DagenBela.

into which Jesse’s piece had been installed. He included former beloved institutions, like the Nacional Theater and the Chapa Drug Store; there are musicians playing, there is singing and dancing, and there’s a bustle of activity all over the image. The celebratory mood is similar to that of Imagenes de Mi Pueblo. The work had taken months longer than he’d originally planned, and the mural wasn’t completely finished at the time of the unveiling. One third of the scene still needed to be added, but when Jesse finally, quietly completed the piece, he felt much more confident about his abilities in this new medium. Tiles were durable, and they could hold an image for hundreds of years. Now

he had no doubt about what he intended to do with this newly mastered medium.

— Jesse and Terry were married in New Braunfels, where Terry’s father lived, and then traveled to Vancouver, Canada, for a reception with Terry’s mother and to enjoy a honeymoon. Elaine DagenBela and her husband and the Vasquezes took the trip with them. For Jesse, it was a brief, restful retreat with his new bride. She’s the one—he just knew it this time. Very soon after returning to San Antonio, however, his focus returned with full force to his career, especially after his art appeared in the

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most famous newspaper in the country as part of the “¡Mira!” tour. Featuring the works of nearly two dozen artists, the exhibition opened in late August 1984 at El Museo del Barrio in New York City and was reviewed enthusiastically in the New York Times by Michael Brenson. The story included a photo of Jesse’s Guadalupe y Calaveras (lent by the Vasquezes), and Brenson wrote with remarkable understanding, “With Trevino, we are drawn into human situations, rather than being told about them.” For most artists, a positive reference (not to mention a photo of their work) in the New York Times would be a career-defining moment. For Jesse, well, he didn’t feel it held the same weight as having his art displayed in the front windows of the Art Students League, but he still felt great satisfaction knowing that professionals with whom he once worked, perhaps William Draper himself, might see his painting in the paper. And while Jesse carried around copies of the Times story for weeks, proudly pulling it out for Terry, his mother, his siblings and friends, and anyone else who came by his studio or stopped by his table at La Fogata, he knew it wasn’t to be the biggest moment of his career. It wasn’t even close. Earlier that summer, with funding provided by Anheuser-Busch (thanks primarily to the efforts of DagenBela), an independent film crew had followed Jesse around for about a week. Their cameras and microphones accompanied him on visits to the Alameda, Our Lady of the Lake, Dolores’s home, and other West Side points of interest with a Jesse Treviño con-

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nection. He answered questions about his life, including Vietnam, and was asked over and over about why he painted what he did and what his inspirations were. And when he was asked to paint while they filmed, this private individual, who rarely allowed anyone into his studio while he worked, without hesitation picked up his brushes, mixed his paints, and went to work for the camera. In September, Jesse returned to the San Antonio Museum of Art for the premier of the documentary. Though still resentful toward the museum administrators, this was not the time for bitterness. The auditorium was packed with family, friends, and media representatives, all eager to view the film. After the lights went down and the title Jesse Trevino: A Spirit Against All Odds appeared on the screen, there was a short burst of applause followed quickly by surprised, excited whispers at what followed: “Narrated by Martin Sheen.” And then: Jesse, inside his studio, facing a large canvas, painting. It’s hard to make out the image. Though only loosely sketched and just beginning to bloom with color, it would become Los Piscadores (“The Pickers,” 1985, acrylic on canvas, 40˝× 32˝). “Our mouths just dropped,” recalled Terry Vasquez, who attended the premier with her husband, Juan. They had recognized the face of the man in the painting, standing tall in a cotton field, an eighty-pound sack of cotton slung over his shoulders. At his hip, young Juan proudly carries his own smaller sack of cotton. The painting was a commission

Los Piscadores (“The Pickers," 1985, acrylic on canvas. 40˝× 32˝). Collection of Juan and Terry Vasquez; photograph courtesy of Juan and Terry Vasquez.

for the Vasquezes. “We see that and I go, ‘Oh my gosh. That’s ours!’” As the music fades, Sheen’s unmistakable voice begins speaking. “It is a quiet and solemn dignity that streams from sudden lashes of brush to canvas. Jesse Treviño is painting his people at their backbreaking toil.” It’s the same voice, so steady yet always hinting at distress, that narrated Captain Willard’s Vietnam nightmare through the Mekong Delta in the 1979 film Apocalypse Now (“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.”). Now Sheen is describing San Antonio’s West Side with similar gravitas: “These are Jesse Treviño’s streets, his people. Intense eyes peer deep inside the barrio to bring out the best of what passes by.” When Jesse speaks, his voice is slow and deliberate, less polished, a bit of nervous excitement simmering beneath the surface. “It’s just straightforward type paintings. There isn’t anything there that’s not there,” he tells the camera with a boyish grin. “What I mean is, I paint it the way I really see it.” At times, the nineteen-minute film is especially poignant because Sheen, one of the most famous actors in the country, is recounting Jesse’s experiences at war. It was not, however, an Oscar-winning script, and Sheen’s sincere efforts can’t save every melodramatic line, such as: “Jesse soon realized his innermost choice was clear: force-feed a reluctant hand the sweet diet

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of artistic knowledge, or live an empty and listless life without palate, brush, or paints.” Spirit Against All Odds aired several times in 16 mm format in San Antonio during September 15–20 for National Hispanic Heritage Week; the film was later broadcast on PBS stations in other parts of the country. While Jesse was the one signing autographs and posters, sitting for television interviews, and, of course, producing his art, Elaine DagenBela’s impressive legwork as pseudo-publicist attracted more attention from corporate honchos who commissioned works for their corporate offices. In the coming years she secured Jesse lucrative commissions from Dr Pepper and JC Penney, among others. As Jesse’s regional and, to some extent, national fame continued growing, and as he refined and repeated his message on the important role of art in his city’s culture, it was inevitable that comparisons would be drawn with Diego Rivera (1886–1957). After all, most Americans who had even heard of Rivera probably knew of him as a “Mexican muralist.” Even though Jesse hadn’t painted that many murals, the ones he had finished so far had received a fair amount of attention. On a more meaningful level, Rivera had painted the working classes with dignity and respect, which was at the core of Jesse’s artistic philosophy. However, in stark contrast to Jesse’s deliberate avoidance of political material, Rivera was outspoken about his politics. A Marxist much of his life, Rivera never shied away from including

his views in his works and speeches. He was also far more worldly than Jesse, leaving Mexico City to study and work in Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Florence, Detroit, San Francisco, and other places, sometimes for years at a time, but never letting just one place lay claim to him for too long. Jesse had studied Rivera and his works and was always flattered by any comparisons. He certainly felt some kinship because they were both Mexican by birth, but he truly admired Rivera’s faith and confidence in his own talents as well as the dedication he displayed to his principles. “It was important to me to paint what I wanted,” Jesse said, explaining his desire for total control over his concepts, including the freedom to not have a concept at the time he accepted some jobs. “I think like Diego Rivera; he didn’t tell them that he was going to paint Lenin.” The reference is to Rivera’s 1933 mural for Rockefeller Center in New York City that included a portrait of the Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. After someone caught an early glimpse of the sixty-three-foot-long mural, Man at the Crossroads, it became a scandal before it could be completed. Jesse was half right about Rivera. While Rivera didn’t tell anyone beforehand that he intended to paint Lenin into the piece, he was required, in fact, to submit a preliminary sketch of his work to be approved by the people who signed his paychecks. The sketch included no likeness of Lenin, and Rivera’s inflexibility to remove the portrait from the mural ultimately led to the work being destroyed,

friendships broken, and business partnerships frayed. Still, Jesse admired the artist’s backbone and desire for independence. Another loose comparison between Jesse and Rivera (and, probably, most any artist) was that both desired magnificent studios within which they could better realize and execute their outsized ideas. The grandest way to accomplish that, Jesse felt, was to build a beautiful house— itself a work of art—around such a studio. For Rivera, that dream house and studio was built in the early 1940s on the outskirts of Mexico City. “The immense energy which Rivera had once dedicated to covering miles of wall with fresco was here turned towards the construction of walls themselves,” wrote Rivera biographer Patrick Marnham. “His fascination with the relationship between art and architecture, his belief that the two were forever linked . . . were here brought to life.” Jesse shared such fascination and belief. A new studio and home, sprung from his own imagination, could be his most fantastic piece of art yet. The larger truth was that, as much as Jesse loved his celebrity, it came with disadvantages. His address was fairly well known and people constantly dropped by. Sometimes he’d open the door, sometimes not. Either way, he and Terry wanted to start a family, and they both craved a bit more seclusion. “It doesn’t matter where I live, people are going to hear about me,” Jesse told her. Plus, he was making money, more than ever. (Terry had money, too. Her family was “very

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successful in business,” Jesse said.) He never bothered much with the notion of investing or saving. To live as an artist demanded that he give his all today. With the kind of prices his paintings and commissions commanded, and with more work coming in steadily, he must have felt like he could give all his money away today and it would find its way back to him tomorrow, bringing more with it. Jesse and Terry found a plot of land that suited the size of their dreams about forty-five miles north of San Antonio. It was about twenty acres, studded with live oak, cedar, and mesquite trees, with a little creek running through it. Back off the road, isolated within a beautiful swath of the Texas Hill Country, it seemed the perfect antidote to Jesse’s increasingly busy life. From the beginning, Jesse worked directly with the architectural firm on the design, figuring out the best place for the location of the studio, the gardens, and the Olympic-size pool. Once construction got underway, he began leaving Mistletoe early each morning to drive to the work site and meet the trucks hauling gravel and building materials between construction sites and quarries around the Hill Country. He helped with the framing and painting and assisted shaping the house’s textured stone façade. He designed, glazed, and fired tiles that were used throughout. Month after month he devoted more energy to the house, especially when time came to work on the studio. He desired a massive, open space filled with natural light and with enough room to

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work on several oversized canvases at the same time, and enough room for his spirit to keep growing. Its design was definitely influenced by Willem de Kooning’s East Hampton studio and, to a lesser degree, Andy Warhol’s “Factory” studio in Midtown Manhattan. Compared to the Mistletoe studio, this space commanded attention. It was the focal point of the home. Did all the work on the house slow him down professionally? Not exactly. His confederation of friends and colleagues remained solid, and his work remained constant. He stayed in the headlines, too, often by donating limited-edition autographed prints of his works to raise money for civic projects, such as a revitalization plan of the same block featured in Progreso. He kept making public appearances, like when a local organization presented Dolores Treviño with its Parent of the Year honors. She and many of her children attended the ceremony at Our Lady of the Lake in early June 1985, and Jesse told the people in attendance, “My success was really a reflection of my mother’s success. She has seen all of her children become successful in what they do.” Afterward, Dolores, replying to a question on how to be a good parent, said simply, “Take care of your children and keep them in school.” And Jesse kept painting. One of his commissions was for a portrait of San Antonio’s archbishop, Patrick Flores, the first Mexican American to be ordained a bishop in the Catholic Church. Archbishop Patrick Flores (1985, acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝) was a particular painting that made his mother particularly proud.

Presented to Flores in a high-profile ceremony at the Cathedral of San Fernando to commemorate his fifteenth anniversary, the portrait was then placed at the Archdiocese of San Antonio. Of this portrait and many others Jesse completed, the press took note, conveying a growing sense of importance to his works. For example, when he unveiled a new painting, Estrella (1985, acrylic on canvas, 60˝× 48˝), the San Antonio ExpressNews proclaimed, “Another West Side building has gained the status of instant landmark as local artist Jesse Trevino unveiled Monday his painting of the Estrella grocery store.” Which is quite a compelling statement and a recognition of the influence Jesse wielded. It was impossible not to feel the weight of responsibility when his paintings were seen as being so important to the city, and so Jesse kept painting with a growing sense of obligation.

— Charles, Prince of Wales, was visiting Texas to honor the state’s 150th anniversary of its independence from Mexico. As part of his four-day tour, Prince Charles would visit San Antonio and had requested seeing minority-owned businesses and organizations dealing with the challenges of urban renewal. A presentation at Avance, a West Side organization advocating for child-abuse prevention and parent education, was put on the itinerary. Lionel Sosa convinced the makers of Canadian Club whiskey to commission a painting to present to the prince and chose Jesse as the painter.

For Jesse, being selected for the job was as important as completing the job itself. Having long been considered a favorite son of the West Side, increasingly he was also enjoying his role as a symbol of San Antonio, an art emissary to the wider world. With the deadline looming, Jesse decided on a concept, a “Madonna image” of a woman and a baby. But the days dragged on without choosing a model, much less actually painting anything. He and Terry were just finishing up their dream home and expecting their first child. Jesse was still very involved with the home’s final details—the painting, the tile work—and whatever he wasn’t actually doing himself he insisted on overseeing. His sister, Alice Treviño Rodriguez, who had been suggesting models for the Avance project, said that Jesse was “obviously thrilled” with the commission but was also “beginning to be a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work and expectations put on him.” Just as important, she explained, was how Jesse always worked the same way. “He had to be motivated on his own timeline. So weeks passed, and he hadn’t started on the painting but never seemed too worried about it.” Finally, Lisa Ortiz (of the DagenBela Gallery) and her niece sat for Jesse and his camera and were chosen. “But that still didn’t mean Jesse was ready to work,” said Elaine DagenBela, who remembered how much of the whole production felt “very last minute.” Alice Treviño Rodriguez said, “Finally, one day, he stayed up twenty-four

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Jesse Treviño with Prince Charles discussing Mother and Child (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝), 1986. Photograph courtesy of Rick J. Bela and Elaine DagenBela.

hours [to complete the painting], and people don’t know this, but when they framed the painting the oil was still wet.” Jesse disputed that last part but did say he finished Mother and Child (1986, acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝) “about a day before” it was to be presented. On Friday, February 22, Prince Charles (unaccompanied by his very popular wife, Princess Diana) was greeted at the airport by Mayor Cisneros with the music of a mariachi band and

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the gift of a pair of cowboy boots. As the official motorcade wound its way through the city, at least a hundred invited guests waited inside Avance’s lobby. Jesse stood with the rest of the eager crowd until the prince arrived, handsome and dressed with impeccable style. He swept into the lobby followed by a scrum of staff, security officers, and reporters. After the usual speeches and accolades from the local dignitaries about the work Avance was doing and how excited everyone was to host

the prince, the attention turned to Jesse and his painting. This was never a moment he’d dreamed of as a kid. And yet there he was, seeing himself shaking the prince’s hand—making him go leftie—while he stammered through some kind of explanation of his painting displayed before them. And then he listened to the prince’s soft, calm, measured tones while he carefully inspected the painting and eloquently admired it, asking rather smart questions about it as the crowd pressed in to hear every word. “He told me he painted, too. He was really nice,” Jesse remembered nearly three decades later. The two men shook hands again—one hand belonged to a man raised in Buckingham Palace and the other hand belonged to a man raised a few miles away from where they stood. It’s fair to speculate that at this meeting Jesse felt by far the happier for the circumstances of his upbringing. The gathered crowd began clapping, and Jesse knew full well that most of the applause was for the dapper thirty-eight-year-old heir apparent to the throne of England, who any year now would probably take over the reign of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and become king. But a significant number of those in the audience were clapping for him, overjoyed that when San Antonio wanted to present its best to the world, it presented Jesse Treviño. Just as soon as he arrived, Prince Charles was gone again; his entire stay in San Antonio lasted less than six hours. Before the portrait was shipped to London, DagenBela made prints of

Mother and Child to sell as a fundraiser for Avance and garner more publicity for Jesse.

— In a very meaningful way, Martin Sheen’s smooth, suede-like voice was telling the truth when it proclaimed in Spirit Against All Odds, “These are Jesse Treviño’s streets, his people.” And so it could be seen as more than a bit ironic when, shortly after the excitement of the prince’s visit had subsided, Jesse and Terry packed up the last of their belongings from the Mistletoe house and headed to their new life in the Hill Country. For Jesse, as with Diego Rivera, his house was meant to be a comfortable dwelling that also showed off his earning power. There were two bedrooms plus a bi-level master suite, a limestone fireplace, imported floor tile, a kitchen stacked with new appliances, marble counters, and a small wine cellar—but the heart of the home was undeniably the thirty-five by fortytwo-foot studio. The bright open design included a twentytwo-foot-high ceiling with exposed ductwork and oak floors. Tall, elegantly arched windows allowed natural light to pour inside while also providing views of the woods and the swimming pool. The studio dominated the home. There was more than adequate room for all his lights and ladders, rolling trays filled with paint tubes, drafting tables, blank canvases, and brushes by the dozens. This was the studio of a master artist.

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At the time, Jesse estimated the house’s cost to be $500,000, and even though Terry had contributed a sizable portion, Jesse’s income needed to remain steady to afford the place. Through DagenBela he was making money with prints and posters while continuing to sell original paintings and actively court more corporate commissions, so he was certainly putting that grand studio to good use. Back in San Antonio, a few friends and acquaintances groused that moving from the West Side—and out of San Antonio completely—was a betrayal to the people who most supported his work. For some artists, pursuing that corporate money smacked of being an opportunist, even a sellout. Jesse tolerated neither argument. Shortly after getting established in his new home, he invited a writer from the Express-News out, gave her a tour, and explained what he expected to get out of the move. Near the top of his list was privacy to do more work. “In San Antonio, there were too many distractions. I was right there, accessible to everybody,” he said. He addressed any disappointment from the public directly with “I couldn’t forget the West Side if I wanted to.” He was also straightforward about his growth and his expectations as an artist. “Maybe some people would like to see me continue to paint the same things over and over. But I have to grow. I’m not just a San Antonio painter. I’m a Texas painter.”

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When the flashbulb went off, Jesse forgot— for the briefest moment—why he was even in Washington, DC, in the first place. Elaine DagenBela and various hotshots from Anheuser-Busch and Dr Pepper stood nearby. Like him, they all smiled like schoolchildren as the camera flashed again. The only one not momentarily star-struck was Vice President George Bush. Though he kept smiling for the cameras, it was probably the tenth time his work had been interrupted that day. They were all in Bush’s office, inside the White House, chitchatting about Texas, specifically Houston, where Bush had been elected a US senator before becoming vice president. They also talked of the beauty of San Antonio, its remarkable history and culture, before Jesse presented Bush with a framed print of La Raspa. The vice president said he liked it very much. The many handshakes (as such occasions produce) were easy between the two because Bush was a born southpaw. Later the vice president sent Jesse a personal note of thanks. But Jesse’s time in the West Wing wasn’t over yet. As the group was escorted toward the Oval Office, they each tried to steady themselves for their next meeting. “It was exciting,” Elaine DagenBela recalled. “You can’t be ushered in through the security of the White House and not be excited.” DagenBela, Jesse, Archbishop Flores, and the rest of the group had arrived in Washington for the inaugural presentation of the Hispanic Heritage Awards, honoring people in several

fields for their commitment to and influence on Hispanic culture in the United States. The idea for the awards grew out of a White House task force convened to find a way to expand Hispanic Heritage Week (created in 1968 by President Johnson’s proclamation) into Hispanic Heritage Month, from September 15 to October 15. “That task force was to find out what could be done to make Hispanic Heritage Month viable, important,” said DagenBela, who had been named the first executive director of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. “When the idea [for an awards ceremony] was cemented and we realized we could get funding for it [chiefly from Dr Pepper and Anheuser-Busch], we went back to the task force and asked them to nominate different people to be considered. It was probably about eighteen to twenty people originally.” There were three categories: Jesse was being recognized for the Arts, Flores was chosen for Leadership, and Ernest Robles (from the San Francisco Bay Area), a Purple Heart recipient from the Korean War, teacher, and founder of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, was selected for Education. DagenBela said that while President Reagan and Vice President Bush had worked with the task force, “they weren’t going to attend the events at the Meridian House,” the awards venue located about a mile away from the White House. They both agreed, however, to spare a few moments of Thursday afternoon, September 17, 1987, to meet with DagenBela’s entourage. Like meeting the future king of England, being received at the White House had never been in

Jesse’s dreams as a child, but when the door to the Oval Office opened, he took a breath and thought, Let’s get on with it. The group, including Flores and Robles and several businessmen, entered the most famous office in the Western Hemisphere and were greeted by the most powerful man in the free world. President Reagan welcomed his guests with a smile and the same characteristic warmth and charm he’d been known for all his life. Jesse admired the pearl-white sofas, polished wood furnishings, the grand, elegant oil paintings on the walls. He looked out the elevenfoot-tall French windows onto the South Lawn, and as he and Flores awaited their turn to address the president, they spotted a plaque on his desk that read, “It can be done.” Later they would speak of how it reminded them of the rallying cry César Chávez led strikes with: “¡Sí, se puede!”—“Yes, we can!” It’s what thousands had cried as they marched and protested, including against Reagan when he was governor of California and was regularly opposing the United Farm Workers and other labor unions in support of the growers and owners. And then Jesse saw himself shaking the hand of the president of the United States of America. Reagan, being naturally left-handed but trained to be right-handed in school, grasped Jesse’s hand with confidence and wished him well on his impending recognition. An easel had been brought in to display The Alamo (1987, acrylic on canvas, 40˝× 31˝), a painting Jesse had finished just for Reagan.

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Volumes have already been written about the Alamo, perhaps Texas’ most iconic symbol. The image of the Alamo’s arching stone façade can be seen all over San Antonio, and Jesse was drawing it as a child years before he ever stepped foot through its front doors. Though richly symbolic, and having been used as a totem of discrimination against Mexican Americans in San Antonio for generations, the Alamo did in fact suffer a military defeat from Mexico, although Jesse later claimed there was no overt political significance behind choosing it as a subject for the president’s painting. It was simply a part of San Antonio:

“Ronald Reagan, being a Hollywood actor— I remembered he’d been in some westerns, and I believe the Alamo was always dear to him. I wanted to give him something he liked.” On behalf of all the American people, the president accepted Jesse’s painting with a smile of thanks. In a news broadcast on San Antonio television later that night, Dolores Treviño saw her son standing next to San Antonio’s archbishop in front of the White House. A boyish grin is splashed across his face as he tells the camera about his gift to the president, “You could tell he really liked it.”

Jesse Treviño and President Reagan in the Oval Office looking at The Alamo (acrylic on canvas, 40˝× 31˝), 1987. Courtesy of Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

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Later, at the awards ceremony, DagenBela hung several of Jesse’s paintings throughout the Meridian House. The black-tie gala included a Latin combo and a simple riser stage on which introductions were made, speeches given, and medals draped around the necks of the honorees. About 200 people attended, including ambassadors of members of the Organization of American States and key Hispanic leaders from the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, and the American G.I. Forum. Jesse was dressed in a black tuxedo with a white vest. His new Hispanic Heritage Awards Medal for the Arts, with a red, white, and blue ribbon, hung around his neck all night. It was the first ever of its kind, and it belonged to him. This, he reminded himself throughout the night—while he danced with Terry, as complete strangers suddenly needed to know him better, as he realized that the people who would receive this award the following years would always know that he was the first—this was why he was in Washington, DC.

— He had a wife and son, Jesse Jr., a beautiful house, money in the bank, national recognition. He had achieved the American Dream. Not only that—he’d stopped smoking cigarettes and given up on the prescription painkillers, even though his body’s many pains would never totally abate. Neither would his anxiety and depression and impatience. Headlines and

adulation could be useless balm against his stormy emotions. He retreated to his studio. Strains were forming, though Terry tried her best to get past them. “He was in total control,” said Terry Vasquez of Jesse’s relationship with Terry. “I think it was because she romanticized the fact that she was with an artist. She came to admire him too much. In part, it was fantasy.” “Unfortunately, people say it’s used as a crutch by the artistic community,” DagenBela said by way of explaining the realities of an artist’s temperament. “But I happen to think it’s true. With intense creativity and passion for something, you always have that chance of hitting that low, where you can’t see you have the talent. Part of it with Jesse is his artistic intensity. Part of it is that he lived through some horrors. That has to affect you. Part of it is he struggles physically. All that affects a lot of relationships.” “Whether he was talking about his life or his next project, you could feel the intensity,” said Lionel Sosa, who speculated that Jesse has experienced bouts of posttraumatic stress disorder. “It seems like he was always trying to contain some anger inside. I never saw him lose his temper. Not once. Sometimes he smiled, sometimes not. But the energy and intensity was . . . palpable.” It was the same energy that had guided Jesse when he was on the verge of giving up on art, and it had burned brighter within him ever since. It had convinced him of the power behind his art, and it had made him into something like a

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historic figure, like Diego Rivera. He, as much as his work, was making a difference in peoples’ lives. So, if you’re not getting my art, his temperament proclaimed, then you’re not getting me. “The other thing about Jesse is that he is very good at networking,” Sosa continued. “He supported the Mexican American community and expected them to support him back.” And while Jesse’s relationship with that community didn’t truly change once he moved, his outlook as an artist was broadening through his experiences. Back in 1986, after he’d first moved into his new home and proclaimed that he could never forget the West Side, he also said, “It’s the artist who endures, not his subject matter.” Now he was trying his best to figure out how to endure. It was 1989; he was forty-two years old and backed by a dizzying decade of success. His story continued spreading, sometimes through unlikely outlets, such as the nationally syndicated newspaper feature Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Along with an illustration of Jesse clutching a pair of paintbrushes in his right hand, the caption read: “Jessie Trevino of San Antonio, Texas, lost his right hand while serving in Vietnam. Three years later he had trained himself to replace his right and is now a highly successful artist/muralist.” Jesse’s feats shared the column with an Italian boy who had succumbed to the influence of a TV hypnotist and spent three hours clasping his hands together. The hypnotist needed to call the boy at home to break the spell.

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Jesse would always call himself a Chicano artist. Reorienting his worldview to that of an outsider had been critical for his career after returning from Vietnam. But he had since found a great desire to become a unifying figure for all Mexican Americans, including Chicanos, even if he’d never really subscribed to some of the Chicano movement’s mythical underpinnings. “There wasn’t so much of that that came out in my art work,” he said by way of explanation as to why concepts of Aztlán didn’t appear on his canvases. “But that was a part of Con Safo, a part of the conversation. It was important. But it seemed to divide people a lot. It never became a big part of what I did.” Facing a post-Chicano era, he set about trying to change the paradigm of his career and become a bridge to other segments of society. “As an artist, my goal is the acquisition of my works by museums,” he told Hispanic magazine. But he made it clear that he didn’t want to be known just as a “Hispanic” artist, wanting instead for his works to be judged on their artistic merits. Later, when asked if exhibitions just for Hispanic artists were limiting, he replied, “In a way, it’s unfortunate that shows are grouped as Hispanic artists. What’s more important is survival as an artist, not as a Hispanic artist. People want to see Hispanic art and that’s what it is, but it goes beyond just being a Hispanic artist. Eventually, the top Hispanic artists will be known as just artists.”

PART THREE

West Side Storyteller

Chapter 9

Museum Peace (1990–1995)

Too many distractions: they had driven Jesse out to the Hill Country to live within a bubble of his own making. Elegant, grand, filled with his own paintings and accolades, perhaps someday it could become a Jesse Treviño museum, he explained to his visitors. “He took me to that house once,” Lionel Sosa recalled. “It was a house that was a giant monument to himself.” Yet it wouldn’t be too long before he began feeling like the move had just maybe been a mistake. Politically, Jesse was never a separatist, and yet he found that he had separated himself from the West Side in order to create his own paradise, his own Aztlán, to some extent. Way out in the middle of nowhere, Jesse had to contend with the heavy consequences of privacy. For as much as he craved isolation, he’d become consistently energized by his public image—by the very fact that he had a public image. He understood that keeping his name in the newspapers and on television kept interest on

his art. Plus, he genuinely appreciated receiving public adulation. It was a rush to be recognized, singled out, treated differently, asked for his opinion. So after a television reporter visited his new home and later asked him what he missed about San Antonio, Jesse mentioned that there were “so many people” and “so many things,” including the interruptions. “I sort of miss that,” he admitted. Inevitably, both the media and others closer to him asked how he could still represent the West Side when he lived so far away. The truth was, he couldn’t. “He was taken out of his element, moving away from the West Side,” said Elaine DagenBela. “That wasn’t Jesse. I think he realized it. He could have the financial success and live in this contemporary lush place that he designed, beautiful land around it . . . but Jesse’s heart is in the West Side. I think being [isolated] created problems for his work.”

Jesse, indeed, felt a little left out. “I was thinking I could build a beautiful studio, and I did,” he said. “I was established enough that I could get commissions no matter where I was. But it didn’t give me the insights. Maybe it was too easy for me. I needed to suffer a little more.” What did suffer, however, was his family life. In San Antonio he was Jesse Treviño. At home, he was expected to help take care of his son, take care of the property, take out the trash, and engage with life’s domestic side. It wasn’t long before he was increasingly absent as a husband and father, spending his days and even a number of his nights back at the Mistletoe house (which he still owned) or with Jesse and Alex Villarreal, brothers who owned a framing business. It was Jesse Villarreal who once delivered art supplies to Jesse’s hospital room at Beach Pavilion. Over time, the three men had become close friends; professionally the Villarreals would regularly frame Jesse’s canvases, work alongside him during some of his most highprofile jobs, and offer him an under-the-radar space to hang out in the city. Despite a desire to be recognized as a “Texas artist,” Jesse knew it was important to keep close ties with San Antonio. There was no shortage of talented artists trying to make names for themselves. Some of them were finally being acknowledged beyond their commercial art projects, although fewer were being recognized for producing professional and collectible-quality pieces. Most who tried making a living through

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the sale of artwork alone realized quickly there wasn’t a strong enough art-collecting community in town, with real money, to support a growing number of artists. Mel Casas, who by the 1990s was widely acknowledged as one of Texas’s most important Chicano artists and an influential teacher for a generation of San Antonio painters, admitted to always being pragmatic when it came to selling his art. In 2012 he said, “We say the patron system is dead . . . it really isn’t. We still depend on [others] to buy our paintings. And once they buy one, it sets a value. So you have to be attuned to that. It’s not that your paintings are worth more or less, it’s that somebody has given them value. And therefore they have value. I’ve had people buy some of my artwork for next to nothing because I needed the money. And that’s the reality of it. I needed the money. I thought they were worth more. But that’s the way it goes. It’s a difficult thing, but it’s realistic. I let go of those paintings, even though I didn’t want to, because I needed the money.” That was absolutely not how Jesse believed life worked. “We have artists here in San Antonio, and when they need money, they’ll sell a signed print for half the price, or something,” he said, growing agitated as he further explained, “Well, you shouldn’t do that. It’s unethical for an artist. To me . . . you see . . . one of the things is integrity. You build that. You build that integrity and you never undermine yourself by doing something like that.”

“It was not that he was interested in money,” said Juan Vasquez. “He wanted to make a living. He knew that his work was valuable. I don’t know how he arrived at the value of his work, by the way. I don’t know if it was based on market values or market trends or whatever. But he knew what the value was.” When Jesse sold paintings to private collectors he held firm to his prices, which were then regularly running north of $15,000. If his price wasn’t met, he didn’t sell the painting, no matter how desperate he was for the money. (And there were regular times of financial desperation when he could have used a quick infusion of cash.) Despite the high prices asked and received for his work, the pressure of making a living could be overwhelming at times. After all, Jesse needed to keep producing, whether he was in the mood to create beautiful, collectible art or not because of the debts he’d created with the new house and his financial obligations to his children. He still received a monthly disability stipend (which was only fair since he still didn’t have his right hand), and Elaine DagenBela continued securing corporate commissions. There can be no doubt that any professional meeting he attended benefited from his unique story. He wore a symbol of his life’s pivotal moment to every press interview, every unveiling, every gallery opening, every meeting with a possible buyer, and he relived his experiences in the Mekong Delta whenever asked. The story behind his prosthetic revealed a career journey other art-

ists couldn’t offer. The Treviño name, more than that of any other artist, was being solidly linked to the West Side and increasingly with the whole city and even the state. For example, his team secured a gig for a Wrangler print advertisement; Jesse stood, hand and hook resting on hips, legs slightly spread in a power pose, with Señora Dolores Treviño on an easel in the background. The ad copy read: “After losing his right hand in Vietnam, could Jesse Treviño train his left hand to paint as brilliantly? You can judge for yourself. He’s wearing a Riata shirt and jeans.” The other subjects in the ad campaign included country music singer George Strait, professional football standout Earl Campbell, and star baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan—all heroes, in one way or another, to many Texans. But Jesse’s remained a pressured life. The same exigente spirit that stoked his behavior when talking about his murals, or selling a potential buyer on the importance of owning a Jesse Treviño painting, could often spill over and affect his general demeanor, even when a discussion about his artwork took an innocent, if unfortunate, turn. “He does not react well,” Juan Vasquez said. Vasquez and his wife, Terry, had remained Jesse’s steady friends and advisors as well as collectors of his work; yet they weren’t immune to his outbursts. There was the occasion when Juan merely observed that one of the Royal Crown Cola signs in Jesse’s painting Guadalupe y Calaveras was more faded than the other. “I asked why, and oh

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my gosh, he went into a frenzy. How dare I question his integrity as an artist?!” Jesse yelled that it “was faded because it was faded when he looked at it and took the picture! He thought I was questioning that he didn’t make it as dark as the other sign.” John Treviño observed that when Jesse came back from Vietnam, on balance, he tried to lead a fairly normal life. “That being said, my brother can be a very volatile person because he’s very passionate about some things. I’ve seen his dark side. He’s not a violent person, but personalitywise he can get mean in his words and the way he treats you. On the other side he can be very loving and caring and give you the shirt off his back. But he can have fits. He loses his temper,” he said. Jesse began spending even more time back in San Antonio, which was coping with growing pains. With a population pushing one million, it was the tenth-largest city in the country, filled with considerable military pride after the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) had ended decisively for the United States. Despite its high levels of patriotism, San Antonio also had bigcity problems. In his book Mayor, former San Antonio mayor Nelson Wolff (1991–95) wrote, “The war on gangs was not something I expected to be doing only a few weeks into my term. But the city was suffering from record homicide rates and a sudden explosion of youth violence. Aggravated assaults by youths had increased 122 percent and attempted murders by 100 percent in the first six months of 1991. . . . Much of the

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youth violence was driven by gangs, and San Antonio was seeing an increase in gang indicators, such as drive-by shootings and graffiti.” Even Prospect Hill was not the neighborhood of Jesse’s youth. “What the West Side was and what it became is very different because a lot of the buildings Jesse painted are gone,” said Lionel Sosa. The whole area was experiencing financial decline, it had more than its fair share of illegal activity, and community organizers, still feeling neglected by the city council, were often at odds with law enforcement and the city council. While still observing it with an artist’s sensitivity, Jesse recognized that home was a rougher place, but he never stopped feeling that he’d developed a certain degree of uniqueness, an extra level of quality, from growing up in his particular childhood neighborhood. Sure, many buildings were boarded up and falling down; the old movie palaces didn’t draw the crowds or play the kinds of variety shows that they had when he was growing up. It’d been years since he played football in the street with his brothers. Of course, the West Side scene didn’t exactly mirror the other excesses of the 1990s, like the salaries of professional athletes going through the roof. But it was a party for some, with drugs, booze, and sex feeding various egos and addictions. With his growing popularity, Jesse loved being recognized more often and treated special at various bars and restaurants; and he took advantage of the other perks of celebrity, like the attention he’d always craved from women.

Besides, the past was still around him. Sunny Ozuna and other groups had remained popular as links to the West Side’s golden musical past; and places like Ray’s and the Malt House, with its swinging jukebox, still stood. The old neighborhood had enough history to feel recognizable and familiar. Just as important, Jesse knew how people were drawn to artists and their work for comfort, happiness, and meaning, and he wanted the community to get behind him as he tried to make the West Side a better, more beautiful place. This did not mean he was ready to settle down and settle into his work, but shortly after meeting a teacher’s assistant at UTSA named Laura Lopez, the two became seriously involved. Lopez became pregnant with Jesse’s child, and they rented a house together. Yet even after he and Terry divorced in 1991, and despite eventually having two children, David and Carolina, with Lopez, Jesse found it challenging to fully commit to this domestic relationship. He could still regularly be found hanging out with his friends, indulging in the seductive excesses of his reputation, rather than spending time with his family. “I was more attracted to that lifestyle,” he admitted many years later. “It took me a long time to stop that behavior.”

— In early 1992 Joseph DeRugeriis, general director of the San Antonio Festival, an annual performing arts series, persuaded Jesse to design and build the sets for a production of the comic

opera La Perichole. As part of the program, ten local high school students were chosen to help build the sets, including Emette Rivera, who was growing up on the South Side. Rivera had his own version of Karen Alsup, a dedicated high school art teacher named Donna Simon, who was helping him find viable career paths. “She was pushing me to build up my portfolio, try out for competitions,” Rivera said. “She brought it to my attention that maybe I could be a part of building sets for an opera.” After being selected for the gig, Rivera was given a tool bag and tools (valued at $200) to use during the show and to keep afterward. More than twenty-five years later, he was still using the bag and still remembered working on the show. He also recalled being particularly excited to meet one of the stars, Joel Grey. Although the performer was best known for his Tony- and Oscar–winning role as master of ceremonies of the musical Cabaret, Rivera knew him as the father of Jennifer Grey, who had starred a few years earlier in the popular coming-of-age movie Dirty Dancing. But it was Rivera’s work with Jesse that ultimately helped shape his future endeavors. In all honesty, seventeen-year-old Rivera didn’t know any more about Jesse’s career than he did Joel Grey’s, but the artist left quite an impression on him as the team began designing and constructing the Spanish Colonial–themed sets. “Jesse would come in with these drawings, explain to us what it would be. I thought of him as a mentor figure. I was probably so shy, being a kid and not knowing where I was or what I

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An image from one of Jesse Treviño’s set pieces from the comic opera La Perichole (1992).

was doing, so I don’t think I approached him [to talk] about anything personal, but I respect now, when I look back at it, his even temperament. I remember feeling his confidence and calm. He had a command of the space. He commanded respect.” Rivera, who eventually founded his own woodworking studio in Los Angeles specializing in home furnishings from reclaimed wood, added, “Today, if you ask me what the play was about, I’d have no idea. But working with Jesse really changed my life, really helped set me on this path. I saw how art can come off the canvas. It can be three dimensions.” When the opera completed its short run, there stood Jesse, taking a bow onstage with the cast and crew. And standing there with the stage lights in his eyes, he knew some people were in the audience just to see his sets, his art. The next day, however: “One foot in disaster and one in tedium, the San Antonio Festival’s horrid little production of Offenbach’s normally comic operetta ‘La Perichole’ trudged its weary way across the Majestic Theater stage Thursday night.” That’s how one writer for the San Antonio Express-News put it, holding back nothing of his distaste for the production, even referring to the show’s marquee player as the “former stage and screen star Joel Grey” before moving on to Jesse’s work: “Set designer Jesse Trevino is a hyperrealist painter with a certain reputation, but he had never designed a stage set before, and the festival clearly gave him no guidance in the matter. His literalist, four-square sets, drawn

from Spanish Colonial San Antonio, desperately wanted perspective, dimension and magic.” Jesse was certainly vulnerable to such criticism, even such apologist criticism as it was. For it had been a rare media story that didn’t praise him and his works outright. But while friends and colleagues recall that he did not take the review well, he was able to quickly put this small publicity blip behind him and continue his juggernaut career. Working on the show had pulled certain influential people into Jesse’s orbit, including the festival’s publicist, Carolee Youngblood. So taken was she with Jesse’s talent and his life story that, after the show wrapped up, Youngblood added Jesse as a client and took over other aspects of his promotion. “I had a lot of printing experience, and I began overseeing the printing of Jesse’s posters. Every time there was an opening or exhibition, there was a new printing of posters. They never sold for what he wanted. We would sell them for ten dollars, or sometimes we gave them away. It was wonderful PR, but it was a constant fight with him,” Youngblood said, then added, “But I wanted to do it. He could be the most charming, darling, wonderful guy. He could turn on the charm like you couldn’t believe.” The other person who became a Jesse Treviño fan around this time was Rosemary Kowalski, with the opera again playing a tangential role. A native Westsider and an ambitious, self-made businesswoman and owner of a successful catering company, Kowalski knew nothing about

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art, much less anything about Chicano artists. Her life was centered on feeding the city’s elite, powerful, and influential. There were also outof-town celebrities, such as the visiting client staying at La Mansion del Rio Hotel, located on downtown’s touristy River Walk. “I had gone to the hotel to pick up the client,” said Kowalski, who didn’t remember who the client was, but did recall getting into her Mercedes when her new passenger suddenly became very excited. “She said, ‘Look who’s in that car—that’s Joel Grey!’ I said, ‘Oh, my!’” As it turned out, for the brief time that Jesse and Grey worked together, they made the most of it. “We got off to it real good,” Jesse recalled with a broad smile. “He had read some article about conjunto culture and wanted me to take him around the West Side.” Jesse had just picked up Grey from La Mansion del Rio in his black Corvette Stingray when, pulling into traffic, he noticed two women in a Mercedes staring at them like they were from the moon. When Jesse stopped at a red light, the Mercedes screeched up to them in the next lane. One of the women yelled at him, “Is that Joel Grey sitting next to you?’” “I didn’t say anything,” Jesse said. “Joel says, ‘Yes,’ and a conversation starts between them while we’re parked at a red light.” Before catching up to the Stingray, Kowalski had noticed the Purple Heart on Jesse’s license plate. “I don’t think I knew what that meant at the time,” Kowalski said. “So I say, ‘By the way,

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what does your license mean?’ Jesse—he’s ornery, mean by now—he pulls his right arm up so we can see [the prosthetic] and yells, ‘I’m a veteran!’ Oh, I just wanted to go through the floorboard, I was so embarrassed. I sped off. “The next day, I was talking to one of the girls in the office. I said to her this crazy thing happened. She says, ‘You didn’t know who that was?’” So not everyone in San Antonio knew of Jesse Treviño, but as soon as she was informed of his story, Kowalski became intrigued—so much so that she tracked down Jesse and called him to apologize. “The next day after that she came to the Villarreals’ frame shop. I was there working with Jesse,” said Youngblood. “Rosemary comes in. She wants to meet Jesse and get to know him. Jesse fell in love with her, she fell in love with him. That started it.” Their love was not romantic, but something closer to familial; Kowalski’s fondness for Jesse developed into something like that of a sister’s. When he spoke of his art—what art does for the human heart, for local communities, and how it has the power to bring people together—she listened and believed and wanted to be a part of his vision. She began looking out for Jesse, encouraging him to spend more time in the studio and less time in the fast lane. And not infrequently, Jesse responded to her advice. As importantly, she began using Jesse, his story, and his art to bridge the gulf between Anglo San Antonio and

Mexican American San Antonio. It was really a continuation of what Elaine DagenBela (who continued working with Jesse) had begun, and now, along with Youngblood, this trinity of successful businesswomen promoted Jesse and his art with true zeal. “He had a really good following downtown, the West Side, and with some professionals,” said Youngblood. “Then I really started introducing him to the Anglo side of San Antonio, bringing him into their circle, telling his story. Rosemary did, too. Rosemary putting her stamp on it was really important.” Along with the highenergy backing from Jorge Cortez, this team brought a level of sophistication and experience to publicizing Jesse’s career—from rising artist to established San Antonio artist, one worthy of the whole city’s attention. This idea was acknowledged in January 1993, when San Antonio’s Institute of Mexican Culture exhibited a one-man retrospective, “Three Decades of Art by Jesse Treviño,” and featured fifty of Jesse’s paintings and sketches. This was a real party, including a red carpet for the opening night VIPs and with Kowalski catering the affair. “This gala, I think, it might have been 100 to 200 people. We did a real fancy dinner. We had the tables set with beautiful flowers. We used the [image of the] Raspa man as the invitations. We had chocolate palettes made with chocolate paintbrushes and colored sorbet as the paints for dessert. And we had paper cones with raspas,” said Kowalski. About 20,000 people

attended the opening weekend, and the show remained open long after its originally scheduled February 22 closing date.

— Time would bear out the fact that while Jesse was very good at making money, he was less successful at holding onto it. The same discipline he brought to his work never quite influenced building a solid financial regimen. But as long as the money lasted, he had friends and acquaintances who benefited from his largesse. Unfortunately, days and sometimes weeks passed with Jesse not attending to his work, including unfinished commissioned pieces, while he enjoyed his celebrity. “He was resistant to thinking ahead,” Youngblood said with some amusement, some frustration. “If he and his friends had money— and it was almost always Jesse’s money—they were all like, ‘We’re going to live today. And worry about everything else tomorrow.’” Youngblood’s observation certainly rang true, but while the rewards of the “now” clearly motivated Jesse personally, he was also refining his professional focus. At the age of forty-six he was contemplating his legacy: What, if anything, would inform the city that he had lived and worked here with such passion? What would last through time even when his time here was through? Even at this point in his career, with more freedom than ever to paint what he desired, even with his growing popularity in San

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Antonio, and even with a solid team promoting him, he remained bitter with the perception that he wasn’t being properly celebrated by the mainstream art community, most especially from the San Antonio Museum of Art. “That was San Antonio’s attitude: if you hadn’t made it in New York, then they couldn’t recognize you here. That always seemed dumb to me,” said Dan Goddard, an arts writer for the San Antonio Express-News who kept tabs on Jesse’s career throughout the 1990s. Because New York always sought the avant-garde, smaller, less established art communities like San Antonio’s often felt a need to follow suit rather than value works of, say, photorealism, which was almost considered a novelty by New York standards. Still, Goddard believed that Jesse’s familiar scenes of the West Side helped him become a larger-than-life character in some local circles. Having published more than a dozen stories on Jesse, Goddard was aware that there were very few artists that San Antonio supported in the way that Jesse was being supported (even if that level wasn’t up to Jesse’s liking), and he came away detecting something of a maverick streak to Jesse’s agenda. “I think he was concerned about getting the West Side into museums. That was something that he wanted to do. He craved that, but he didn’t want to play by the mainstream’s rules.” Goddard’s observation was perhaps a different way of saying that Jesse often acted as the enfant terrible with dealers, gallery owners, even

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his own promotional team, but his ambitions only increased. Jesse was no longer content with just being in exhibitions, even solo exhibitions, because those were always temporary. And even though private collectors paid handsomely for his paintings, those works were typically housed away from the general public. Anxious to have his art seen, anxious to be known, he really wanted them acquired as part of a museum’s permanent collection. He had come close with El Alameda and SAMA in 1981 but remained bitter at the outcome. However, another museum—out of town, naturally—was interested in acquiring Jesse’s works.

— In the late 1980s, the Latino Working Committee was formed within the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The committee began advocating for the Smithsonian to direct more attention to Latino projects, programs, staff, and collections, and its efforts led to the appointment of a task force for further work. In May 1994 the task force published a report called “Willful Neglect,” which cited a lack of representation of Latinos within the galleries of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art (now called the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and the nation’s other museums, thereby distorting an accurate representation of the country. The report became national news. Andrew Connors, who at the time was responsible for Hispanic art and cultural issues for

the Smithsonian, had already been working with others to change the culture within the museum. “By the time ‘Willful Neglect’ was published, [the museum] was already moving toward building a larger collection of art by Latinos and doing more exhibitions and installations of Latino/ Hispanic art,” Connors said. “‘Willful Neglect’ simply encouraged us to continue to move in the direction we had already started.” That direction included acquiring more art from Mexican Americans, and, in fact, Connors said, the museum had learned of and wanted to acquire Jesse’s work well before the report was published. “He was already an artist the museum wanted to add to the collections. His name had been on the museum’s wish list of artists to acquire since probably 1990.” Connors respected that Jesse’s work had been included in “CARA: Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985,” organized by UCLA to be the largest exhibition of Chicano art to tour the country. (Connors might also have been impressed that the exhibit and extensive catalogue of the show included reproductions of larger pieces, such as Jesse’s Mi Vida; Jesse had submitted a photo of himself, smiling wide, sitting right in front of his work. Even as he obscured his own art, his presence provided scale for the enormous piece while linking his face with his art. Of the forty-nine works reproduced in full color for the catalogue, plus dozens more blackand-white photos of paintings, sculptures, and murals from artists all over the country, only one

artist was shown with his work: Jesse Treviño.) Additionally, Connors had met Jesse in person on a research trip to San Antonio in 1990, during which the artist made his typical lasting impression. “Jesse seemed like an important voice both within that exhibition and for the country, so we kept him at the front of our discussions of acquisitions and programming,” Connors said. By now, Elaine DagenBela had relinquished much of her business with Jesse, but not before she had lobbied many influential people in Washington, DC, about his work, and her message had obviously broken through. “She had many contacts in Washington, DC, and she had done her job politically,” said Youngblood. “When Elaine did that for Jesse, she really started making a path for the show. That’s why she was so important.” The “show” occurred after the Smithsonian agreed to acquire Jesse’s work. Lionel Sosa, who had purchased Mis Hermanos, and Reverend Virgilio Elizondo of San Fernando Cathedral, who had commissioned Tienda de Elizondo (“Elizondo’s Store,” 1993, acrylic on canvas, 89 5/8˝× 66 1/8˝), a colorful depiction of the interior of his family’s grocery store, agreed to donate those works to the museum’s permanent collection. Connors also curated a solo exhibition, “Works by Jesse Treviño: New York, Vietnam, San Antonio,” which opened in the Smithsonian’s Lincoln Gallery on the same September day as Jesse’s induction ceremony and ran for several months. Back home, some media outlets called

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Mis Hermanos (“My Brothers,” 1976). Acrylic on canvas, 70˝× 48˝. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.

it the first one-man Hispanic exhibition at the Smithsonian, and while that wasn’t the case, the opening day certainly was the occasion when the secretary of the Smithsonian, Michael Heyman, referred to Jesse in his opening remarks as “one of the, if not the, leading realist painters in the United States.” Undoubtedly, the secretary was burnishing Jesse’s image—just a little—for the occasion. But how could Jesse unhear those words? Former San Antonio mayor and acting secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros summarized Jesse’s life before praising his works: “His paintings of the community capture the colors, the texture, the uniqueness of signs and idiom and language, and they move us as only artists can do. Artists speak in a language that none of the others of us can speak. . . . They move us to remember, and associate, and dream, and to be inspired. That’s what Jesse has done.” Elaine DagenBela then introduced Jesse, saying, “His goal was that his art would be in a major institution so he could share his heart and his soul with the masses. And [the exhibit] is here tonight and what a goal and what a success story.” And there stood the artist, dressed in coat and tie with short-trimmed hair and a rare cleanshaven face. He beamed with youthful pride as he thanked the dignitaries and his gathered friends. For here he was showing his work inside the most American of American museums, being praised on a national level, having a portrait of

his own brothers inducted into the country’s premiere art collection; his rendition of a momand-pop grocery store from the West Side of San Antonio had suddenly become a part of the same collection that included works by American masters Andy Warhol, William F. Draper, and Mel Casas. “And I’ve struggled quite a bit,” Jesse said solemnly, “but I always believed that what I was doing was what I really loved, which was painting and drawing and everything that had to do with art.” He called the event the “most exciting time” of his career, and it prompted thoughts of improving San Antonio’s cultural approach to Mexican American art. In fact, it planted a seed in his mind that would, against the odds, germinate and bloom someday. “When I got back home I told Jorge [Cortez] that we have to make a museum around here. We have to create our own Latino-Chicano museum,” Jesse remembered. With conviction that would have made Joe Bastida Rodriguez and Mel Casas proud, he added, “No one’s going to do it for us.” Cortez, according to many who know the restaurateur, is truly an artist at heart. He has learned at the easel directly from Jesse, Armando Sanchez, and others and has become accomplished as a painter. But his real talent involves wielding other artisans like painters use paintbrushes in order to fulfill his ambitious vision. At the heart of this vision, he wanted the Mercado to be a sensory experience, with music and art and commerce, all housed in an authentic

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Mexican ambiance, and Jesse’s works should be among the most important contributions. “We’re partners in crime,” Cortez said of his relationship with Jesse. “My whole thing is a vision of a cultural zone, about preserving the Latino culture in San Antonio, to be an example for the country of being an American and being a Latino. And Jesse’s art pulls people together like no other artist in San Antonio ever has. So [Jesse and I have] shared many dreams together.” The two began corralling others in town— artists, business leaders, politicians—to talk of creating a National Museum of Mexican American Art. On December 24, 1994, Jesse’s forty-eighth birthday, Dan Goddard reported in the San Antonio Express-News that a new foundation had been formed, Amigos del Arte, which included Jesse, Cortez, César Martinez, Mel Casas, Lionel Sosa, and Rosemary Kowalski, for fundraising and scouting locations for a museum. Goddard also wrote that the group had opened discussions with a representative of the Smithsonian Institution to partner on the project. Jesse’s career was on a trajectory unlike any other artist’s in San Antonio at the time, and he was undoubtedly viewing his success as a metaphor for his manhood, which might be why his marriage to Laura Lopez didn’t last. “I wanted her to be obsessed with Jesse Treviño and his artwork,” he admitted. “I knew she wanted to settle down, but I made it difficult. That’s also why I got divorced from Terry. We couldn’t get along together.” The couple parted around

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Christmastime and began divorce proceedings in early 1995.

— “In 1981 I was in the exhibit ‘Real, Really Real, Super Real,’” Jesse told an interviewer for the Institute of Texan Cultures in mid-1995, “and I felt at that point I had already proven myself and that I needed to be in [the San Antonio Museum of Art], in the permanent collection. The museum was already purchasing works by other artists that were in that exhibit. Originally they were working on purchasing the Alameda from me. But then they fired the director or they lost interest or whatever, ignored me. And I was left out of the museum since 1981. It’s hard for me to forgive them because all the people who went through the doors of the museum could have seen this painting that I did. It hurt me a lot.” The painting he referred to was Señora Dolores Treviño, even though, for reasons unexplained, at the time of his grousing he was well aware that the museum had agreed to acquire that painting for its permanent collection. Apparently, it just wasn’t soon enough. Fundraising efforts had been spearheaded by Kowalski, Sosa, and Cortez to buy the painting from Jesse for SAMA for $30,000. There was also to be a one-man retrospective show: “A West Side Story: Works by Jesse Treviño,” which would exhibit fourteen of his canvases. It would be the museum’s first Mexican American one-man exhibition, and there were some doubts as to how San Antonio would embrace the show.

Kowalski, who catered the opening affair with Cortez, initially worried about attendance, too: “Because most of the people represented or who were proud of his art—they didn’t go to museums. And we were scared that no one would come because they would feel like they weren’t welcome. But we had a wonderful attendance.” When the private opening was held on Thursday evening, September 8, 1995, it was a full house, with perhaps 150 people crowded into the museum’s lobby, some even standing on the steps leading up to the second-floor galleries. All were waiting for one person to appear. “He liked to make an entrance,” said Carolee Youngblood, explaining how she believed Jesse’s arrival had become a calculated part of his public appearances. “When these big exhibits would start, we always had a schedule. I never knew exactly when he would show up. But he would waltz in; usually the crowd was already there. Maybe he just innately knew not to come at the beginning. He was never early to anything.” Naturally, Jesse’s mother was as popular as the artist. She arrived with several of her children, her hair newly coifed for the night, a touch of rouge on her cheeks, a pair of silver dangle earrings that never stopped moving as her head turned from one well-wisher to the next. Dressed in an elegant yet festive blue dress, she posed all evening in front of her portrait with the mayor, council members, business leaders, museum executives, and artists. Dolores’s daughter Alice Treviño Rodriguez remembered, “My mother used to say Jesse was

always hanging out with cagadas grandes—it’s a slang way of saying ‘big shits,’ ‘VIPs.’ Now here she was being fawned over by the big shits. I think she really loved it.” While speaking about the museum’s newest acquisition, Lenora Brown, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees, told the crowd, “We see [Dolores’s portrait] every day. We’ve grown to love her.” Mayor Bill Thornton remarked how important it was that “we’re showing one of our very own” and extolled Jesse’s art as “Of us. Of our city” before reading a proclamation of commemoration to the museum and to Jesse. When Jesse finally spoke, he first told the crowd with a smile, “I’ve been doing interviews all day. I’ve never done as many interviews before as I’ve done today.” But then he continued with what was becoming a familiar theme for his public presentations: “Your presence here today, your interest in my work, it proves to me something about what I’m doing.” The rest of his speech conveyed how happy he was and how this show meant more to him than the one in Washington, DC, because so many people, especially his family, were on hand to enjoy this moment with him. He held no ill will toward the museum that day, even when the official poster for the show was unveiled: It was the portrait of El Alameda—the one that got away. Jesse spent a long night signing posters, being flattered by the cagadas grandes, telling his stories of growing up, telling his stories of New York and Vietnam. When he surveyed the crowd, he saw his mother and family and longtime friends,

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and he also saw people he didn’t know. They all had come to admire his work and to validate his life. He might as well have been back in the Witte Museum’s auditorium when he was in first grade, never wanting to leave, never wanting the day to end.

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A couple of weeks later, the museum hosted a “family day,” and 2,500 children and parents and others showed up to meet Jesse, discuss art, and talk about the West Side. Months later, when the show finally closed, it had broken the museum’s attendance records.

Chapter 10

Spirit and Loss (1996–1999)

Jorge, the eleventh child, who had been born with a heart murmur and who had never reached five feet tall, died of kidney failure in July 1996. He was forty-five. Jesse had known death before. He still felt the loss of his father, and he would never get over the death of his sister Eva. He’d seen men die in the jungles of the Mekong Delta and at Beach Pavilion. In 1990, he’d faced a parent’s worst nightmare and buried one of his children. After the divorce, Anna Davila had moved their two kids, Jessica and Jackie, to Florida, and Jackie had grown up studying art like her father. At age twenty Jackie had been killed in a car accident. “We were her godparents,” said Armando Albarran. “I saw some of her work. She had just graduated from an art school in Florida. When the news came, it floored Jesse.” Apart from being emotionally devastating, this tragedy came at one of those times when Jesse had practically no money to his name.

“The family pitched in for a ticket for Jesse,” said Alice Treviño Rodriguez. “And then somewhere along the way he was so lost mentally that he got lost at the airport and was going off to another place. The family in Florida had to meet him at another airport. He didn’t know how to handle it.” Jesse was in a similar state of grief when Jorge died. “Everybody loved Jorge,” he said nearly thirty years later, adding how he still felt the pain of losing his younger brother. Jorge (whose family nickname was “Koke”) endured lifelong medical issues, but he’d always been very active, remembered John Treviño. “My brother became a kindergarten teacher’s aide at Crockett Elementary, the same school he attended. Many teachers and kids went to the church funeral mass, presented flowers, and sang a song. The church was full of family, friends, and many kids of all ages because Koke loved to coach Little League and basketball teams.”

Having grown up two blocks away on Monterey Street, George Cisneros was close friends with Jorge Treviño and described him as shy, quiet, and analytical. “Jorge was very meticulous, the way his mind worked. Everything had to be in order, clean. Great penmanship. Very thorough. Very polite. Totally loved his mom, like all the children did,” he said. “When Jorge passed, Jesse took it hard. I remember that night. I was at my studio. Somebody called and said Jorge passed and that Jesse was really in a bad place, taking it hard. We went over there and he just cried and cried.” “Everybody loved Jorge,” Jesse repeated. “The community, the school, all these kids just thought he was the best guy. He was, too.” At the time of Jorge’s passing he was living at home and taking care of Dolores while she took care of him. Jorge made sure his mother had everything she needed, bought groceries, paid all the bills, while Dolores cooked his meals, washed and ironed his clothes, and fixed his lunches. “They were good companionship for each other,” said John Treviño. “She cried and took it very hard when he died.” Yet, as John Treviño further explained, just as she had done before, Dolores persevered. “Her strong Catholic faith and being loved and surrounded by her children helped her get over the grieving period. She still had a lot of her polluelos [‘baby chickens,’ as she sometimes called her kids] to take care of. That was her station in life: to worry and take care of all her children and now grandkids.”

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Jesse, too, would persevere. He always dealt with grief by throwing himself into work for long, dedicated periods, though they were often preceded or interrupted by periods of inactivity, depression, and seclusion. His withdrawal from life, he always knew, couldn’t last. He’d spent so many years chasing down his destiny, wrangling the spotlight, getting his art into important institutions, and earning his way into the city’s elite core of artists. His importance to the city was being acknowledged with every painting’s unveiling, every mural’s dedication. The San Antonio Conservation Society even presented him with a Conservation Hero citation in 1993 because his “realistic paintings preserve contemporary vignettes of San Antonio’s people, places and cultural traditions.” He relished these types of honors, accepting them as further validation of his work and of his life itself. Jesse saw himself becoming something of a historic figure with an important job to do, and he would be a failure if he didn’t do that job. That job was to lead with his art and his vision. The new museum project, for one thing, was certainly going to be a part of that vision— especially since it would soon be confirmed that the Smithsonian was actually coming on board. Though still many years away from realization, this new institution was being planned to be the largest Latino museum in the country. And Jesse was there at the beginning.

—

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Mexican American artists exhibited their works in any space that they could find. For example, members of Con Safo often approached the public library for exhibition space, but their requests were constantly rebuffed, with the library administrators showing little inclination to open the doors to Chicano agitators and their political propaganda art. But in 1994, after San Antonio’s library foundation chose Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta to oversee the design of a new Central Library, Jesse was commissioned to create a mural inside the new building. The six-story downtown library included outdoor spaces, an expansive atrium, and a bold, eye-catching exterior color that became known around town as “enchilada red.” Jesse’s mural, completed for the library’s opening in May 1995, was called San Antonio in World War II (acrylic on canvas, 36´× 10´); painted on multiple canvases joined together, it incorporates a collage of marquee signs from six historic downtown theaters, like the Majestic, the Texas, and the Aztec, along with a bridge spanning the River Walk, a statue of St. Anthony, the Tower Life Building, and the Hertzberg Clock at the corner of Houston and St. Mary’s. Twinkling lights cross the twilight sky, casting soft, familiar holiday warmth. “I remember when I was a child, my sister Eva would take me downtown to see all the theaters, all the decorations they would have during the Christmas period. All the store windows were like New York, Macy’s. All the beautiful displays.

I’ll never forget how beautiful all that was,” Jesse said. Within this sentimental setting, the piece also pays tribute to war veterans (a military jeep and a B-24 bomber bookend the mural) and several important figures of San Antonio’s history. In the foreground there are candles and flowers; the illusion is that friends and family spontaneously left these items in front of the mural to honor their loved ones. Photographs show Air Force general Robert McDermott (1920–2006), who later headed up the United Services Automobile Association, an insurance company for the military and their families; Emma Tenayuca (1916– 99), a popular and successful labor activist who began two unions for ladies garment workers and helped lead a successful labor strike against the South Pecan Shelling Company in 1938; and Cleto Rodríguez (1923–90), a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient (1945) who served in both the US Army and US Air Force. In truth, Jesse remained a bit unsatisfied because the mural was located in an inadequately lighted hallway off of the main lobby. In June of 1995 he told interviewer Sarah Massey, “It’s not as huge as I would have liked to do it, and it’s not on the wall I would have liked to do it, but what I’m very grateful for is that I had the opportunity to do it. It has to be one of my proudest moments. It means a lot to me, to come almost full circle to do this mural for the library.”

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San Antonio in World War II, Central Library, San Antonio, 1995. Acrylic on canvas, 36´× 10´. Kirk Weddle Photography.

Jesse began thinking more seriously about works that helped define public spaces. In the past, many people had purchased posters and prints of his work; a select few owned original paintings, and some of these works could occasionally be viewed in a museum or gallery for a couple months. But the appeal of producing public art, or at least art that is much more assessible to the public, had slowly been eclipsing his satisfaction and sense of exclusiveness that came with being in a museum’s permanent collection. In fact, he was preparing to raise the bar for public art in San Antonio because—finally!— downtown’s Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital (now the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio) was ready to give Jesse his wall. Operated in part by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word, the hospital had been scouting sites to relocate operations to the north but had decided to stay put, a block or so from the Mercado. The nine-story exterior wall facing Milam Park was all Jesse’s if he still wanted it. (He did.) “They came to us because they decided they wanted an image,” said Carolee Youngblood. “They wanted to be known. It was important to them to be a recognized part of the neighborhood.” Jesse always admired Jorge Cortez’s talents in marketing and salesmanship, having seen his successful transformation of the Mercado’s neighborhood into a vital and vibrant cultural zone and a destination for local families and tourists. Cortez set up a luncheon with hospital

administrators and Jesse’s team and then turned Jesse loose. “We sat across from him as he described his vision and we became inflamed with his passion,” Fernando Martinez, director of hospital support services, told the Dallas Morning News. “He genuinely sees the project as a way to bring people together in a way that clicked with our sense of mission.” While eager to work with Jesse, the hospital’s representatives were also well aware that a project of this enormous size would be very expensive. It certainly wasn’t going to cost $350,000, like Jesse had counted on twenty years ago. But that’s where the news got better: The hospital had determined it was able to fund the majority of the project on its own. There would be some additional fundraising involved, which Jesse would take part in, but he was assured that he would have everything he needed to make his vision a reality. Looking back on that meeting during an interview for the Archives of American Art for the Smithsonian Institution, Jesse told Cary Cordova, “And they decided to spend money— all that money again on doing something like this. And I think that says a lot for me too as an artist. I mean, I’d never done anything like this before.” Nobody in San Antonio had done anything like that before. But it was enough space—nine stories!—to tell any story he wanted, to portray any image he could imagine, to leave his mark on San Antonio in a most unbelievable way. He

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knew it would be physically demanding, plus the pressure put upon him by the hospital and the public—not to mention by himself—would be enormous. But he’d been preparing for this moment as an artist for so long, and he confidently told the hospital it should take only about a year to complete. Now all he needed was an idea for the image. “We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Youngblood remembered of the time. She said everyone around Jesse was trying to figure out what he might be thinking as he searched for the right source material to translate his emotions, to be universal with his message, and to bring people together. “I recall he just kept going around taking pictures in cemeteries.” During his research Jesse discovered that in the 1840s the area that became Milam Park was largely undeveloped except for all the tombstones. A public cemetery had been located there, and a Catholic cemetery had been just to the north, where the hospital now stood. With such knowledge swirling around in his mind, Jesse sought inspiration by photographing headstones and sculptures at the San Fernando Cemetery. Jorge Cortez recalled being with Jesse at his Mistletoe studio, looking at the photographs on the table before them, grappling over ideas for the concept. Jesse had recently painted a portrait of his son, Jesse Jr., using photographs from when he was about eight years old, holding a pet hedgehog. These photos were strewn across Jesse’s workbench along with those from the cemetery. Cortez said, “I tell him, ‘Jesse, I see

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Christ’s love in this child. Only a child with such innocence and spirituality can look at an animal with such love and tenderness.’” The two kept shuffling around the photos, growing more excited about the evolving concept, until one combination made a resounding impression. At last, after twenty years of imagining what he would put on that wall, Jesse could see the image he wanted to share with San Antonio. He produced a nine-by-five-foot acrylic painting of his concept to show the hospital. In the foreground stood his son. Instead of holding a hedgehog, his hands delicately cradle a dove, and from it streams of golden light cast a glow across the boy’s face. “I used a dove to be the spirit of life,” Jesse explained. Picking up the colors of the boy’s striped T-shirt, the sky is streaked with similar oranges and yellows and cooling blues and purples. A stone angel sculpture, her head bowed, watches closely from behind. Both of her wings are outstretched, but part of the left one has broken off. “The broken wing of the angel is all about . . . saying, there are hard times, but we get through them, especially with the help of angels, who could be your mother or anyone who gives you guidance as a child,” Jesse told the Associated Press. On an even more personal note, he would later say, “You don’t have to be complete in order to be effective. I don’t have an arm. It was simple and symbolic.” Jesse has described the face of the angel as being both that of his mother and his sister Eva.

“My sister, my oldest sister, she’s the one that believed in me. She was my guardian angel. Can you imagine if I didn’t have her?” he said. Now Jesse’s guardian angel could watch over Milam Park and comfort all the children and their families coming to the hospital. As Jesse told La Prensa, “I wanted to emphasize the importance of children and how the neglect of our children brings about problems in our youth.” He titled the artwork Spirit of Healing, and the hospital loved it. The image certainly reflected a growing area of Jesse’s thinking. Still enjoying his celebrity, he was also developing a soft side toward children. He tried as best he could to be active in his own children’s lives, and there is a range of opinions from friends and family on how successful he was in that department. But he had also begun visiting various schools and youth organizations to encourage students to pursue the arts, even conducting art workshops. He would continue these activities for many years and often spoke publicly of the need for society to take care of its most vulnerable.

— Long ago, Jesse had determined that if he ever had the chance to make a piece of art this important, not to mention this big, he would be damn sure that it was going to last a long time. This was not just a work of art. It was to be a monument, a nine-story testament of unconditional love given to the city from Jesse Treviño (via the generosity of the hospital), and he intended for it to endure for generations. So, unlike his

previous murals, this one required entire crews of workers planning, constructing, moving, and affixing the piece to the building. Cliff Cavin of Union Tile Company was among the first experts to be tapped, and he quipped to the magazine Tile: Design and Installation, “[Jesse] was ready for me to figure out how to actually make it happen.” “So with the construction guy and some architect friends of mine,” Jesse explained, “[we] worked out a way of how to do the pieces on panels that would last forever. I mean, something that—so we, we took a fiber panel, light fiber panel, wrapped it with a fiberglass mesh, and then gave it a coat of latex paint, and it became a very rigid, very sturdy panel, very light and strong.” The ceramic tiles would be attached to those panels, which were two feet by four feet and weighed almost fifty pounds each, and then mounted to the wall. (Cavin advised that the ceramic tiles not be applied directly to the wall.) It would be a significant engineering challenge, but Jesse had convinced the hospital that it was a good investment since the maintenance costs over time would be lower than trying to keep the colors of a painting from being bleached away by the unrelenting Texas sunshine. Creating the outsized image would be a Herculean task, requiring a methodical approach and a lot of help. Jesse and Alex Villarreal acted as Jesse’s main assistants, and they also solicited help from high school students. They received about 250 applications from which they chose

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Spirit of Healing, Children’s Hospital of San Antonio (1997). Hand-cut tile mosaic, 43´× 93´. Kirk Weddle Photography.

ten assistants. Headquarters was a warehouse, donated by the San Antonio Press, about fourteen blocks northwest of the hospital. The key to success with the project was the grid system Jesse set up to maintain proper perspective. After a professional photographer shot the painting of Spirit of Healing in extreme close-up, the image was separated into columns and rows. Three slide projectors were needed to project enlarged sections of the image against the grid onto a long white screen. Using that as a guide, Jesse loosely sketched the image on individual two-by-four-foot panels, indicating where tiles were to be placed. He didn’t copy the design exactly; he said at the time there was still room for a bit of improvisation: “I don’t see this as a mosaic. It’s a painting with tile.” Jesse chose Chroma ceramic tiles from a German company, Buchtal, because he found the colors (more than fifty would be used) vivid and bright, producing beautiful reflections from the sunlight. (Chroma tiles were also frostproof; while South Texas doesn’t often experience freezing weather, it does happen, and frost could potentially damage the mural.) There were boxes and boxes and boxes of colorful eightby-eight-inch tiles stacked against the walls of the warehouse, ready to join the thousands of pieces being shaped every month. A framed print of the hospital wall with Spirit of Healing superimposed on it was hung prominently in the warehouse for guidance and inspiration. Jesse, the Villarreal brothers, and their student assistants showed up day after day, week

after week, and eventually month after month, to simply cut tiles using hand pliers. It took the team several months to get used to all the bending over and walking on the hard concrete floor all day. The work was tough on their legs and backs, especially Jesse’s; his pain and stiffness were daily reminders of how broken his body remained. Still, even with his team working hard, Jesse cut the majority of the tiles himself. “With my prosthesis, I could cut the tiles faster than them,” he said. “When you cut ceramic, it is sharp, so maybe you get cut. You have to be cautious. But I could just clamp it in my prosthesis, score it and break it. So I probably cut 90 percent of that tile alone.” A diamond saw was needed to shape smaller features, like the fine lines of the angel’s eyelashes and the wrinkles in the boy’s shorts. In effect, he could create the illusion of blending colors on the panels. “He cut every tile like it was a brushstroke,” said Youngblood, who frequently joined in to cut tile whenever she could. Extra hands were always needed, since they were running well behind schedule. Sometimes Jesse would miss a day or more, simply disappearing. Sometimes he was with a new girlfriend, sometimes he was with someone that his team had never seen before. Sometimes he just wanted to be by himself. For his colleagues in the warehouse, getting him to open up about where he’d been could be more difficult than the task before them. So the team simply kept working, and after a year Jesse adjusted the timetable to have the piece completed by Christmas.

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Incidentally, Jesse never stopped working on commissions or being lauded by some organization or another during this time, and that certainly contributed to Spirit of Healing’s delays, but it kept his name in the press and in the public’s eye. Moved by the killing of superstar Tejano singer Selena, he unveiled a portrait of her, titled Como Una Flor (“Like a Flower,” 1996, acrylic on canvas, 50˝× 60˝), at a one-man exhibition, “Jesse Treviño: An Artist and His Place,” held at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi. A caravan of San Antonians, including Mayor Bill Thornton, bused down to the opening reception. About 700 people showed up that night, and the show ultimately broke the museum’s attendance records. There was also prominent media coverage of Proud Heritage: The C-5 Galaxy and San Antonio (1997, acrylic on canvas, 8´× 5´), commissioned by Lockheed Martin to honor the workers of Kelly Field who had maintained the C-5 aircraft for twenty-five years. In the painting the enormous long-distance cargo plane ascends in the sky over the top of Mission San Jose, a sight San Antonians had gotten used to seeing for a quarter of a century. Said Jesse to a writer for the San Antonio Express-News, “My brothers, my cousins, my friends have worked at Kelly Field as long as I can remember. This painting honors them and their work.” Whenever possible, he pivoted the interviews toward updating everyone on the progress of Spirit of Healing.

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It was coming along nicely, as a matter of fact. Thousands of individually cut pieces of tile had been arranged by hand and attached to dozens of panels with waterproof cement rated at 600 pounds per square inch. These panels were connected into sets of three, making each of the new panels six feet by twelve feet. As spring turned to summer and more sections were completed, the team began laying out and assembling the finished artwork on the warehouse floor. But seeing it from ground level wasn’t its intended perspective, and Jesse fretted about its overall balance and whether it would maintain proper perspective once it was attached to the wall. His thoughts weren’t always bleak. He was convinced that visitors to the city would see this new work—how could they miss it?!—and know that San Antonians were good people. Families would gather in Milam Park, children would play there. His work had to be perfect for them. Feeling such responsibility on his shoulders, he knew Spirit of Healing had to be the best he could produce. Then came the day when the final tiles were secured to their respective panels. It had taken about three years to get this point, but there were now more than 150,000 individual hand-cut tile pieces assembled and attached to the panels. Now Jesse was ready for the hard part. In mid-July 1997 installation began, but not before ultrasound testing confirmed that the load-bearing walls on that side of the hospital were strong enough to support the panels.

(Without the tiles, the panels weighed over 25,000 pounds combined.) Scaffolding was erected and teams of hard hats began assembling the mural from the bottom up. Jesse, a constant presence at the worksite, took his place on the scaffold to inspect and sometimes make adjustments as the panels were cemented, then bolted onto the hospital wall. An expansion joint sealed with clear neoprene was inserted every ten feet to allow the mural to expand and contract with the changing weather. Tile magazine reported, “Accuracy was of the utmost importance in this task—if one panel was slightly out of place, the entire mural would be thrown off-balance. To ensure complete precision, the team plumbed the mural three times per day.” Each panel was also caulked to the wall and grouted on the side with the next panel. After the last tiles were put into place, a neoprene-coated aluminum frame was installed around the whole mural, further protecting it from water. By the time September 12 arrived, a curtain covered the completed mural, even though Spirit of Healing was hardly a secret to San Antonio. By the time October 7 and the unveiling came around, there had been plenty of opportunities to see it being completed, and the final image had been known for two years. This hardly mattered as dozens, and then hundreds, of people began filing into Milam Park. The crowds soon overflowed to the surrounding sidewalks. Following a private reception inside the hospital, Jesse walked across the street to Milam Park

and was greeted by a raucous cheer from the enormous crowd. He also discovered that it was raining—not just a drizzle but a downpour. “We were all under umbrellas,” recalled Youngblood. “There was a little stage set up in front of the mural, but the rain had knocked out all the microphones. The mayor was supposed to speak. We had children who were supposed to sing. A mariachi band. But we didn’t need any microphones because when they lowered that drape—that’s all that needed to be done. You didn’t need a word.” Despite the weather, about 2,000 San Anto­ nians turned out that evening. (There can be little doubt that the weather kept hundreds more away.) As the rain fell, so, too, did the curtain, slowly revealing first the wings of the angel and the brightening sky behind her. The cheers started out loud and enthusiastic and grew evermore ecstatic as each section of the mural was revealed. By the time the curtain passed the bottom stories, the crowd was roaring, cameras flashing, warm rain anointing it all. Some people were moved to shed a few tears. “When the curtain came down, it was so dramatic,” said Youngblood. “I had only seen [Spirit of Healing] lying flat. One of the things that is so true is Jesse’s artistic vision. He knew what it was going to look like before it went up. You can’t imagine the scale of the thing. It was such an affirmation to him. He had already become a favorite son of San Antonio in a lot of ways, but I think that that pretty much cemented [his

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legacy]. It’s going to last forever. That’s one of the reasons he loves tile.” There is disparity in the actual dimensions of the final piece, having been reported variously as 90 feet by 40 feet and 93 feet by 43 feet. Television and newspaper reports that night, the following day, and for weeks to come repeated that Spirit was believed to be “the largest tile mural in North America.” (Geographically, Hawaii isn’t a part of North America. However, a pair of ceramic tile murals, each thirty-one stories high, has graced two sides of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort on Oahu since 1968. They’re known as the Rainbow Mural and were designed by Millard Sheets.) Standing on the stage, Jesse raised his arms triumphantly, acknowledging the crowd, soaking in their adulation and excitement that flowed over his skin like the warm raindrops. You cannot ignore me now! the mural declared on behalf of the artist. It was viewable in great detail from every corner of Milam Park, and it could be seen from the Interstates circling downtown. It could even be spotted from the sky on the right flight paths. How thrilling it was to be its creator. Nothing had changed since he was a child. This was the feeling that he chased with every painting, every mural, every piece of art he produced. He was joined on stage by Jesse and Alex Villarreal, who were credited by having their names included under Jesse’s cut-tile signature on the lower right side of the work. Then the rest of his team and some friends and family members appeared next to him. He had to admit, this

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even topped the Witte contest from first grade. Afterward, during one of his countless interviews, he revealed just how important this piece was for him: “It’s my way of giving something back to the city. It’s not that I don’t want my paintings in museums. I do. But most of the people are outside those museum walls. Public art, big pieces like this, bring the art out where everyone can see it. This is a transformation for me. In this work, San Antonio is my canvas. The people are the art.”

— One day, the phone rang. It was the White House. First lady Hillary Clinton was traveling to Santiago, Chile, to attend a summit of first ladies from North and South America. The summit’s theme was empowering women. Chilean first lady Marta Larraeches de Frei suggested that each participant bring with them an artist to help Chilean children put together an art exhibit. So Clinton’s office called to say that a presidential commission chose Jesse for the honor. “I started setting this up, but Jesse didn’t have a passport and didn’t bother to tell me until about three days before,” said Youngblood. “I moved heaven and earth to get that passport.” “Man, she was good,” Jesse would say many years later about Youngblood. He would say it often, too, acknowledging all the critical contributions she’d made to his career. “She could put a contract together. She worked with Hillary Clinton’s staff, put my itinerary together, bought my tickets. What a difference someone like her

made for me. It’s very important to have someone to do all that.” And then on the morning of the flight “something came over him, and he said, ‘I’m not going,’” Youngblood recalled. “We tried everything to get him to go. I said, ‘You have to go because you’re Jesse Treviño. That’s why you have to go.’ He got up and took his suitcase and agreed to go.” Later he would be very glad he had made the trip. He’d been met by Clinton’s keepers, who understood the importance of making sure the first lady’s entourage was complete. So there he was—in another hemisphere—about to make the first lady of the United States go leftie with her handshake. Reporting for the Associated Press, Carolyn Skorneck wrote: “The U.S. artist, 50-year-old Jesse Treviño of San Antonio, who was chosen by a presidential commission, got an effusive welcome from Mrs. Clinton.” Obviously caught up in the moment and perhaps laying on the flattery a little heavy, Jesse told Skorneck, “She gave me a hug and kiss on the cheek. She’s like my hero.” After a trip to Casas de Lo Matta Museum, the group was shown artwork by the children in an exhibit named “Pintando con los Niños” (Painting with Children). Relaxing more into the reality that he was representing all of the United States, Jesse enjoyed working with the children and talking with the other artists. Clinton was reportedly very touched to receive a sketch of herself that he completed in the brief time they spent together. As future events would suggest, he made an impression on the first lady.

In fact, it was only a few days after Jesse returned to San Antonio that the White House contacted him again. This time Hillary Clinton wanted Jesse to be a guest speaker at the White House for the first annual Coming Up Taller Awards. The ceremony would recognize school and community arts and humanities programs that help develop interest, skills, and confidence. In addition to appearing on behalf of San Antonio’s Urban smARTS after-school program, which was created to keep at-risk youth away from the temptations of gang life, Jesse knew he was representing all of San Antonio to the nation once again. On the afternoon of October 7, in the East Room of the White House, Hillary Clinton called Jesse “a remarkable artist and a remarkable human being” and explained that “Jesse’s personal story has given not only kids, but adults as well, a powerful lesson of overcoming obstacles.” After Clinton’s opening remarks, Jesse walked to the podium. When he turned to face the guests, he couldn’t believe he was standing in the same room where presidents had given both somber and celebratory speeches to the nation. John F. Kennedy’s body had rested in repose here. Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the same hand-cut-glass chandeliers that burned brightly above him. Always comfortable in front of crowds, Jesse added his story to the East Room’s heritage, speaking of his childhood, of the Witte contest, of what happened in Vietnam. He explained how proud he’d been in Chile with the first lady just a week

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earlier, being the American artist for the world to get to know better. Standing at that podium, he knew that the main reason he could live such a life was because a long time ago his mother told him to have faith in himself. If there was one place in Jesse’s life that was pure and free of compromise, it was where he kept his faith in his artistic spirit.

— When Dolores Treviño could no longer live independently, the family hired someone to move in, take care of her needs, and become a companion. The arrangement worked fairly well, but family members saw Dolores’s health continue to deteriorate. “My mother . . . she never went to the hospital,” Jesse’s sister Elvira Treviño Limón said, referring to Dolores’s life before this episode. “She never was sick. She had twelve kids with a midwife in Mexico and here, too. She was very, very healthy. When she was seventy-five, she still made her own lard.” But Dolores was now in her eighties. Her failing health meant she often needed a wheelchair to get around. The family made the difficult decision to move her into an assisted living center. “She adjusted well, made many friends; she had family visiting her every day, and weekends were full of family and friends,” said John Treviño. On September 7, 1999, about six months after leaving her home on Monterey Street, Dolores died peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by family. She was buried next to her husband.

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Dolores had been the family’s center, its core, and the glue that held them together. She was a force, leading by quiet example, and constantly being in service to her children. Maria Ferrier, who grew up in Prospect Hill and whose husband, Marcos Ponce, was a member of the Road Griffins, remembered spending a lot of time with her mother-in-law “who was raising eighteen children and raised five others, from other people, in the house next door to Jesse’s. Every morning, Mrs. Treviño would come over to have coffee. She would have an apron on. I can’t remember a time when they didn’t have aprons on, both of them. I would sit and listen to them talk. It was all in Spanish. It was gossip of the neighborhood and family. I remember Mrs. Treviño as very kind to me, very pleasant. This was fifty years ago, but you know how you have impressions that stay with you? I know that both my mother-in-law and Mrs. Treviño had control of their families. They kept them together. Mrs. Treviño had more of a drive for her kids to finish school, more than many mothers. My mother-in-law had it, but not as much, not to the same degree. She wasn’t as ferocious about that—going to school—as Mrs. Treviño.” Joe Bernal, who had taught Jesse in sixth grade before becoming active in politics, remembered how Dolores “was very active with PTA, and so I got to know her. I never had trouble with Jesse. I never had trouble because of his mama—she stayed on top of him.” For Jesse, who couldn’t bring himself to say anything at Dolores’s funeral, her death was,

initially at least, almost so large a trauma as to be insurmountable. His mother had understood him like no other person on earth. She’d felt his struggles as if they were her own. And when he said he could never disappoint her, he meant it. “It’s like when I was little kid, I wanted our lawn to look beautiful for her,” he recalled clearly and fondly many decades later. “I’d be there until evening cutting all the edges perfectly with scissors, by hand. I’d get blisters, but it was for my mother so she could have the best lawn.” Her face had become almost as familiar as his own whenever his work was being shown.

“Whenever I had an exhibit, she’d be there [if possible] and be on the phone calling everyone to attend. Her greatest sense of achievement was her sons and daughters. I liked her to get the limelight. I couldn’t wait to show her what I had accomplished,” Jesse said. “As humble as she was, she was intelligent, she knew so much. She did an incredible job of raising us. When I grew up, I always went back to talk to my mother, to talk about my problems. She was my best friend. I would talk to her because I had such respect for her. She was my best teacher in life.”

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Chapter 11

Of Murals, Mexico, and Immortality (1999–2012)

Death comes for everyone. The artist still had beautiful dreams of his works bringing people together, even in death, but not on this day. He’d only felt like sitting alone at his mother’s kitchen table, swallowing a fairly robust amount of beer during the long, empty days after Dolores was laid to rest, acknowledging with deep, black emotion that, indeed, death comes for everyone. Later Jesse, now fifty-two, would sit in his darkened studio on Mistletoe, reach for another beer, and ponder the questions artists are expected to ponder during such times. What is truly important? What will last? How can one live forever? Everyone knows the name of William Shakespeare, John F. Kennedy, Babe Ruth, Davy Crockett, Pablo Picasso, and Diego Rivera—their names endured, their works survived and are cherished and valued. People who never knew them coveted their lives and accomplishments. So will the people who flock to my unveilings remember the name Jesse Treviño once I’ve died?

“He’d become very concerned about this legacy and obsessed with public art. He could make a lot more money doing private art, commercial art. But he is interested in doing things for the public,” said Robert Treviño, who became an aerospace engineer for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He recalled that it wasn’t just about having the most people viewing Jesse’s art that stoked his brother’s ambitions: Time itself was always one of Jesse’s natural competitors. “He’s always had this thing about there’s not going to be enough time to do things. I remember being young, as teenagers, him rushing me to finish various projects so that we can do something else. Even today, he’s impatient with his own work.” Lionel Sosa saw that same impatient quality manifest itself within Jesse over the years: “I think that’s what drove him to be the best. The intensity. The need to be recognized. All artists have a need, I think, to be recognized or a need to be remembered. Otherwise I don’t think you’d become really good. I think that part of Jesse’s

need for public art is this need to do something grandiose and have it remembered long after he’s gone. He wants to see it during his lifetime. He wants his great-grandchildren to say their greatgranddaddy did that.” Sosa also recognized a trait that was key to the artist’s drive (it also happened to be in sync with one of Jesse’s mother’s strongest-held characteristic): faith. On the subject of “Applied Faith,” Sosa wrote: “Jesse was strong enough to overcome defeat by developing a definiteness of purpose built on faith. And he applied it. He created images of success in his mind. He conceived of being an artist. Then he believed he would be an artist. And finally, he achieved his dream of being one.” Of course, in addition to possessing faith in his abilities, Jesse’s sense of competition never abated; and there was also the reality that he needed to keep working to satisfy the monthly expenses, the taxman, and his children’s needs. His government check just kept getting whacked up into tinier parcels, and even after making $20,000 or $30,000 on a commission, the money was spent so quickly that his bank account rarely reflected a healthy balance. During this time, Jesse often disappeared, for one reason or another, from clients and the people who were trying to help his career. Sometimes he might be binging on fame with his friends or home alone numbing the pain, both physical and emotional. Often he ran off to spend time with a new female companion, and

neither his team nor his friends nor his family would see him for days at a time. “There was a string of women. But his depression and volatility got in the middle of everything,” said Carolee Youngblood. “He would get these [relationships] going. Jesse, Alex, and me would either like the girl or not like the girl, but we knew it was going to cycle and they would get in a fight and it would be over. Every now and then he would find one of these girls and be gone for a couple weeks, spend a whole lot of money. “Someone else—if I had a client like that— they’d be gone,” Youngblood continued. “But I was still there. He liked me, I liked him. Even when I was mad at him. I was never so mad at him that I stopped liking him. Rosemary and Elaine would probably say the same thing. For me, he was just such a unique person with so much going on in his head, in his plans, in his ideas. I’d never met anyone like that. It’s like finding Picasso in San Antonio.” And Paris has proudly associated itself with Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), a native Spaniard, for more than a century; Taos claims the transplanted Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) among its most celebrated former residents; Figueres, Spain, remains a major destination of fans of Salvador Dalí (1904–89) because it was the place of his birth. And so wherever Jesse had wandered off to, it was probably somewhere in the back of his mind that he longed for San Antonio to claim him in the same way. And the

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truth was, not that many artists have been associated with San Antonio; not that many are immediately and indelibly linked to the city. The designation of San Antonio’s preeminent artist remained, arguably, up for the taking because, as some art historians have pointed out, appreciation for fine art came late to Texas. Art researcher and appraiser Jeffrey Morseburg said that there was little money in the state to purchase fine art before the growth of the oil business, which meant there was little attention being paid to painters. “But it was oil that spurred everything in Texas, and it took a while for it to take hold and for the oil businessmen to start collecting. This is sort of a roundabout way of saying that there wasn’t much of an art market in Texas before the 1920s.” Within the state there were mostly amateur painters along with a dozen or two artists whose work reached more professional levels. In connection with San Antonio, Morseburg mentioned Robert W. Wood (1889–1979), José Arpa (1858–1952), and Porfirio Salinas (1910–73) among very few others who left their mark on the city’s art history. But he also noted Robert Jenkins Onderdonk (1852–1917) and his son Julian Onderdonk (1882–1922), both important artists working in San Antonio throughout the turn of the twentieth century, who brought some interest to Texas’ art traditions. “In the early 1970s, when my father opened a gallery in the old Shamrock Hilton in Houston, there was virtually no interest in old Texas paintings,

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save for a few people who were familiar with the Onderdonks,” said Morseburg. That all changed when the Chicano and Mexican American art movement blossomed. Since the mid-1970s, Jesse had been mentioned with critical praise along with Mel Casas, César Martínez, and Felipe Reyes as San Antonio’s important pioneers of a genuine counterculture. Arguably, Jesse was San Antonio’s Artist. He’d dedicated much of his life to making the kind of art that provoked emotions. Spirit of Healing— nine stories tall and about 3,600 square feet of life-affirming benefaction to the people of San Antonio—had made headlines around the country, including, again, in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” (along with a fellow from South Carolina who glued 149,000 buttons to his car). His brief but memorable time spent with the country’s first lady had confirmed Jesse as a recognized ambassador of the arts from San Antonio and from America itself. So as the world prepared to welcome a new millennium, what remained inside him to give? Well, that was actually never any concern for Jesse. After all, it’s not like he’d spent the last twenty years concentrating on just one wall. There was a certain wall alongside a heavily traveled portion of the River Walk, for instance, that would serve as a welcoming canvas; and one day, after spotting a wall at the airport that he thought should contain a Jesse Treviño mural, he began devising a design. Downtown was still filled with blank walls, too, and the West

Henry B. González (1997). Acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝. Collection of the US House of Representatives, Wash­ ington, DC.

Side, which had long been made colorful with hand-painted commercial billboards and murals, always needed more Jesse Treviño art to distinguish it as his home turf.

— Jesse continued his commissioned work, and just weeks after Spirit of Healing was unveiled he completed a portrait of Congressman Henry B. González (1997, acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝); it was displayed in the Financial Services Com­ mittee hearing room in the Rayburn House Building, just southwest of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. González was dressed in a light-colored suit for his official portrait. There is a lantern on his desk, presented to him in 1994 by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for political courage and leadership, but he sits with something of a dark expression on his face, perhaps thinking, Who will carry on the fight when I’m gone? It’s an expression Jesse was certainly familiar with. In addition to enjoying the honor of painting an official portrait of a San Antonio icon, Jesse’s portrait showed a new artistic direction: more stylized. The change could have been a simple issue of not having enough time and energy to devote to photorealism, but more likely the divergence into figurative realism was more practical in nature. With pain originating around his shoulders and shooting down both arms, he didn’t possess the greatest finesse in his left hand for gripping and controlling the brushes. Perhaps the cruel irony of completing the Spirit

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of Healing mural is that the endeavor accelerated the deterioration of his shoulders and back, perhaps taking the physical demands of photorealism past the limits of his abilities. “All artists go through stages, and it’s the muse that can trigger a change,” explained Arturo Almeida, art specialist for the University of Texas at San Antonio and curator of the school’s art collection of about 2,700 pieces, including several Jesse Treviño originals from this realism period. “But I think there was much going on with his body . . . I think his body’s pain impacted his dexterity. And I think it’s hard when everyone’s knocking on your door. Everyone wants to include him in their plans. I think it all took a toll on him.” Gabriel Velasquez first met Jesse in 1994 when he was an architecture student at UTSA. Having heard of the plans for a Latino museum, Velasquez went to a public meeting at the Centro de Artes building (ultimately, it became the museum) with sketches of his own design for just such a venue. “They were trying to explain their idea to a lot of people who didn’t want to hear it,” Velasquez said. “There were factions who didn’t want to give up the building. It was an important part of our Market Square culture.” He also remembered that Jesse appeared ready to take them on. “Jesse was wearing Vietnamera fatigues that night. I’ve never seen him wear them since.” Although his plans weren’t chosen, Velasquez began a friendship with Jesse (and Jorge Cortez) that developed over the years into a close broth-

erly relationship. Having spent time together, planning future projects, and strategizing Jesse’s career, Velasquez explained, “You cannot understand the man if you don’t understand the physical pain that he lives with every day. The sacrifice he made is without end.” Regardless of his physical abilities or his emotional confidence, by the time he’d returned from his presentation at the White House, completed rounds with the media, and been congratulated by the local cagadas grandes, Jesse found himself lagging behind on a commission for the Texas Diabetes Institute. Its administration had offered Jesse a twenty-four-by-eight-foot wall in the lobby of its newly constructed West Side medical building, and much like at the Santa Rosa Hospital, the institute hoped a high-profile commission would bring attention to the high levels of diabetes in San Antonio’s population. Jesse eventually recalled a place named Casa Mireles, a botánica that had opened in 1916 near Market Square. “It was about medicine. Herbs and different things that we’ve used as remedies for medicinal purposes. I wanted to be able to see all that in a modern institution,” Jesse said. Another time he explained, “I thought, to me that’s our—that’s what we used to cure people. These are things that—that when people come in here to this hospital, I wouldn’t want them to ever forget that this is where we come from, this is part of our culture, all that.” Recreating Casa Mireles, as Jesse intended to do, meant composing his tribute with a canvas full of candles, jars of dried herbs, handmade

boxes filled with botanicals and soaps, bottles of essential oils, and religious statues and prayer cards for the Catholic Church. Like San Antonio in World War II, the mural would be painted across multiple canvases. The enormity of the image would help create a keen perspective to bring the viewer into the painting, an illusion of walking up to the counter and being greeted by owner Berta Mireles, dressed in a flower-print dress. After decades of learning her trade in the family business, there should be assurance in her expression, there should be kindness in her eyes. Jesse’s figurative realistic style still called for close detail on the statuettes and rosary beads. As the image came together in his imagination, he took note of how the shelves and glass cases were neatly organized with bottles of holy water and perfumes. There were glints of sunlight coming from a window, through which the Alameda Theater can be seen. In one space there would be a photograph of his brother Jorge to commemorate his battle with diabetes. The entire mural was a bridge to the past. It was incredibly ambitious. And it was a problem. Despite assistance from the Villarreal brothers, it was a time-consuming job, but Jesse was not showing up regularly to work on it. The institute administrators were getting nervous, Jesse’s team was getting nervous. And since it had been years since Elaine DagenBela and Jesse had worked together (both had just allowed the relationship to drift apart), her influence was sorely missed. Youngblood remained but found that she had limited leverage. No one controlled

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Jesse, she believed, because no one other than his mother would ever completely understand him. However, there was still Rosemary Kowalski. While Kowalski continued running her successful catering business and sitting on a number of advisory boards across San Antonio for education, philanthropy, and cultural heritage, she’d remained friends with Jesse. She had enormous respect for his vision and was well aware of what he was capable of accomplishing—when he worked. When she was made aware that Jesse was slacking off, she stepped in, telling him he “really was letting people down” at the diabetes hospital. “That big beautiful mural,” Kowalski said. “I was with him all the time on that. He’d get to drinking beer and not work. I’d go by the house. I was always there to help. “I hate to see people have problems. I was trying to help him to get out of his rut and do better. I don’t know what puts people in the mood to drink and do other things. But every time he did one of these big projects—I knew everyone who worked with him—they’d call me when he stopped working, get on a binge or whatever. So they’d call me, ‘Rosemary, please, we’re on a deadline.’” It’s clear that Jesse and Kowalski enjoyed a special bond. While he felt the confidence and high expectations she had for him, she enjoyed the satisfaction of being an active part of his success and evolution. Kowalski was especially fond of Jesse’s Vietnam 1966 and often made a point of appreciating it aloud to the artist. “Well, I had to have that painting. But why did I have to

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have it? It just hangs on the wall, you know what I mean?” recalled Kowalski. “One time, he lent it to me. I was so excited to have it,” Jesse eventually agreed to sell it to Kowalski, though it wasn’t an easy decision. Had he not been in need of the money, it might never have left his personal collection. But it’s a testament to his affection for and trust in Kowalski for him to have completed the sale of that piece in the first place. Which is why, like she had done before, Kowalski tracked down Jesse to get him back to work on the mural. She stroked his ego, sure, but she also gave it to him straight: a good reputation isn’t filled with unfinished works and broken contracts. “He always listened to me,” Kowalski said. “I’d tell him that he’d have to come to his senses and go back to work. I don’t know how I did that. I guess he just believed in me.” Jesse had grown up with such respect for his mother and for his sister Eva’s memory that he had a hard time disappointing certain women in his life, like Kowalski. He promised to get serious and to devote his energy to finishing the mural, and he followed through on that promise. For the unveiling on October 7, Jesse chose the title La Curandera (“The Healer,” 1999, acrylic on canvas, 24´× 8´) as an acknowledgment of the owner of the botánica. The next day, the photo that ran in La Prensa showed John Guest, president and chief administrator of the University Health System (with which the Texas Diabetes Institute is affiliated), and the artist. It’s a curious photo. Jesse’s eyes look tired, Guest’s facial expression is neutral at best. Both lack the

Jesse Treviño in front of La Curandera (“The Healer,” 1999, acrylic on canvas, 24´× 8´), Texas Diabetes Institute, 2014. Kirk Weddle Photography.

enthusiastic smiles so often displayed for the cameras at these events—especially given the enormity of the concept and the intricacy of the execution. Still, the paper reported that Jesse hoped the mural brought comfort to the patients of the institute. To the medical representatives specializing in diabetes who were gathered for the unveiling, he urged, “I wish with all my heart that when you find it, you will find a medical, physical, and spiritual cure.”

— When Elizabeth Rodriguez first met Jesse in late 2000 or early 2001, she asked him to critique her paintings. A native of San Antonio with a daughter from a previous marriage, Rodriguez was about twenty-two years younger than Jesse and not nearly as far along on her artist’s journey, but she did have talent and the drive to pursue a life producing fine art. With a splash of machismo coloring his posture, Jesse initially acted rather unimpressed with Rodriguez’s canvases, but not necessarily with the painter. They began dating, and as the two kept seeing each other, perhaps the turned-on turmoil of a new relationship colored Jesse’s interests to the point where he became ambivalent about some details of his career. Rodriguez slowly took over some of the marketing footwork for Jesse and began taking charge of his posters; all of which eventually convinced Carolee Youngblood that it was time to devote more of her efforts to other projects and clients,

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and her professional relationship with Jesse soon came to an end. Even as Jesse’s orbit of colleagues and confidants underwent changes, his reputation remained elevated, his craving for attention at the ready. In a story that Jesse loved telling, he was invited in early September 2001 to attend the opening of “Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” at Chicago’s Terra Museum of American Art. The traveling exhibition included sixty-six paintings, sculptures, and photographs, among them Jesse’s Mis Hermanos; in addition to some of the artists, the guest list for the opening included first lady Laura Bush and the first lady of Mexico, Marta Sahagun de Fox. “I was invited to the opening of the exhibit. There was a lunch beforehand and I got to sit between Marta and Laura. It was interesting,” Jesse said. “It was interesting, being from Con Safo, once being discriminated against. Being associated with the word Chicano . . . there was a time when both countries turned their backs on Chicano artists. I wasn’t really connected to Mexico. I kind of felt that way toward the US as well at the time. And here was Laura Bush telling Marta Fox what a great artist Jesse Treviño is. And Marta Fox finds out that I was born in Monterrey and then both are saying they’re so proud of me.” In addition to the unique thrill of such a moment, Jesse felt it was important for the world to be comfortable and accepting of art from

Chicanos, and he continued to affirm his affiliation as a Chicano throughout his life: “I’m a Chicano artist. I know that the things that I’ve done make me a Chicano artist,” he said. Comedian, actor, and avid collector of Chicano art, Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin was putting together a national art tour. Like “CARA” and “Mira!” and other consequential national shows that had come before it, Marin’s “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge” was intended to raise awareness of contemporary, influential artists. Although a California resident, Marin chose to begin his tour at SAMA in San Antonio. Before the show officially opened, however, he was publicly criticized for a preponderance of corporate backing and a lack of balance of national artists (the show was overweighted with pieces from his own personal collection). Marin took the criticisms in tow, writing a few years later how his show exposed jealousies between the West Coast and the South Texas Chicano philosophies: So there I was in Texas on November 15, 2001, staring into the belly of the beast. I had decided to launch the tour of the Chicano Visions exhibition in San Antonio because it [was] always an important center for Chicano art. The trouble was that some members of the very large and influential academic community had their knives out for me. I had stepped into their arena without the proper authorization, coming into their neighborhood and “throwing my looks around.” Who does this dope-smoking hip-

pie comedian who hung out with a halfChinese Canadian think he is by coming and telling them what was Chicano art?

By the time the show opened in December 2001, “Chicano Visions” had become a referendum on who is a Chicano as much as what constitutes Chicano art. So much drama—and all Marin wanted to do was show off some of his paintings and, again, raise the country’s awareness of the importance of Chicano art. Which is why it must have been extra frustrating for the show’s organizers to try to get one of San Antonio’s most important painters to return their calls. Whereas before he was always eager to be a part of national tours and any other events to lift the name Treviño, Jesse had become less cooperative with such endeavors. Other San Antonio artists, like Mel Casas and Adan Hernandez, had already committed works to the show, and the organizers persisted in trying to include Jesse. But just as writer Dan Goddard suspected, Jesse’s desire was to direct his career on his terms, including where his work was displayed. In this case, though, it seemed like Jesse was just being irascible; his behavior could probably be chalked up to a sense of entitlement overfed by his own celebrity. Even Kowalski couldn’t prod Jesse to lend any art for Marin’s tour. Juan Vasquez and the Villarreals often started their days together with Jesse at the frame shop. Whenever the subject of getting Jesse’s paintings into Marin’s show came up, Jesse typically resisted, according to Vasquez. “Jesse is very . . .

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he doesn’t want to be bothered with things. He only does things at his [schedule]. I recall these people who were putting [“Chicano Visions”] together wanted Jesse’s work in the show. But Jesse was just kind of putting them off. They were begging Jesse and Alex Villarreal, who were his contacts. It’s hard to get ahold of Jesse, and basically my impression is he just wouldn’t respond to them,” said Vasquez. Finally, someone floated the idea of including two of the Vasquezes’ paintings, Guadalupe y Calaveras and Los Piscadoros, to which Jesse relented. “Okay,” Jesse said with a gruff voice. “If you can satisfy those people, get them off my back, that’s fine.” (Although it wasn’t really his call if Juan Vasquez lent paintings that he owned to the show, the interaction demonstrates how much influence Jesse could hold over his friends.) In San Antonio and nationally, “Chicano Visions” was met with mostly positive reviews and was quite popular with the public, resulting in consistent praise for Jesse’s work. Once the show left San Antonio, Marin would take the time to speak to the media of various works. “Oh, he loved that painting,” said Terry Vasquez of Marin’s fondness for Los Piscadores. Having decided to keep an eye on their works, the Vasquezes often visited the exhibition elsewhere in the country. “Juan and I followed the show to San Diego, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale.” Indeed, they hit the road and showed up in Washington, Chicago, and other cities, twelve in all. “Cheech Marin accused us of being groupies,” remembered Terry Vasquez.

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“Cheech would give this presentation [for Los Piscadores], and he’d say this is a painting of this little boy who grew up to be a federal judge,” added Juan Vasquez, who, of course, was that little boy in the painting and now served on the United States Tax Court. “We got [Jesse] a lot of PR,” said Terry.

— Despite some of his contemporaries’ beliefs that Jesse had dulled his artistic edge by working so hard to get high-profile, high-paying jobs, and even though his public art was accessible and viewed by countless thousands each day, there was by no means an oversupply of Jesse’s original works to be found throughout the city. That bothered Jesse. He desired work with more exposure, and, as usual, he introduced his eagerness to just the right people in the city’s influential business and arts worlds. Occasionally, he’d get a project green-lighted with the promise of financing. In 2001, he got two. The first of these projects was commissioned by a local Goodwill, which was renovating a building across the street from the Mercado. Jesse was offered a thirty-five-foot-tall wall to interpret Goodwill’s mission, “To help change lives through the power of work.” Thirty-five feet? Let’s get on with it! Jesse thought, as both abstract and figurative images came to his mind. What eventually moved him were childhood memories of a downtown drugstore that had been located next to the wall he’d been commissioned to fill. La Botica Chapa

(Chapa Drugstore) was opened in the 1950s by Frank L. Chapa, originally from Monterrey, Mexico. Chapa’s store was known also as La Botica del Leon because the store’s logo, a lone male lion (león) painted on its outside wall, commemorated Nuevo Leon, the northern Mexican state where Monterrey is located. Many Westsiders never forgot meeting up socially at La Botica Chapa as well as finding both traditional remedies and modern medicine there, and Jesse wanted to evoke past feelings of comfort and confidence with his work. Because it was an outdoor piece, Jesse chose six-by-six-inch Italian ceramic tiles and, with assistance from the Villarreal brothers and Elizabeth Rodriguez, produced the mural in the same warehouse as Spirit of Healing, with similar techniques: The final design was projected onto nearly 2,500 tiles, after which they were painted, then glazed and fired. In the late afternoon on Tuesday, March 11, New Chapa Lion (2003, hand-cut ceramic tile, 30´× 25´) was unveiled. The single lion had become a pride with an adult male, a lioness, and five wide-eyed cubs. Jesse’s message: the institution of the family (and here the family also stands in as metaphor for the local community at large) still reflects a strong symbol of positive growth. The balance of the composition reflects how Jesse could still wield light, color, and shadow like others could wield words and phrases to write books. Behind the lions, goldenrod and umber streak the savannah stretching

to the horizon. Above, a rich, purple-lavender sky hangs over Monterrey’s Cerro de la Silla in the distance. This saddle-shaped mountain formation was a familiar sight to generations of West Side transplants from Monterrey, and in much the way that La Curandera acknowledges the necessary passage of time in the advancement of medicine, New Chapa Lion recognizes the passage of miles between an old home and a new one. A playful twist not only expanded the oversized portrait of the lion family into a more complex mural but also fulfilled Goodwill’s thematic requirement. The image includes a team of workers installing tiles to the image while others, perched on ladders, lift an enormous frame into place over the entire mural. Despite such fun elements (the workers in the piece include Jesse, Elizabeth Rodriguez, the Villarreals, and Armando Albarran, who was then serving as national commander of the Disabled American Veterans), New Chapa Lion doesn’t feel gimmicky. But the actual finished piece would always remain unfinished in its own way. It’s a bit of self-recognition of Jesse’s reputation for blowing past deadlines. But with the life of those tiles being possibly 250 years and with so many visitors encountering the mural as they journey in and out of Market Square, Jesse knew it would be seen for generations to come. Once he painted buildings that were then named “landmarks.” Now his works became landmarks in their own right.

—

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New Chapa Lion, side wall of Goodwill Industries, San Antonio (2003). Hand-cut ceramic tile mural, 30´× 25´. Kirk Weddle Photography.

San Antonio’s West Side has a rich history of murals. The Chicano arts movement eventually brought cooperation between private organizations, civic associations, and oftentimes school arts programs to produce dozens of murals, some being political in nature, others filled with images of Aztlán and the Aztecs or with Mexican American soldiers who distinguished themselves fighting and dying for their country. There are murals of social engagement and the determination of the families that immigrated to San Antonio as well as those bearing images in support of the Catholic religion and of cultural heritage. In many neighborhoods these murals have endured for decades, completed with hands that believed in self-expression during a time of self-determination. Jesse was well aware of the historical significance of murals—not just in San Antonio but also in the country of his birth. After its revolutionary war, Mexico’s new government attempted to bind its divided people into one nation with murals commissioned in Mexico City and elsewhere. Seen as a way to broadcast the common history of the country directly to the largely illiterate masses, what became known as the Mexican muralism movement spanned the early to middle twentieth century and is typically represented by works of Diego Rivera (1886–1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883– 1949), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), frequently referred to as los tres grandes (“the three greats”). Despite their mandate for creating art that emphasized shared “Mexican” values and

history, this trio (and many of the hundreds of commissioned artists throughout the country) painted plazas, school walls, and government buildings—but occasionally deviated from their original designs to express some subtle, or not-so-subtle, political or cultural idea that they thought all mexicanos should know. Occasionally, they got away with it. Jesse’s art provoked reaction, too. Along with people like Jorge Cortez, he felt his job was to make San Antonians stop and look at something beautiful, or be touched by an emotion from the past, or maybe revere the familiar and the virtually invisible. And after Spirit of Healing he felt unbridled as an artist. He couldn’t be ignored— the nine-story piece of art could be seen from the Interstate, after all. Now he worked on becoming more of a player in the cultural progress of the West Side, especially close to downtown, where there was more likely to be a cross section of people (including tourists) to view his art. Because these were “Jesse Treviño” murals, he thought, they meant fine art could be accessible to everyone. “My challenge is to be up there—Jesse Treviño, Orozco, Diego Rivera,” Jesse said. “You come to San Antonio and there’s one artist you go to see—Jesse Treviño. You come here, it’s [my art] all over the place. You come to the West Side, it’s all over the place.” To be clear, Jesse wasn’t opposed to working beyond San Antonio. Wanting to leave his mark on his birthplace, he had long dreamed of returning to Monterrey for a public art project.

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Yet even though that remained a dream, his ties to Mexico had never faded. He’d returned several times since first crossing the border with his family in 1950. As a young artist-to-be, Jesse recalled these trips because they included his earliest artistic imprinting from downtown Monterrey, where he witnessed men hand-painting billboards and store signs. “It was so incredible to see an eye this big that was painted, or a face,” he said, using gestures to help demonstrate the size of the billboard images. “And I would just stand there and look. It was so incredible. They were real artists who were doing that kind of stuff. I was so impressed with that. That has always stayed with me.”

— Elvira Treviño Limón remembered that when the family still lived together on Beso Lane, their landlord was in love with her. “And one Christmas he invited me to his house and, in front of the whole family, he said, ‘Here,’ and gave me an engagement ring. I couldn’t say no, but all the time I knew I wasn’t going to marry him.” She never did, but before she let him down, she convinced him to rent her family a house on Monterey Street in Prospect Hill. Nearly half a century later, she still remembered that house was always overflowing with family and friends. “A lot of people came to my house. We’d sometimes have family from Mexico come and stay for a week. I don’t know where we put everybody, but that house always somehow had room,” she said. “It was always filled

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with friends and family,” agreed Alice Treviño Rodriguez, who probably best summed up the feelings about the house for many of her siblings, at least the younger half dozen who spent more years living there: “That was the place we really grew up.” But it was finally sold, and for all the ways it had served the Treviños, its passing out of Jesse’s life felt fairly close to the loss of a family member. However, while dealing with that void, in the summer of 2003, in the midst of completing his second large-format project, he and Elizabeth Rodriguez found a new place to live together. Built in 1957 on Guadalupe Street, the two-story, 3,450-square-foot property looked something like an urban compound, an industrial fortress of wood, brick, and iron. The building had a rooftop deck to look out over Apache Creek, providing a hint of the outdoor atmosphere Jesse enjoyed as a child living on Martin Street. “When I was a kid, I grew up a few blocks from here; I knew of this place,” Jesse recalled of the neighborhood. “You didn’t want to spend a lot of time on Guadalupe Street. It was like a red-light district for a long time—bars, bars, bars. There were more bars than homes.” It was certainly nothing like the acres of live oaks, wildflowers, and Hill Country solitude he was working within just a few years earlier. But his new home did have an immensity of character. The interior was much the same as the outside, brick and stone walls plus concrete floors that provided a rough-around-the-edges atmosphere,

especially when combined with the long, open floor plan. While it was much darker than his Hill Country studio, there was still enough room to work and display many of his paintings. (Elizabeth’s studio was on the second floor.) Like Mistletoe, there was abundant opportunity for transforming this diamond-in-the-rough property into the jewel that Jesse saw in it. “For me, I could work on this place forever,” he said. In order to do that, he needed to sell the Mistletoe house. Since 1969 it had been Jesse’s most personal space. He’d been so young when he bought it, still simmering with dark feelings from the war. But even as those emotions blistered him like the pins and needles that raced up and down his right arm, he had created many of his most popular and important paintings in Mistletoe’s studio. While establishing himself as a serious artist, he’d made the house a thing of beauty. His passions, visions, and frustrations were in the very bones of the place. And Mi Vida—having been painted directly on the bedroom wall, his first great work was literally a part of the house, which meant it stayed put after the sale. Jesse felt almost as deflated about losing that single mural as he did about losing the entire house.

— Jesse’s second major outdoor work of this time came out of the blue—at least his vision for it did, as visions often do. While driving through a familiar stretch of the West Side in 2001, just past the corner of Brazos and Guadalupe, where

the Progreso drugstore had formerly stood, he saw how dark and lonely the street had become. Despite how often he’d donated limitededition autographed prints to help revitalize the area, he felt people were scared of their own neighborhood. And then, after the East Coast terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jesse felt the nation needed a lot more comfort. He could begin the process in his own neighborhood. He wanted to bring light, and so he imagined a candle—a giant, three-dimensional votive candle—and he wanted to provide a safe space, and so he envisioned a small plaza for people to gather within. He wanted the art to feel familiar, and so it would be one of the most enduring images from Mexico’s history. The project was called La Veladora of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and, yet again, it would be Jesse’s most ambitious project: a mixed-media concept consisting of a twenty-by-forty-foot mural that included a ceramic-tile votive (the veladora of the work’s title) with a circumference of roughly six feet. On the front of the votive would be the image of the Virgin Mary. Jesse sold the whole idea to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center with a presentation emphasizing that the work of art, the building, and the street were all named Guadalupe and that he’d complete it by December 2002. But that became another deadline blown. This time, work was being completed under a number of somewhat unusual circumstances. For one thing, Jesse’s attitude about

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being involved in raising money was fairly sour. “When I did the Santa Rosa, it was private. I didn’t have to convince them to go raise a million dollars. They already had a million dollars. They believed in me and they paid for it,” Jesse said. “But when I did the Guadalupe, I’d have to go talk to people . . . we would go to their offices . . . make a little presentation. Well, I’m the artist and I’m willing to work to a certain extent. But my art is my work.” Hadn’t he earned the right to just be an Artist without being a Salesman? Jesse believed he had. “I wanted to be at the point where my reputation spoke for itself. I didn’t want to play such a big role in the money raising, the selling of my life story yet again. I don’t want to have to go and say, ‘I’m working on a mural and I need your help,’” he admitted. In all honesty, what Jesse might have needed was his full team back, Youngblood and DagenBela and a good press kit to trumpet his story. But with help from Gabriel Velasquez, Jesse did some promotion. Elizabeth, too, lent her growing skills to assisting Jesse with both his business and artistic affairs. Unlike the Santa Rosa project, this production was made trickier because part of the salaries of the Guadalupe Center’s staff were covered by city funds and the building itself was owned by the city; so while public money as well as private donations were sought for Jesse’s project fiscal critics questioned the price tag (eventually topping out around $300,000) for such an epic votive. Others believed the project raised an

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issue of separation of church and state. The piece was, after all, filled with overt religious imagery. Except it wasn’t quite that simple. True, this very specific image of Mary is significant to the Catholic Church. It represents a story dating back to 1531, when on four occasions a man named Juan Diego beheld an apparition of the Virgin Mary, who told him to have a church built for her. Diego eventually had the church built, and Basilica de Santa Maria de Guadalupe still stands near that original site outside Mexico City. Within it, Catholic pilgrims find Diego’s cloak, imprinted with Mary’s image. Some scholars have determined that there are no visible brushstrokes or underlying sketches to indicate that it was ever a work in progress, as if it simply manifested itself in its completed form. For others familiar with the cloak’s history, its durable condition after several mishaps and accidents during the past half century, which should have left it damaged if not destroyed, helps back some claims that the provenance of the cloak’s image is divine. Skeptics, however, point to evidence that the image was created by an Aztec painter named Marcos Cipac de Aquino. Either way, Jesse followed the original depiction closely, portraying Mary draped in a blue robe filled with stars, her hands clasped, and her crowned head tilted slightly downward to bring comfort to all who gaze up at her. A bright golden sunburst surrounds her as she stands atop a crescent moon, accompanied by an angel. For generations, through wars and peaceful times, through the blending of civilizations and

La Veladora of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio (2003). Mixedmedia mural, 20´× 40´. Kirk Weddle Photography.

religions, the Virgin of Guadalupe, as it was known, became one of the most widespread Catholic images throughout Mexico. Jesse recognized how the symbolism behind the image is that Mary bound the history of myriad cultures—Aztec, Mayan, Spanish, Indian, etc.—that formed one country, Mexico. When some of the population moved north to the United States, Mary made the trip along with the Mexican flag and other cultural markers. Jesse had always lived an intensely private and generally unresolved life with God. Although his mother was a devoted Catholic, she never asked too much of her kids when it came to being active in the Church. But from Dolores came the importance of faith in one’s self. Which is why Jesse never doubted that he could assemble a towering ceramic-tile candle, regardless of what it might mean to him or others. On the wall behind the votive he’d add elements from the Mexican flag, an eagle, a snake, and a cactus. They were chosen for the official flag based on a legend of the god Huitzilopochtli, who appeared with a message in a dream to an Aztec tribal leader: When the nomadic people saw an eagle perched on a nopal cactus eating a snake, it should be taken as a sign from Huitzilopochtli that they had found their new home. This event is said to have occurred in 1325 with the subsequent founding of Tenochtitlán, now called Mexico City. As for the case that people shouldn’t sweat the religious iconography of Jesse’s piece, he argued that Mary’s image was already commonly used

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by the Mexican American and Chicano art world. His generation, for sure, had co-opted it as a symbol of solidarity in much the same way that they had co-opted Aztlán’s relevance during the 1960s and 1970s. Mary’s portrait was community property, so to speak, north and south of the border. The fights over Jesse’s votive were not especially prolonged or particularly embittered. The project continued in the warehouse until Jesse’s team finally completed work after about two years. The sculpture was unveiled to a crowd of several hundred (many of whom had paid fifty dollars a ticket) on the evening of December 12, 2003 (Mary’s Feast Day). A seven-piece orchestra played original music for the event. Elda Silva wrote in the Express-News that Guadalupe Center director Maria Elena TorralvaAlonso believed that Jesse’s sculpture was certainly his “masterpiece” and would serve as a “rallying point” for the community. She hoped it would create enough curiosity and artistic pull to lure people over the Guadalupe Street bridge and into the West Side neighborhood. “She is also banking on money generated by Veladora merchandise such a posters, T-shirts, and, of course, candles to feed the center’s coffers,” wrote Silva.

— “They cut it out of the wall and slid it out the side of the house, then put it on a flatbed trailer.” That’s how Jesse summed up Mi Vida’s rather ignoble departure from its home of thirty-two

years in the summer of 2004. He and Gabriel Velasquez stood by as the process unfolded, ensuring its safe removal. “First, they put some kind of a transparent, thin film [on the front of the painting], that stabilized it against cracks, then they went through the back side of the stucco wall,” Jesse recalled. After cutting through the house’s exterior wall, the crew faced a half inch of drywall with the painting on the other side. When Jesse first started painting his bedroom wall, he coated it time after time, probably six layers thick, with black acrylic paint while waiting for the muse. The layers had thickened to nearly the depth of a piece of cardboard, which is probably what saved the mural when it was removed. The house’s current owner, Cindy Gabriel, told the press that she understood how important the piece was and how important Jesse was as an artist. Eventually, she said, she wished to see Mi Vida exhibited in a museum. This offered little solace to the artist as he watched one of his most important works being hauled away to a climate-controlled storage facility. Life’s roller coaster continued taking Jesse for lifts and dips. His older brother Mario (number five in line) passed away in the spring of 2006. He’d come to admire how his brother had distinguished himself while working at Kelly Field and Brooks air force bases for more than four decades. “Mario . . . he knew so much about the C5-A [the Galaxy military transport aircraft] that when anything happened to one of those planes, they would send him to investigate.” Jesse would also

always remember Mario’s dedication in running the Road Griffins car club as a point of pride for Prospect Hill. A few months later, on September 16 (Mexican Independence Day), Juan Vasquez wore his dark judge’s robes to perform a wedding ceremony for Jesse and Elizabeth. “I married them in their backyard,” Vasquez said. “The only other ones that were there were Terry, myself, and Elizabeth’s daughter. Jesse did not want anyone else there. It was very cheerful. He presented [Elizabeth] with his Purple Heart.” Were emotional wounds being healed? Possibly. But Jesse’s demeanor remained mercurial: he could be wired one moment and then guarded and closed off the next and considerate and engaging after that. Likewise, he wanted his friends’ attention—until he didn’t. His reputation for breaking business engagements grew, and such activity could be greatly exacerbated by the completion of a project without more commissioned work lined up. “That depression will always be in his blood,” said Alice Treviño Rodriguez, adding the one thing everyone in Jesse’s life agreed upon: “Art brings him back to life.” Art—and perhaps the right kind of publicity tended to have equal effects. Jesse found some excitement when the film world again found interest in him, once from a Los Angeles–based director and, when that fell through, from a writer and producer in LA-adjacent Sierra Madre. But that, too, failed to materialize. Both had wanted to put Jesse’s life on the silver screen, but

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neither could find a way to realize their visions, leaving Jesse frustrated and bedeviled with that whole process. “Somebody comes to you and says they want to make a movie of your life, and what can you say? ‘Go for it.’ What happened? I don’t know,” he said.

— It took more than ten years to realize another long-held dream, but on April 13, 2007, in affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution, the Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture opened the doors to the Museo Alameda. Anchoring one end of Market Square (across the street from Jesse’s New Chapa Lion and around the corner from Spirit of Healing), the building was painted hot pink and included a prominent aluminum and stainless steel luminaria, the traditional Mexican celebration light. Inside the 39,000-square-foot space there was 20,000 square feet of exhibition space and eleven galleries. Museum director Henry Munoz told USA Today that the exhibits were “telling an American story through Latino eyes.” The New York Times drew the connection that the museum’s creation stemmed from fallout of the Smithsonian’s 1994 “Willful Neglect” report on the lack of diversity within the museum, which was the same report that essentially opened the doors for Jesse to become a part of the Smithsonian’s collection. Jesse, now sixty, wasn’t much involved with the Museo Alameda by the time its opening arrived. He remained proud to have been there at

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the beginning. Since then, it had been ten years of assembling committees and preparing business plans and canvassing the city for money and pushing a lot of paper around—and all that was for someone else, Jesse figured. Now the museum had become a reality, but it was mostly someone else’s reality. When he reflected back on this period, Jesse seemed more proud of his LBJ work being acquired by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin the following April. Gifted by the Dr. Alfonso Chiscano family, LBJ was the portrait of Johnson that Jesse had painted in 1962. With friends like Rosemary Kowalski and Juan and Terry Vasquez on hand, and Johnson’s younger daughter, Luci Baines Johnson, in attendance, Jesse told of his sister Elvira sewing and embroidering Senator Johnson’s jackets at Sol Frank Uniforms, and he wondered aloud how special it would be to have one of those suits displayed alongside his portrait. Apparently, as Robert Rivard reported for the Express-News, Luci Johnson agreed that it was a worthy idea for the library and initiated plans for it to happen. Not much later, on July 3, Jesse stood with Gabriel Velasquez and a handful of local community leaders, including the commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars District 20 and District 5 councilwoman Lourdes Galvan, on the banks of Elmendorf Lake and announced to the media plans for La Ofrenda (“The Offering”), a sculptural tribute to Hispanic veterans. This collaborative piece by the two would be erected

Rosita (2009). Oil on canvas, 6´× 9´. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

in the lake, within sight of Our Lady of the Lake University and near to where Jesse and his brothers used to fish when they were young. To state that this would be Jesse’s most ambitious project would at first sound like the proverbial broken record. Artistically, however, he was undoubtedly taking his skills to a new place— completely off the canvas and off the tile, while sticking to his familiar scale. In other words, it would be big. La Ofrenda would consist of a 130-foot-tall steel girder tower with military dog tags hanging by their chains, each of the four tags representing a different military branch. Atop the structure on a long, thin spire was an image of the Virgin Mary similar to that of La Veladora of Our Lady of Guadalupe. A couple of months after unveiling plans for La Ofrenda, Jesse was honored to be chosen grand marshal of the ninth annual Veterans Day Parade and rode before 10,000 people lining the streets of San Antonio. “Nowadays, with the wars we’re involved in, people are more aware of our veterans and how important they are to us,” Jesse told a reporter for the Express-News at the time. “People are realizing it takes a lot of guts to go fight a war.” Alas, as he and Velasquez continued drumming up financial support for the monument, Jesse’s body began breaking down. His pain increased, constantly seeping into his bones, and in 2009, at the age of sixty-two, he had his right knee replaced, followed by the left knee shortly after that. The experience left a bitter impression on Jesse, whose physical maladies all started on his seventy-third day in the Mekong Delta.

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— Another film crew, this time from San Antonio, produced a slick trailer for their proposed film, The Heart of Treviño. There, on screen, was Jorge Cortez, Rosemary Kowalski, Lionel Sosa, and others extolling the reasons that more people needed to know Jesse’s story. Felix Padrón, director for the City of San Antonio’s Office of Cultural Affairs, said he was “very excited about all the ingredients that are coming together to make this very exciting film.” There was also Jesse’s voice, exclaiming the following non sequitur (perhaps due to editing) while some of his prominent paintings were displayed: “When I was a little boy, six years old, I learned about the museum, and how important it was. And everyone told me, ‘No! No! No!’ And you know, I’ve always believed in art. I’ve always believed in San Antonio. I love this city. I’ve been here all my life and I’m very proud of it.” The video slowly resolves to show Jesse, apparently speaking at a city council meeting, and he’s angry. The baggy white shirt he wears has the words “For Art” on it in bold red lettering. His hair is tussled, his face clenched, his voice filled with tension. We learn nothing more about his anger or why he was repeatedly told “no,” but at the end of the trailer the title is shown again, along with “Sometimes God Breaks a Man’s Wing to Open Up His Heart.” The trailer was shown at the opening of Jesse’s one-man show at the Museo Alameda in 2009 (although the movie was apparently never made). After being open more than two years,

the museum decided to exhibit Jesse’s work, and the idea was to create a world-class exhibition and do justice to his career. The film trailer was part of it, but so was pulling in the most important works from around the country, possibly the world, to produce a singular, comprehensive story of Jesse’s life—a story for the ages about one of San Antonio’s best. “Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida” opened on October 22 and should have been a triumph for the artist, and to some extent it was. There was a well-chosen chronology of his work on display, including standout pieces like Vietnam 1966, La Raspa, El Alameda, Mis Hermanos, and Señora Dolores Treviño; as well as essentially unseen pieces, such as a fashion sketch he did of his sister Alice (ca. 1960), the recently celebrated LBJ from 1962, and of course his haunting masterwork, Mi Vida. Many of Museo Alameda’s previous exhibitions had already been criticized for lacking in strength and local appeal. The proficiency of the museum’s management had also been called into question as the museum continued losing money, and this affected Jesse’s show. Jesse knew there were pieces out in the world that would have added more depth to the exhibition and shown more complexity and range in his work, but there wasn’t enough money to track them down and ship them to San Antonio. Ruben C. Cordova, a PhD in art history from the University of California–Berkeley and author of Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas, curated the exhibition. “Ruben was great,” Jesse

said, “but he was limited to what he could do, what he could bring.” Despite exceptional attendance over the next four months—and Jesse was indeed gratified to have an exhibition in the museum that he had envisioned so long ago—he never felt as satisfied as he’d hoped when the show was first planned. In the years that have passed since, Jesse has expressed some disappointment. “I’ll tell you why my show wasn’t a big time. There wasn’t enough money. We didn’t have much of a budget,” he said. “If you didn’t have the money, you wouldn’t have a decent catalogue or bring in paintings from all over the country. It was halfassed. I knew it from the beginning.” There was also this: at the time of the show, he and Elizabeth were separated. As for Museo Alameda, it continued listing like a troubled ship for some time, with financial challenges and accusations of mismanagement. It closed for good on September 30, 2012.

— Before “Mi Vida” closed, the museum presented “A Conversation with Jesse Treviño.” Although the program started at 4:00 p.m., the space filled quickly when the doors opened a half hour early. All the folding chairs were occupied; standing room only remained. Perhaps 100 people, including kids in ripped jeans, fathers in blue blazers with handkerchiefs, and mothers in brightly printed dresses, crowded into the room. They looked perfect for a canvas.

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At a small table in front, draped with a colorful Mexican blanket in his lap, was the artist. He sat in the corner, with sky-blue walls behind him, which made him look small for his accomplishments. Everyone stared at Jesse. He looked over their heads toward the door, watching more people file in. Extra chairs were set up in the gallery next door to accommodate the overflowing crowd. No one spoke to the artist. The artist spoke to no one. And then, promptly at 4:00 p.m., Jesse stood. It was the first time his prosthetic was revealed as the light reflected a silver gleam from its hooks. Some of the kids’ eyes might as well have been magnetized to it as Jesse hobbled forward to the front of the table and then back into his chair to generous applause. Jesse was animated. He began simply with, “It was a great childhood. Those years were very important to me.” After giving an abbreviated version of his life’s story and telling the crowd how proud he was to have the show at the museum, he offered to answer questions. When a young boy in the front row asked if Jesse had any advice for art students, he replied, “Yeah, well, as far as occupations, it’s probably the most competitive, so you have to be able to, you have to motivate yourself. No one else is going to be able to do it for you.” “When did you realize you were going to be an artist?” he was asked. “I was six,” Jesse replied before telling the story of the Witte Museum contest, ending his familiar tale with: “God, this

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Jesse Treviño at Ray’s Drive Inn, San Antonio, 2010. Kirk Weddle Photography.

is what I want to do for the rest of my life! Go to a small auditorium to win money!” A little girl asked if he enjoyed painting, to which he replied, “I don’t know what else to do.” When he was also asked if he had painted his “masterpiece,” he replied with rigid certainty, “No.” Alice Treviño Rodriguez recalled Jesse’s life during this time and described his pain during “Mi Vida” as “excruciating. At his worst. He

couldn’t even walk. Shortly after the show closed, I brought him [to her home] and pampered the heck out of him.” Later that year, in August, Armando Treviño, the fourth child of Juan and Dolores Treviño, passed away at the age of seventy-four. As a younger man, he’d proven his mettle to the family by quitting high school to take over his father’s Cream Crest Dairy delivery route after Juan suffered a stroke. He left his legacy with San Antonio in the form of his popular Evita’s restaurant.

— On March 18, 2012, the Express-News printed the results of a questionnaire that asked its readers to finish the sentence: “You know you’re from San Antonio if _____.” One of the printed responses was “. . . you consider Jesse Treviño a greater artist than Pablo Picasso.”

— On a hot, early-summer morning, music filled the air of downtown San Antonio. By 11:00 a.m. the temperature stood above ninety degrees, but an all-female mariachi band, donning black Chiapas dresses with vividly embroidered flowers of indigo, tangerine, buttery yellow, and fuchsia, lifted the spirits of the gathered guests braving the oppressive heat with buoyant, festive melodies. Wooden stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables had been set up. Women dressed in brightly colored blouses and skirts wandered among

those stalls and stacks of hay bales, welcoming the crowds with slices of chilled fruit and small cups of ice-cold agua fresca. Loose straw covered Nueva Street, where everyone strolled under a sky as blue as those in Jesse’s paintings. Were it not for the modern cars and SUVs parked behind the police barricade, or the massive mechanical cranes rising against the downtown skyline, or the smart phones in the hands of every other person snapping photos and recording videos, the festivities wouldn’t have looked that out of place 50 years ago, or 150 years ago when Texas belonged to the Confederacy, or 175 years ago when this was part of the Republic of Texas, or even 200 years ago when it belonged to Spanish Texas. It was Saturday, June 23, 2012, and it was time to celebrate the past and the present. The location for the fiesta was the former homestead of José Antonio Navarro. Born in 1795, Navarro became a soldier, a legislator, a signer of Texas’s Declaration of Independence from Mexico in 1836, and one of the drafters of the state constitution in 1845. From the area surrounding that of his home in the Laredito (“Little Laredo”), one of the city’s original neighborhoods, San Antonio grew in every direction. Navarro died a successful rancher and a respected statesman, a man of history, full of dignity. Designated a State Historic Site, Navarro’s adobe and caliche residence had recently undergone major renovations, including the installation of a mosaic tile mural by Jesse. With sizable help from Elizabeth (the couple had somewhat

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reconciled), he’d been at work on the project for nearly two years. Again, medical issues had hampered his work but not his enthusiasm for the commission. Jesse was in a great mood. Although he had often been reduced to using a wheelchair, on this morning he arrived, walking stiffly, leaning on a smooth wooden cane, with Elizabeth beside him. He was dressed smartly in a cream-colored guayabera shirt and matching fedora. His trimmed silver moustache and goatee added a regal dash of color against the brown skin of his face. Under the relentless Texas sun, Jesse surveyed the smiling faces from behind his sunglasses. He looked like a man of history, full of dignity. The crowd would top out at about 200, certainly a far cry from the 2,500 who overwhelmed SAMA’s “Family Day” in 1995 during Jesse’s oneman exhibition; and it was much, much quieter than the 2,000 people who filled Milam Park on a rainy night in 1997 to witness the unveiling of Spirit of Healing. Yet this crowd felt no less enthusiastic, and Jesse was happy to see that so many people had turned out on such a hot Saturday to applaud and approve his most recent gift to San Antonio. They approached him to bear their best wishes, talk of their anticipation for the new mural, and offer their prayers for his health. Most wanted their photos taken with him. They then quickly filled all the chairs under an enormous white tent that had been set up in front of the covered mural. Dozens of guests were left to find whatever shade they could by standing at the tent’s edges and ducking beneath the color-

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ful picado banners and tiny piñatas hanging dead still from the tent’s support poles, in want of a breeze. Elaine DagenBela, Armando Albarran, and many others who had known and supported Jesse for years were in attendance. Of course, some of Jesse’s siblings were present, too. Like holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries, Jesse’s unveilings had been regular occasions for bringing together the family. Unfortunately, just a couple weeks earlier, Pete Treviño had died at the age of seventy-eight. Being the oldest son, Pete had a lot of responsibility put on his shoulders, Jesse said. He remembered whenever Pete would come home from the Marines, he’d always line up the boys and give them haircuts. Following his tour in Korea he worked for Mexicana Airlines for thirty-three years. Pete’s death brought a touch of bittersweetness to the day for all the Treviños, including Jesse, who always counted on seeing his family at these gatherings. Still, Jesse was in a great mood. The mural on the long courtyard wall behind him remained veiled with a black curtain while various local politicians and dignitaries took turns speaking about the importance of preserving the city’s history even as time keeps moving forward. They spoke of the wonderful character of the people of San Antonio and the West Side, and how it was truly represented on this day by the enduring spirit of Jesse Treviño. Prospect Hill alum Ricardo Romo, president of UTSA, joked about seeing Jesse crawling through neighborhood trashcans as a kid looking for scraps of paper,

metal—anything for his art projects. Then Jorge Cortez spoke briefly. Cortez’s catering outfit was behind much of the set pieces and the refreshments for the day, and he brought forward a number of his family members and employees in grateful recognition. He then explained how he often called Jesse “el maestro” (the same title that William Draper’s students bestowed upon him), saying that when Jesse was at work, “he’s directing a symphony of colors and art and meaning.” When it was Jesse’s turn to speak, he stood in the sun and let the applause continue for a few extra moments. His jaw hurt. He thought the problem was a bad tooth. Over time, talking had become problematic; chewing was difficult, too. He couldn’t ignore the tendrils of pain running down his neck and left shoulder. But when he began, saying, “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time . . .” he spoke with his usual animation, excitedly moving his arms, and occasionally slurring his words as his tongue tried to keep pace with his thoughts. He declared that he wanted to be part of a “whole new era of educating all the young kids and people who don’t know the history” of San Antonio’s West Side. Then, in a remarkably vulnerable moment, Jesse closed the gap between artist and audience. “Every single one of you is so important,” he said, and he meant those who kept showing up, time after time, to his exhibitions. His following. His fans. “That’s the ultimate for the artist, when a lot of people will follow him. That’s the way I’ve been thinking ever since I was a kid. The people . . . I want their

attention . . . all eyes on this wall so they can see what I’ve been thinking about.” It was such an honest, sincere acknowledgment that his artist’s aspirations had not existed solely within the vacuum of his studio and his own imagination. His words were meant as a thank you for support, although they almost sounded like a plea: Never forget me. Perhaps it was the midday heat or fatigue or just soreness from the day, but after a few minutes Jesse seemed to run out of steam. He handed the microphone to Elizabeth, who had painted and glazed the tiles alongside Jesse to complete the mural on time. Peeking out from under the brim of her sunhat, she briefly thanked the crowd. Then a dozen or so volunteers pushed the curtain back over the top of the wall, revealing Casa Navarro-Laredito (hand-cut tile, 50´ × 8´). Composed of several vignettes, the mural depicts mid-nineteenth-century life in the Laredito, when people depended on ranching and farming economies for survival. To one side a cattle-pulled wagon waits nearby as two figures wash clothes in San Pedro Creek, while on the other side of the mural a street vendor sells fresh vegetables from a cart. As the eye moves toward the middle, José Navarro is prominently featured, poised as a protectorate of the Texas landscape around him. The steady pace of time is represented by the continuous stretch of blue sky overhead, which covers everyone, including a family gathered for a meal at a long outdoor table. Located at the mural’s center, the table is

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filled with food and drink. A man strums a guitar while a woman makes tortillas. From above, the artist has blessed this familial scene with a white dove in flight. It was, in fact, a dove (or, to be more specific, two doves) that helped Jesse’s career take flight so long ago. Nearly sixty years had passed since he’d sketched those doves and then stood on stage at the Witte’s auditorium to claim his award. It was then and there that his spirit came alive and lit up like a candle on Christmas Eve. Back then, the doves were simply pretty birds he saw in a picture book. Later he used the dove to convey universal love and comfort in Spirit of Healing. In this mural the dove appears to impart a gentle spirit of peace on everyone at the table, including the gentleman wearing a sombrero, who has a very familiar face—distinguished with a silver moustache and goatee—seated at the end of the table. This man looked familiar because he was, in fact, the artist, who had again taken advantage of his medium’s way to defy time by painting himself into the scene, quietly enjoying a taco. (For he had never forgotten those aromatic memories from his infant years in Monterrey or his mother’s tortillas, flying like spaceships across the kitchen every morning on Monterey Street.) The man in the mural has an appearance of utter contentment, as if he’d be satisfied for the moment to last forever.

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Despite the heat, Jesse remained in a great mood as he happily moved to and from different spots of the mural, over and over, whenever he was beckoned to pose for photographs. He signed autographs until there was nothing left to sign. He heard several times how much he was appreciated for his work, and he always replied that he still had big plans. He wanted to work, he told them. In truth, he had to work. And, as in the past, he would work. He would keep working because that was simply how an artist lived, how an artist endured. He’d reached an elite level in San Antonio as a Chicano artist, and at every turn he found himself out in uncharted territory because no one had done the things he had done. After decades of work, his name was virtually synonymous with his beloved West Side. As Gabriel Velasquez put it, Jesse was “the icon of how the Mexican American community writes its own chapter in the history book.” Ultimately, Jesse would keep working because he had more to give. Battling pain, fighting his own demons, he’ll work because his enthusiasm never diminishes. Most importantly, though, he’ll keep working because there are still so many canvases to make beautiful. “Let’s get going,” Jesse said at the end of the long, hot day. And give it some gas, his spirit replied.

Jesse Treviño at his studio with Rosita in the background, early 2018. Kirk Weddle Photography.

Afterword

Hay mas tiempo que vida

In late November of 2012, five months after the unveiling of the Casa Navarro mural, Jesse Treviño was diagnosed with cancer. He’d felt pain in his mouth and throat for several months until speaking and eating became nearly impossible. Believing the pain centered on a bad tooth, he went to the dentist, which led to the discovery of a lump on the left side of his throat. Subsequent tests revealed about 2.5 centimeters worth of stage four squamous cell cancer with tendrils reaching back into his neck. And so, shortly after turning sixty-seven, Jesse started chemotherapy and radiation. But before he faced those procedures, all of his teeth were pulled out because the radiation was so powerful it was capable of making changes to the roots of his teeth and jawbone. He’d have to wait about a year before being fitted for dentures. The treatments were tough. His throat burned. His energy fell, dragging down his spirit with it. Other than seeing Elizabeth (it was complicated) and Jorge Cortez, he’d generally cut himself off

from family and friends during his recovery. At times, in his isolation, he felt hopeless, forgotten. But if you could get him to talk about his art, he would sometimes sit up a little straighter, become a little more animated, forget about the pain for a moment—hell, he’d already lived with pain for most of his life (although that reality didn’t make any of this easier to adjust to). Whenever I ran into one of Jesse’s friends or people he’d worked with, they would say to me, sometimes rather insistently, “Get him to talk. You need to get him to talk, or he may never work again.” By this time I had known Jesse for about three years, but I understood his friends’ pleas. Jesse and I met shortly after I saw the “Mi Vida” exhibition in January 2010. I’m not an art critic or art student or art historian, and I am not interested in being misrepresented as an expert in any field of Chicano or Mexican American culture in any way. But I know what I like. And as I passed through the Museo Alameda exhibition, I began

to really admire many of Jesse’s pieces, especially the black canvases. I found those to be wildly engaging. I might have stared deeply at Mi Vida for fifteen or twenty minutes before I realized I was hogging the canvas all to myself, and others were waiting to get a closer look. (I’m no art expert, and apparently I have boorish museum behavior, too.) A docent with “Angel” on her nametag provided me with a few brief but wonderful tales from Jesse’s life. She also told me about his upcoming speaking engagement and (against museum protocols, I’m sure, bless her heart) produced Jesse’s phone number. Our first face-to-face meeting took place just as Jesse’s Museo Alameda show was winding down; I was essentially sizing him up to see if he would be an interesting subject for me to write about. So, at “A Conversation with Jesse Treviño,” I was looking for a good quote or two to take to an editor, and I was the person in the audience who asked if he had painted his masterpiece yet. While he had indeed answered “no” to my question, that wasn’t his complete answer. Here is his full reply: No. You know, when I was wounded . . . and I, you know, I . . . had . . . people asked me, ‘Did ya’ pray to God? . . . and I said . . . for another chance? . . . and I didn’t actually do that. But the fact that I was . . . I wanted another chance to be able to do and suddenly I have done so many things since. Almost everything that I created, I created with this one . . . now with the

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loss of that hand. And now it seems I have to go to another level and create . . . it’s almost the beginnings of the masterpieces. I have paintings outside this museum that are not in here. You know. If you’ve never seen them. You have to see La Veladora, the way it’s constructed, or the Spirit of Healing . . . murals . . . the library . . . all around town and, are incredible pieces. They’re huge, monumental. And those are the kinds of things that I dream of doing. These incredible projects that take me years to accomplish. But they are part of my repertoire as art. I feel real strong about that. I don’t just paint with an easel. I want to create the actual pieces that for the public that are . . . people can marvel, “Wow—how he’d do that?” Those are the kinds of things that—the whole process of creating that piece of . . . raising the money . . . whatever it takes to accomplish that. That’s the kind of things that—right now we’re working on a Hispanic monument, a war memorial. In the middle of an island on Elmendorf Lake. It’ll be 130 feet high. And it’ll commemorate the dead and the veterans. It’ll be a giant Ofrenda for all the veterans— especially from the West Side—but from all over. It’ll be symbolic of that. That’s the kind of multimillion-dollar project that’s something beautiful and lasting for many many years.

Well—he was clearly a man of passion, and I could see that passion build steadily as this Ofrenda (whatever the hell that was; I was

exhausted at that point) spun into existence in his imagination. As I tried to keep up, his words reminded me of Lucky’s epic monologue in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and I noted in my journal that Jesse didn’t always talk in straight lines. Yet I was hooked by his exigente (a term I would learn later), and I will forever love the phrase “the beginnings of the masterpieces.” (This is an opportune time to inform readers that, for clarity’s sake, I cleaned up and lightly edited some of Jesse’s quotations throughout the book.) Plus, he did answer the question. Following his talk, I introduced myself and told him how I admired his work and then asked if I could interview him at length. He agreed and, with Gabriel Velasquez’s help, a meeting was set up, which led to an article published in Texas Highways in 2012. But the research for that article was so captivating that I asked if I could write his biography. He eventually said he would cooperate as best as he could, but I think I saw him roll his eyes. I didn’t know then that he’d been approached at least four times by various movie interests. Much later on, near the end of our interviews, having discovered this curious part of his life, I asked if he was frustrated that those movies hadn’t been made. He wrinkled his face sourly and said, “I just don’t think about it.” Except, I think, he does sometimes. I think he does because, even though he’s already had a documentary made of his early career and has appeared in San Antonio newspapers and magazines for nearly his whole life

and has framed prints of his works in countless downtown and West Side restaurants and tourist shops, it’s just not enough for someone with the character, ambition, and talent like Jesse possesses. Another documentary or even a major motion picture would introduce the renown of Jesse Treviño to another generation. And that’s important to him—well, it’s a good start. I think he’d prefer at least two more generations to get to know his art better, and while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and throw in three or four more public murals.

— Back in February of 2010, I didn’t leave the Museo Alameda expecting to devote more than seven years of my life pursuing Jesse’s life, but that’s what happened because of a few unforeseen twists to the journey. First of all, it was hard catching up with Jesse. He was busy. And when he wasn’t, he was guarded. Very guarded. But just as I started getting his story together, my calls stopped being returned. Sometime later Jesse’s sister Alice Treviño Rodriguez called me with the news of his cancer. While Jesse underwent treatment and was recovering, I interviewed some of his brothers and sisters. I had just finished having lunch with Ernest and his wife, Terry, at Leticia’s, and we were talking about our busy schedules when Terry uttered, “Hay mas tiempo que vida.” I asked what it meant, and she told me that it was an old Mexican expression—“There is more time than life.”

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La Historia Chicana (“The Chicano History”), Sultenfess Library, Our Lady of the Lake University, San Antonio (1974). Acrylic on canvas, 100´× 57˝. Kirk Weddle Photography.

What a beautiful, eloquent way to sum up everything. Everything. I was immediately taken with the phrase’s simplicity and its honesty, and I couldn’t help but layer it over my perceptions of Jesse. At some point his list of projects will outgrow the time he needs to complete them (including the new ones that continuously pop into his imagination). Time will always outrun us all. Jesse is going to try to keep up as long as he can. And, hey, he was indeed prescient about the need to construct his murals for mobility. Back in 1981, having noticed that the location of La Historia Chicana in Our Lady of the Lake’s SUB had left it a target for incidental damage (beer spills, billiard-cue chalk, etc.), students led an initiative to preserve it. The canvas was unmounted, recut, and relocated to three walls inside the St. Florence Library, where it was also formally dedicated. But that wasn’t the end of it. The university presented Jesse with an honorary doctor of fine arts degree in 1989, and when the school built its Sueltenfuss Library, the entrance lobby was designed specifically to feature his mural (now cut to be four-sided). La Historia Chicana, having been moved to its final (probably) place of prominence in 2001, is always ready to go if need be.

— Jesse’s cancer went into remission toward the end of 2013. Even though he was in a weakened state, he agreed to sit for more interviews. His voice was so low and cracked that often I

couldn’t bring myself to continue past a few questions. Other times he was buoyed by the stories he told and, I think, grateful that I kept returning. He spoke often about La Ofrenda, which remains a dream, but one he’s still determined to see turned into reality. By early 2014 he was in a stronger condition, but unfortunately things got worse before they got much better. He and Elizabeth became serious about their divorce, and Jesse moved out of his home and studio on Guadalupe. All of this naturally made it difficult for me to continue. That sounds selfish, and it was, but this book should have been finished already. So I was in the process of tracking him down when— I was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia. Terrible illness. I would advise staying far away from it. I spent two years in and out of hospitals, including one stay of three months. During that time I went back over “Vietnam 1966,” the chapter about Jesse’s recovery. I actually said to myself after reading it, “If he could do two years recovering in a hospital, then I can do three months.” Without Jesse’s knowing it, he pulled me through a pretty tough time. After a bone marrow transplant, my cancer went into remission and has stayed that way. To say that leukemia disrupted my schedule for completing this book would be something of an understatement. But I started regaining some strength, and after a little time I began meeting with Jesse, who had settled into a space on the South Side. Even though it has more than enough room for him to work and display many

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of his large canvases, it’s not on the West Side, so he wasn’t too happy. On our first meeting, he said not to give out his address to anyone because he didn’t want anyone to find him. We resumed. And I had two questions that had been weighing on my mind for quite some time. I was curious about any events that might have, in some small way, helped build the character of a young artist, and I asked what it was like to celebrate his birthday on Christmas Eve. It seemed like it would end up being an elaborate co-party for Jesus and Jesus Treviño. I was curious if his siblings resented him for getting more attention around Christmastime. Did he feel special? And did he get two sets of presents? His answer was heartbreaking. “We only celebrated certain birthdays, and mine was never celebrated as a child,” he said. “I never realized my birthday and Christmas Eve were the same day, and nobody made a big deal out of it. Nobody told me.” The kid never celebrated a birthday. And why not? The answer, according to Jesse, was very pragmatic for a family of fourteen. “Because if they acknowledged it, then they would owe me a gift.” And he added that, yes, it hurt when he figured it out, but it would have been financially tough, what with another birthday (or two) always right around the corner. It was really hard for me to believe little Chuy’s mother didn’t slip him a gift or that Eva didn’t take him somewhere special to celebrate his birthday. After all, when I called John Treviño

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to fact-check Jesse’s claim, he told me, “My mother said she loved us all, but Jesse was her only ‘Christmas baby.’” But he confirmed that birthdays were rarely celebrated for the Treviño children because of the cost. (Jesse says he has gotten over it.) On one of my last visits, I pressed him to answer the question. I’d asked him this question before, several times in fact, and he’d always put me off. This time, though, I insisted on knowing: who was the woman in Mi Vida? He dropped his head in exasperation but finally relented. “Some of my best work was created at the Mistletoe house when I was on my own,” he began. “During that time I was going to SAC and usually meeting at Mel Casas’s place for Con Safo. But there were a couple of times that we met at my place, even though I’m not the kind that always likes people in my studio. [During one meeting] this girl came over, Joanne. One of the members brought her. Beautiful girl. “I had already painted the bedroom wall black. I had covered the window. I remember she was there, against that wall, sitting on the floor, listening to the stereo, smoking a joint, drinking a beer. That’s what I saw—her face against that wall. At that time, I want to say there was nothing on the wall, but maybe the Purple Heart was there. I had already decided the mural was going to be about me, my life, so everything there had to be personal. At the time, she was very important to me. She was right there at the right place at the right time.”

Treviño (2015). Acrylic on canvas, 8´× 6´. Collection of Jesse Treviño; Kirk Weddle Photography.

Jesse told me they had a brief but intense relationship that helped bring him out of a depression caused by his divorce from Anna Davila, but it didn’t end up lasting much longer than six or eight months or so. As for the tale of Joanne’s tragic ending in a car crash (a detail that, for me at least, immediately brings to mind Eva’s death), he said while looking away, “I don’t really know where that came from. Maybe it just sounded good. I’m not sure what’s happened to her.”

— On November 12, 2015, he unveiled a newly painted portrait to honor Veterans Day. Commissioned by Starbucks, the image for Treviño (acrylic on canvas, 8´ × 6´) was taken from a 1954 photograph (see chapter 1). It’s a black-and-white photo that all the Treviños have owned because it shows all fourteen members of the family in the Monterey house; some of the brothers are in their military dress uniforms. Young Jesse, who is eight, sits beside his beloved sister Eva, who is in a periwinkle-blue dress and has an attractive impression of poise and confidence about her. If you look closely, you can see that Jesse, while nicely dressed, wears his father’s shoes because he didn’t own any dress shoes at the time. This portrait celebrates life—and veterans, to be sure. Despite the fact that you’d be hard-pressed to find more than two or three smiles in their faces, it’s a wonderful picture of an All American Family, composed of Mexicans and Americans.

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A giclée print of the painting is displayed in a Starbucks coffee shop on the outskirts of San Antonio. Despite the out-of-the-way place of its presentation, I think it was very important for Jesse to hang that portrait of his family somewhere in town because he thinks of San Antonio as his home—not just his hometown but his house—and he likes to decorate his house with his art. I don’t see anything unusual about that at all. Nothing stands resolved with Jesse. Nothing is wrapped up in his life, except maybe that he has his new teeth and it’s much easier to understand him. As I finish this book, he is alive and well and looking for a home on the West Side. Because he’s still working, there has been no climax to his career, so nothing can be wrapped up in these pages. One thing is certain: he’s not going to stop trying to outrace time. “Your work is forever,” he told me once. “It seems like I got momentum, and I don’t have limits. I’ve slowed down because of my health, but mentally I still have the will to create more. My reason for doing something . . . it’s not about the money. The bottom line is that I’d like to think at the end of the show the real art continues.” I think Jesse’s on to something, too. Some­ where in my notes, after our second or third meeting, I scribbled the following: While others may imagine, an artist imagines things into being. Great artists imagine things into being that also last.

Acknowledgments

Very simply, this book would not exist without the help of Annette Angel Lahr in the very beginning. Thank you, Jesse Treviño, for putting up with the questions and for welcoming me into your world. Thanks to the whole Treviño family, including Robert, Alice, Ernest, and Elvira (who passed away in March 2017), who opened their homes to me, showed me their own Jesse Treviño collections, and spilled the beans on their brother. I was sorry to not have the opportunity to speak with the others. I extend my gratitude especially to John Treviño, who was always available and willing to mark up the manuscript for accuracy. I felt good that he was tenacious. My buddy and Austin-based photographer Kirk Weddle has been a part of this project almost from the beginning. He shot nearly twodozen of Jesse's works, plus he captured portraits of him over several years, documenting the artist and time’s passage. Kirk’s work is an invaluable asset to this biography.

Thanks to Brian Pauli, managing director of operations for Dick’s Classic Garage in San Marcos, who helped confirm the identity of El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora. I’m indebted to Allen Armstrong, amateur historian of San Marcos and the Triple Crown, who helped tracked down details to one of the most pivotal moments of Jesse’s life. I’m so happy that Lori Moffatt, who gave me the "Jesse Treviño" assignment at Texas Highways, is now my good friend. Leonora Laney of Our Lady of the Lake University represented professional archivists with satisfying results. Thank you, Cindy Gabriel, Kathy Sosa, Rick Bela, Elaine DagenBela, Linda and Fred Hofheinz, and Jaime Vasquez, for your help in getting some wonderful images into these pages. To my own home office in Hays County, though it doesn’t get enough credit for what I do, it set the mood to get me through act one; for the folks at Tantra Coffee Shop, San Marcos, who caffeinated me through the second act;

and the Root Cellar Bakery and Coffee Shop, San Marcos, which pushed me to the end of the third act with delicious pastry: Thank you. Jorge Cortez, restaurateur and champion of the Mercado, provided an insider’s perspective on San Antonio’s art scene and the city’s history, which would have otherwise eluded me. George Cisneros, probably without knowing it, provided me with the single most important, insightful perspective to the way an artist’s life progresses. He also checked in on my health, like a good friend would. I appreciate how open and honest Rosemary Kowalski (like most of the other interviewees) was in her recounting of her life with Jesse. Carolee Youngblood was also a font of knowledge about the times, the events, and the people during Jesse’s mid-life period. What Jesse said to me about her rings true: “I don’t think I could have done it without her.” I’m so appreciative of her enthusiasm to participate. I remain forever grateful to the Honorable Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio (and so much more). Not only did he take the time to sit for an interview; he also wrote the foreword. I am thankful that my longtime friend and colleague Laura Samuel Meyn took the opportunity to catch the right goofs and straighten out some confusing storytelling on my part. Damon Falke, formerly of East Texas and currently in Norway, honored me with a thorough examination of the manuscript. His gift with

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words polished my own and made the story even stronger. My editor at Texas A&M University Press, Thom Lemmons, was always calm, knowledgeable, and ready and willing to work with me through the tricky parts of publishing. My thanks also go out to managing editor Katie Duelm, editor Alison Tartt, and designer Kristie Lee for their diligent work to make this book the best it could be. As mentioned in the dedication, Terry Vasquez was crucial to the outcome of the book. She was always lovingly looking over my shoulder, like the stone angel in Spirit of Healing. Her husband, Juan F. Vasquez, also contributed some of the most critical, intimate material to Jesse’s story, leaving me indebted to his assistance and grateful for his friendship. I absolutely must thank my oncology teams in Dallas and Austin, with extra love going to the wonderful people on the sixth floor at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center. Thank you, Jessica Haynes, for the loan of the computer. It was a need that you filled without hesitation. My daughter, Sidney Grimes, deserves some credit for listening to my endless stories of Jesse. Finally, my wife, Michele, is responsible for this book in that she was a paragon of strength for me during some harrowing times. In addition to assisting me during my research, she helped me stay alive so that I could finish the story.

Appendix

A Partial Chronology of Jesse Treviño’s Artwork

Years listed indicate dates of completion.

1971: Pachucos (acrylic on canvas, 48˝ × 48˝)

1953: Two Doves (pencil on construction paper)

1972: Mi Vida (“My Life,” acrylic on gypsum board, 9´ × 14´)

1957: Girl with Poinsettias (tempera on paper, 10˝ × 12˝)



La Fe (“Faith,” acrylic on canvas, 52˝ × 48˝)

1960: Amor Indio (“Indian Love,” oil on masonite, 36˝ × 48˝)

1973: The Gran Chile (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝)

1962: LBJ (oil on canvas, 22˝× 28˝), Museum Collections, no. 2008.7.1, LBJ Presidential Library and Museum, Austin, TX

1974: La Historia Chicana (“The Chicano History,” acrylic on canvas, 100´ × 57˝), Sueltenfess Library, Our Lady of the Lake College, San Antonio

1965: “Stay in School” poster (casein on illustration board, 14˝ × 18˝)

Untitled portrait from life (acrylic on canvas, 30˝ × 36˝)

1966: Samir Abdul (pastel on paper, 12˝ × 18˝)

Vietnam 1966 (tempera on paper, 18˝ × 25˝)

1968: Armando Albarran (acrylic on canvas, 16˝ × 24˝) 1969: Alamo Exit (2 panels, acrylic on canvas, 42˝ × 32˝ each) Pontiac (mixed media, 47.5˝ × 47.5˝) Zapata (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 99˝)

1976: Los Comaradas del Barrio (“Friends from the Neighborhood,” acrylic on canvas, 48˝ × 36˝)

La Raspa (“Snow Cone,” acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 48˝)



No Te Acabes Kelly Field (“Don’t Close Kelly Field,” acrylic on canvas, 50˝ × 72˝)



Mis Hermanos (“My Brothers,” acrylic on canvas, 70˝ × 48˝), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC



El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora (“The Car on Zarzamora Street,” acrylic on canvas, 52˝ × 66˝)



Guadalupe y Calaveras (acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 52˝)





La Troca en La Calle Commerce (“The Truck on Commerce Street,” acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 48˝)

1985: Los Piscadores (“The Pickers,” acrylic on canvas, 40˝ × 32˝) 1986: Archbishop Patrick Flores (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝)

Liria’s (acrylic on canvas, 80˝ × 54˝)



La Cita’s (acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 48˝)

Progreso (acrylic on canvas, 66˝ × 50˝)

El Malt House (pencil on paper, 26.5˝ × 22˝)

1979: Los Santos de San Antonio (“The Saints of San Antonio,” acrylic on canvas, 84˝ × 56˝)

Pan Dulce 1 (watercolor on paper, 29.5˝ × 22.5˝)



Pan Dulce 2 (watercolor on paper, 30˝ × 23˝)

1980: El Alameda (acrylic on canvas, 54˝ × 84˝)

Fiesta 1981 official poster

1982: Imagenes de Mi Pueblo (“Images of My Town,” acrylic on canvas, 54´ × 12´), Exchange National Bank (now Wells Fargo Bank), San Antonio

Señora Dolores Treviño (acrylic on canvas, 84˝ × 52˝), San Antonio Museum of Art

1984: La Feria (“The Fair,” hand-painted ceramic tile mural, 12.5´ × 7´), corner of Dolorosa and Concho Streets, San Antonio

a ppe nd i x

Mother and Child (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝)

1987: Mothers March (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝)

Body and Fender (acrylic on canvas, 8´ × 6´)

1978: The Torso (pencil on paper, 16˝ × 23˝)

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Estrella (acrylic on canvas, 60˝ × 48˝)

1977: La Panadería (“The Bakery,” acrylic on canvas, 78˝ × 54˝)

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Mexicano, Chicano, Americano (3 panels, acrylic on canvas, 24˝ × 48˝ each)

The Alamo (acrylic on canvas, 40˝ × 31˝), Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Simi Valley, CA

1988: Mission San Jose (watercolor on paper, 48˝ × 36˝) 1989: La Corte Colorada (watercolor on paper, 41˝ × 46˝) 1990: Texas Theater (acrylic on canvas, 54˝ × 78˝) 1991: Walter’s (acrylic on canvas, 72˝ × 52˝)

Flores Tire Shop (3 panels, acrylic on canvas, 96˝ × 78˝ each)



Teatro Guadalupe (acrylic on canvas, 36˝× 48˝)

1992: Stage sets for La Perichole 1993: Tienda de Elizondo (“Elizondo’s Store,” acrylic on canvas, 895/8˝ × 661/8˝), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC 1995: San Antonio in World War II (acrylic on canvas, 36´ × 10´), Auditorium Foyer, Central Library, San Antonio

1997: Proud Heritage: The C-5 Galaxy and San Antonio (acrylic on canvas, 8´ × 5´)

Como Una Flor (“Like a Flower,” acrylic on canvas; 50˝ × 60˝)



Spirit of Healing (hand-cut tile mosaic, 93´× 43´), exterior of Santa Rosa Hospital, San Antonio



Henry B. González (acrylic on canvas, 36˝ × 48˝)



2005: Dr. Romo (acrylic on canvas, 48˝ × 60˝) 2006: Reaching for the Stars (hand-cut tile mural, 48˝ × 36˝)

1999: La Curandera (“The Healer,” acrylic on canvas, 24´ × 8´), Texas Diabetes Institute, San Antonio

La Veladora of Our Lady of Guadalupe (mixed-media mural, 20´× 40´), exterior of Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio

César Chávez (watercolor on paper, 36˝ × 48˝)

2009: Rosita (oil on canvas, 6´ × 9´)

2001: The Printer (acrylic on canvas; 60˝ × 48˝)

2012: Casa Navarro-Laredito (hand-cut painted tile mural, 50˝ × 8´), exterior of Casa Navarro State Historic Site, San Antonio

2003: New Chapa Lion (hand-cut ceramic tile mural, 30´ × 25´), exterior of Goodwill Industries, San Antonio

2015: Treviño (acrylic on canvas, 8´ × 6´); giclée print on display at Starbucks Military Community Store, San Antonio



San Martin de Porres (acrylic on canvas, 12´ × 16´)

a par tial ch r on ology of jesse tr ev iñ o’s art w or k  

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Sources

Interviews Jesse Treviño—July 22, 2011–January 30, 2018, San Antonio. I interviewed Jesse Treviño more than twenty-five times during this period. We met most often at his home and at two of his studio locations as well as places like Mi Tierra, San Antonio’s Central Library, and a parade honoring César Chávez. There were also several brief telephone interviews.

Andrew Connors—May 26, 2016, email interview Kevin Consey—June 14, 2014, telephone interview Jorge Cortez—January 7, 2012, June 26, 2012, and June 29, 2013, San Antonio Jennifer Dacus—November 1, 2013, San Antonio Elaine DagenBela—January 3, 2013, Austin, TX Gloria Ferrier—January 9, 2016, San Antonio Maria Eva Flores—October 15, 2015, San Antonio

Armando Albarran—July 2, 2012, San Antonio

Dan Goddard—March 7, 2013, San Antonio

Arturo Almeida—January 27, 2017, San Antonio

Fred Hofheinz—December 22, 2015, telephone interview

Sam Barber—August 29, 2014, telephone interview Joe Bernal—November 11, 2013, telephone interview Clayton Buchanan—September 11, 2014, telephone interview Mel Casas—July 19, 2012, San Antonio

Rosemary Kowalski—January 13, 2012, San Antonio Annette Angel Lahr—February 23, 2016, telephone interview Anthony Limón—January 27, 2012, San Antonio

George Cisneros—February 12, 2015, San Antonio

Elvira Treviño Limón—January 27, 2012, San Antonio

Henry Cisneros—January 24, 2015, San Antonio

Santos Martinez—August 26, 2013, San Antonio

Ellen Riojas Clark—May 16, 2014, San Antonio

Marise McDermott—March 20, 2016, San Antonio

Bill Minutaglio—December 19, 2013, email interview

Books

Jeffrey Morseburg—January 31, 2016, email interview

Acuña, Rodolfo F. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. London: Longman/Pearson, 2011. Anaya, Rudolfo A., and Francisco Lomelí, eds. Aztlan: Essays on the Chicano Homeland. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Anderson, Terry H. The Sixties. London: Longman, 1999. Art Students League. Art Students League: Centennial Decade, 1965–1966 (class catalogue). New York: Art Students League, 1966. Behnken, Brian. Fighting Their Own Battles: Mexican Americans, African Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Buitron, Richard A., Jr. Quest for Tejano Identity in San Antonio, Texas, 1913–2000. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2004. Calvert, Robert A., and Arnoldo De Leon. The History of Texas. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1990. Caro, Robert. Master of the Senate. Vol. 3 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Vintage Books, 2002. ———. Means of Ascent. Vol. 2 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ———. The Path to Power. Vol. 1 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Vintage Books, 1981. ———. Passage to Power. Vol. 4 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Cordova, Ruben C. Con Safo: The Chicano Art Group and the Politics of South Texas. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press, 2009.

Ysleta Northam—January 12, 2016, San Antonio Felix Padrón—July 2, 2013, San Antonio E. Carmen Ramos—October 20, 2011, email interview Emette Rivera—February 25, 2016, telephone interview Alice Treviño Rodriguez—February 7, 2012, San Antonio Elizabeth Rodriguez—June 12, 2013, San Antonio Joe Bastida Rodriguez—May 15, 2012, telephone interview Ricardo Romo—May 23, 2013, San Antonio Armando Sanchez—May 21, 2013, San Antonio Lionel Sosa—March 3, 2013, San Antonio Ernest Treviño—February 21, 2012, San Antonio John Treviño—January 31, 2012, San Antonio Robert Treviño—January 18, 2012, and July 22, 2012, Seabrook, TX Gabriel Valesquez—March 13, 2013, San Antonio Juan and Terry Vasquez—March 4, 2013, Houston, TX; April 23, 2013, San Antonio Tom Wright—July 17, 2013, telephone interview Carolee Youngblood—January 31, 2014, Austin, TX

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Del Castillo, Richard Griswold, Teresa McKenna, and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarno, eds. CARA: Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985. Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery, UCLA, 1991. Ebert, James R. A Life in a Year: The American Infantryman in Vietnam. New York: Presidio Press, 1993. Flynn, Jean. Henry B. Gonzalez: Rebel with a Cause. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2004. Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1997. Haas, Oscar. History of New Braunfels and Comal County, Texas, 1844–1946. Austin, TX: Steck Co., 1968. Hawthorne, Charles. Hawthorne on Painting. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004. Hernandez-Ehrisman, Laura. Inventing the Fiesta City: Heritage and Carnival in San Antonio. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Kelker, Nancy L. Mel Casas: Artist as Cultural Adjuster. Lascassas, TN: High Ship Press, 2014. Keller, Gary, Mary Erickson, Kaytie Johnson, and Joaquin Alvarado. Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art: Artists, Works, Culture, and Education. 2 vols. Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 2002. La Botz, Dan. César Chávez and la Causa. London: Pearson Education, 2006. LeClerc, Gustavo, Raul Villa, and Michael J. Dear, eds. Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en LA. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999. Leon-Portilla, Miguel, ed. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

Lomelí, Francisco, ed. Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Literature and Art. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press, 1993. Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Ancient Roots/ New Visions (Raices Antigua/Visiones Nuevas). Tucson, AZ: Tucson Museum of Art, 1977. Exhibition catalogue listing Jesse Treviño as an exhibiting artist. Marnham, Patrick. Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Martinez, Santos. Dále Gas. Houston, TX: Con­ temporary Arts Museum, 1977. Exhibition catalogue listing Jesse Treviño as an exhibiting artist. Miller, Terry. Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way. New York: Crown Publishers, 1990. Montejano, David. Quixote’s Soldiers: The Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Museo del Barrio; Hiram Walker, Inc.; San Antonio Museum of Art.; Plaza de la Raza. Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour.” New York: Museo del Barrio, 1984. Exhibition catalogue listing Jesse Treviño as an exhibitor. Oropeza, Lorena. ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!: Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam Era. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Payne, Laura. Essential History of Art. Bath, UK: Parragon, 2000. Pycior, Julie Leininger. LBJ and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Reed, John. Insurgent Mexico. New York: Penguin Books, 1914.

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Rosales, Rodolfo. The Illusion of Inclusion: The Untold Political Story of San Antonio. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. San Antonio Light, May 26, 1965. Photo of James Shand, vice president of Joske’s, congratulating Jesse Treviño for winning a national contest. San Antonio Museum Association / San Antonio Museum of Art. Real, Really Real, Super Real: Directions in Contemporary American Realism. San Antonio: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1981. Exhibition catalogue listing Jesse Treviño as an exhibiting artist. Shorris, Earl. Latinos: A Biography of the People. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992. Silver, Larry. Art in History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. Sosa, Lionel. Think & Grow Rich: A Latino Choice. New York: Ballantine Books, 2006. Snodgrass, Michael. Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Steiner, Raymond J. The Art Students League of New York: A History. Saugerties, NY: CSS Publications, 1994. Treviño, Jesse, and Dan R. Goddard. Three Decades of Art by Jesse Treviño. San Antonio: Instituto Cultural Mexicano, 1993. Exhibition catalogue. Wright, Tom, and Susan VanHecke. RoadWork: Rock and Roll Turned Inside Out. Montclair, NJ: Hal Leonard Books, 2007. Wolff, Nelson W. Mayor: An Inside View of San Antonio Politics, 1981–1995. San Antonio: San Antonio News-Express, 1997. Yorba, Jonathan. Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2001.

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Salazar, Veronica. “Artist to Get Honorary Doctorate.” San Antonio Express-News, December 9, 1989. “San Antonio: Population Profile.” http://www .city-data.com/us-cities/The-South/SanAntonio-Population-Profile.html (accessed February 14, 2013). Schramm, Alissa. “Avance Taps Parent of the Year: Credited with Artist’s Success.” San Antonio Light, June 3, 1985. “Ship Posters Win for Two.” San Antonio Express, May 6, 1965. Silva, Elda. “‘Chicano’ Draws Mixed Reviews.” San Antonio Express-News, January 4, 2002. ———. “Community Symbol Unveiled.” San Antonio Express-News, December 12, 2003. ———. “A Life in Art.” San Antonio Express-News, October 18, 2009. ———. “Marin Introduces New ‘Chicano’ Exhibits in S.A.” San Antonio Express-News, December 14, 2001. ———. “‘Mi Vida’ Is Getting a New Life.” San Antonio Express-News, July 20, 2004. ———. “‘Mi Vida’ Pays Homage to S.A. Artist.” San Antonio Express-News, October 23, 2009. ———. “Museo Alameda Says Adios.” San Antonio Express-News, September 27, 2012. ———. “Museo Alameda Staffers Pinched.” San Antonio Express-News, March 27, 2010. ———. “A Museum and More.” San Antonio ExpressNews, April 8, 2007. ———. “Nine for ’09.” San Antonio Express-News, January 4, 2009. ———. “A Notable Film of Courage.” Conexión, February 8, 2007, 23. ———. “Public Soon May See Artist’s First Mural.” Conexión, July 29, 2004, 41–42.

———. “Sculpture, Musicians Honor ‘la Virgen.’” San Antonio Express-News, December 12, 2003. ———. “Writer Plans Film on S.A. Artist.” San Antonio Express-News, January 21, 2007. Skorneck, Carolyn. “First Lady Embraced in South America.” San Antonio Express-News, October 1, 1998. Smith, Roberta. “Twelve Days of Texas.” Art in America, July–August 1976, 42–47. “Smithsonian Moves to Embrace Latin Culture: Peruvian Scholar Catalogs Collection of Hundreds of Photos.” Baltimore Sun, July 25, 1997. “Stepping Back into History.” San Antonio Express, January 19, 1984. “Students Win Prizes.” San Antonio Light, May 5, 1965. Swisher, Kara. “A New Statue for the Mall?” Washington Post, September 21, 1987. Thompson, Ronnie. “Porfirio Salinas Paints to Please.” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, January 13, 1964. Trafford, Al. “The Giant Painted Photo Album: Jesse Trevino.” Southwest Art, April 1979, 58–63. Trejo, Frank. “Around the Plaza.” San Antonio Light, August 17, 1977. ———. “Mural Artist: Latest Creation Depicts History.” San Antonio Light, May 31, 1979. ———. “Pencil-Stub Sketch Launched Art Career.” San Antonio Light, May 23, 1976. “Trevino Wins Poster Contest.” San Antonio Express, October 30, 1964. “Trevino’s ‘Estrella’ Shines.” San Antonio Light, October 1, 1985. “12 Students Win Contests.” San Antonio Express, May 27, 1964.

“Two from S.A. Vie for Artist of Year.” San Antonio Light, September 18, 1985. Uhler, David. “Muralismo.” San Antonio ExpressNews, May 5, 2004. Vargas, Kathy. “The Evolution of an Artist: Jesse Trevino Traces His Roots and His Reasons.” San Antonio Light, November 4, 1984. “Veteran Artist Exhibits Retrospective, First Time Ever.” La Prensa, November 23, 2009. Weinberg, H. Barbara. “William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chas/ hd_chas.htm (accessed March 20, 2014). Wilson, Morris. “Bexar Facts.” San Antonio Light, April 13, 1964. Wolff, Elaine. “It’s Potluck Time Again.” San Antonio Current, January 27, 2005. Yerkes, Susan. “A Palate of Loving Friends Help Trevino Celebrate Show.” San Antonio ExpressNews, January 29, 1993. ———. “Treviño, S.A. Are Standing Tall for Art.” San Antonio Express-News, October 7, 1998. Zaruzua, Jeorge. “Hispanic Vets Monument Planned.” San Antonio Express-News, July 4, 2008.

Audiovisual Materials Casas, Mel. Oral history interview by Paul Karlstrom. August 14 and 16, 1996. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. CBS News. Hunger in America: A CBS Reports Program. Carosel Films, 1968. https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=h94bq4JfMAA (accessed January 3, 2017).

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Coppola, Francis Ford, dir. Apocalypse Now. Paramount Pictures, 1979. DVD, 153 min. Dali, Salvador. Dali in New York. Directed by Jack Bond. Sunrise Pictures, 1965. DVD, 57 min. Digital Work Studios. “The Heart of Treviño Teaser” (trailer). http://www.digitalwork studios.com/2009/10/ (accessed November 18, 2016). Draper, William F. Oral history interview by William McNaught. June 1-2, 1977. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. “Gene Pitney / Sunny and the Sunglows.” American Bandstand, season 7, episode 10 (November 9, 1963). http://www.tv.com /shows/american-bandstand/gene-pitney -sunny-and-the-sunglows-november9-1963-159088/ (accessed October 1, 2013). “Reception in Celebration of the Exhibition Works by Jesse Treviño: New York, Vietnam, San Antonio” (transcript of remarks). National Museum of American Art, September 20, 1994. Treviño, Jesse. Interview by Sarah R. Massey. June 20, 1995. Institute of Texan Cultures Oral History Collection, University of Texas at San Antonio. ———. Oral history interview by Cary Cordova. July 15–16, 2004, San Antonio, TX. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. ———. A Spirit against All Odds. Busch Creative Services Corp., 1984. VHS, 19 min. Varela, Laura, dir. As Long as I Remember: American Veteranos. San Antonio Filmmakers, 2009. DVD, 54 min.

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Archival Materials “Amarillo Competition” (brochure). Amarillo, TX, 1979. Lists Jesse Treviño as second-place winner for Mis Hermanos. Artist’s archive. “Galería de la Raza” (brochure). San Antonio, ca. 1977. Lists Jesse Treviño as an exhibitor. Artist’s archive. “Hispanic Heritage Month” (brochure). National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, 1994. Lists Jesse Treviño as an exhibitor. Artist’s archive. Home video of Jesse Treviño, in a half-body cast, visiting his home from the hospital in the summer of 1968. Artist’s archive. Home video of Jesse Treviño discussing La Feria tile mural in 1983; he explains its lasting properties and talks briefly about doing a much bigger tile mural. Artist’s archive. Home video of events at Jesse Treviño’s exhibition “A West Side Story: Works by Jesse Treviño,” San Antonio Museum of Art, September 8, 1995; shows Jesse’s mother and her portrait, Señora Dolores Treviño; Lenora Brown, chair of the Board of Trustees, Mayor Bill Thornton, and Jesse Treviño are shown speaking to the crowd. Artist’s archive. Home video of unveiling of Spirit of Healing, October 7, 1997; shows mariachi band playing and Jesse Treviño speaking to the crowd. Artist’s archive. Home video of KSAT television news segment of Spirit of Healing unveiling, October 7, 1997; reports that the mural is “believed to be the largest mural in North America.” Artist’s archive.

Home video of KMOL television news segment of Spirit of Healing unveiling, October 7, 1997; reports attendance of “two thousand or so.” Artist’s archive. Home video of KMOL television news segment of Spirit of Healing unveiling, October 8, 1997; reports that the mural is the “largest mural in North America.” Artist’s archive. “Jesse Treviño: An Artist and His Place” (brochure). Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, 1996. Artist’s archive. “Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida” (brochure). Museo Alameda, San Antonio, 2010. Artist’s archive. Photo of Jesse Treviño and other nationally known Latinos (clipping). Parade, January 3, 1999, 6. Artist’s archive. Photo of Jesse Treviño on stretcher (clipping). Stars and Stripes (Pacific Edition), March 14, 1967, 6. Artist’s archive. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” illustration from San Antonio Light, June 21, 1989 (clipping). Includes Jesse Treviño write-up. Artist’s archive. “Ripley’s Believe of Not” illustration (clipping), ca. 1995. Includes Jesse Treviño’s Spirit of Healing mural. Artist’s archive. San Antonio Archival File—Artists: Treviño, Jesse, no. 1 (1980s). Vertical Files, Texana/ Genealogy Collection, San Antonio Central Library.

San Antonio Archival File—Artists: Treviño, Jesse, no. 2 (1990s). Vertical Files, Texana/ Genealogy Collection, San Antonio Central Library. San Antonio Archival File—Artists: Treviño, Jesse, no. 3 (2000s). Vertical Files, Texana/ Genealogy Collection, San Antonio Central Library. Video of Jesse Treviño interview with Patty Elizondo for “Showcase Seven,” UACC-TV (channel 7), 1981; he reveals how he is still angry about his experience in Vietnam and explains his injuries; he tells a bit about his history and journey to professional artist; talks about creating a mural on the side of Children’s Hospital. Artist’s archive. Videotaped segment of KENS “Eyewitness News” covering the Hispanic Heritage Awards in Washington, DC, September 17, 1987; Jesse Treviño, seen in his tuxedo, explains the inspiration behind The Alamo. Artist’s archive. Videotaped segment of Jesse Treviño interview (with unknown interviewer, ca. 1986–87). In a studio setting, when asked what he misses about the West Side, Jesse’s full response is: “I think the one thing that I do miss is there are so many people and so many things, all the interruptions and the hustle and bustle of the city, I sort of miss that.” Artist’s archive.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Abdul, Samir, 42–44 abstract expressionism, 10, 63, 66, 75 accessibility of public art, 180, 183 acquisition of art, 136, 148–49, 152–53, 190 aesthetics, 35, 41, 95, 109 African Americans, 6, 9, 17, 21–22, 30–31, 76, 112 Agnew, Spiro, 69 agricultural industry, 21, 34, 68, 84 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, 34 El Alameda, 112–15, 113, 148, 152–53, 193 Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture, 190 Alameda Theater, 16, 112–15, 114, 175 The Alamo, 133–34, 134 Alamo Exit, 67 Alazán Creek, 11 Albarran, Alberto, 54

Albarran, Armando, 54–56, 57, 65, 81, 155, 181, 196 Almazán, Jesse, 75 Almeida, Arturo, 122, 174 Alsup, Katherine, 28–30, 66, 143 Amarillo Competition, 103 ambassador of the arts, 166–68 American art, 36–38, 66, 103 American culture, 26–27 American Dream, 14, 87, 88, 135 Amigos del Arte, 152 Amor Indio (“Indian Love”), 19 “Ancient Roots/​New Visions” exhibition, 103–4 Anglos: Casas and, 66–67; Chicano art movement, 74–76; and discrimination, 21–23; and Fiesta San Antonio, 110; and Mexican Americans, 68–69, 146–47; museum and gallery community, 96–100; political environment, 17; in San Antonio, 6–9 Anheuser-Busch, 132–33 anti-establishment art, 77 antiwar movement, 74 “Applied Faith” (Sosa), 171

Archbishop Patrick Flores, 128–29 architecture and art, 127 Archives of American Art, 159 Armando Albarran, 57 Arpa, José, 172 art, collecting, 96, 105, 115, 119, 140–41, 172, 179 “Art and the Family” (thesis), 100–101 Art Deco theater. See Alameda Theater “Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum,” 178–79 “Arte Tejano” exhibition, 97 Art in America magazine, 94–95 art in San Antonio culture, 104–5, 108, 114, 126, 151 Art Instruction Schools, 32–33 Artist of the Year, 67 artists’ collaborative, 103 art market, 172 Art Museum of South Texas, 164 Art Students League of New York, 32, 36–42, 44–45, 46, 63–64 The Art Students League of New York: A History (Steiner), 37

Ashford, Gerald, 70–71 assimilation, 76 Associated Press, 160, 167 Austin, TX, 97, 190 autobiographical aspects of work, 80, 84 autographed prints, 128, 140, 185 Avance project, 129–31 Avante Plaza, 122 Aztlán and Aztecs, 69, 84, 136, 183 The Bakery (“La Panaderia”), 91, 103 balance of composition, 164–65, 181 bank lobby mural, 115–18 Barber, Sam, 41 Bardwell, Harmon, 55 Basic Design class, 63 Basilica de Santa Maria de Guadalupe, 186 Battle of San Jacinto, 16 Beach, George Corwin, 52 Beach Pavilion, 52–56, 61 Bela, Rick, 105 benefits for veterans, 55–56, 63, 65–66, 86 Bernal, Joe, 12, 76, 168 Beso Lane, 9–11, 184 Bexar County, 17 Bexar County Tuberculosis Association poster contest, 31 bigoted environment, 66, 84 Big Springs operation, 49 bilingual education act, 76 billboards, 15, 24, 51, 89, 174, 184 black canvas, 71–73, 80–83, 189, 202, 206 blacklisted artists, 42 blue-collar life images, 75

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Booth-Meredith, Sally, 111 Boston, MA, 39 botanicas, 175–78, 181 La Botica Chapa (Chapa Drugstore), 180–81 boycotts, 68, 87 Brazos Street, 115–17, 185 Brenson, Michael, 124 British art scene, 66 Brooke Army Medical Center. See Beach Pavilion Brooks Air Force Base, 22, 29, 189 Brown, Lenora, 153 “Brown Paper Report,” 75–76 Brown v. the Board of Education, 17 brushwork, 94 Buchanan, Clayton, 38–39 Buchtal tile company, 163 building sets, 143–45 Bush, George H.W., 132–33 Bush, Laura, 178 C-5 aircraft, 164, 189 California, 6, 21, 34, 48, 68–69, 75, 83, 88 camaraderie among artists, 107–10 Camino Real, 8 Campos, Dolores. See Treviño, Dolores Canadian Club whiskey, 129 cancer, 201–5 Cape Cod School of Art, 38 “CARA: Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985,” 149 car clubs, 26–28 The Car on Zarzamora Street (“El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora”), 98–100, 99

El Carro en La Calle Zarzamora (“The Car on Zarzamora Street”), 98–100, 99 Casa Mireles, 175–78 Casa Navarro-Laredito, 195–98 Casas, Melesio “Mel”: “Ancient Roots/​New Visions” exhibition, 103; in Art of America, 94–95; background on, 66–69; black canvas technique, 71; and the Chicano movement, 74–76; “Chicano Visions” exhibition, 179; and Con Safo, 81–82; counterculture, 172; “Dále Gas” exhibition, 97–98; sale of artwork, 140; on subject matter, 89 Casas de Lo Matta Museum, 167 catalogue, exhibition, 149, 193 Cathedral of San Fernando, 129 Catholicism, 62, 80, 84, 103, 185–88 Cavin, Cliff, 161 celebrity status, 37, 114, 127, 142, 147–48, 179 Central Library mural, 157–58 Central Texas Regional Scholastic Arts Awards, 31 Central Valley, CA, 21 Centro de Artes building, 174 ceramic tiles, 122–23, 161–66, 181–82, 185–88 Chaliapin, Boris, 24 Chapa, Frank L., 181 Chapa Drug Store, 180–81 Charles, Prince of Wales, 129–31 Chase, William Merritt, 37–38 Chávez, César, 21, 34, 68, 133 Chávez, Manuel, 21 Chicago, IL, 180

Chicago’s Terra Museum of American Art, 178 chicanismo, 76, 81, 95 Chicano art movement, 68–70, 74–85, 96–98, 136, 149, 172, 178–80, 183 The Chicano History (“La Historia Chicana”), 82–85, 204, 205 Chicano political and social movement, 74–85, 87, 104 “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,” 179–80 children, as artistic subject, 12, 32, 128, 160–61, 166–68 Chiscano, Alfonso, 190 Chroma ceramic tiles, 163 Cipac de Aquino, Marcos, 186 Cisneros, George, 83, 101, 156 Cisneros, Henry, 24–26, 28, 101, 118, 122, 130, 151 La Cita’s, 93 citizenship, 64 civic attention to community, 22, 104, 128 Civil Rights Act, 30, 68, 167 civil rights movement, 8, 17, 21–23, 29–34, 42, 74 Civil War Centennial Poster & Essay Contest, 30 Clark, Ellen Riojas, 77 classical aesthetics, 41 Clinton, Hillary, 166–67 Cold War, 22 collaboration, 103, 190–92 collections of art, museums, 111, 114, 148–52, 159, 174 colorists, 38–39 colors, 37–41, 44–45, 85, 109, 122, 157, 163 color training, 89

combat action, 48–49 combat injuries, 52 comic opera, 143–45 Coming Up Taller Awards, 167 commemorative posters, 110, 112 commercial arts, 23–24, 27–33, 45, 66, 86, 111, 140, 170 commissions: of Archbishop Patrick Flores, 128–29; of Casa Navarro-Laredito, 195–98; corporate, 126, 132, 141; and DagenBela Gallery, 105–7; Fiesta San Antonio poster, 110; of Henry B. González, 174; of Imagenes de Mi Pueblo, 115–18; of La Curandera, 175–78; of La Feria, 122–23; of Los Piscadores, 124–26; of Mother and Child, 129–31; of New Chapa Lion, 180–81; of Proud Heritage, 164; of San Antonio in World War II, 157–59; of Tienda de Elizondo, 149; Treviño, 208 communism, 42, 47 Como Una Flor (“Like a Flower”), 164 competition, 11, 29–33, 63, 65, 82, 108, 171 complexity of work, 56, 63, 181, 193 composition, 41, 56, 63, 73, 80, 83, 89, 181 conceptualization, 61, 83–84, 127, 160 conjunto culture, 26, 97, 146 Connally, John, 29 Connors, Andrew, 148–50 Con Safo, 75–77, 81–82, 94–98, 136, 178, 206 conscription, 47

Conservation Hero citation, 156 Consey, Kevin, 111, 114 contests, 10–11, 29–33, 51, 76, 105, 118, 166–67, 194 “A Conversation with Jesse Treviño,” 193–95, 202 cooperative society, 26, 76, 183 Copeland, Jennie, 32 Cordova, Ruben C., 75, 193 corporate commissions, 126, 132, 141 Cortez, Jorge, 107–10, 147, 151–53, 159–60, 192, 197, 201 Cortez, Pete, 107–8 Cotulla, TX, 8 counterculture, 172 critical attention, 110, 112–14, 122, 126, 172 Crossley, Mimi, 98 cruising, 2, 27, 51 cultural zone, 108, 152, 159 culture: of art in San Antonio, 104–5, 108, 114, 126, 151; and Casas, 67; Catholic, 103, 185–88; Chicano, 69, 83–84; conjunto, 26, 97, 146; gang, 22; Hispanic, 132–35; of Jim Crow, 8, 30; of Market Square, 174–75; of museums, 149; of New York City, 36; West Side, 26–27, 183. See also Chicano art movement La Curandera (“The Healer”), 175–78, 177, 181 DagenBela, Elaine, 105–7, 122–26, 129–35, 139, 149–51 “Dále Gas: The Continued Acceleration of Chicano Art,” 97–100

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Dali, Salvador, 45 Dallas Morning News (newspaper), 159 David Crockett Elementary School, 10–12, 155 Davila, Anna. See Treviño, Anna deadlines, 129, 176, 181, 185 deferments from draft, 45, 74 de Kooning, Willem, 128 Delano, CA, 21, 34 DeRugeriis, Joseph, 143 design: instruction, 66–67; of logos, 27; of murals, 82–85, 172, 183; of museums, 111, 174; of posters, 105; of sets, 143–45; of studio space, 128, 131–32; of tile murals, 100–101, 122–23, 160–66, 181, 185–88 detail, level of, 15, 24, 37, 41, 71, 89, 91, 175 development as artist, 9–10, 15, 66, 88, 105–7 dexterity, 63, 174 diabetes as subject of commission, 175–78 diamond saw, 163 Diego, Juan, 186 dimensions, 67, 69–70, 145, 165–66, 185 disability compensation, 55, 86, 141 Disabled American Veterans, 55 discrimination, 21–23, 30–31, 34, 46–47, 68, 76, 83–84, 134 diversity, 42, 190 divisive images, 69 documentary, 124–26, 192–93, 203 Don’t Close Kelly Field (“No Te Acabes Kelly Field”), 89–91, 90

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doves in art, 10–11, 160, 198 downtown theaters, 16, 112–15, 157 the draft, 47, 54, 66, 75 draftsmanship, 38 Draper, William F., 37–41, 44, 46–48, 65, 89–91 drawing, 9–11, 15, 23, 38–41, 44, 63, 134, 143 dreamlike quality, 94 drugstores, 103, 115, 180–81, 185 education, Jesse’s: Art Students League, 36–45; early years, 10–20; high school, 23–34; MFA at UTSA, 88–100; postwar at OLLC, 80–85; postwar at SAC, 63–68 Elizondo, Virgilio, 149 Elizondo’s Store (“Tienda de Elizondo”), 149 El Museo del Barrio, 124 engineering challenge of mural, 161 English language, 9, 10, 26 English-only requirement, 12, 76 Ennis, Michael, 122 Estes, Richard, 88, 98, 111 Estrella, 129 ethics of art, 95 Europe’s art society, 37–38 evading the draft, 47 Evita’s restaurant, 195 Exchange National Bank, 115–18 exhibitions: “Ancient Roots/​ New Visions,” 103–4; “Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum,” 178–79; “Arte Tejano,” 97; attendance, 97,

153–54, 164, 193; “CARA: Chicano Arts: Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985,” 149; “Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge,” 179– 80; and Con Safo, 75, 81–82; “Dále Gas,” 97–100; Galeria de la Raza, 96; HemisFair Park, 114; and Hispanic artists, 103, 136; “Jesse Treviño: An Artist and His Place,” 164; “Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida,” 193–95, 206–8; “Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour,” 122, 124; Museo Alameda, 190–94, 201–3; “Pintando con los Niños” (Painting with Children), 167; “Real, Really Real, Super Real: Directions in Contemporary American Realism,” 111–14, 152; space for, 157, 190; “Three Decades of Art by Jesse Treviño,” 147; Trinity University, 83; “A West Side Story: Works by Jesse Treviño,” 152–54; Witte Museum, 10–11, 103; “Works by Jesse Treviño: New York, Vietnam, San Antonio,” 149–51 exigente spirit, 101, 141, 203 exposure, 105, 110–11, 180 The Fair (“La Feria”), 122–23, 123 Faith (“Le Fe”), 79, 80, 98 fame, 107, 126, 171 Family Day at SAMA, 154, 196 family in work, 119–22 farmworkers, 21, 34, 75 La Fe (“Faith”), 79, 80, 98 female companions, 171

La Feria (“The Fair”), 122–23, 123 Ferrier, Maria, 168 Fiesta San Antonio, 16, 110, 117 figurative imagery, 66, 75, 117, 175, 180 figurative realism, 174–75 figure painting, 37 film about Jesse, 124, 189–93 finances: art market, 172; car clubs, 27; contest winnings, 11, 16, 28–29, 31–32; funding, 81–82, 124, 133, 159, 186, 192; fundraisers, 131, 152, 186; integrity, 140–42, 208; merchandising, 188; museum management, 193; and museum representation, 96; patron system, 108, 140; in personal life, 141, 171; from posters, 105–7, 132; sale of artwork, 100, 104–7, 115, 119, 127–28, 132, 140–41, 176; and success, 42–44, 110, 139, 147. See also commissions; VA benefits fine arts, 28, 32, 45, 73, 77, 96, 110–12, 183 Flores, Patrick, 128–29, 132–33 Florida, 155 Fort Gordon, Georgia, 54 Fort Lauderdale, 180 Fort Polk, Louisiana, 47, 54 Fort Riley, Kansas, 47 Fort Sam Houston, 22, 52, 61, 65 Fox Tech. See Louis W. Fox Vocational and Technical High School framed prints, 132, 163, 203 frame shop, 146, 179 framing of canvases, 67, 83, 140

framing of murals, 117, 165, 181 Freedom Summer campaign, 30 Friends from the Neighborhood (“Los Camaradas del Barrio”), 89, 98 “The Frito Bandito” mascot, 67 front-page story, 112 funding, 81–82, 124, 133, 159, 186 fundraisers, 131, 152, 186 Gabriel, Cindy, 189 galas, 135, 147 Galeria de la Raza, San Antonio, 96, 96 galleries, 75, 81–82, 96, 105–7, 111–12, 148–49, 159, 190 Galveston Arts Center, 103 gangs, 22, 142, 167 gay rights, 42 Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 38 G. I. Bill, 9, 66 giclée prints, 208 Girl with Poinsettias, 15 God, Jesse’s relationship with, 62, 188 Goddard, Dan, 148, 152 Goleta, CA, 69 Gonzalez, Henry B., 17, 29, 51–52, 76, 112, 122, 173, 174 Goodwill mural, 181–82 graduation requirements, 63, 83 graffiti, 22, 75 The Gran Chile, 80, 98 grand marshal, Veterans Day Parade, 192 grants, 81–82 Greenwich Village, 42–44 Grey, Joel, 143–46 grid system for murals, 163 grocery store interior painting, 149–51

grocery store windows, 9, 24, 51, 87 Grosset & Dunlap, 42 Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, 185–86 Guadalupe Street, 115–17, 119, 184, 185–88, 205 Guadalupe y Calaveras, 119, 120, 124, 141–42, 180 Guantanamo Bay, 87 Guest, John, 176–78 Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), 142 Gutiérrez, José Angel, 76 Hagy, Virgil, 63 Hale, Robert Beverly, 41 hand-lettering, 9, 51 hand-painted advertising, 89–91, 174, 184 Harithas, Jim, 97 Harlem’s Apollo Theater, 112 Hawthorne, Charles, 38–39 Hawthorne’s technique, 38 The Healer (“La Curandera”), 175–78, 177, 181 The Heart of Treviño (film), 192–93 HemisFair Park, 114 Henry B. Gonzalez, 173, 174 Hensche, Heinrich “Henry,” 38–39 Hernandez v. Texas, 17 Heyman, Michael, 151 Hill Country studio, 127–28, 131–32, 139–40, 184–85 Hispanic American art, 103, 105, 136, 148–49 Hispanic culture, 132–35 Hispanic Heritage Awards, 132–35

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Hispanic Heritage Foundation, 133 Hispanic Heritage Month, 133 Hispanic Heritage Week, 126, 133 Hispanic leaders, 135 Hispanic (magazine), 68, 136 Hispanic population, 6–7, 9, 22 Hispanic Scholarship Fund, 133 Hispanic veterans, 190 La Historia Chicana (“The Chicano History”), 82–85, 204, 205 Ho Bo Woods, 54–55 Hofheinz, Fred, 100 hospitals. See Beach Pavilion; Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital Houston, TX, 96–100, 132, 170, 172 Houston Chronicle (newspaper), 98 Houston Post (newspaper), 98 Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum, 97 Houston Street, 23, 112, 157 Huerta, Dolores, 21 Huitzilopochtli legend, 188 Humancapes series (Casas), 75, 98 “Hunger in America” program, 75 Hyannis Port, 39 ideological art, 96 illustration, 24, 26, 41–42, 107, 136 Imagenes de Mi Pueblo (“Images of My Town”), 115–18 Images of My Town (“Imagenes de Mi Pueblo”), 115–18 immigrants, 6, 9, 84, 183 impressionism, 37 improvisation, 70, 163 “in country.” See Vietnam Indian Love (“Amor Indio”), 19 Inferno (Draper), 39

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inflammatory art, 75 influences, artistic, 41, 65–66, 80 installation of murals, 123, 164–65, 181, 195 Institute of Mexican Culture in San Antonio, 114, 147 Institute of Texan Cultures, 152 institutional racism, 96 instructors of art, 36–42 interviews, 91, 152–53, 157, 159, 164, 166, 203, 205–8 isolation, 7, 23, 128, 139, 201 Itliong, Larry, 34 Jesse Trevino: A Spirit Against All Odds (film), 124–26 “Jesse Treviño: An Artist and His Place,” 164 “Jesse Treviño: Mi Vida” exhibition, 193–95, 201–2 Jim Crow, 8, 30 Jimenez, Luis, 94–95, 97 Joanne (subject of Mi Vida), 206–8 John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 174 Johnson, Luci Baines, 190 Johnson, Lyndon Baines: civil rights, 29–34; and Porfirio Salinas, 96; portrait of, 24, 25, 190; as Senator, 7–8; as Vice President, 17, 28–29; and Vietnam, 47–48, 56 Johnson Space Center, 170 Jordan, Esteban “Steve,” 97 Kelly Field Air Force Base, 22, 48, 52, 91, 164, 189 Kelly Field Bank. See Exchange National Bank

Kennedy, Jackie Onassis, 39 Kennedy, John F., 17, 28–31, 39, 167 Kowalski, Rosemary, 145–47, 152–53, 176, 190, 192 Kuhn, Joe, 51 Ladshaw, Theresa “Terry.” See Treviño, Theresa “Terry” La Fogata, 118 La Mansion del Rio Hotel, 146 landmarks, 91, 114, 129, 181 landscapes, 16, 32, 67, 91, 94, 96, 197 Lanier High School, 54 Laredito (“Little Laredo”), 195–98 Laredo, TX, 7–8, 86 large pieces, 16, 69–70, 89, 124, 149, 206. See also murals Larraeches de Frei, Marta, 166 Latino civil rights movement, 21 Latino museums. See Museo Alameda Latino perspectives, 190 Latinos and Latino art. See Mexican American art; Mexican Americans Latino Working Committee, 148–49 LBJ, 24, 25, 190, 193 LBJ and Mexican Americans (Pycior), 17 Leesville, LA, 47 Legorreta, Ricardo, 157 Lenin, Vladimir, 127 library foundation, 157 Life Drawing and Portraiture, Painting and Composition, 36–37, 41

Life Drawing at San Antonio College, 63 light, 37–38, 44, 63, 128, 131, 160, 181, 185 Like a Flower (“Como Una Flor”), 164 likenesses, 41 Limón, Armando, 87 Limón, Elvira (née Treviño): American Dream, 87; childhood, 6–7; family portrait, 13, 207; on Monterey Street, 184; on mother’s death, 168; seamstress, 12, 27–28, 190; on Witte awards ceremony, 11 Lincoln Gallery, 149 Liria’s, 91, 92 local interest, 104 Lockheed Martin, 164 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 17 Lone Star Brewing Company, 111 Long An Province, 49 loose styles of painting, 37–38, 41, 45 Lopez, Laura, 143, 152 Los Angeles, CA, 17, 34, 103, 145, 189 Los Camaradas del Barrio (“Friends from the Neighborhood”), 89, 98 Los Piscadores (“The Pickers”), 124–26, 125, 180 Los Santos de San Antonio (“The Saints of San Antonio”), 103, 115 Louisiana, 47, 54 Louis W. Fox Vocational and Technical High School, 23, 27–31 loyalty to United States, 9

luminaria, 190 Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, 190 machismo spirit, 109, 178 magical realism, 111 mainstream art, 76–77, 148 Majestic Theatre, 16, 21–22, 145 Man at the Crossroads (Rivera), 127 Marin, Richard Anthony “Cheech,” 179–80 Marines, 12, 39, 196 marketing, 159, 178 Market Square, 108–9, 174–75, 181, 190 market values, 105, 141 Marnham, Patrick, 127 marriages, 64, 70–71, 77, 87, 100, 152 Martin, Alvin, 111 Martinez, César, 103, 152, 172 Martinez, Fernando, 159 Martinez, Gloria. See Treviño, Gloria Martinez, Santos, 82, 94–97, 103 Martin Street, 11–12, 184 Mary’s image, 185–88 Massey, Sarah, 157 master’s degree program, UTSA, 88 Max Martinez Funeral Home Braves, 16 Mayan, Earl, 41–42 Mayor (Wolff), 142 McAllen, TX, 7 McAllister, W. W., 68 McDermott, Robert, 157 meaning of art, 68–71 mechanics of art, 67

media coverage, 45, 63, 65, 68, 82, 94–97, 104, 115, 124, 128–29, 132–35, 136, 139, 165–66, 172, 203. See also San Antonio Express-News medical evacuation from the Mekong Delta from Stars and Stripes, 50 Mekong Delta, 1–2, 48–50, 141, 155 Mendoza, Amalia, 112 Mercado, 108, 151–52, 159, 180 merchandise, 188 Meridian House, 133–35 Mexican American art, 70–73, 83–84, 96–97, 104, 105, 109–10, 149–52, 156–57, 172, 174 Mexican Americans: Alameda Theater, 112; and Anglos, 146–47; barriers to, 96–98; business district, 122–23; and Catholicism, 84, 103; and Chicano movement, 68–69, 75–76; civil rights, 17, 21–23, 29–34, 74; discrimination against, 21–23, 46–47, 68, 76, 83–84, 134; and Fiesta San Antonio, 110; and image of Mary, 185–88; and military service, 91; and “No Spanish” rule, 12, 76; relationship with Jesse, 136; representation of, 104; as symbol, 80; in Vietnam, 46–47 Mexican artists, 127 Mexican consulate, 10–11 Mexican history, 185–88 Mexican migration, 84 Mexican Quarter, 9, 14

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Mexican Revolution, 84 Mexicans in Texas, 6–7 Mexico: Aztlán, 69, 84, 136, 183; and image of Mary, 185–88; muralism movement, 77, 183; Texas independence, 16, 110, 129 Mexico City, 185–88 MFA degree, 88–100 middle class, 9, 26, 69, 84, 91 migration of Mexicans, 84 Milam Park, 159–61, 164–66, 196 military service, Jesse’s, 1–2, 46–56 minorities, 6–8. See also Mexican Americans Minutaglio, Bill, 111–12 “Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour,” 122, 124 Mireles, Berta, 175, 177 Mis Hermanos (“My Brothers”), 91–94, 103, 149, 150, 178, 193 Mission San Jose, 103, 164 missions of San Antonio, 117 Mistletoe Avenue, 65, 104–5, 118, 160, 170, 206 Mi Tierra, 107–8 Mi Vida (“My Life”): Art in America profile, 94–95; artwork image, 72; background on, 71–73; “CARA” exhibition, 149; hidden from sight, 83, 185; identity of woman in, 206; “Mi Vida” exhibition, 193; removal and preservation, 188–89 mixed-media mural, 185–88 mobility of murals, 83, 205 models, 15, 41, 56, 63–64, 80, 89–91, 129

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modern landscape, 67 money. See finances Montejano, David, 22 Monterey Street, 12–18, 27–29, 46, 61, 119, 168, 184, 208 Monterrey, Mexico, 5–8, 20, 178, 181–84 Morseburg, Jeffrey, 172 mosaic tile murals, 100–101, 160–66, 195–98 Moser, Charlotte, 98 Mother and Child, 129–31, 130 movie palaces, 16, 112–13, 142 multiple canvases, 157, 175 Munguia, Ruben, 28 Munich, Germany, 37 Munoz, Henry, 190 murals: Casa Navarro-Laredito, 195–98; design of, 82–85, 172, 183; La Feria (“The Fair”), 122–23, 123; La Historia Chicana (“The Chicano History”), 82–85, 204, 205; historical significance, 183; Imagenes de Mi Pueblo (“Images of My Town”), 115–18; La Curandera (“The Healer”), 175–78, 177, 181; La Veladora of our Lady of Guadalupe, 185–88, 187; Mexican muralism, 77, 183; New Chapa Lion, 180–81, 182; Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, 127; San Antonio in World War II, 157–59, 158; Spirit of Healing, 159–66, 162, 172, 174, 181, 183, 196–98; West Side public murals, 183. See also Mi Vida Museo Alameda, 190–94, 201–3 Museo del Barrio, 122, 124 museums: acceptance to, 81, 83,

96, 136, 152; Anglo-centric community, 75; creation of for Mexican American art, 151–52, 156–57, 174; culture of, 149; El Alameda, 148; Mexican American exhibitions, 97–100; and public art, 166; and touring art, 81, 103, 122, 124, 149, 179; West Side’s public murals, 183. See also individual museums by name music, 26, 42, 108–9, 130, 143, 151, 188 My Brothers (“Mis Hermanos”), 91–94, 103, 149, 150, 178, 193 My Life (“Mi Vida”). See Mi Vida National Academy of Design, 37, 39 national fame, 126 National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), 21, 34 National Hispanic Heritage Week, 126 National Maritime Administration, 29 national pride. See patriotism national tours, 103, 122, 179 natural light, 37–38, 44, 128, 131 Naumer, Helmuth, 114 Navarro, José Antonio, 195–97 navy, 39, 87 Nayarit, Mexico, 69 nerve damage, 62 networking, 136 New Braunfels, TX, 6, 123 New Chapa Lion, 180–81, 182 newspaper art, 112 “New Visions in Texas: Recent Works by Hispanic Artists in Texas,” 103

New York City, 32–34, 35–45, 66, 122–24, 127, 148 New York Times (newspaper), 124, 190 NFWA (National Farm Workers Association), 21, 34 Nixon, Richard, 17, 69 Northam, Ysleta, 81 “No Spanish” rule, 12, 76 No Te Acabes Kelly Field (“Don’t Close Kelly Field”), 89–91, 90 notoriety, 22, 86, 102 Nueva Street, 195 Nuevo Leon, 5, 181 Offenbach, J., 145 The Offering (“La Ofrenda”), 190–92, 205 Ohio National Guard, 74 oil business, 172 “Old Reliables.” See 39th Infantry OLLC (Our Lady of the Lake College), 80–85, 86–88 OLLC (Our Lady of the Lake University), 124, 128, 192, 204, 205 Onderdonk, Robert Jenkins and Julian, 172 one-man exhibitions, 97, 103, 114, 149–51, 164, 192 one-man retrospectives, 147, 152 173rd Airborne, 54 opera, 143–45 operation Enterprise, 49 opportunist, 132 opportunity. See American Dream opposition to war, 42, 74, 76 Orozco, José Clemente, 183 Ortiz, Ed, 115–18 Ortiz, Lisa, 105, 129–30

Our Lady of the Lake College (OLLC), 80–85, 86–88 Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLC), 124, 128, 192, 204, 205 outdoor pieces, 181, 185–88 outsized images, 161–66, 175–78 Oval Office, 132–34 Pachucos, 78 Padron, Felix, 192 Painting with Children (“Pintando con los Ninos”), 167 Palo Alto, CA, 88 La Panaderia (“The Bakery”), 91, 103 patriotism, 8, 46–47, 62, 64, 142 patron system, 108, 140 payment plans, 115, 118–19 PBS stations, 126 peace movement, 74 Peña, Albert, 17, 76 perceptions, 37, 67, 94, 104, 148, 205 La Perichole (comic opera), 143–45, 144 permanent museum collections, 111, 148–49, 152, 159 perspective, in art, 67, 112, 145, 163–64 photography, 160 photorealism, 88–89, 98, 103, 115, 117, 148, 174 The Pickers (Los Piscadores”), 124–26, 125, 180 “Pintando con los Ninos” (Painting with Children), 167 political art, 95, 126–35, 157, 183 political environment, 17, 42, 74–77, 88, 107

Pontiac, 67 pop art, 66, 73, 80, 98 popularity. See celebrity status portfolios, 29, 31–32 portrait from life from William Draper’s class at the Art Students League, 40 portraiture: by Draper, 39; Fiesta poster, 110; of Mary, 185–88; from photographs, 160; and photorealism, 89–94, 98; Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, 127; Smithsonian exhibition, 149–51; stylized, 174; in Vietnam, 47–48; at Village Artist, 44–45. See also individual portraits by name post-Chicano era, 136 posters: Civil War Centennial Poster & Essay Contest, 30; commemorative, 110, 112; design of, 105; Fiesta San Antonio, 110; and fine arts, 77; money from, 105–7, 132; printing of, 105, 145; for Road Griffins, 27; San Antonio Museum of Art official poster, 153; signing of, 126, 153; “Stay in School” contest, 32–33, 33 posttraumatic stress disorder, 135 postwar self, 71 pottery, 63, 122 poverty, 9, 29–31, 66, 74–75, 77, 104 praise, 63, 94–95, 145, 151, 172, 180 precision, 44–45, 63, 165 La Prensa (newspaper), 20, 161, 176–78 preservation of murals, 83, 205

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presidential commission, 166–67 prices. See value application prints: autographed, 128, 140, 185; by DagenBela, 131–32; framed, 132, 163, 203; giclée prints, 208; of posters, 105, 145; print shops, 16, 28 private art. See commercial arts Progreso, 115, 116, 128 progressivism in Jesse’s art, 68–69 propaganda art, 157 Prospect Hill, 14, 24–26, 77, 142, 184, 189 prosthesis, 70–71, 81, 95, 118, 141, 163, 194 Proud Heritage: The C-5 Galaxy and San Antonio, 164 Provincetown, RI, 38–39 public art, 159, 166, 170–71, 180, 183 publicity. See media coverage purity of color, 38 Purple Heart, 52, 55, 71, 146, 189, 206 Pycior, Julie Leininger, 17 Quixote’s Soldiers (Montejano), 22, 104 Rach Kien, Vietnam, 48, 52 radical art, 95 Ramirez, Enrique, 16 La Raspa (“Snow Cone”), 59, 89–91, 98, 105, 106, 115, 132, 193 raspas (snow cones), 15, 147 Rayburn House Building, 174 Ray’s Drive Inn, 194 Reagan, Ronald, 133–34, 134

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“Real, Really Real, Super Real: Directions in Contemporary American Realism,” 112–14, 152 realism, 111–14, 151, 156, 174 recognition of work, 71, 94–95, 98, 102–7, 129, 133–35, 139–42, 170–71 rehabilitation from injury, 52, 61, 95 rejection, 17, 114 religious imagery and iconography, 80, 185–88 removal and preservation, 83, 189 renovation of homes, 65, 81, 111, 180, 195–96 repatriation, 47 representation, 68, 76, 83, 96, 104, 148, 153, 167 Republic of Texas, 195 reputation, 107, 143, 176, 178, 181, 186, 189 resident alien status, 7 Reynosa, Mexico, 7 “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” 172 Rivard, Robert, 190 Rivera, Diego, 63, 126–27, 183 Rivera, Emette, 143–45 River Walk, 146, 157, 172 Road Griffins, 27, 67, 91, 168, 189 Roadwork: Rock & Roll Turned Inside Out (Wright), 109 Robles, Ernest, 133 Rockefeller Center, 127 Rodriguez, Alicia “Alice” (née Treviño) (sister): on the Alameda Theater, 112; birth of, 7; on brother Jorge’s death, 155; childhood, 14–15, 18; family portrait, 13, 207; fashion

sketch of, 193; on Jesse’s pain, 194; on Jesse’s temperament, 189; on La Historia Chicana, 85; on Monterey Street, 184; on Mother and Child, 129–30; on mother’s portrait, 153; on news of Jesse’s cancer, 203; Queen of the Car Clubs, 27–28; teenage years, 23 Rodriguez, Cleto, 157 Rodriguez, Elizabeth. See Treviño, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Joe Bastida, 96–97 romanticism, 37, 94 Romo, Ricardo, 196–97 Rosita, 191, 199 Ross, Fred, 21 Sabinas Hidalgo, 6 SAC (San Antonio College), 62–63, 66, 74, 80, 87, 122, 206 Sahagun de Fox, Marta, 178 Saigon, 48–49, 54–55 The Saints of San Antonio (“Los Santos de San Antonio”), 103, 115 sale of artwork, 100, 104–7, 115, 119, 127–28, 132, 140–41, 176 Salinas, Porfirio, 96, 172 Salinas Valley, CA, 75 SA (magazine), 104 SAMA (San Antonio Museum of Art), 111–15, 117, 124–26, 148, 152–54, 179 Samir Abdul, 43 San Antonians, 76, 119, 164–65, 183 San Antonio, population of, 8–9, 68, 142, 175 San Antonio artists, 71, 147, 179

San Antonio Art League, 67 San Antonio College (SAC), 62–63, 66, 74, 80, 87, 122, 206 San Antonio Conservation Society, 156 San Antonio Express-News (newspaper): on Amigos del Arte, 152; on Beach Pavilion, 55; on contests, 30–32; on Estrella, 129; on Hill Country studio, 132; on “La Perichole” sets, 145; on La Veladora of our Lady of Guadalupe, 188; on popularity of Jesse, 195; Proud Heritage coverage, 164; on San Antonio artists, 70–71; on San Antonio Museum of Art opening, 111–12; Sol Frank Uniforms inclusion with LBJ portrait, 190; on veterans, 192 San Antonio Festival, 143–45 San Antonio in World War II, 157–59, 158 San Antonio Light (newspaper), 30, 65 San Antonio Museum Association, 103 San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), 111–15, 117, 124–26, 148, 152–54, 179 San Antonio Press, 163 San Antonio River, 117 San Antonio Teen Fair, 30 Sanchez, Armando, 107–10 Sanchez, Martin T., 118 San Fernando Cathedral, 149 San Fernando Cemetery, 160 San Marcos, TX, 8 San Pedro Creek, 11, 22, 197 Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital,

100–101, 108, 159–66, 175, 186 Santa Rosa Street, 100 Santiago, Chile, 166–68 scaffolding, 117, 165 scale of works, 9, 70, 149, 165, 192 scholarships, 31–33, 45, 65, 88 school arts programs, 183 sculptures, 36, 41, 63, 149, 160, 178, 185–88, 190–92 search-and-clear missions, 1–2, 48–49, 54 seclusion, 127, 156 segregation, 6, 9, 22, 34 selection for exhibitions, 103, 111 Selective Service, 45 Selena (singer), 164 self-determination, 68, 84, 183 self-expression, 183 self-identification, 68, 76 self-portraiture, 71–73 self-promotion, 45, 105 self-recognition, 80, 181 Señora Dolores Treviño, 119–22, 121, 152 sensitivity to subject matter, 89–91 sentimentality in art, 5, 94, 157 separatist, Jesse as, 84, 139 September 11, 2001, 185 set building, 143–45 set design, 143–45 shadows, 15, 48, 63, 67, 88–89, 91, 114, 181 Shamrock Hilton, Houston, 172 Sheen, Martin, 124, 126, 131 Shinnecock, NY, 38 shows. See exhibitions signing posters, 126, 153 Silva, Elda, 188

Simon, Donna, 143 Siqueiros, David Alfaro, 183 Sisters of the Incarnate Word, 159 size of artwork, 69–70, 82, 89, 159, 181, 184 sketches, 10, 16, 38–41, 47–48, 63–64, 163, 167, 174 skin color, 23, 80 Skorneck, Carolyn, 167 slide projector, 88–89, 163 small pieces, 70, 89 Smith, Roberta, 94–95 Smithsonian American Art Museum, 148–51 Smithsonian Institution, 148, 156 Smithsonian National Museum. See Smithsonian American Art Museum Smithsonian’s Lincoln Gallery, 149 Snow Cone (“La Raspa”), 59, 89–91, 98, 105, 106, 115, 132, 193 social issues in art, 69 Sol Frank Uniforms, 12, 87, 190 solidarity, 69, 110, 188 solo exhibition, 103, 114, 149–51 somnambulism, 11–12 Sosa, Lionel: Amigos del Arte, 152; art collecting, 115; donation to exhibition, 149; on Hill Country home, 139; on Jesse’s temperament, 135–36, 170–71; promotion of Jesse, 119, 129; on West Side, 142 Sosa and Associates, 115 source material, 160 South Side, 9, 14, 143, 205 South Texas Chicano philosophies, 179

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South Vietnam, 48, 51, 91 Southwest, 6, 21, 67–69, 104, 110 Southwest School of Art, 109 Southwest Texas State Teachers College, 8 Spanish Colonial, 143–45 Spanish language, 9, 12, 26 Spanish Texas, 6, 195 speaking engagement, 202 Spirit of Healing, 159–66, 162, 172, 174, 181, 183, 196–98 St. Florence Library, 205 St. Mary’s Street, 157 standards of care and benefits, 56 Starbucks, 208 Stars and Stripes (newspaper), 50 “Stay in School” poster contest, 32–33, 33 steel girder tower, 192 Steiner, Raymond, 37, 41 stereotypes, 67, 68 still-life, 80 stone angel sculpture, 160 store signs, 184 Student Union Building (SUB), 82–84, 205 student walkouts, 74, 83, 87 studio art degree, 88 studios: Art Student’s League, 36; design of, 128, 131–32; in documentary, 124; environment, 41; Hill Country, 127–28, 131–32, 139–40, 184–85; Mistletoe Avenue, 65, 104–5, 118, 160, 170, 206; Village Artist, 44–45 stylized portrait, 174 subject matter of art, 15–16, 32, 56, 88–91, 122, 134, 136 SUB (Student Union Building), 82–84, 205

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Sueltenfuss Library, 204, 205 Super Graphics, 107 Supreme Court, 17 surgery and rehabilitation, 52, 61 symbolism, 67, 69, 71, 80, 84, 134, 141, 185–88 task force, 133, 148 technical skills, 15, 31, 44, 63, 66, 69, 103 technique, 38–39, 41, 44, 71, 181 temperament, 87, 105, 135–36, 141–42, 145, 179, 189 Temple, TX, 70 Tenayuca, Emma, 157 Tenochtitlán, 188 Texas A&M University, 103 “Texas artist” recognition, 140 Texas Diabetes Institute, 175–77 Texas Highways (magazine), 203 Texas independence, 16, 110, 129 Texas Monthly (magazine), 122 Texas painter designation, 132 Texas State Historical Survey Committee, 29–30 thematic requirement of Goodwill mural, 181 39th Infantry, 47–49, 61 Thomas Jefferson High School, 23, 95 Thornton, Bill, 153, 164 “Three Decades of Art by Jesse Treviño,” 147 Tienda de Elizondo (“Elizondo’s Store”), 149 Tile: Design and Installation (magazine), 161, 165 tile murals, 100–101, 122–23, 160–66, 181, 185–88, 195–98 Time (magazine), 24

Topeka, KS, 47 Torralva-Alonso, Maria Elena, 188 touring of art, 81, 103, 122, 124, 149, 179 tourist art, 98 trauma, 62, 65, 168 Treviño, 207, 208 Treviño, Alicia “Alice” (sister). See Rodriguez, Alicia “Alice” Treviño, Anna (née Davilo) (first wife), 64–65, 70–73, 77, 155, 208 Treviño, Armando (brother), 7, 13, 18, 87, 195, 207 Treviño, David and Carolina (children), 143 Treviño, Dolores (née Campos) (mother): bond with Jesse, 22–23, 87; death, 168–69; early years, 5–20, 27; family portrait, 13, 207; and Jesse’s injury, 51–52; and Jesse’s recovery, 61–62; La Fe (“Faith”), 80; model for angel, 160; Parent of the Year honors, 128; portrait of, 119–22, 153; sending Jesse to Vietnam, 46–48; and son Jorge’s death, 156 Treviño, Elizabeth (née Rodriguez) (fourth wife), 178, 181, 184–85, 189, 193, 195–97, 205 Treviño, Elvira (sister). See Limón, Elvira Treviño, Ernesto “Ernest” (brother), 9, 13, 14, 51–52, 89 Trevino, Evangelina “Eva,” 157 Treviño, Evangelina “Eva” (sister): childhood, 6–7; death, 20; family portrait, 13, 207; model

for angel, 160–61; relationship with Jesse, 10, 157 Treviño, Gloria née Martinez (second wife), 86–87, 100 Treviño, Jesse Jr. (son), 135, 160 Treviño, Jessica and Jackie (daughters), 64, 155 Treviño, Jesus “Jesse”: ambassador of the arts, 166–68; ambitions, 52–56, 87–88, 148, 170, 203; Art in America profile, 94–95; audiences of, 16, 69, 89, 104, 197; on brother Jorge’s death, 155–56; on brother Mario’s death, 189; camaraderie among artists, 107–10; and Casas, 66–71; and Catholicism, 62, 80, 185–88; celebrity status, 37, 114, 127–28, 142, 147–48, 179; and Chicano art movement, 68–70, 74–85; and Chicano movement, 149, 178–80; childhood, 5–20, 77, 100, 194; and DagenBela, 105–7, 122–26, 129–35, 139, 149–51; and Diego Rivera, 126–27; documentary about, 124–26; education of, 10–20, 36–45, 63–68, 80–85, 88–100; and Elizabeth Rodriguez, 178, 184–85, 189, 193; and Gabriel Velasquez, 174–75; and Gloria Martinez, 86–87, 100; isolation, 7, 23, 128, 139, 201; Latino-Chicano museum idea, 151–52; and Laura Lopez, 143, 152; legacy, 37, 147, 165, 170–71, 195; and Lionel Sosa, 115, 170–71; MFA at UTSA, 88–100; mother’s death, 168–69; and museum

representation, 148–51; in New York City, 35–45; photorealism, 88–94; photos of, xi, 13, 50, 96, 123, 130, 134, 177, 194, 199, 207; physical challenges, 55–56, 61–65, 160, 174–75, 192; postwar recovery, 61–73; privacy, 132, 139; prosthesis, 70–71; recognition of work, 102–5, 170–71; and Rosemary Kowalski, 145–47, 176; teenage years, 22–34; temperament, 87, 105, 135–36, 141–42, 145, 170–71, 179, 189; and Terry Ladshaw, 118–19, 123–35, 143; and the Vasquezes, 118–19; war experience, 1–2, 46–56; Washington, D. C. visit, 132–35. See also exhibitions; finances; studios; West Side; individual artworks by name Treviño, Jorge (brother): audiences of, 20; birth of, 9; death, 155–56; family portrait, 13, 207; model for Los Camaradas del Barrio, 89; model for Mis Hermanos, 91–94; in mural, 175 Treviño, Juan (father), 5–7, 9–20, 13, 207 Treviño, Juan “John” (brother): birth of, 7; on brother Jorge’s death, 155–56; childhood, 11, 18; family portrait, 13, 207; involvement in activism, 87–88; on Jesse’s birthday, 206; on Jesse’s temperament, 142; on mother’s death, 168; teenage years, 23 Treviño, Mario (brother), 7, 13, 23, 27–28, 91–94, 189, 207

Treviño, Pedro “Pete” (brother), 6–7, 12–13, 13, 20, 196, 207 Treviño, Ramiro (brother), 7, 13, 23, 27, 47, 207 Treviño, Roberto “Robert” (brother), 7, 11–12, 13, 18, 87, 170, 207 Treviño, Theresa “Terry” (née Ladshaw) (third wife), 118–19, 123–24, 127–29, 131–32, 135, 143 Trinity University, 83 La Troca en La Calle Commerce (“The Truck on Commerce Street”), xi The Truck on Commerce Street (“La Troca en La Calle Commerce”), xi “Twelve Days of Texas” (Smith), 94–95 25th Infantry Division, 54 UCLA, 149 UFW (United Farm Workers), 68, 84, 133 Union Tile Company, 161 United Farm Workers (UFW), 68, 84, 133 University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), 76, 87–88, 100, 111, 122, 143, 174, 196 Urban smARTS after-school program, 167 USA Today (newspaper), 190 UTSA (University of Texas at San Antonio), 76, 87–88, 100, 111, 122, 143, 174, 196 VA benefits, 55, 63, 65, 80, 86 VA loan, 65, 71

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value application, 16, 75, 95–96, 100, 105–7, 119, 140–41 Vancouver, Canada, 123 vandalism. See graffiti Vasquez, Juan F. and Terry, 118–19, 123–26, 135, 141, 179–80, 189, 190 Veladora merchandise, 188 La Veladora of our Lady of Guadalupe, 185–88, 187 Velasquez, Gabriel, 174–75, 186, 189, 190, 192, 198, 203 veteran benefits, 55, 63, 65, 80, 86 Veterans Day, 208 Veterans Day Parade, 192 Vietnam, 1–2, 30, 42, 46–56, 61–62, 74–77, 142 Vietnam 1966, 52–54, 53, 176, 193 Vietnam Moratorium Rally, 87 Village Artist, 44–45, 64 Villarreal, Alex, 140, 161–63, 166, 171, 179–80, 181 Villarreal, Jesse, 55–56, 140, 161–63, 166, 171, 179–80, 181 Virgin of Guadalupe, 84, 185–88 Voting Rights Act, 34, 68 votive, 185–88 war experience, 1–2, 46–56 War on Poverty, 29 Warrior Homeward Bound (Draper), 39 war veteran tribute, 157

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Washington, D.C., 103, 132–35, 148–54, 174 Washington Irving Middle School, 15–16, 20 Watts Riots, 34 Welhausen School, 8 West Coast, 88, 179 Western Union telegram, 51 West Side: activism, 104; art scene, 109; Chicano art movement, 74–77; civic neglect, 22; conjunto culture, 146; culture, 26–27; depictions of, 88–100; described in documentary, 126; Estrella grocery store, 129; family settling in, 8–11; financial decline, 142–43; flooding, 29; moving away from, 132, 139; patriotism, 46–47, 62; photorealist depictions, 148; portrait of drug store, 115; portrait of gas station, 119; public murals, 183; represented by Jesse, 141, 196–98; Texas Diabetes Institute, 181; vision for La Guadalupe, 185; visions for murals, 172–74 West Side drugstore, 115–17 West Side medical building, 175 Westsiders, 14, 94, 119, 145, 181 “A West Side Story: Works by Jesse Treviño,” 152–54

White House, 74, 132–34, 166–68 “Willful Neglect” report, 148–49, 190 Witte Museum, 10–11, 103 Wolff, Nelson, 142 woman in Mi Vida, 72–73, 206–8 women admirers, 80–81, 114, 142, 171 women empowerment, 166 Wood, Robert W., 172 working classes, 9, 37, 42–44, 126 “Works by Jesse Treviño: New York, Vietnam, San Antonio,” 149–51 “The Works of Jesse Treviño,” 103–4 World War II, 157–58 Wrangler print advertisement, 141 Wright, Tom, 5, 109–10 Xochil Art Center, 103 Yokohama, Japan, 51 Youngblood, Carolee, 145–49, 153, 159–60, 163, 165–67, 171, 175–78 Young Democrats, 83, 87 Zapata, 69–70 Zapata, Emiliano, 69 Zarzamora Street, 98–100