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Oral Histories: Abstracts: Peña Interview The Evolution of Amado M. Peña Jr.'s Art. "The Pictures Spoke to Everybody" I am here to interview Amado Peña Jr. for the purpose of inclusion in the Fascinating Texans Curriculum Project . He has been working all day at the Texas State Arts and Crafts Fair in Kerrville showing his paintings. I would like to start with a question about income. Seeing the prices of your pictures today and all the people that were around, are you rich? (Chuckle) I think you could say that I am rich. I'm rich because I've made a lot of money through the sale of my art work through the years. When I look back at the first money I ever earned [at] the first job I ever had, I was making thirty-six dollars a week. And at the time that I was making thirty-six dollars a week, that seemed like a lot of money. I never really measured wealth. Then, when I got my first big job, I was making forty-eight hundred dollars a year. I thought that was a lot of money. Now when I look back and I can make twenty thousand dollars in a day, I can say, probably, that I am rich. If I measure wealth that way, I suppose I can say that I'm rich. I can look around at my worldly possessions, and I can say that I have things that I enjoy, that probably many years ago I would never have thought that I would own. I guess maybe that's a way of measuring wealth. I am capable of doing things that I probably never thought that I could do, so I guess maybe I could measure my wealth that way. I don't do what I do every single day for the long hours that I do and necessarily think that the reason that I'm doing it is because it's going to make me very wealthy. I've been very lucky that I can make a living; that I can make a very good living with what I do. But I also believe that kind of wealth comes and goes. If I stop to think about what's going to remain with me or what is going to be memorable to me, and probably to the hundreds and thousands of people that I've met, the sheer idea of knowing that because of what I do with pictures, has made an impact on me, as well as a lot of people. That's the other side of wealth that I think I probably remember more often. I think it stays with me; it makes more of an impact or has made more of an impact in my life. I think about the idea that people think of me as a famous person is wealth in itself because I never think of myself that way. But I am constantly reminded of it. I think the special things that have happened to me as a result of what I do is wealth, but it's not necessarily material. It's made a big difference in my life. It's changed me. It's changed how I look at myself and the things around me. And it's changed, from my very early beginnings and where I grew up, and the way I grew up. How did you grow up? In a very, very simple household; very straight; a very close family; a very traditional family. The idea of respect, the idea of working hard, the idea things are the way they are because that's the way they are! (laughter) The idea of caring and loving, you know, for those that are close to us. I think that when I look back at our family, we weren't rich; we were poor, actually, when it comes down to a monetary description of a household, I suppose. We were very poor, but we got by. We always had food at our table; we always were adequately clothed. My parents took very good care of us. You know, they believed very strongly in education. Their philosophy was: we don't want you to be what we were; we want you to be better. And what were your parents? Well, my dad was a fireman for many years; my mom was a housewife. And they took care of their families at the same time as they were taking care of themselves. Did your grandparents live with you? I had one grandparent that lived with us, my grandfather on my mother's side. But even my grandparents that did not [live with us], my dad always took care of them. My aunt [was] kind of the extended family; everybody took care of everybody else. I grew up [in] what you would call "The Peña Barrio." But in those days, when you're growing up in that kind of an environment, you don't really think of it as being any different. You don't see differences! You see what is there. You don't measure wealth; you knew [there] were people on the other side of the tracks. The people in the Heights obviously were rich people. They had green lawns and two cars and whatever. And you were very much aware of that, but I don't think I ever really felt like I wanted to be like them. I never really felt like I wanted to be in their neighborhood. It wasn't something I desired. Friends, when I was growing up in high school, we didn't even date anybody that was of that part of town. Not that we didn't want to, we just didn't know any of them. We had friends, obviously, but not in that sense. So it was, I would say, pretty much what you would expect in that kind of neighborhood environment. I noticed at the fair this morning that your sister was with you. Right. Sister and friends. So you're still carrying the extended family with you? Yes, very much so. My sister has been working with me for quite a long time. Now my niece works with me; a couple of my nieces work with me. My father, in fact, after he retired, in his own ways [is] involved with the art work. Which is, again, you know, one of the things that I spoke about wealth that is not necessarily measured as monetary. The fact that I've seen both my parents become part of my art world, which when I was growing up and I was doing art, there was probably very little understanding. Of course, I was on the outside; I never asked the question, "Well, do you really understand what I'm doing?" (laughter) It wasn't a question to be asked. I think it's because their concern was to make sure that we were taken care of. So the participation was not there, which was acceptable. Their biggest support is probably the fact that they left me alone to do what I wanted to do, what I liked doing. In fact, when I left teaching and decided that I was going to go on my own to do my art work, they couldn't understand because I was leaving a job that was very secure. They didn't say anything, of course. I was a grownup, obviously; they couldn't tell me not to do it, but I think that they were really concerned that I was leaving something secure and going to something that had uncertainty in the future. But their biggest support is the fact that they didn't get in the way of it. As well as they'd never get in the way when I was doing it as a ten-year-old or as a high school [student] or whatever. Amado, at this point I'd like to ask about when you decided to become a teacher. Well, that was pretty much decided for me, believe it or not. My father believed very strongly in education, and he believed that [was] my only inheritance. We were not going to inherit money because, obviously, he was not a rich man. Even at the job that he had, he didn't feel like he was ever going to be wealthy, from that standpoint, from monetary-wise. So he felt like our education was going to be our inheritance. And he did two things: One, he pushed us into being good students, making good grades, and our future was to go to college and become a professional. I was twenty-one years old, and I'm still bringing my report card home, so he definitely made an impact on us. The other thing he did was the fact that I wanted to be an artist, he pretty much decided that there was no future in being an artist, but being an art teacher was more realistic. And I had an uncle who was a teacher, so he used him as kind of [an example]; in fact, I went to the same school. Not necessarily because he went there but because it was the only one we could afford. So in respect to him, I did what I was supposed to do. I went off to college and received my degree and looked for a teaching job. I did not know that I wanted to be a teacher. I did it out of respect for him-that's what I was going to do. This was back in 1965, and when I started teaching, I was very fortunate. The chain of events that kind of, probably for some reason, happened set the foundation for my future teaching career. I didn't know how I would be as a teacher. I didn't know that I wanted to be a teacher; I just did it because that's what I was going to do. I landed a job in my hometown, in the same high school that I was a student, and teaching in the same art department where I had been a student. The very first point of excitement for me, in terms of teaching, was the fact that I had landed an art teaching job in the high school that I graduated from. I was going to be an art teacher in the same classroom [where] I had very many happy experiences as a student and not really knowing how I was going to perform. What happened to me was that I used my high school art teacher like my ghost following me around. I remembered a lot of the things that I did as a student and the way that he treated us. So I kind of very unofficially adopted some of his ideas; I remember them because they were so fresh to me. There were a lot of memories on the walls; there were the ribbons that I'd won when I was a student. I was going to teach the same things that he taught, and I was going to use the same materials. So that was basically the guide that I used. And slowly, before I knew it, I was having a great time with it. I enjoyed it. I felt like I could be a good teacher. I felt like, you know, I had qualities that made me a little bit different than most because my concern was very much the kids, but not just that. I was really concerned about art. I was really concerned about how important [art] was to me and how important it should be. I felt like it was so important to me that it should be important to all of my students! So I started to build a philosophy around that [which] many years later, actually set the foundation for what I consider to be my philosophy now. I've been out of education for fifteen years, but the last seven years that I taught, I finally sort of released that ghost that followed me around. I said this is me, and this is what I believe art education should be, what I believe I can contribute to the kids. Even though I had already done that, somehow it seemed like because I went to a school that was brand new, and it was my department now. And somebody said, "It's your department; you're in charge." I already had all those other years to set the framework, and the last seven years that I taught, I feel like I really set it in stone, to what I believe now. And were you teaching in Crystal City? I taught in Crystal City before I went to Austin. The last seven years that I taught was in Austin, Texas. Prior to that I spent two years in Crystal City as an art supervisor and an art teacher both. Can you tell us something about what was going on in the school at that time? If you are making reference to the reason I went to Crystal City, it in part had to do with a restructuring of the entire system by the circumstances that had happened prior to my going there. For the first time a community in the state of Texas actually took charge of their own destiny. It started out through political means, with education. It started with students wanting better education, and then it became a political issue. Through the politics and the system, they were able to use that to restructure their school. So the politics had made the changes in their educational system. It so happened that the president of the school board was an old college friend of mine that I went to school with. When he went to A&I to recruit, I was graduating with my graduate degree, and he was looking for someone to set up an art program in his school system. Prior to him going there, I was already involved. I was a student activist in the art department. (laughter) There was a period prior to my graduation, prior to 1968-well, 1970, between 1969 and 1970-where I returned to school. And in the process of returning to school, my work, my art work had started to take a new twist. It was influenced. It was kind of like in 1965 after I graduated from college I set up my first studio. I continued to paint. I was doing imagery that was, I guess you would say, radical but not in the sense of political radical. It was just radical in the sense of art. It was just something I really felt very strongly about, imagery and the color and design, so it was pretty abstract for an artist where I was located. It was extremely radical. But the struggle within myself as I was searching for something that had some relevancy to being creative-I knew that I was creative as an artist, but I didn't have content that was really making the impact that I really wanted, that I was looking for. And so, when I went back to school as a grad student, through circumstances in the department and the politics and the Chicano movement going on at the time, I became involved with some groups and found the transition was very natural to politicize the times through the art; record what the Chicano movement was about. The participation in the movement for me was as an artist [through] the artist's role. It's like everybody had a role in the movement-the politicians did the politics, the poets did the poets, the musicians did the music, and the artists did the arts, and it went on and on. The historians did the history. (laughter) And so I kind of became a leader in that sense, because I was one of the few that was in the department at the time. There were a few others. [I] proceeded to bring out imagery in art, you know, in different mediums to portray what was going on with the movement. Can you trace your identity and your evolution in terms of your own ethnicity, heritage, development, and identification with your ethnic background in the evolution of your art? I am looking at where you started [with] the first images [grounded] in the Chicano movement, to the images that you have now. Through my art work, you can trace the start, which has to do with finally understanding who I am. Yeah. You can. And it's kind of flip-flop. For example, the first images have to do with the present times that not necessarily affected me directly, but affected all of us that were of Mexican descent. It was twofold. We all did the same thing. It was two things that the movement was saying: One is that you have to be proud of who you are and your culture; and we can trace our culture to Mexico, and we can trace our culture to all of the cultures that have come. So we handpicked. We handpicked the Aztecs. We handpicked-probably we didn't handpick the Spaniards-but we definitely handpicked the underdogs. We handpicked Zapata, and we handpicked Pancho Villa. We handpicked certain images that, to us, [had to do with] our birth. At the same time, we handpicked Che Guevara; we handpicked Corky Gonzalez, and Cesar Chavez, and the low-riders, and all of those things. And those were things that were happening "now." We were integrating or flip-flopping, but we were saying the same thing. We are trying to find ourselves through the art. What the artist did through his or her images is to try to help everybody else identify those images. We were saying that the guy sitting down with the sombrero and the burro and the cactus was not necessarily us! Or the guy with the big moustache was not necessarily us. There were other symbols that were us as well. So, through those images, we identified who we were. You know, we did. And you created new images. We created images that recorded our history; where it hadn't happened before. I mean, where in any history book did you ever see Zapata being cited as a hero of Mexican people? Of Mexican-American people for that matter? Or Cesar Chavez, for example? Those were things; like I said, we went back and forth. We borrowed, and we kept on borrowing. But I think the images that were the true images were the ones that we in this country had and we lived with every single day. So there was a period. That was it. That was the start. That was an identity. That was saying, this is really who I really am. If you want to know, if I want to know about myself, this is really who I am. But you know what? It only came when issues were to vote. I didn't do that when I went to bed; I didn't do that when I went to dinner; I didn't do that when I visited with my parents. We only did it when we were with our own peers, when we were rallying. So, you know, that's the way we were. We only did it when we sat around and discussed philosophy. So the images were portrayed that way. After that time period of the Chicano images that you were doing, was there another period? Or did you go right straight into the Indian images that I see you painting now? What happened-because for so many years the intensity of what was going on at the time and my commitment to documenting the times and the images that were necessary-I reached the point where I was tired of doing them. I wanted to talk about us, about myself, about our people, and there were other ways of saying those things, of saying good things about our culture or bad things about our culture, that blood and guts were not the only thing that were required. You know, it seemed like that was what most of us were dealing with. And so I was tired. I decided that I didn't want to do that anymore. It took one image, one specific image that really kind of just made me stop. I did a portrait of a little boy that had been shot through the head in Dallas, and the image was so powerful that it just made me sick. I decided that I had enough. I needed to find something else, some other way of talking about ourselves. So I stopped doing work. I had made one trip to Mexico to see art, period. I came across some very simple Indian drawings that people from the Southern part of Mexico were doing through their craft [by] recording their everyday events in a very primitive way and very simple way. And I said, "There it is. Right there. They're talking about themselves, but there's no blood. I mean, they are telling us about what they do every day. They're telling us about what's in their backyard. They're telling us about, you know, how far they have to walk to get water. And it's a pretty picture." And so I said, "Hey, you know, that part of us we never really took time to talk about." So I came back and borrowed their approach to doing that. I threw away all of my academics and started looking in my backyard. I started looking at the things that were part of our culture, part of me, part of my children, and started making pictures of them and the things that were so beautiful about us that we never really took time to record. It seemed like politics were the ones that were dominating the issues. So I did many, many, many pictures of things that were relevant to our people but not necessarily had to make an impact on anybody else-but a lot of it's on me. Everybody who saw it could see and understand that it was something that they lived. It was something that they knew, but they never saw it in pictures. So I went through a period of doing that. I don't remember how long I spent doing that, but I had the opportunity to travel west, and as a result of going and doing a [an art] show on the road, I ended up in New Mexico. All this time, when we were doing this whole Chicano movement, it seemed like we were so isolated with our part of the world. Texas was very different than California. And Chicanos were different in California. They were different in New Mexico. They were different in Arizona, and they were different in Colorado. We knew that, but we never really came in contact with them that much, or at least I didn't. When I went to New Mexico, through just being in the right place at the right time, I came across some things that I didn't understand too well. It was kind of like in that place it seemed like the mixture of the cultures was not just there, but it was also alive and moving around. And it made me wonder, are we any different than that? And we're not. But it was a kind of thing to me that I looked at myself, and I looked at who I was. It seemed like we never really took the time to say, if you really look at your blood, I'm not white, I'm not German, or Irish. I've been given this name, but, somehow or other, I think that the name is just something that I've accepted. And there's more to it than that. I had to really say, "Well, if I'm not, you know, what is? What is a Mexican American?" I mean really take and try to analyze that. What is it? Well, for one, it's just a title that somebody gave me. But if I look at my skin or if I look at my blood, if I look back and see how I was created or if it's blood that we're talking about, then there's something else. I didn't grow up in a reservation. I didn't have that. Just through our oral history I found out that my mother's bloodline came from the Yaqui and so if, in fact, that is a source, then, yeah, I can relate to this thing of being mixed. I mean, I can relate to that Indian blood being, and I didn't isolate myself. I think all people whose parents came from that side of the border, or were born here, but whose ancestor ended up being-I mean, nobody planted a Mexican in Texas! (laughter) That's where I decided that this was really the truth. We're mixed. I, don't have anything documented other than oral, I accepted that. And I said, "Well, maybe there's a start there." You know, I can relate to this mixed; I can relate to the crossover of the cultures. And so I started looking and trying to make pictures; trying to make sense of this in the sense that I want to make pictures of it. So I start looking at where the two cultures, the native and Spanish, for a lack of a better word, "mixed," existing in this region. They intermarried, obviously; there's the mixed blood. But I'm looking for visuals; I'm looking for things that I can make some sense of. It sounds like you really identified with the Indian part of your background from Mexico. And it was the simple life in the backyard that you initially saw when you went to southern Mexico. Then, when you came back, you were bringing back, through your mother, the Indian blood of the Yaqui that you identified with. There are other images too. Right. And the only place that those became real life-alive-for some weird reason, was in the Southwest. In New Mexico it became alive, this whole idea. I mean you don't see it in Kerrville, Texas, or you don't see it in Laredo, Texas. You don't see it in Brownsville, Texas. It's been buried. But here is a place where it is facing you every single day. Every single day you come in contact with it. I was very fortunate. My adopted grandfather was a medicine man from San Ildephonso, who could relate to what I was trying to find out about myself. And this is nothing mystical; this was just conversations. Well, I have a Spanish grandfather too! (laughter) And I'm a Tewa too. I'm trying to [figure out] how do we relate? I mean we speak two languages. He spoke three-Tewa, Spanish, and English. You know, his name was this, but yet he carried Peña on the other side of it. He had his Indian religion, and then he went to church on Sundays. But what I said, here was this idea of two bloods, but they were alive and walking. It made sense to me. I believe that's where I use the term "mestizo," extensively, because to me if I were to identify myself, truly, that's what I am. I've been given a label of "Mexican American." I've been given the label of "Chicano." But in reality we're mixed. I know in my blood that I'm not Irish, I'm not English, I'm not German. And really, if we look at our neighbors, if we look at our ancestors, and the Mexican people of today are not English or Irish, they're mixed! Somewhere they were created. Either they were full-bloods, or they're mixed from somewhere! Somebody asked me today what I was, and I said, "Well, if you really want to know, it's a European mongrel." You know. I mean, what can I say. But that's what we are. We are of that. And I'm not a crusader. All I'm saying is that for me, I accept. This is to me what the truth of it is; to me, this is who I am. And if I have to fill out the blank, and I've been capable of filling out the blank, and I've written in "mestizo." That's where I began to see images, and I began to use these images. I tell people, I really don't paint Indians. When you think of Indians, [you think of them] with feathers and warbonnets and war shields and riding horses and bows and arrows. I don't. I do the mixture. I do the things that influence and what, to me, the both cultures have shared. You know, we shared many similar philosophies-the Circle of Life, we share. We have it in different ways, but we believe the same thing. We share that which is respect. I mean, when my grandfather said "respect the land," that means he took care of it, he was going to plant corn, and he was going to grow corn. I mean, that's no different [than] what he was doing in my backyard in Laredo, Texas. I saw him take care of the land like native people do. So it's nothing that has to do with some spiritual, philosophical kind of thing. It has to do with understanding that this is the way it is. And it has to do with doing that. I think it is just a personal thing, but I think it has to do with values and what you believe in too-the importance in family, the role of the extended family, the responsibility for all. The sense of not destroying that which you touch. Right. And because of the art I have been able to do that. If I was an attorney, if I was a banker, if I was a shoe salesman, I could not do that. But because of the art, I do that. It allows me to seek those images. So, if I don't do that, then I short-change what I'm supposed to do, my role, what I believe I should do. I really feel like I will cheat that, being that artist, [of] being able to put it into pictures. Many of the Indians that I'm familiar with, talk about the dilemma and the difficulty of living in two worlds, the Indian world and the white world. And I see you trying to juggle three worlds. Has that been difficult? Has there been any problem in that for you? I think that if I had thought of it in terms of how difficult is it going to be for me, it probably would have been. What I have been blessed with is the fact that before I realized how hard it was going to be, I was already in it and sort of missed the preparation. I think because of my work, and because of what I believe I should be doing with my work-and it crosses everything from being a teacher-I never let any obstacles get in the way. What I could apply in the white man's world with my teaching philosophy, crossed all barriers because I didn't care who was going to get in the way. My focus was the kids and to do whatever I needed to do to have them experience the best experience that they've ever had, through art. When I focused on that, I didn't care what obstacles were going to be there. I just was so focused that nothing got in the way. What I think helped was because we were successful, they didn't create problems; because we were successful, the kids were successful at what they started out to do. They proved to everyone that art was important and that they believed in it. So that cleared a lot away. I think with my work as it crosses so many barriers-it's amazing. It overwhelms me. I still to this day cannot ever envision [where I am now] because I remember when I was doing images that were very political and very strong. Again I was focused. It didn't matter who came in contact with them and how it impacted them, how it affected them, plus or minus. What I was focused on, was that they get done and that they be seen. I wasn't concerned about acceptability. I pretty much did the same thing all the way through, and because people were not ready for them, they didn't know how to deal with them, so it was so easy to say, "Yeah, I like it. It's new, it's fresh, it's whatever." And before you know it, everybody was familiar with it. Before you know it, everybody liked it. Before you know it, everybody wanted one. Before you know it, through all of the many different [artistic] processes, it was reaching an immense audience. Very few people actually maybe had time to make choices as far as "this is not acceptable." Everybody-native people, local people, foreign people-something about what was in the pictures spoke to everybody. And because that was what I was focused on, I just wasn't concerned. First, I wasn't concerned whether it was acceptable or not. I wasn't concerned whether it was the right size, the wrong size. I wasn't concerned with that. I was concerned with what I've learned, and this is how I want to make pictures of this. I know I worked really hard, but it's like somebody's been watching over me and got 'em going in the right direction, the right places, the right audiences, and I never had to measure it. So that made it easy to cross over and say, "I can be anywhere, and I can speak of this and, whether you accept it or not, it doesn't matter, because it's going to talk to all people. It concerns all people. It's meant for all people. It's not meant for just one side of the community, for one group of people, for native people, for brown people. No, it's meant for everybody, because it speaks of a people." When people try to classify my work, all I can say is if you are going to try and classify it and I have to come up with a classification, it's not Indian art, it's not Western art, it's not cowboy art. It's a little bit contemporary; I can actually say that it is contemporary. It's not objective; it's none of those things. I'd have to say that it imparts a regional part of our world. It has to do with the people from the region. But one of the things I can say about all that?about native art, about cowboy art, about Western art, about Southwest art, that's where I fall in, because if it's regional, that's where it is, because this is where I am?is the fact that the art form starts with the heart and soul of the people. That's where it starts. If you don't understand what it means-not what it looks like, but what it means-then you cannot make pictures; I cannot make pictures of this. It starts with that. Hold a thought in your hand that you made from the earth. That's exactly right. There's a gift that transcends and translates that through what I'm able to do with it [so that] when people see it, it crosses over. Everybody has something to touch and something to smell and something to really sense about that [which] makes an impact on them. The only source that I can think of is that it comes from the heart of the people, the soul of the people, and what they're all about. That's where it comes from, and that's why it reaches everybody. I don't care how I interpret it. I don't care if it is a ten-foot painting or a little postcard, it doesn't matter! But it's that. And it's amazing, I know, and I don't stop to think about it. I don't stop to analyze it. I know it's there, and it's coming, and I understand it, and I'm focused, and I just do it. I don't see it until somebody comes up and says something to me. I don't see it until somebody says, "You know, if this picture hadn't been in my room, I would have had no will to live." That's powerful. Yeah! Whew! And I don't know of any other source other than that it's because it comes from the people. Because I do art, it's given me the time to soak all of this up. You are a very, very fortunate and lucky man. I am a very wealthy man because of that.
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