Santa Barraza was born on April 7,1951 and is an American mixed-media artist and painter who is well known for her colorful, retablo style painting.
32 Facts About Santa Barraza
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Santa Barraza is considered to be an important artist in the Chicano art movement.
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Santa Barraza's work is collected by the Mexic-Arte Museum, and other museums around the United States and internationally.
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Santa Barraza was born in the Kingsville, Texas home of her grandmother, Victoria Meza Santa Barraza.
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Santa Barraza's father, Joaquin Santa Barraza, worked hard to provide opportunities for his children and her mother, Frances Contreras, was a feminist.
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Santa Barraza's aunt on her father's side was a curandera, and Barraza would accompany her when she trained in Mexico.
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Santa Barraza's parents were Catholic and the imagery of the religion influenced much of the iconography of her later work.
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Ironically, her given name, Santa Barraza, proved problematic when she was to be baptized because the priest felt the name was sacrilegious since "Santa Barraza" means "saint" in Spanish.
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Santa Barraza recalls that there was a great deal of stigmatization against the Mexican-American students as far back as elementary school.
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Santa Barraza was the art editor for the high school's literary magazine.
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In 1969, Santa Barraza became involved with the activist group, Mexican American Youth Organization.
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In 1971, Santa Barraza transferred to the University of Texas at Austin in order to pursue studio arts and because it was important to her to receive a BFA rather than a BA.
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Santa Barraza faced a sense of displacement when she was at UT.
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Santa Barraza recalls that while she was at UT, she knew she wanted to be an artist and make a difference and she chose to do this by painting the images she felt were missing from the textbooks: Chicana imagery.
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Santa Barraza met her husband at UT where the two of them had several classes together.
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When Santa Barraza graduated with her BFA from UT and after the birth of her daughter, Andrea, she affiliated with Chicano artists in San Antonio and Austin called Los Quemados.
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When Santa Barraza was working on her masters, at first she wanted to study Chicano art history the faculty insisted that Chicano art history didn't exist.
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Santa Barraza found that she was a descendant of shaman, Don Pedro Jaramillo, and the Carancahuas.
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In 1985, Santa Barraza accepted a teaching position at La Roche College.
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Santa Barraza took her daughter with her to Pittsburgh and taught graphic design at La Roche College.
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Santa Barraza felt that La Roche was very supportive of her work.
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Santa Barraza was an associate professor at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1993 to 1996.
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Santa Barraza has been the chair of the art department there since 1998.
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Santa Barraza started working more with oil painting, enamels and acrylics.
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Santa Barraza feels that her creativity comes from emotion and in turn, that this emotion comes from her family and physical ties to Texas.
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Santa Barraza has traced her personal heritage back to the 1700s and discovered that she has Native American roots.
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Santa Barraza feels that her ancestors had a sense of determination that were passed down to her.
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Santa Barraza often uses the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe as an "empowerment symbol" for women.
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Santa Barraza has used traditional media, such as sand paintings, to connect with her cultural past.
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Santa Barraza describes the process of reusing traditional imagery as a way to appropriate the ancient past and then to update it in a contemporary art expression.
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Santa Barraza uses a variety of media, materials and techniques to create her work.
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Santa Barraza has been commissioned to do large scale murals, such as the mural done for the Biosciences rotunda at the University of Texas at San Antonio.