The Brown Dot Project is an elegant solution to questions about Latino population and workforce data. This image includes a grid of 12,096 squares. 7.2% of US architects are Latino. 7.2% of 12,096 equals 871. This piece contains 871 brown dots representing the number of U. S.  Latino architects.

Movie star and sex goddess Marilyn Monroe becomes brown, pointing to questions about Latino sexuality, talent and possibilities of fame.

Artist Statement

My formative years were spent in far-flung locations throughout the United States and Europe. Although I initially worked primarily as a “naturalist” painter for many years, in 2015 I began developing a completely new series of mixed media sculptures and collages focusing on biting and comical social and political satire.

It has taken my entire artistic career to fuse images that define my multicultural experience of the world and my place in it. Like most of my contemporaries, my initial studies immersed me in the Western European canon of paintings, sculpture and architecture, but I later found myself living and creating in a milieu where symbols of beauty were manifest from a decidedly different perspective.

I began asking myself, “What would these iconic images look like from a Latino/ Mexican-American/Chicano point of view?” It wasn’t long before I started developing a new series of work entitled Make ‘Em All Mexican, where the universe of white icons suddenly became Latino. Extracting the subjects from their traditional Caucasian identity redefined their personas and histories and challenged the power of the dominant culture.

Education

1975-1978  MFA, Printmaking, Cal State University Long Beach, CA
1975-1996  Undergraduate studies in Lithography, University of Madrid, Spain
1969-1973  BFA, Whittier College, CA
1971  Undergraduate studies in Independent Theater Arts, London, England
1967- 1969  Graduated from Madrid High School, Spain

Bio

Linda Vallejo consolidates multiple, international influences gained from a life of study and travel throughout Europe, the United States and Mexico to create paintings, sculptures and installations that investigate contemporary cultural, spiritual and political issues.

Her work was included in The California/International Arts Foundation’s L.A. Rising: SoCal Artists Before 1980 and the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980 in two exhibitions: Mapping Another LA: The Chicano Art Movement at the UCLA Fowler Museum and Doin’ It in Public: Art and Feminism at the Women’s Building at Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design.

Solo exhibitions of Make ‘Em All Mexican and The Brown Dot Project have been presented at Texas A&M University, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Soto Clemente Velez Cultural Center, George Lawson Gallery, University Art Gallery of New Mexico State University, Arte Americas in collaboration with the Fresno Art Museum and California State University, San Bernardino Fullerton Museum. In 2016 Make ‘Em All Mexican was featured in the LA Times Calendar Section in the article “In her series Make ‘Em All Mexican, artist Linda Vallejo imagines #OscarsSoBrown” by Carolina A. Miranda.

Vallejo’s work is in the permanent collections of East Los Angeles College Vincent Price Museum, The National Museum of Mexican Art, Carnegie Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, University of California, Santa Barbara, California Multicultural and Ethnic Archives (CEMA) and the UCLA Chicano Study Research Center.

She lives in Topanga Canyon, CA with her husband, Ron Dillaway. Her son Robert is a practicing lawyer and her son Paul is completing his doctoral residency in Arizona.