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There Goes Breakfast
Rooster man of Chaparral, NM – 2008
He has been raising these birds since he was a teenager. Fighters are they, he and his birds.
Now, cockfighting is illegal in New Mexico. Outlawed. “Civility,” has come to the funklands. God help us. Now come the thiefs with pens. They been fighting this since Billy the kid.
The rooster man keeps raising his birds. Doesn’t know what else to do.
He speaks of the “Old Man,” and “Ralph,” “Juan Pedro,”and the others. Each has a name. There are hundreds.
When he speaks, he says their names softly, a Lover’s murmur whispering his loves’ names.
Pit Bull(s)
Pit Bulls, Memorial Park, El Paso, Texas / May 2007
Carlos (last name not given) in Memorial Park with his Pit Bull Zues. They both had a lot of scars. They both are fighters, and it appeared they had more in common with each other than either could have with anyone of their own species.
Pit Bulls.
Asked why he liked that particular breed of dog, Carlos replied, “They don’t give an inch. Neither do I.”
Luis Jimenez Bio
Sculptor; Born July 30, 1940; Died June 13, 2006
Luis Jimenez, a successful but often controversial sculptor, has died after being struck by a falling part of one of his works.
Authorities described the incident as an industrial accident. A segment of a sculpture came loose while it was being moved with a hoist at Jimenez’s New Mexico studio on Tuesday.
It struck the artist, pinning him against a steel support. The 65-year-old sculptor was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
“Luis Jimenez’s loss to the United States, to New Mexico, to the Chicano community, is great,” his friend David Hall told Albuquerque TV station KRQE.
“He was an icon, he was a very famous and well-respected artist. We will dearly miss him.”
Jimenez, a native of El Paso, Texas, was known for his large and colourful fibreglass sculptures that depicted fiesta dancers, a mourning Aztec warrior, steelworkers and illegal immigrants. His work often started arguments and spurred emotions. “It is not my job to censor myself,” Jimenez once said. “An artist’s job is to constantly test the boundaries.” Jimenez’s Vaquero and Plaza de Los Lagartos sculptures became civic landmarks in El
Paso, where he grew up learning to paint and fashion large works out of metal in his father’s sign shop.
“I think Luis shared this border region with the world. Those images will continue to live on,” El Paso art gallery owner Adair Margo said. “You look at the images he left us, and you realise he was a voice that mattered, that
gave form to this region and communicated it with people.”
Jimenez studied fine arts at the University of Texas in Austin and spent time working in New York. In 1969, he created Man on Fire, a sculpture of a man in flames that drew its inspiration both from Buddhist monks in South
Vietnam who burned themselves and the Mexican story of Cuauhtemoc, set on fire by Spanish conquerors. The sculpture was displayed at the Smithsonian Museum.
Jimenez won numerous awards for his work. More recently, he completed a mud casting of firefighters and three fibreglass flames as part of a memorial for Cleveland. He was also working on a piece that was destined for Denver International Airport.
Sculptor; Born July 30, 1940; Died June 13, 2006