Luis Jimenez, Hondo, New Mexico, 2001
Born: July 30, 1940, El Paso, TX / Died: June 13, 2006, Hondo, NM
The first time I met Luis, back in the seventies, he came into my apartment and seemed to fill the room. It was like no room was big enough for him.
He was that big of a g
Not physically, although he was that powerful.
Not spiritually, although he did have that aura of somebody who really sees the bigger picture.
He was just big. All of it. Life. Love. Art. Humor. Seriousness. Ambition. Regular guyness.
When I first met him, and I suspect this is what most people felt upon first encounter, I felt like my life was just a lot more complete than it had been a moment before.
If you wanted to be good at something, in my case it was to be a photographer- you knew he’d be encouraging for your dream.
He was a brother. A big brother. And like a lot of big brothers, he was larger than anyone could possibly be.
And, man, was he smart.
He said what mattered. He lived He cut the crap.
He made impossibly complex Art and made it look like you could buy it from a south side El Paso Body Shop. And the Art mattered. It was about something. It was about him and our culture and his culture and the idiocy of our system and about the flora and the fauna and intuition and magic and love and joy.
The piece, Border Crossing, created for the border crossing at San Yisdro was so Luis. In your face. But with Grace and intelligence. But with all that color and all that flow and all that inventiveness, he made it a good thing to be in your face.
How poignant for our times, huh?
This was the piece made by a guy who’s father had come across that river with no papers (Luis, senior) and he didn’t close the door behind him. He demanded in the smoothest way that you look at this couple, woman on the man’s shoulders, trudging across the river and the minefields of scorn and diminution, and feel the immigrant experience as it is now. Here. On this border.
His lithograph of Eziquiel Hernandez, down there in Polvo (as the locals call it) down in Redford, Texas,, near Presidio, was totally relevant to our times, tambien. A skillful indictment. Eziquiel the sheepherder wasted by a Marine. Bad enough. The dismissive- ness of the death by military fidgetiness and their court, unforgivable.
Luis never flinched. He made his statement with grace and moved on.
But he made his statement.
He fought the ethnic battles, too, as he did with the Southwest Pieta piece that had a Aztec sacrificial maiden in the arms of a warrior…which was OK with the city that commissioned it (Albuquerque), but, when they saw it had “Indian,” features, it wasn’t OK with them.
Luis fought that war, very openly and publicly and then moved the piece to Martineztown, a Mexican-American neighborhood.
Where it belonged, really.
He never backed down from bigots, he never didn’t try to educate through his work and his courage, he stood for a lot of really important things that are more relevant every day, now, and he also stood for El Gozo and a lot of fun.
It was an adventure to travel with him. One time we were going to drive two large pieces to Dallas from El Paso. He showed up in one of his amazingly stud trucks with pieces lashed down, many many hours too late to actually get to our destination on time (but somehow he always did) and you’d go, “…whoa Luis… what’s that odor?”
He looked at me, just a little apologetically and a lot wryly and very amusedly, and said, in his amazingly casual way, “Oh, since I had some really good blue paint in the spray gun when I was finishing the piece, I decided to spray the door panels in the truck. We’ll have to drive with the windows open! OK?”
It was winter.
And we did.
It was always something like that.
And it was never the same twice
And that was the beauty of this dude: he was an original times 100, inventive, unexpected, smart and regular and courageous and giving, oh so giving. He was all about quality. He was about the magic and the power of magic in the art. He was so into that that I have seen him support and promote people who had done him wrong and do it with a smile just because that person’s Art was good. That was his guideline and his principle: if the work was good it had to be supported.” It didn’t matter if the other person had horns and was a total maldito.
He made the distinction.
He had priorities and excellence and integrity were at the top of the list.
The world needs the Art more than all the messy details and politics.
And man, did he put out the Art!
The stuff was wild!
In his younger years he created sculpture no one had ever seen before, surely not in fiberglass and car finish paint: boozy blonds with enormous boobs swinging a beer glass, swaggering from her bar stool while wrapped in the American Flag ( Viet Nam era). He had other hot babes, entwined in sexual repose with a Volkswagen Bug, barreling down the ole American Highway, his ode to the highway that he spent so much of his life on and that, really, he loved. When Luis arrived in a town with enormous fiberglass, flowing, pulsating, brilliant pieces -often arriving a little late- it was like the circus had come to town. Except it was, for me, at least, a lot better than the circus (even if the paint fumes required you to hang your head out the window for the twelve hour trip).
And he made it fun!
Oh was he fun! He was dedicated to not letting the “world” overtake him.
Even on tight deadlines. Even with preparations not being done that were essential to be done when he got to a certain city. Even with dealing with people, I often observed, who thought that Luis was delivering a product and didn’t understand, right there, before their very eyes he was delivering a piece of magic infused with the spirit of heaven and the depth of his roots and infused with the power to make you feel. Really feel. Feel straight through to your bones and your heart and your soul, right through your business suit or your ten thousand dollar gown or you seven dollar Wal Mart closeout shorts.
His pieces mattered because they got down to the essence of the culture he was of, and because they also got down to the essence of who he was.
They mattered because he was a beautiful guy and he did incredible things that inspired anyone who cared to look.
I think there was only one like him and we won’t see one like that again.
I’ll miss him.
I think we’ll all miss him.
So, I’ve been thinking this over ever since I heard the bad news about Luis’ passing, trying to remember some of the things he encouraged me to do. I learned this from him:
Let us, too, have fun.
Let’s do serious work with a joy of spirit.
Getting down is only another creative mood. Roll with it.
Let’s try to help each other when we see that it’s needed and deserved, and let’s support quality over expediency, our heart over our intellect.
Be brave, let’s live life fully and passionately and with a lust that comes from the knowledge this time we have, now, just may be “it,” and let’s be gracious and, most of all, let’s try to matter.
He did.
Bruce Berman / El Paso / June 16, 2006