Rebel with many cause

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin was among a group of people being honored recently by LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who presented the Pasadena artist with a certificate of achievement before handing over the microphone so she could address a crowd of people and elected city officials gathered last month to celebrate Latino History Month.

“I said a few words about the bonds between a mother and a child, and then I asked the council to please help stop the war,” she recalled of the ceremony. “That’s when they took the mic away from me.”

This was not an unusual situation for Aparicio-Chamberlin, a native of East Los Angeles whose work was chosen to help commemorate Latino Heritage Month. She remains as committed today as she ever was to creating peace, ending war and seeking social justice through her art.

“She’s an artist for justice,” said Rosalio Muñoz, coordinator of Latinos for Peace who back in the 1960s served as chairperson of the Chicano Moratorium Committee. “Vibiana is one of the core artists from the Chicano generation who has grown from the commitment that she made as a young woman, just as her art has matured and grown.”

Aparicio-Chamberlin credits her father with giving her the inspiration and courage to seek justice for society’s underdogs through her art.

“I treasure the conversations I had with my father, who instilled in me pride in my Mexican culture, a concern for the downtrodden and respect for people of all colors,” she said recently. “Che Guevara had a saying: ‘If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine,’ and that was very much a philosophy of my father’s.”

A joyous gift
A longtime Chicana activist, Aparicio-Chamberlin in the 1970s was involved in teatro, the street theater movement rooted in East LA that called attention to a number of social injustices.

A retired special education teacher with the LA Unified School District, Aparicio-Chamberlin was among the first artists to come out of Self Help Graphics, working with Sister Karen Boccalero, a Franciscan nun who founded what would later become a world-renowned cultural art organization in Boyle Heights.

In February, Aparicio-Chamberlin spent much of the month conducting workshops on Matisse and Frida Kahlo for Mexican immigrant children in the Coachella Valley.

The program aimed to introduce the works of various artists to kids ages 6 to 12, many of whom lived in immigrant trailer camps. Then they did their own representations of the artists work.

“Vibiana came dressed up as Frida to teach the class,” recalled Sandra Serrano Sewell, executive director of the children’s group Centro de Los Niños. “She also introduced other concepts to the children in addition to the art. She made journals with each of them, emphasizing to them the importance of keeping a journal. Three of the children broke down in tears when the class ended.”

In late August, Aparicio-Chamberlin was among thousands who marched in support of Elvira Arellano, the illegal immigrant with an 8-year-old US-born son who had taken refuge in a Chicago church before coming to speak in Los Angeles, where she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents outside of Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Pueblo Los Angeles.

An active member of Latinos for Peace, Aparicio-Chamberlin recently coordinated an art auction to benefit US Army paramedic Augustin Aguayo, a conscientious objector who refused a second deployment to Iraq and was imprisoned for eight months after being convicted of desertion.

“Vibiana recognizes her skills and abilities and utilizes her artwork in the most joyous way a person can give. It is way beyond just being an artist,” said Dorothy Garcia, an Altadena resident and program director of the group Art Aids Art.

Aparicio-Chamberlin is also involved with The March 25 Coalition, a national immigrant rights group, which provides support for immigrant mothers — like Arellano — who are in jeopardy of deportation and separation from their US-born children.

This kind of involvement is not surprising to people who know Aparicio-Chamberlin. As a young mother with small children, she was a member of the Mother’s Club in Pasadena, a multiracial group that began as a center for wives and mothers of inmates.

At the Mother’s Club, women staged shows with puppets created by Aparicio-Chamberlin from the stories that some of them told. Although she and her husband Richard, who died in 2002, were busy raising their two young sons Ricardo and John, she continued reaching out to the world through street theater, puppets, spoken word and painting.

“I found a place there that fit my values,” Aparicio-Chamberlin said of her involvement with the group.

Didactic art
For this year’s Latino Heritage Month celebration, city officials chose Aparicio-Chamberlin’s “Omeotl: Two Aztec Hearts” from 78 art submissions, according to Will Caperton y Montoya, director of marketing and development for LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

Aparicio-Chamberlin was honored recently at a reception at the Pico House at Pueblo Los Angeles, along with other honorees including actor and activist Edward James Olmos; Gustavo Santaolalla, composer of the musical scores of such films as “Babel,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “The Motorcycle Diaries” and “21 Grams”; and Grammy-winning Latin music superstar Pepe Aguilar.

“A prominent Aztec mystical belief is that life is elusive, with its suffering and its rapture,” she said of her winning entry, which was featured on the cover of a special calendar commemorating Latino Heritage Month. “But the artist is the chosen one who experiences flower and song. This is the life of creativity, with its struggles and its search for love and perfection,” she added. In the painting, two hearts are joined by the vine of roses, “the passion of their colors, the ardor of their flames and the suffering personified by the 'espinas',” she said.

Most of Aparicio-Chamberlin’s artwork is bright and colorful, with very loose lines and statements that cut right to the quick.

“I see art as didactic — again, from my roots in the ’60s and ’70s — ‘agitprop’ [agitation propaganda] they called it,” Aparicio-Chamberlin recalled. “I have my didactic art, but I also have my highly personal art, which stems from my dream journals. That’s how I figure out my place in the world. … My culture and my family have influenced me, and they give me tools for emotional survival.”

Aparicio-Chamberlin’s life lessons have never been more instructional for — or appreciated by — those who love her and her art.

“I’ve seen her mature, enduring and surviving life’s hardships, and she always bounces back,” said Tomas Benitez, development director of Plaza de la Raza and former director of Self Help Graphics.

“Vibiana has never lost the spark. That exuberance for art and culture from her youth has never faded,” added Benitez, who has known Aparicio-Chamberlin since her teatro days in the ’70s. “If anything,” he said, “the kind of work that she is doing now is richer and better than ever.”