{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/542j67b65z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Interview with Roberto Jose Gonzalez"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/173/original/Logo_CL_ColorReversed.png?1773939905","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eInterview with Roberto Jose Gonzalez. TU Treasures Oral History Collection. UAOH003-018. Coates Library Special Collections and Archives. Trinity University (San Antonio, Tex.).\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Special Collections and Archives, Trinity University"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThe materials in this collection may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). The materials are available for personal, educational, and scholarly use. It is the responsibility of the researcher to locate and obtain permission from the copyright owner or his or her heirs for any other use, such as reproduction and publication.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["TU Treasures Oral History Collection"]}},{"label":{"en":["Participants"]},"value":{"en":["Roberto Jose Gonzalez (Interviewee)","Lee Denney (Interviewer)","Abra Schnur (Monitor)","archives@trinity.edu (Metadata contact)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2023-11-03 (captured)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["San Antonio (Tex.) (spatial)","1974-1976 (temporal)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["MP3"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["UAOH003-018 (local)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Relation"]},"value":{"en":["Conmemorando a la Comunidad (is part of)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History","Sound Recording"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThe materials in this collection may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code). The materials are available for personal, educational, and scholarly use. It is the responsibility of the researcher to locate and obtain permission from the copyright owner or his or her heirs for any other use, such as reproduction and publication.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Trinity University Special Collections and Archives"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Trinity University Special Collections and Archives"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/173/original/Logo_CL_ColorReversed.png?1773939905","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collections/default_thumbs/000/002/313/small/Confluence_graphic_%282%29.jpg?1704393526","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Gonzalez-Roberto-20231103-MIX-Final.mp3"]},"duration":6406.73333,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collections/default_thumbs/000/002/313/small/Confluence_graphic_%282%29.jpg?1704393526","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-trinityuniversity.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/254/719/original/Gonzalez-Roberto-20231103-MIX-Final.mp3?1729617119","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":6406.73333,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Interview with Roberto Jose Gonzalez [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\n\nDENNEY: Today is November 3, 2023. I am Lee Denney, a student at Trinity University and today I am interviewing Roberto Gonzalez. Gonzalez is an alumni of Trinity University and was here from 1976 to 1978. I am also joined by Abra Schnur who will be monitoring the recording equipment. The interview today will mainly focus on Chicano experiences at Trinity as well as the Con Safo art collective. \n\nThe interview is being recorded for the Conmemorando a la Comunidad Latinx Experiences at Trinity. Is being archived with the University Archives and Special Collections in Coates Library. \n\nRoberto Gonzalez, if we can begin by having you state your full name, place, and date of birth.\n\nGONZALEZ: Roberto José González. I also go by Robert Gonzalez, but I'm fluid like that. I was born in Laredo, Texas on the border—border town. But I lived both in Laredo and here, back and forth, until I guess ‘73 I graduated high school and moved up here permanently. And its—I’'ve really enjoyed San Antonio very much. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. What was it like for you growing up? Walk me through some of your earliest childhood memories. \n\nGONZELEZ: Well I mean we spent—growing up on the border it’s like, you know, a totally different experience than living inland. You are right across the river [Rio Grande River]—in Laredo—from Mexico. And we would travel across many times, you know, every week to go have dinner across the river, or go shopping. My grandfather had a business across the river and we would go visit. My dad had a warehouse. He sold seed and farm stuff. That was about two blocks from the river. I'd go visit him. I'd go work with him. He'd make me, you know, haul onions and all kinds of stuff. And the river was about two blocks away, so sometimes I'd sneak away and go down to the river and play down by the river and, you know, see the big whirlpools, that would form and it would just be mesmerizing. \n\nAnd there were no fences. It was a whole different time. It was before the militarization of the border. You could see people crossing. And the border patrol was up there, but it wasn't a big deal, you know. It was a much freer time. And that's all been forgotten, but I have memory of how relaxed the border was. It was understood implicitly that the farmers, the ranchers, other people around the United States really required, needed, migrant labor. And so everybody had an implicit agreement to allow the free flow of people. And if you really think about it, the river has been there for hundreds of thousands of years. I can only imagine how long it's been there. People have been crossing back and forth the river, on their own, without any kind of artificial regulations or whatever. And I just remember a time when things were much more relaxed. And they would allow people to go, come across to work every day to work in Laredo and go back and, or stay. It was not a big deal. When you have that kind of memory, it just kind of saddens me that things have become so militarized, so punitive, so—what do you call it? Villainized. The people who in the last hundred years, would normally come back and forth, and you know, they wouldn't stay, and maybe some people would stay, but they would go back because they loved México. They would love to go back and be with family there, but they would come back up and make money and go back. It's just sad to see how disconnected we all are now and villainized. And it's so painful almost to see them. And I get it, you know, there's just been this really, really big wave of immigration coming in. There has to be some kind of controls. I get it. But, you know, It's a tough. It’s a tough","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=0.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"issue. It’s a tough—I don't know all the answers to it, but I do remember when things were much more peaceful and relaxed about how people immigrated and went back and worked here and came back. And you see that now with a lot of the farmers here who are struggling to have workers to pick stuff. They're suffering. And a lot of times, the economic consequences of the immigration issues were not really taken into account during all these deliberations and new laws and things like that. But it's a process. I get it. It's a process. Things will change. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. \n\nGONZALEZ: That was a simple question. (laughter) And twenty minutes of an answer, so sorry. \n\nDENNEY: No, it was really insightful. What was high school like for you? \n\nGONZELEZ: Oh man, high school. Well, you know, I was kind of just, you know, struggling in high school, freshman and senior. And I had an art teacher who I just felt drawn to because he would make us do these projects, you know, these painting projects. I was like, Oh, wow. I’ve always been—I would always draw. I would always paint all through my childhood. But when he—there was this one moment. I always reflect back on this one moment where he brought this huge panel. It must have been five by five foot square. And he got four of the art students together—it was a small class—and he all gave us paint. He said, “Okay, we're going to do a collaborative painting today.” I was like, Wow, okay. We did this. It was, you know, collaborative paintings and collaborative work is always kind of a mishmash, and it was. It was a mishmash. But it just like, wow, sparked this joy in me. I was like, Oh, okay. I think I want to be a painter the rest of my life. I remember going home and telling my dad, “Hey, dad, I think I want to be a painter!” I just saw him just turn red and just about to explode. He said, “No, never! You're never going to be a painter! You have to do something where you can eat.” I'm like, oh, okay. I have to be a painter. This isn't me now and sure enough, I've just been a painter all these years. It hasn't been easy. But I graduated, and I came to SAC, San Antonio College. I hope I'm not throwing your—\n\nDENNEY: No you’re good.\n\nGONZALEZ: —questions off. Okay. I came to San Antonio College and there was this wonderful professor. I took mostly art courses, but you know, you go to junior college for two years and then you transfer. It was always my plan to go to SAC two years and then come here [referring to Trinity University] for two years. I took a class with Mel Casas, the great esteemed Chicano painter, Mel Casas. And I was good. I was really—I thought I was—I'm trying not to be—toot my horn too much, but I was really good and he saw how good my work was. He had been already a few years into this development of this Chicano art group called Con Safo. Con Safo was sort of at the beginning—you know you're talking about the rise of Chicano culture in the forties, in the fifties, and then with the sixties and the sort of explosion of consciousness, you know, during the Vietnam War, the sense that actually we could have a sense of identity of our own. Part of that was creating, in his mind, creating an art movement, an art group that would therefore start to sort of propagate and support the culture, especially in terms of painters. So we were known as Pintores Chicanos, Con Safo Art Group. And we started exhibiting and I was sort of the third or fourth year in. I mean, there were already—the group had been in existence for about three or four years prior. And then I was","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=300.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"—he invited me in because I was so good. And I don't mean to be narcissistic or anything, but I was good. It was good work. I was doing really good work. I was really happy. Except I was doing abstract work. And most of the Chicano artists were doing very representational work where you'd have lettuce with barbed wire wrapped around it because of the lettuce boycott or grapes with, you know, a fist coming up, a brown fist coming up to talk about the grape boycott from the Raza Unida Party in, mostly in California, but they were here too. Trying to work for the betterment of the farm workers. Excuse me. (sips water)\n\nSo it was a great, great experience to be with these older artists. I learned so much. I learned so much from him [referring to Mel Casas]. Mel Casas was, you know, always this great influence in my life. He would do paintings that were maybe five by seven, five by eight something, six by eight foot, huge paintings. And I—he would invite the group over to his house and I remember I had this great experience of walking into his house and he would have this room and there were like fifty paintings in his room. They were just huge. And I was like, oh, you could do that. You can have these, you know, fifty huge paintings. And so I realized that I had been working large myself, just inherently. But I went, okay, no, that's what I'm going to start doing is working large. And so, I've been working large paintings ever since. So, after my two years at SAC, I found my way here and I was so fortunate. Trinity, you know, Trinity was experiencing—stop me when you need to. \n\nDENNEY: No you’re good. \n\nGONZALEZ: If I'm—yeah? Okay. I just had this memory of Trinity being such a free kind of relaxed and just so, you know, almost so little structure. And like, if you, if you didn't want to take one of—I just remember if you didn't want to take one of the disciplines, you didn't have to. So I chose not to take math at all through my entire thing. Cause I'm like, I'm not, you know, I wasn't that interested in that part of my mind. I was more, I think right brained, and just very creative and I just wanted, yeah, I just want to do that. And so when I was here, I was very fortunate to find my way to the great painter, professor Robert Tiemann, who had been a great abstract painter, very powerful artist. Eventually he became chairman of the department and then retired after a number of years. And he just had this great influence on my, my, my artistic consciousness as well. \n\nAs, as, you know, for me, being a Chicano, it's, it's a little different. I always see Chicanos from the border as being a little different than Chicanos from the northern, more northern cities. The Chicanos—the way I see it, the way my experience is, is that the way Chicanos are on the border is because there's, they’re so much closer to Mexico, they’re so much more connected to the motherland in a way. There's no need for having to be anything else other than yourself. You don't have to wear anything. You don't have to do anything. You know, you just, you just wear what everybody else is wearing culturally. You just talk like everybody else does in that milieu of the border town. Like San Antonio, when I would come up here as a kid, I'd go, oh, wow, okay, these things are a little different here. People—you know, the Chicanos here, they were kind of the same way up until the sixties and then it, it, there was this really big push to—expand and be more, more expressive in your identity. It was as if there was this consciousness that—this awakening","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=600.0,900.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"that we want to have our—we have to have our own expression of who we are in all areas, all dynamics. And so there was this need to, dress differently, to talk differently, you know, to—you know, that always was there, but it sort of became more key to establishing an identity separate from the rest of the societal milieu. And so I would see that and I'd go, okay, that's something I've got to maybe talk more differently or whatever, dress differently, but not really because I was from Laredo. I had that, that sort of natural sense of my own identity as a, as a Mexicano, as a Chicano, as an American and Mexican American. And so I just, I've always felt more, more of a relaxed sense of who I am in terms of my identity. That I don't need to be more than who I have naturally been. I don't need to be more expressive or more—you know, I hate to use the word artifice, but there—to me, there's a certain amount of artifice that I've seen when certain people really lean into cultural markers for, you know, getting tattoos or, you know, wearing cholo outfits. That's great. I love that. I mean, it's, that's what makes culture so real. But, you know, it's like in my old age, I feel like—there's, there's a certain amount of illusory qualities to all that. And I'm wanting to more side more, be more in terms of a oneness, in, in who we all are. You know, I see the, the, how remarkable and how blessed we are to be standing on this planet. Here I am sitting here talking to you. And, and it's—I'm sitting here on this planet of floating on this—turning on this planet in this solar system, in this galaxy, in this, in this universe of trillions of galaxies, thirteen plus billion years old. And I'm, I'm just not sure, you know, how much I need to invest myself in having a certain identity. I feel like, you know, this, this identity of, of just being—yeah, just being here in this moment, this perfect, beautiful moment is all that I want. I just want to be in this moment and be perfect and try to be, you know, as good of a person as I can be and not be stuck on these cultural markers and not be stuck on having to express my identity. You know, yeah, that's good. That's, you know, that's what makes the world around. That's what makes, you know, Chicanos make this world a much richer place. And, and if you look at the, the, the world of Chicano identity now, you know, there are parts of the world like in Japan where there are Japanese who have taken on a Cholo identity. Wow! Who would have thought that would happen? (laughter)\n\nDENNEY:  I saw it. \n\nGONZALEZ: That's like, okay, what does that mean? That they would take that on. They would say, you know what, we really like this Chicano identity, let's act like that. Let's talk like that. Let's dress like that. Let's enjoy that. (inaudible) Good. Go for it, you know. And that's what they need? Great. People here, that’s what—you know you need to be, you know, expressed, really kind of create and establish and grow Chicano identity. Great. Love it. I'm an old man. I'm sixty-eight. I just turned sixty-eight. I'm just like, oh man, you know it’s like, I'm just this elder stage of my life. I'm just like, I'm just looking at the universe going, how is this possible that I'm sitting here in this moment talking to you? What an amazing blessing","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=900.0,1200.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"this is that I'm here in this moment and that's where I'm at. So everybody's where they're at. Here I am. This is where I'm at. \n\nAnd, you know, for me, my expression with my Chicano identity has been more of an exploration back into Mesoamerican imagery. Trying to understand and trying to reconnect with all that has been lost since the invasion in the 1400s from the Anglo-European-Iberian decimation, the genocide, the total shutdown of the cultures here in the Americas and the loss of the arts, the artists. Probably the one loss that has affected me the most and I think probably affects most people is the loss of the indigenous religion from the shutdown. Wow! You start thinking about how that affected people here, how that affected indigenous peoples to lose their indigenous religious deities, their religious experiences, and have to shut that down and start learning these Anglo-European-Iberian deities and religion and all that stuff. And what—I should like to use, a mind, (laughter) crazy making mind thing that was. But, you know, you really look at the dynamics of syncretization and that, yeah, if I don't say a prayer the way you want me to say a prayer, you're going to kill me. Okay, I'll say the prayer. But you know what, instead of praying to the Virgin Mary, I'm going to pray to Tonantzin. I'm going to pray to any other—any number of other deities. And through, thankfully, somehow, you know, in our capacity as human beings that we had that possibility that we could syncretize and in our minds go “click.” Okay, yeah, I'll say a prayer to the Virgin Mary, but—and I pray to the Virgin Mary, but I, you know—just trying to imagine what that must have been like for my ancestors to go “click.” Okay, I'll pray to the Virgin Mary, but I’m praying to Tonantzin, you know, that's how I'm going to do it. Wow, that's like amazing. That's, you know, the resilience, the ability to evolve under great, tremendous, actual stress of being murdered. Wow, what our ancestors must have gone through and still are going through. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. \n\nGONZELEZ: God, I just talked forever. I am sorry.\n\nDENNEY: No, you’re good, you’re good. It's really helpful. Could you tell me a little bit more about, like, kind of what drew you to Trinity or how you heard about the school? \n\nGONZALEZ: Well, so I'd always wanted to be a fine arts administrator because I knew I probably wouldn't be able—at that time—make a living as an artist. My dad was right. (laughter) And so I thought, well, you know, fine arts administration was pretty new on the horizon. And I always sort of think of myself as one of the early fine arts administrators in San Antonio. You know, there was the Witte [Witte Museum], which I worked at, but, you know, there weren't very many—there was like maybe—there was a registrar who took things in and kind of did that. The director of the Witte usually took on the job of curation. And so, you know, I was like, okay, yeah, I want to—I think I can do this, this new thing called fine arts curation—being a fine arts administrator. And so I always knew, okay, I want to come to Trinity to get an arts degree. You need an arts degree to be a fine arts administrator. Great. But I thought, well, you know, I'll go to Incarnate Word University—well, back then it was Incarnate Word College—to get a, a degree, a business degree in management. And that was, you know, later on, that was a correct marriage of degrees to get me into fine arts administration.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=1200.0,1500.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, I made it here [Trinity University]. Everybody was wonderful. You know, everybody was really very kind here, very wonderful here. I have not one negative memory here. I had, you know—I was, I was really—part of my, my thing as an artist was always to really push, push, push, mix, mix, mix. Mixtura, fusión, fusion, just complex churning of ideas. \n\nAnd I had—I took an advanced literature course here—I just wanted to share some memories—And I forget his, the professor's name. It was so long ago, but he was great. He assigned us to do a paper and on some subjects—some French literature or something, whatever. And so I typed it up and I was like, ugh, ah. (laughter) You know, I'm sorry. I'm like pointing my, my, my finger in my mouth wanting to throw up. [editor note: Gonzalez is referring to the hand gestures he is doing in the interview] But it was like, okay, now what can I do? So I typed it up. It was two page. And, and I, started to erase it. And I, and I erased almost the whole thing, but not really trying to erase all. And, and I gave that to him. I think it was, it was like something like performance art in literature or something like that, kind of course. And I remember him getting it. It was like, he was like, wow. You know, he was like having a hard time really understanding what I was doing. And, but he got it. I think he really started to understand that I'm, I was a little different. (laughter) (clears throat) And then there was a point where towards the end, I think it was our final grade assignment where he was going to ask us to do some kind of performance that was a little bit, you know, more artistic, more radical. And I had started in, as a performance artist at SAC in 1974. And you, you know, Dr. Cordova, Ruben Cordova? He seems to think that I'm the first Chicano performance artist from 1974. Seventy-six was Asco in California, that performance group. But in terms of me—and so I did about eight or nine performances at SAC. And people thought I—like I was not well mentally because I was really pushing. And I was well, but I was pushing. I was pushing, pushing, pushing the, the boundaries of what performance was. So he—that's why, one reason I really liked this course because he was like—it was kind of in that area. And so I, I did this for my final grade. I did this performance where, I started developing this, this thing of being self—not self-flagellating, but self-harming as a way of making the artifice—transforming the artifice of performance into a sense of reality performance. Almost all performance has artifice in it. And I was like, oh, I don't like that. I want to, I want to do something else. I want to—how can I make this more real? And, and that really kind of started coming to me that you, you kind of hurt yourself. There was a group in—a couple of guys in Europe that were doing these, these really dangerous things. And I read about them. I went, oh, okay, maybe that's something I can try. And so I remember I had a friend come up with a whole black and white TV and he turned it on and off, you know, facing the wall to—it was a dark room. And I came in on a chair and I kind of bounced around in the chair for a while. And then I, I got out of the chair and I started to like (hits table) hit the, the ground with—I was kneeling on the ground and I hit the ground with my hands. And then I (hits table) hit it harder and (hits table) then harder and then (hits table) really as hard as I could without breaking my hands. And then I started","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=1500.0,1800.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"hitting my forehead really lightly and then a little harder and harder until I thought, oh, I better stop. And I remember stopping, going, “Okay, thank you I’m done.” and I remember looking around and people were like, Wow, this guy needs some help. But I didn't. I was really like—I was in my—sort of, there was an advanced state of consciousness where I really wanted to push this new genre, which was kind of a new genre. It started with the Dadaists in the thirties and forties in Europe doing these Dada performances. But it had never really taken hold here until Asco, you know, until—I mean, I was kind of all alone here. But I didn't continue that very much because it just hurt. (laughter) So I just kind of stopped. I started going into other kinds of ways of doing performance that didn't hurt. But it was interesting. It was fun. And he got it. My professor got it. He was like, oh, okay. So I got an A. (laughter) So that was good. But it had—this university, Trinity University, had such a freedom back then and I'm so grateful to all—every—all the friends I had here, all the friends I made, all the professors who were so understanding and so supportive. And just, I just look back fondly at all that I learned here. And knowledge is so important, so critical to me to—I'm so curious. I've never stopped being curious. I just want to learn, learn, learn. And that's why this building [referring to Coates Library] is so important. Like I was telling you when I was walking in, I lived here. I grew up here. You know, the stacks here of art books, you know, these big, huge art books, man. I'd come in and grab them and sit down, find a little corner and just learn. And I just learned so much. It was so wonderful. I should stop. What did you ask? \n\nDENNEY: No, you’re good.\n\nGONZALEZ: Okay. \n\nDENNEY: Oh, could you tell me, what did a typical day as a student at Trinity look like for you? \n\nGONZALEZ: Oh, wow. (laughter) Oh, so I was a really big, big painter. I mean, I was painting my—I was painting a lot. \n\n[AT THIS POINT THE AUDIO RECORDER STOPS RECORDING.  THE AUDIO AVAILABLE IS PIECED TOGETHER FROM A CELL PHONE RECORDING]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=1800.0,1955.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eSCHNUR:\u003c/strong\u003e It is recording again. And I think, do you remember what the last question was?\n\nDENNEY: Yes. \n\nGONZALEZ: How are you? \n\nDENNEY: I'm doing good. (laughter)\n\nGONZALEZ: I'm not overwhelming you?\n\nDENNEY: No, no, no. You're doing great. Very nice interview. We were just discussing what a typical day looked like for you at Trinity. \n\nGONZALEZ: Ah well, I think I would come early and I'd come to the Coates Library [meaning Chapman Graduate Library] and just, you know, do my work here. I’d—on off times, I just go through the stacks, man. I went through every stack and every book and just learned, learned, learned. And there were so many. The art section here—I've always said that the art book section here is probably the best in the city qualitatively. UTSA [University of Texas at San Antonio] Library has the quantitatively biggest section. But in terms of quality of work, quality of books here, this really is the place to go. And if I ever had questions or was curious about something, I'd always come here. But anyway, I'd come here and then go to class and hang out with friends. I, you know, I had my own studio at home. You know, I usually would get a two-bedroom and one-bedroom was—you know, it wasn't—I was, like, so poor back then. I think I was living on twenty dollars a week. So I would get, you know, a big space but I'd have to deal with rats. (Denney gasps) I remember just rats everywhere. Kind of, you know, I'd be asleep and I'd feel this thing crawling across my stomach. I'd be like, Oh my God, what's going on? The price you had to pay as a young artist. But I do most of my artwork at home. \n\nWhen I was at SAC, I would do work in the art building. I would leave it there because it would usually be large or whatever. But people would come up and, like, write on it and poke on it and stuff. And I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe this is not the best thing for me to do. So, I just do it at home and bring it in for appraisal. I think","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=1955.0,2100.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":", you know, I just had a blast. It was just a wonderful time for a curious young man. And I just really enjoyed all my professors and I just remember, like I said, everybody here was just wonderful. I don't think I had one bad, negative, nothing experience here. Everybody was great. But it was a different time. You know, I mean, it's hard to express how things were—you know, it was a different—culturally, societally, it was a different time for in the world. You know, it's different than now, which everybody's angry and pissed off and all that stuff. \n\nAnd stay here late in the library. I would just, you know, just stay here late and then go home and work through the night. And, you know, sleep a few hours, get up and come back and do it again. I had pretty much—the only teacher I had here, with the exception of one or two, was Professor Tiemann. And it was that kind of dynamic where you could have just one professor throughout your—all your course study here in a particular study, like art. So, I learned so much from him and I'm so grateful. I always feel grateful. I'm grateful to him. I guess that's it. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. Were there a lot of fellow Chicano students when you attended Trinity? \n\nGONZALEZ: No, I was—that's an interesting question because—no. I was pretty much—I don't remember a lot of other students of any race. Maybe one or two Asians. Maybe one or two other Mexican Americans. I was pretty alone. But, you know, I was young, and I didn't care and I just nose to the grindstone and just wanted to get through my time here. And it was, again, just thoroughly enjoyable. Just a wonderful experience. Only positive things to say about my time here. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. Did you participate in any student organizations? And if so, which ones? \n\nGONZALEZ: No, because I was so, so much into learning and just being an artist. So I'd come here to learn. I'd come here to study. I'd come here to research. And I'd go home and work. And I did do this thing where, towards the last two or three semesters, where I would take like twenty-one hours one semester. And then the next semester I would take three hours. (Denney gasps) And that gave me the freedom to—like, I wouldn't work much during the twenty-one hour semester. I would just be like, “ahhh,” student. \n\nBut I knew if I did that, if I sacrificed and just really focused and was here every day, that I could—next semester I could just, like, show up twice a week here for an hour or two and go home and work and paint and create and create and create and create. And I was very prolific because of that. So, I really didn't have much time for organizations, you know. \n\nDENNEY: Do you remember having any Chicano professors? \n\nGONZALEZ: I don't think there were that many organizations now that I think about it back then. \n\nSCHNUR: Do you remember an organization called the Trinity Association of Chicano Students? \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow! There was such a thing? \n\nDENNEY: Yeah. \n\nGONZALEZ: No. My goodness. Okay. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I would love to learn more about that. Who was involved with that? I guess it was very quiet because I thought of myself as being connected pretty much and always looking around. But yikes. No. (laughter)I didn't know that. Wow. Who was the main person? \n\nSCHNUR: During your time period, I'm not quite sure who were the officers. The most activity of the organization was kind of in the 1970 through ‘75, really. And then it lasted four more years until 1979. But activities and events pretty much","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=2100.0,2400.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"started to die down after this wave of students had graduated. \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow. So I was here ‘76, ‘77, ‘78. So maybe I missed it. Maybe I wasn't here that much. Maybe just towards the tail end. \n\nSCHNUR: Towards the tail end, the— \n\nGONZALEZ: Maybe that's what accounts for that. \n\nSCHNUR Yeah. The organization changed their name from Chicano to Hispanic in ‘79. \n\nGONZALEZ: Ah, okay. Okay. Wow. That's amazing. Thank you for bringing that awareness to me. That's interesting. I'm going to check that out. And you have that in your archives? \n\nSCHNUR: We do. We are currently—\n\nGONZALEZ: Wow I'd like to see that. \n\nSCHNUR: Yeah, we're going to create a digital exhibit to kind of go through the timeline of the organization. \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow. Oh, wonderful. That's great. That's great. I'm so sorry. I wasn't connected to that. I would have been had I known. I think definitely would have been connected to that. So—\n\nDENNEY: Do you remember having any Chicano professors or instructors? \n\nGONZALEZ: No. Were there? \n\nDENNEY: I don’t think so. \n\nGONZALEZ: I don’t think there were. (laughter)\n\nDENNEY: I was just like to ask just in case. (laughter) \n\nGONZALEZ: But I mean, were there? I mean, I don’t think so. \n\nSCHNUR: I don't think so. \n\nABREU-TORRES: No. \n\nDENNEY: There was a—\n\nABREU-TORRES: Not during that time. \n\nGONZALEZ: They were all Anglo. \n\nSCHNUR: Yeah. Not—I mean, not in terms of Chicano identity. Also, we did have some Latin professors. There was a Latin American professor. \n\nDENNEY: There was a Cuban professor in the religion department? \n\nGONZALEZ: Oh, excuse me. \n\nDENNEY: A Cuban professor in the religion department. \n\nGONZALEZ: Ah okay, okay. No, I had no memory of that at all. I just remember all my professors were Anglo American. \n\nDENNEY: What do you think are some of the differences between the experience of a Chicano student at Trinity and a non-Chicano student? \n\nGONZALEZ: Well, when I was here, I, you know, I have to be honest and say I don't think there was much of a difference. See, I wasn't that connected to—socially here because I had my process of coming here to study, doing the work and getting home as soon as I could to get in the studio and work. And I was very prolific, which meant that I had to really be home and working in the studio a lot at every moment of my time, late into the night. And, you know, I don't have any real memory of being connected to other Chicanos here. The friends I had here, I had like two pretty decent good friends, Jeanette MacDougall, who's a painter now, and Todd Johnson, who just passed away a couple years ago. They were pretty much my friends. But, ah, sorry. \n\nDENNEY: No, it's okay. It’s okay.  \n\nGONZALEZ: I don't have much to say about that. \n\nDENNEY: It’s okay. Did you notice any change in your feelings or understanding regarding Trinity and academia from the point when you started education versus when you finished? \n\nGONZALEZ: Say that again. \n\nDENNEY: Sorry. (laughs) Did you notice any change in your feelings or understanding regarding Trinity and academia from the point at which you started your education compared to when you finished?\n\nGONZALEZ: No. It—that’s a very—to me to answer—it seems like it would be a very diffused answer to answer that. And I'm not sure I could, actually.\n\nSCHNUR: It seems like you had a very direct focus for coming here. \n\nGONZALEZ: Absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to get through and get on to business degree and get on to work. Again, I was living in twenty dollars. I was skinny as can be. And I wasn't eating very well. And I was spending—so paint's expensive. So I was like, food, paint. Food, paint. What do I do? Paint. And so I wouldn't eat much. And I just would paint, paint, paint. And , you know, it was, yeah, very, very, very stupid. Yes, I was very focused on just coming to school, getting—finishing my studies, and in between trying to do as much work as I could and grow as an artist, really develop myself as an artist. I had that fire in my belly to work as hard as I could, to do as much as I could, to learn as much as I could as an artist","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=2400.0,2700.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":", to grow as an artist, to really be able to push myself to qualify my work, which in my mind—in my experience—really means you got to work hard. You got to produce a lot. You have to be as prolific as you can be to produce a lot. And in that process of producing a lot, you learn, you grow, and maybe once in a while, you'll do something magical. You'll do something really important. And that's what happened. So, it kind of came true. \n\nSCHNUR: And I think from other former students, that we've spoken with, for them, they just kind of happened upon Trinity. It wasn't in their plan. And it seems very much like in your plan to come here. \n\nGONZALEZ: Yeah. I pretty quickly understood. Okay, I made the decision probably at SAC, first year. I want to be a fine arts coordinator because that's a way I can make some money to survive. And how do I do that? Get an art degree, get a business degree, and get out and try to find a job. So yeah. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. We've already discussed this a bit earlier. But could you summarize what Con Safo was for our listeners and then your role in the group? \n\nGONZALEZ: It's just an absolute wonderful explosion of creativity. Amongst the group members in that the belonging to a Chicano art group meant that you had somebody next to you that could validate you, could offer you critique, offer you a sense of support, offer you a sense that you're okay to be a Chicano artist, to do this work. How wonderful that was to have that sort of belonging, that sense of connection to other Chicano artists. How important that was for so many of the younger artists who came in mostly towards the end of the cycle of the group. The early cycle of the group were much more older artists who had been doing work for a long time. They came together and started exhibiting. And then as the younger artists came in, they started exhibiting. I was like, oh, I can exhibit my work like this. This is great. \n\nBecause you know, you have to remember that San Antonio today is so incredible in that probably in terms of the region, probably in terms of the United States, we have an enormous arts community here with an enormous amount of galleries and museums and support structures that were not at all existent in the ‘70s, ‘60s, ‘70s. They were just nothing. So you had to make your own space. So we exhibited in dining halls, we exhibited in conferences, we exhibited in cafeterias. We were like just like we had to, you know, it wasn't nobody was going to give us anything at that point, especially being Chicano artists. It was, you know, there was such a strong political agenda to the group. And people were very kind of like, oh, I'm not sure if this is okay. We're going to get a lot of feed—kickback from the community for joining in with this political you know, brouhaha stuff kind of. And so we made our own spaces. We fought for it. And we have these exhibits. And to have that feedback as a young artist, I remember we had an exhibition at the Assumption Seminary. And I had done this large monochromatic painting. It was just a lot of triangles with—but it was just one color monochromatic with Prussian blue, which is a really rich dark blue. And I put it up on the wall and we were still kind of installing the exhibition. And one of the priests happened to walk in and we all kind of went, oh, okay, somebody here looking around. And he was like, oh—he was looking up and","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=2700.0,3000.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"as he was walking out, he kind of spoke up loudly and he said, “You know, this painting, this is a really, really good painting. Whoever did it, bravo.” It was my painting. And I was like, oh. And for a young guy, I was like, Wow, like I'll never forget that, you know, to have that kind of validation coming through and have just a person in the community just say, Wow, this is a really terrific painting. And I can't remember looking around and it was like, they weren't that happy. But he didn't say that was my painting was good, you know. But anyway, I just—you know, we were just fighting to to show, we were fighting to express ourselves, come together as a small community of artists to push for a greater consciousness of Chicano identity, of political identity, you know, trying to raise consciousness about what it means to be who we were in the community, who we were culturally. And, you know, it's such a validating experience, I have to say. I mean, it was just really validating. It's beautiful, especially for a young guy. And there were like four or five other young artists there my age. Back then, I was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, you know, that age. And like nobody said anything about my work. Actually, a lot of people, a lot of people would show my work separately from the group. And a lot of people would come up and go, what is this? But “dot, dot, dot” you know, What is this stuff? You know, and like, Oh, it's the worst stuff I've ever seen in my life. And I'd be like, Yeah, okay. So, you know, but I quickly learned it doesn't matter, you know, what anybody says. I have to say what I say. And I knew in my heart, in my eye that this work was great. So. And it really taught me to, you know, you get—you do things, you get yourself out there and people slam you and diss you and criticize you as opposed to critique you. You still have to have your own center of gravity where you know who you are and you're secure in yourself and you regulate yourself through the world, you know, people banging on you to, you know, to put you down and stuff, it doesn't matter. I know who I am. \n\nDENNEY: So you joined Con Safo during your time at SAC? \n\nGONZALEZ: Yes. Yeah. \n\nDENNEY: Okay, thank you. And then so I know some of the exhibits for Con Safo took place on Trinity campus. What do you remember about like planning for the exhibitions? \n\nSCHNUR: There were earlier before him. So just knowing if there were any additional Con Safo exhibits on Trinity's campus during your time?\n\nGONZALEZ: No, I don't think so. No, you know, again, I was sort of a what do you call it? Aberrant. I forget the word. I was I was aberrant in the sense that I was an abstract Chicano artist. And my thing is, you know, for many of my compatriots, they thought, you know, if you're going to be a Chicano artist, you have to be a political artist. If you're a political artist and you have to do representational art, you have to to do paintings of things that people can recognize. And you have to have if you're going to have words there, they have to be clear and you have to like really be expressive. So everybody gets it. And somehow I wasn't—that wasn't my sensibility, that wasn't my eye. And, you know, since I've realized, you know, like the thing I often say is, you know, the sculpture downtown—the big red, the real tall bright red sculpture [La Antorcha de la Amistad], that's by an artist, Sebastián. And he's Mexicano. And it's abstract. And nobody says to him, you know, anything. They go, Wow, that's a great work. That's a monumental piece. Thank you very much for donating to the city. And it's a great abstract painting. Nobody says, you know, You're a Mexicano and you come from a tradition of [Diego] Rivera and [David Alfaro] Siqueiros and [José Clemente] Orozco and [Rufino] Tamayo where you—if you're Mexican, you have to—if you're Mexican artist, you have to do representational work. No, you can do you can be a Mexicano and do abstract work. And nobody says anything because it's fine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=3000.0,3300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Somehow in a political group, you have to—like Con Safo was—you have to be representational. You have to paint lettuce or you have to paint something that's political and, you know, the fist risen and all that stuff. And I just like, oh, that's not that kind of an artist. And they would kind of hassle me about it. But I'm like, you know, it's like asking a lion to become a leopard or a rhinoceros or something, and you can't. You know, I was doing what I was doing because it was my internal sensibility moving me forward. It was my internal eye moving me forward. And I wasn't going to change just because somebody was telling me I needed to do, you know, fist risen or whatever, you know, but that did I feel like that didn't make me any less of a Chicano. I was born on the border. I feel like that's almost like I—you know, I've got it. I've got whatever bonafide is that you need to be a Chicano artist. If you're born on the border, you grow up and you're going across the river to Mexico all the time and you're talking to, you know, you have friends who are in Mexicanos and you—and you grow up in that kind of milieu of border consciousness. You don't have to prove yourself to anybody in that kind of feel like that. I don’t have to prove myself. I don't have to do anything anybody tells me to do. And isn't that the case with being an artist? You don't—you have to find your own way, your own vision, your own your own way of making your work. So, I'd listen to them, you know, their criticism, but you know, you just have to trust yourself, trust your vision, trust your sensibility to guide you forward. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. \n\nSCHNUR: May I ask a follow up?\n\nGONZALEZ: Yes.\n\nSCHNUR: So how would you describe your—the messages in your art? What are the messages in your art?\n\nGONZALEZ: Probably more of a spiritual dynamic. Always. I think like I'm—like I’m—\n\nSCHNUR: Going back to the religion aspects of—\n\nGONZALEZ: And I've been studying world religion since I was thirteen, fourteen, like like really into learning all about the different religions of the world. I just had a natural curiosity. And like I was reading Carl Jung when I was fourteen—The Undivided Self—and not sure I quite understood everything, but I was like, oh, there is this other dynamic of consciousness that I could tap into the unconscious, you know. And how do I get there? How do I how do I do that dynamic? And for me, one avenue to get to a deeper state of consciousness was to work, was to create through the creative process of surrendering yourself to your work and really letting go, not having an ego kind of saying you have to do this and you have to make this kind of political art or whatever. No, you just really look, you know, you quiet the ego and you let go, and you open yourself. There's so many connections to being a creative artist, deep into one's creativity, that is so alike in being a person in a spiritual path in terms of lessening the ego. You lessen the ego when you're creative, you lessen the ego when you're approaching your, your God. And it's about really quieting the self so that you can open yourself. I have always felt, you know, you always hear these people, these artists say, “ I don't do the work. It comes through me.” Right. So what is that? That means that they're quieting themselves enough. You know, I always feel like there's this—I've talked about it, that there is this jet stream, you know, of the ancestors. There's this jet stream of the—Jung would say the collective unconscious. You know, there's this jet stream of all the artists who have ever been—created work. And for me, it's about me sticking my finger up in there and letting go and just kind of having all of that creative charge come through me. All that inspiration come through me in conjunction","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=3300.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"with just being sensate in the world and really experiencing in the world. Seeing the world. I always feel like everything I need is in front of me. I just have to look. Everything as an artist—everything—all the colors I need, they're all there in front of me. I just need to go, oh, look at that green. Wow. Look at that brown. Wow. Look at that red. That's amazing. Let me use that. Look at that shape. Look at that form. Everything is there in front of me. And part of it is that collective unconscious—that creative collective unconscious is there in front of me. All I need to do is open myself to quiet myself and open myself to God, open myself to the collective unconsciousness of the ancestors and just let them come through. And so often like the last two—fifteen years or so, I've deepened my practice of lucid dreaming where you know, before I like I'm in the studio and I'm, oh man, I've been really like, like bumped my head against this painting and I can't figure it out. (hits table) I can't figure it out. (hits table) I don't know (hits table) what to do next. And I am right before I go to sleep that night. Okay, what do I need? What is what is this painting need? Father, please help me. Let me understand what do I need. What do I need for this painting to really keep going forward? And so I go to sleep and not always, but but you know, it's a practice. You just keep practicing. And there's a time—there are moments where I go, you know, some color comes through or some form comes through. And as I practiced over these years, it's really active, like, like, like very active in terms of solve—helping me solve problems by having by practicing having this connection through the sleep, through the unconscious of the sleep to have it address these dynamics. And all I need to do is ask. All I need to do is work on it. And it has come through more often than not, especially the deeper I am into the work process, the more these answers come to me, these more these solutions come to me. And I'm just I just yeah. Now, get up in the morning and my coffee and “vrummm “go into the studio and get work. And there it is. Beautiful. Great, great solution. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm always so grateful for, you know, that spiritual path through the creativity, through the creative path, that sort of the blending into the unconscious. So, I've studied Jung a lot and he's just like, wow, amazing. I don't think he's the end all of everything. There's so much more in the world, but he's such an important—you know, you've got to learn. I felt I feel like I've had to learn everything I can from him. And I keep moving forward and there's so much more I can learn from him. He's just an amazing writer. Did I answer your question. \n\nDENNEY: Yeah. (laughter)\n\nGONZALEZ: I just go up of on all these tangents. \n\nDENNEY: No you’re good. Who were some of the women members of Con Safo at Trinity, if you knew any?\n\nGONZALEZ: Ugh, great question! \n\nDENNEY: Yeah. Well, we found—I don't know if it was at the same time period. \n\n\nSCHNUR: Yeah, it might not be but—\n\nDENNEY: We found Thelma Ortiz and also Ellen Riojas Clark, who acted kind of as a secretary. \n\nGONZALEZ: Oh, I know Ellen.\n\nDENNEY: Really?\n\nGONZALEZ: Yeah, she's she's one of the great grand dames of Chicano and Chicano culture here to this day. She's just an amazing, amazing person. I don't know the other person, though. I didn't know her.\n\nSCHNUR: Thelma Ortiz.\n\nGONZALEZ: Say that again.\n\nSCHNUR. Thelma Ortiz. And she's still is an active artist in San Antonio. \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow! Okay, I've got to contact somehow. I just, I just remember that, you know, it pains my heart that in all of the recent Chicano exhibits on Con Safo, that the women artists have not been more connected with—I know Ellen—she was not so much an artist, but she was a—she was the mother spirit. She was the support person. She was just this great energy moving us forward when she was a professor at the—well you got to—well she was doing studies were to get","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=3600.0,3900.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"to be a professor, and she's been a professor for so long now. \n\nBut I know Rosario Ezquerra, great, great painter, just amazing! She's on Facebook if you need to contact her. Rosario Ezquerra. Well, Kathy Vargas, of course, she's been at Incarnate Word, just an amazing, great, great world class photographer, just amazing artist. And I knew her back then too. Way back in the early, early eighties, I think. No, mid-seventies, mid-seventies. That's right. \n\nSCHNUR: Was she apart of Con Safo during your time?\n\nGONZALEZ: Yes. Yeah. You know, I'm struggling to remember any others—\n\nSCHNUR: Okay, got it.\n\nGONZALEZ: —but Rosario just knock out, knock out painter and abstract painter. So, she and I were like, you know, abstract buddies like, okay, we can be Chicano and abstract. Okay, great. And she got she got kind of, you know, knocked on just like I was for being an abstract artist. But she was so good. You know, her work was such a high quality work that it was, you know, it's hard for these—you know, what you saw— I'm going to start crying. What you saw back then was that there was a lot of the patriarchy coming through amongst the male members. And I hate to speak like that—speak ill. I'm not trying to speak ill. I have tremendous respect for all of them. I'm just sort of speaking historically that there was this patriarchal dynamic occurring and you have to, you know, you have to appraise people, decisions, experiences that occurred forty years ago, fifty years ago, in the context of forty or fifty years ago. \n\nSCHNUR: Absolutely.\n\nGONZALEZ:  You can't say what we know today and look back and go, oh, they were they were pretty, pretty awful people. No, they were where they were and they did the best they could. And everybody was just trying to do the best they could. And some people got benefits. Some people didn't. Some people were supported. Some people weren't. Fine. That was a long time ago. Let's just recognize it, honor it for what it was and move forward. I just remember poor Rosario and probably Kathy, too. They were just like, what are these women doing here? And all that stuff, you know. It's kind of—not terrible. It wasn't—you know, but it was there. You know, I mean, it was just, it was just the dynamics of the time. Just kind of sad, but not now, which is, you know, a tribute to how the consciousness of the community has arisen. And I'm—yes, good, you know, I'm just I'm so thrilled to see so many Chicano artists of, all of them, coming together as a community of artists and being like, nothing. We're all here. Good. There's no discrimination. There's no sense of, you know, yes or no, bad or right, right or wrong or whatever. It's a wonderful time now, compared to where we were. That's for sure. You know, times have changed. It's good. We're in a better, much better place now. So—\n\nDENNEY: Thank you. \n\nGONZALEZ: Am I taking too long? \n\nDENNEY: No, no, no, you're good. You spoke about this a little bit in terms of like kind of your performance art. But do you think attending Trinity influenced your art in any way? \n\nGONZALEZ: Well, I had those opportunities to do the performance pieces here. I had those experiences at SAC where I would do performance art pieces and—wow, people would like come up to me and say, “Are you okay? Do I need to call somebody?” You know, “What's wrong with you? Why are you doing this strange thing?” (clears throat)","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=3900.0,4200.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"For me, it was kind of like a badge of honor that I was pushing the notion of what performance art was. You know, if I was in New York City, it would be a different experience. I was at SAC. (laughter) So it was like, you know, what is wrong with this guy, this poor guy? (You know, let's call somebody. Let's call the wagon. (laughter) But what was the question? I tried to be more responsive. \n\nDENNEY: Did attending school at Trinity influence your art in any way? \n\nGONZALEZ: Yes, because, you know, I have to honor Professor Tiemann. What an amazing artist, very expansive artist, very risk-taking artist. I had always been into risk taking, pushing, mixing, fusing, just really, you know, turning things around, counter pointing, making things. You know, to me, the life of art exists when you change things up, even if it's contrary to who you are, where you were your work is, where your sensibility is. How do you move your sensibility forward? You move it forward through challenging it, not having a specificity towards your sensibility and saying, well, this is my sensibility, and this is who I am. This is where I'm going to stand—stay that way. And I'm threatened if I have to change it. No. What if you were like really into—your path is that one of really changing things all the time, all the time. So that's your specificity. I'm changing things all the time. I'm really looking for a way to grow as an artist. \n\nWhen I was a curator, I would see artists who I knew did the same painting for thirty years. Maybe a little change here, a little change there. And I'd be like, Oh my God, this isn't right. Something's wrong here. They're like, they're like just like this is as far as they got in terms of their sensibility. No. I've got to really like change. And so that's been my specificity. My main goal in life is to really push my work really—and if you look at my website, you'll see it's a lot of different stuff. And I want to just keep doing a lot of different stuff. \n\nAnd lately, what I've been doing is a lot of serial work where you sort of—like I have a series called Temazcal. And so, I'm really like sort of using the same form, but I'm really—I'm really stretching out. No work is the same. It's sort of the same structure, but I'm not repeating the same structure. Every painting has a different thing. And it's that I want to explore to the very nth of the dynamic of the visual of what my sensibility could provide in terms of challenging that form. Let me see what I can do color wise in terms of form and see what comes out. So even if I work serially, I really try to change things as much as possible. So, I had a really—you know, with Professor Tiemann, he was like that. He was always changing things. He was always pushing me to do different things. And I think he kind of knew I was different, and I was (sighs) good. And so he kind of let me alone a lot of times and let me kind of do my thing and he would just respond to the work that I would bring in the work, the work I would do in class and just kind of—like I had like ugh six, five, six. I don't remember. What do you call those classes where free study?\n\nDENNEY: Independent study? \n\nGONZALEZ: Independent study. \n\nDENNEY: Yeah.\n\nGONZALEZ: I had a lot of independent study. (laughter) I like—you know, and back then you could—Trinity was very open. You could have like half—not half independent studies, but you could have like five or six courses that were all independent study. I don't know if that's the way it is here now. It's like maybe one or two, right?\n\nABREU-TORRES: Not that much. \n\nSCHNUR: Not that much. But— (laughter)\n\nGONZALEZ: No that much. (laughter)\n\nABREU TORRES: Can I follow up on what you were saying? Do you think that being a Chicano in the—working in abstract and most—which is mostly an Anglo approach to art—being a Chicano in that space, gave you that motivation to be so proliferate?\n\nGONZALEZ:  So, I would firstly, if I may, counter your question, that if you look at the","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=4200.0,4500.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"body of work throughout Mesoamerica, there's a lot of abstract work, a lot. And the more I study Mesoamerican work, especially work in Mexico, there's a lot of abstract design work, a lot of abstract work. And so, I would say that there has always been abstract work. \n\nWhat I would say is that in our culture, so many of the artists migrate towards doing representational work because it's easy to understand. It's easy to see. It's easy to make. And it's sellable. For me, as I have grown in my studies of the art of Mesoamerica, I'm like, wow, this is—there's so much great, great abstract work. That's for me. That's me. That's where I'm at. I'm wanting to learn more about that. And one of the problems with all that is that when the invasion of Anglo-European settlers came through, they shut down the culture. They destroyed the libraries. They destroyed so many of the codexes. They destroyed so many of the sculptures, the images, because in their mind, they wanted to have a complete turnover of consciousness, from the indigenous population, into their consciousness so that they could shut down any resistance. To me, as an artist, resistance is really important. It's critical almost. If you are not—if you don't experience resistance as an artist to create and challenge, then you're almost like that artist who does the same painting for thirty years. You're not really doing anything. You did it once and you're kind of you know, you're doing, you know, lettuce and grapes and barbed wire and you're doing it the same thing. Ugh you know. So, as I've as I've grown and researched, and I've come here to do a lot of that research because there are a lot of great books here on Mesoamerican arts that you can't find anywhere else, you see that their abstract work is of our ancestors. And I would love—I mean, I've always had these beautiful moments of meditation of going and like at Bonampak, the great vaulted room there where they have the great mural all over the ceiling and the walls there. And in my meditation, I would go and I sit down—callado—very quiet and just like watch them paint. Because there's been such a great loss. My question is—to myself— my question is, how do I know them? How do I know what they knew? How do I learn what they've learned? And, you know, I've been doing these series of work on the Sunstone. Wow! That's like the one of the most amazing sculptures in the world. And, you know, most of the art world, they're like meh, you know, it's archaeological. It's no big deal. No, that thing is like unbelievable as I've deepened my study and as I've done paintings on the Aztec Sunstone—influenced by the Aztec Sunstone. I'm like, wow, who was this artist? Who was these artists that made this thing? Uh, you know? And so I would go and I'd sit there and I kind of visualized in my meditation there, they're like figuring it out and they're drawing it out. How did they make this thing? And trying to see and maybe ask them a question, ask them, you know, what's where did this come from? How did you figure this out? And everything is so perfect. It is such a perfect image. They didn't have the tools of Michelangelo, [Leonardo] Da Vinci, you know, they had what tools did they have to make this perfect thing? It was perfect. If you read—you know, you don't, I didn't see it until I started really studying it. How did they do this? Unbelievable.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=4500.0,4800.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"The perfection in it is just down to the millimeter, you know, it's like unbelievable. I—the only way—you know, one of the great important dynamics in my life is to find some way back. The codexes are lost. The paintings are lost except at some places like Bonampak. How do I find my way back? How do I find my way back to knowing their work, knowing how they did the work? And we have all these great research studies, these great books, these great authors writing, you know, for centuries now, writing about Da Vinci and [Gian Lorenzo] Bernini, all these great, great artists and, you know, all these great painters in France and in England and—nothing—very, very, very, very little in Mexico. Very, very little in all throughout Mesoamerica. How do I start knowing that? It's lost. Like right now I'm feeling, I want to cry because it's lost. (hits table) It's lost. How do I get back there? How do I learn what they knew? I don't have that opportunity. Say I was born in France, I was born in Italy, in Florence. Wow, I would feel like, oh man, you know, I know this. I can find out easily. I can go read any normal book. (inaudible) Not me. (hits table) As an artist today, not me. (hits table) It's gone. And how do I get back? How do I find my way back to, (hits table) you know, the deities that were lost? What a—you know, to me it's like one of the greatest tragedies in the world, in the history of the world, what has happened to the indigenous population in the Americas. (emotional pause) And it has, unfortunately—it has twisted the consciousness of the indigenous people here. It has twisted our consciousness. It has twisted my consciousness because I have to go, okay, yeah, that's part of me, my ancestors, but no, I have this, you know, acculturated Anglo-European consciousness, and but here I am in Texas and here I was in the border and I have this—as a Mexican American, as a Chicano, I have this big swirl of consciousness of all these different influences. If you're Italian, it's one. You know. You can trace your family back probably centuries. You can, you know, maybe see the history and know that it's your history. You know that is your identity. That is your historical identity. That is your historical identity. I don't have the, I don't have, (hits table) so what do I do? What is left to me but to fight my way back?  To find my way back to some sense of understanding of what those artists—if they were called artists, I don't even know if they were called artists. Maybe they were something else. Yeah, I'm sorry. (hits table) \n\nIt's painful. It's really, really, you know, the more I go, the more I touch deeper and deeper into that history, and I realize the struggle I have as an artist, the more I realize how much pain is in me, in my collective unconscious, all the way back. And how do I heal that pain? How is that possible that I could heal the pain of centuries, the pain of my ancestors? You know, I look back at my ancestors two generations back. What must they have gone through? Wow! Twenty million killed during the Mexican Revolution. Wow! What was that like?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=4800.0,5100.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"What—you know, from my grandparents, both sides, they had to flee. And they lived in little shacks from the stories, you know. What pain, suffering. And then how did that affect my parents? How did that affect me? How does it affect my children? (gasps) And the only answer ahead of—before me and ahead of me is to become as conscious as possible, to be as awake as possible, to be able to go back and open myself to that history. And try to connect, somehow, to civilizations—you know, the Olmec, the Maya, the Aztec, the Mexica, the Toltecs—somehow the Coahuiltecans—to go back and connect somehow. How? I don't know. But it only, you have to start trying to connect. Best you can. You just, as an artist, I have to go back and try to connect as best I can. And, you know, the pain sometimes. When I realized that the loss of religion, (gasps) my heart hurt. Wow. (releases breath) That's like, how do you, how are you forced to lose your, your connection to your deities? Wow. What pain that must have been for my ancestors. What pain, you know? (sniffles) And I just really felt that and I still feel it to this day. I'm sorry, I'm being so emotional. But I feel it, and I want to be, like I want to say how, you know, in order to connect, (taps chest) you have to have some sense of, emotional connection to that loss. (sniffles) Because, you know, either it's love or it's loss. For us, as Chicanos, we don't know—we're not conscious of it. But for us as Chicanos, the implicit, process is to connect with that pain, to connect with the loss. And we may not even think about it. There's so many—I think, I don't know who else would even think what I'm thinking right now. I've spent twenty-five years studying trauma studies. And so much of the developmental trauma is around loss—separation and loss. And so many people suffer because of separation and loss. And so many people don't even know what the effects of that separation and loss is on their consciousness. And so, I sort of extrapolated out, well, what about, not just in terms of a family dynamic, but what about in terms of the, the ancient thousands of years of building up cultures in the Americas, only to be (claps) shut down. And then what? Oh, just this wrenching—I see it as this wrenching consciousness in the populations of the Americas, you know, by threat of death, by threat of loss, like real loss, like getting killed. If you don't wrangle, tighten, change your way of thinking, your identity and all that. And yet here we are. As Chicanos, we're here and we're moving forward the best we can. And it's just me where I'm at, where, you know, after all my studies with trauma, I'm going, Oh, this is like really big. And like not a lot of people really are comprehending the magnitude of the civilizational trauma that is there. But not even—people are not even aware of it, nor I fear will be aware of it. And as artists, that's our job.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=5100.0,5400.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"To help people be aware of it. It's my job. \n\n\nABREU-TORRES: Thank you. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you.\n\nGONZALEZ: I'm sorry. \n\nDENNEY: No, no.\n\nGONZALEZ: (hits table) I went off on a rant. \n\nDENNEY: Don’t apologize. Um—\n\nSCHNUR: Do we need a break?\n\nGONZALEZ: No, let's do it. (laughs) (sniffles) I'm fine. \n\nDENNEY: Why do you think—or do you know why so many members of the Con Safo art collective went on to study at the University of Michigan? \n\nGONZALEZ: Oh, wow! That's a great, great question. Great historical question. I think there—from what I remember, there, there were programs instilled in the University of Michigan in support of Chicano artists. And there were artists here who said, “Yeah, let's go.” You know, and I kind of remember a lot of the artists—excuse me, a lot of the artists went, a lot—let me see, four? Maybe three or four, five? They went, but you know, Michigan is like a much more, much more of a cultural desert for Chicanos. But, you know, bravo to the University of Michigan, I guess, was it? That said, you know, we need to support them and have them come up and, and let's, let's figure out a way to, to, to connect with them and support them. Bravo. That's wonderful. That's really wonderful. I don't remember too much more than that. I'm sorry. \n\nDENNEY: No, you’re good. Thank you. I know you studied at a master's program for business management, but for the first couple of years after graduating from Trinity, could you tell me like what it was like or what you're doing? \n\nGONZALEZ: From here, I went right over to the, in Incarnate Word College, as it was known then. Now it's the University of Incarnate Word. And, you know, yeah, man, like I'm, I'm, you know, my whole brain all my life was just creative. And talk about wrenching. (laughter) I'm like, you know, accounting—three, accounting—three courses of accounting, finance, and business management. And so, my major was in management. And I thought management, fine arts, I mean, being an arts administrator, management would be good. It was good. It was a good—I think. And it was a wonderful thing because I really like had to force my reasoning brain to really gear up. And I did. And it really helped me. It's helped me all my life to have that early experience of, you know, working numbers, working spreadsheets and working, you know, as an arts coordinator, I had to know all that stuff. And I did. And it was like, great, you know, I was able to progress very well with it. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. And what was it like to be a curator for San Antonio's Carver Cultural Center? \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow! What a great—so I curated a lot. I was under the mentorship and of the great arts administrator, Ms. Jo Long. Unbelievable. What a tremendous gift that was. I learned so much. She pushed me hard. I had to work harder than I've ever worked before, which meant twenty-four exhibits a year. \n\nABREU-TORRES: Oh, wow.\n\nGONZALEZ: And I had to, to, to talk to artists, deal with artists. I had to—you know, first year I was there, you know, we had a lot of school outreach program students coming through. And she said, “You talk about the work now. It's your time. Get up there and talk and give a tour.” And I'm like—the first year I was like, (gasps) whoa! I'm like, oh, well, this is a big painting. I'm like, oh, and it's red. And you know, I don't know. And at the end of the year, I was so embarrassed. You finally got to me. Finally, after a year, I was like, oh, this is not going to stop. And I want to be here forever. So not ever but—so one day I just, you know, I got to figure this out. How do I do this? And I developed a system where I could talk about any work, any, any time and, and talk about it for an hour. And I did, I figured it out. You know, I kind of had it—got a system together and I started doing it and it was great. And that really helped me","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=5400.0,5700.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"to this day where I can approach any work, including my own and go honestly, you know, what's, what's happening here? What are the decisions I've made unconsciously? What am I doing here? What's, how do I do this differently? And so, it was a wonderful structural process to comprehend and be able to verbalize and to ask questions and to engage the kids, engage the adults that would come. And it just changed everything. I dealt with—over my eleven years there, I dealt with about over maybe about eleven hundred artists, a lot, a lot of artists. So, I learned a lot. \n\nMy biggest lesson as a curator is to be kind. You have to be kind to these artists. There are a lot of artists who are like professionals and they're like, you know, really gung ho and you know, they don't care about kindness. (laughter) They want to like show and, “Here's my resume, and here's this, a book on me,” and here's this and you know, but there—I encountered so many artists who are so fragile, you know, that they so identified with their work that if anybody looked at it wrong, they would just like, oh, it would just fold away and be hurt. And I realized that pretty quickly and I went, no, okay, you have to really be—I don't know about loving, but pretty much pretty darn close to loving and supporting artists as a curator. You have to be really careful what you say. So therefore, I never really said much to the artists. Other—you know, I can count maybe one or two times during my eleven years when artists would ask me, “Robert, what do you think I could do better?” I go, “Well, you could varnish a painting. You could varnish your work. That would be really nice.” And they started doing it. My work was so much better, and I was like, yay, great. But you have to be really careful as a curator what you say. You have to be just totally supportive. Like if they want to stay overnight to be in the exhibit while they're installing it, you know, yeah, you gotta be there. You can't say, no, I gotta go home. No, you gotta be there and support them. You gotta, you know, love them. And, you know, I got plenty of very angry, critical, rough, tough artists chewing me out all the time. And my—I would go sit down with my wonderful director, the wisest woman I've ever known, Ms. Jo Long, and she would say, “Yeah, no, don't respond. Just be with them.” And I would like, yeah, but I wanna say something. (laughter) I wanna respond to them. “No, we don't respond. We listen.” And so, as a curator, you have to listen. You have to support, you have to love, you have to be kind and really help them through their process. Because as artists—so many artist—if you can realize, if you can imagine being an artist, a painter or a sculptor or whatever, a photographer, you're alone twenty-four seven. You're alone with your work. You kind of know what's going on. But when you put your work out there, it's like you're putting your bare heart (hits table) up on the wall for them. And there are a lot of artists who've been doing it for a long time. It's not about that. It's their work. They just, you know, here's my work. But so many artists that I—especially local artists who hadn't shown much, who hadn't done much, they make something and it's so precious to them. You have to go, “yes, that is precious. Let me help you,” you know, be very accurate about, let's support this piece up on the wall here. And that works, just works out so much better. You know, cause, you know, in the first year I was there, (sighs) I hurt—I unconsciously didn't know what I was doing. I was still learning. And I would say things where I would hurt people by saying things or doing things. And I was like, oh, that's not working. That's not right. I have to be better. And being better meant being kind. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. As we have looked back at your time as a student at Trinity in the mid to late 1970s, are you able to reflect and summarize your experience?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=5700.0,6000.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eGONZALEZ:\u003c/strong\u003e Uh, It's wonderful. Just wonderful. Just amazing. Everybody would—here, everybody was just so powerful. So positive. The administration, everybody in the administration would go out of their way to help me, talk to me. The professors were all wonderful. You know, we'd have one-on-one meetings with the professor, and I—it would just be wonderful. I really don't have one bad memory here. I think I tried to take a COBOL [Common Business Oriented Language] class in programming one time. And that might be—that might have been like, Oh my God, what am I doing here? \n\nSCHNUR Like a computer program?\n\nGONZALEZ: It was like, you know, DOS. \n\nSCHNUR: Uh huh. (laughs) Okay.\n\nGONZALEZ: Remember DOS? \n\nABREU-TORRES: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. (laughs)\n\nGONZALEZ: So DOS—COBOL was after DOS. And that shows how old I am. This was, yeah, seventies, late seventies. And I was like, whoa! I hadn't been through a business school yet. So, I was like, I'm an abstract thinker, but I'm not that much of an abstract thinker. (laughter) So that was probably maybe the—and it wasn't—it was anything. I just like lasted two weeks, and I was like, oh, I can't do this. This is beyond my intelligence ratio here. So—\n\nDENNEY: Do you have any advice for current Chicano students at Trinity? \n\nGONZALEZ: Oh yeah. Mixtura! (hits table) Fusion, (hits table) fusion, (hits table) mix everything, (hits table) fuse (hits table) everything. Counterpoint. Challenge your own specificities. That's the hardest thing I think is to challenge your own specificities. You—you're young, you're a young artist. You're just starting out. You're creating what you're creating. And man, for some artists, wow, that's like, hard. I mean, today what I'm doing in the studio, it's hard. It's the hardest—it's some of the hardest work I've ever done because I'm like, oh man—you know, it's a—you would think that it would be like, oh, let me just tiptoe into the studio and just work and work, work and then leave. No, it's like, oh, what am I going to do? Oh my God, this is like so hard to do something new all the time. Yes. The harder it is, the more you push yourself to go towards hard things—yeah, it's hard. It may hurt. It may be scary. It may be tough. Push, mix, fuse, turn things upside down. Turn—you know, tear it apart, put it back together. Counterpoint. Just push yourself forward as best you can in any way you can. Just push, push, push, push, push. And I can pretty much guarantee that if you do that, you'll get further quicker than if you just really rest into your specificities of who you are and your identity. No, push. Develop your sensibility as much as possible. See everything you can. Go to every museum you can around the world. Learn as much as you can about artists and their lives. Do the work. Work hard. Do as much as you can to teach yourself. For the most part, if you're learning from somebody, and that's what you're doing, that's not enough. You have to push yourself to be your own teacher, to be the one who pushes you forward, the one who challenges you. And then you can really start doing what's important, which is being original, finding your own style and finding a place of work that's yours. And then you let that go. So, you work for years and years, decades and decades on a style and then you let it go. And so, you're not doing fifty years of work and it's your style, and everybody knows your style and that's it. Uh, no. And so many of the richest artists in the world are trapped. And, you know, they're making millions of dollars, but they can't do anything different. If they","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=6000.0,6300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719/transcript/72071/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"do something different, the art world spits them out. And they're—what's the word, where, they're ostracized because, hey, you did this piece in 1979 and we really loved it and that's your style and we want more of those. Why don't you do more of those? Well, you can make millions doing more of those. And like there's this artist, Larry Poons, he—that's his story. He said, no, “I'm willing to go around and grow. I want to do different work.” And then the richest painter in the world, Gerhard Richter, he's like doing the same painting over and over and over again, but he's making like, you know, a million dollars painting. Uh, man, you know, it’s like, how do you figure that out in your head? And for me, I have freedom. I have freedom to do—to move forward as I move forward. I may be still a bit poor. I'm happy. My soul is so at peace and so happy because I'm just really exploring my—the spirit within me into my work. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. And then before we end, is there anything else you would like to share with us? \n\nGONZALEZ: Wow, I'm so grateful to all of you. My heart is so happy. My heart is so at peace that I have this opportunity. Thank you. \n\nDENNEY: Of course. \n\nGONZALEZ: Thank you for this. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. \n\nGONZALEZ: Its beautiful. I'm sorry. \n\nDENNEY: No, it’s okay.\n\nGONZALEZ: I have the vapors. (laughter) (unintelligible) Thanks.\n\n[END OF RECORDING]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/118442/file/254719#t=6300.0,6406.0"}]}]}]}