A Las Vegas artist whose work examines the Chicano identity, Brian Martinez is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon, joining you from Nuwu Art Gallery in Las Vegas, where "Cosmic Chicano" is now on view through November 22.

The artist describes this exhibition as an "exploration of Mexican-American identity through the lens of the mythical, the ancestral, and the now."

Born in Anaheim, California, his family moved to Las Vegas when he was six years old, and his environment and his life experiences are what inspire a lot of his work.

Brian Martinez, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you.

Yeah, I'm excited.

-And thank you for joining us here, because I listened to a podcast you recently did from the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art; and in it, you said you don't really like looking at your work after you've done it.

-Yeah.

It's a, you know, when you make something you-- I've been living with these pieces for so long that it's sort of, I've been thinking about them, looking at them for so long.

Once you release them into the world, it's almost like they have their own life.

And I start to get involved back into the my paintings that I have.

I start to work on more paintings.

And so, yeah, sometimes it's hard.

But these have been, these have been like good friends that I've made.

-Well, and give me an idea of how long ago you did start working on all of these.

-So approximately about three years.

I think the oldest piece in here was about 2022.

I had set a goal for myself to have an exhibition every year until I turned 30.

That was me as a naive 19 year old.

But then at 26, I reassessed.

And then I was like, let me think more quality than quantity.

So I really stepped back, thought more about what my voice, what I want my voice to be in my community.

And yeah, "Cosmic Chicano."

-Not all artists have that capability, though, because you got to make money.

Your case, I think, is sort of unique in that, have you ever had another job outside of art?

-Yeah, I've worked.

I've worked a lot of jobs, yeah.

Even now I'm an adjunct professor at UNLV.

With my degree, I also got a degree in printmaking, so I work at a screen printing shop called Kids in the Attic.

So yeah, I'm doing a lot.

-Okay.

Take me back to-- Well, at 19, you had already been working with Joseph Watson, a local artist, for how long at that point, and what was his influence on you?

-Yeah.

So at 16, I started working with Joseph Watson through the P.A.L.

program, a partnership at Las Vegas, at Las Vegas High School.

On Wednesdays, instead of going to school, we'd go to an internship based on whatever it is that we wanted to pursue.

Ended up at an art gallery at the Arts Factory, and, yeah, Joseph was able to take me under his wing.

And I sort of started learning the art business, how to capture people through art, how to inspire.

And, yeah, that was at 16.

I'm 29 now.

-Wow!

And then he allowed you to have your first exhibition there?

-Yes, yeah.

So he, he just, he imparted so much experience and also let me kind of let my creativity roam.

And so, yeah, he provided the space.

I just created the work.

And yeah, from when I was 20, it just kept going, yeah.

-I remember from that podcast you talking about that first exhibition.

You remember your family and friends being there, but you also mentioned at another point that you're not sure your own parents have ever been to an art museum themselves.

-Yeah.

It was definitely, I wasn't exposed to art through that kind of almost avenue.

And so, yeah, I still, I still want to take them to an art museum.

-They still haven't gone?

-They still haven't been to one.

-What do they think of your work now?

-I think they like my work.

My mom-- I mean, they've also been seeing it since I was little.

My dad constantly wants to see me paint a horse in my work.

That's like, his main critique.

He's like, You should do a horse.

[laughter] That's like one of the, one of the things that, it's on my checklist.

That's like, they kind of have that avenue.

They've seen it since the beginning.

My mom was a seamstress, and my dad works in a kitchen.

He's a Saucier.

So I get the creativity from them.

They're very creative people, problem solvers, and so I think art is just problem solving, yeah.

-I've never heard it described like that.

-Yeah.

-How could you explain that?

-Yeah.

I mean, you have an idea.

I think an idea sort of arises as, like, this almost problem, in a sense, a good problem.

You get an idea, and then it's like, how do I make this come to life?

And that starts this wheel of, how do you make something come to life, and how does something manifest?

And so I think that's where the problem solving is just pushing forward, figuring out how to make something come to life.

And when it's a body of work, it's a lot harder.

It's a lot harder.

So it's almost like three years or two years of just living life and sort of letting things flow out, ideas and sketchbooks, and then one year of like execution--actually put paintbrush to canvas, cutouts, murals--and actually doing the work.

So yeah, it's quite a while.

-Graffiti was your first exposure to art.

What do you remember seeing?

What stood out to you?

-So before that, it was wanting to be a writer.

And so I already had a little bit of creativity.

And then in 6th grade, I think it was just colors and seeing this expression.

I was expressing myself through words, but I hadn't been exposed to a visual expression.

And so I think seeing visual expression.

Colors, color is like my favorite thing.

So color is one of those things that grasps me.

I'm like, what is going on?

Why is this so interesting?

And it's sort of the work that we're exposed to.

Like I said, instead of seeing something in art museums, that was how I was exposed to artwork.

-And that was here in Las Vegas?

-Yeah, here in Las Vegas, yeah.

-What do you remember thinking about it?

Did you know that it was even illegal?

-Yeah, I don't think I had a concept of any of that.

You know what I mean?

I think I don't know if I-- It was just I was in middle school.

I was pretty young.

I just knew that people were writing their names in interesting ways.

And then, so then that problem is really, you know, the alphabet.

So you write a name, how can you distort this in a way that's interesting?

In a weird way, graffiti has, like, quality standards that are upheld.

And then anything that was outside of the art part I wasn't interested in.

And so, yeah, that was that-- Yeah, I had no idea it was illegal or what that meant.

-But you knew that some were a lot better than others?

-Yeah.

-I also heard that your parents put you into boxing.

And why did they do that?

-I'm an only child, and so I always joke and tell people that they're like, Somebody's got to beat him up.

Like, He doesn't have siblings to do it for him.

But, yeah, pretty young.

I also did karate before that, so they had me in a lot of martial arts.

But with boxing, it sort of came natural.

I remember my first few times in a boxing gym.

They were like, Oh, he has, like, he has Mexican hands.

Like, He just has this natural kind of flow.

-How old were you?

-I want to say 12 or 13, yeah.

And so we were training first with one of my dad's friends and then, after that, at Johnny Tocco's Gym.

-Wow!

-And it was just, I loved it from the start.

And, yeah, it sort of has also been something that is still in my work.

With this body of work, I think I went more the lucha libre route, but I think a lot of the boxing still.

-Yes, I noticed a lot of boxing within the work here.

There's one in particular that I'm looking at that's behind the camera.

That has the luchador mask, but it also has like, Julio Cesar Chavez on the chin.

-Yes.

-That's so cool.

The mask, when did you get into wrestling?

Was that as a child as well?

-The mask has been a little bit more of a representation of the lens I'm using to kind of analyze my culture, almost like this mask I put on in the world to better understand my position in the world.

It's almost like a source of like learning and research through this icon.

-Well, and then when I came to the opening ceremony here, you were actually wearing a mask.

-Yeah.

-Why did you choose to do that?

-So one of the first times that I wanted to wear a mask, I bought a really expensive luchador mask.

And I'm like, when am I gonna wear this?

But I had a solo exhibition coming up, and so I pondered it, and I think I didn't do it.

But then when I didn't do it, I was like, I have to do it for the next one.

So I had another show in, like, 2021, and I wore the mask.

And I just went, let's just do it.

And it was really cool.

It almost was like I blended into my artwork.

I kind of lost more of the identity of just myself, and I blended into my artwork in an interesting way.

And I was like, yeah, this is-- I'm gonna do this every time now, at least for solos.

-Yeah.

And what is the reaction?

And is it, I don't know, I was thinking maybe social anxiety.

But I have no idea.

-I'm a little bit-- I'm pretty introverted for the most part.

I tend to get a little extroverted when it comes to talking about art.

Like if-- But I think with the, with the mask, it does help just to be a little more open.

It's more fun.

Like people sort of-- I don't know, it's not as serious as an art opening and everything.

It's just we're having fun.

We're enjoying art.

-When you talk about the duality of the mask, will you explain that.

-It's sort of-- I feel like duality doesn't fit so much with the mask.

With duality, I was thinking more of a lot of the concepts I was kind of going, like the "Laugh now, cry later," and things like that.

With the mask, it's more, it's more specific to the lens I put on to research and learn about my culture, because that's where "Cosmic Chicano" comes in.

I graduated from UNLV in 2021, and then I was doing more skill-based artwork and really kind of trying to be a better painter and with doing the occasional painting where I kind of focused on my culture.

But when I switched, I was-- When I kind of graduated and was finding my voice, I'm like, no, I want to represent my culture through my artwork, through my skill.

And then that's where the mask comes in.

It's almost like I use the mask as this idea of like learning, because, as I was doing all these paintings, I'm learning about more about my culture.

I want to, I want to kind of dust off some of the ignorance that I might have of like, how well do I know Mexican-American culture?

How well do I know Mexican history?

How well do I know American history?

What middle ground does that have?

What are the histories among both countries?

Or how have these two countries affected history of the world in general?

That's sort of where I'm at now in the studio, where it's like I'm continuing all the learning I did with this exhibition and moving forward and learning more.

-Last question: The cosmic aspect, what is that?

-I think for me, the cosmic aspect almost seems the more American aspect, because I'm really interested in psychedelic thought and sort of thoughts and ideas that come out of, like, the '60s and these eras where like these psychedelic eras, these psychedelic booms, that I sort of have been influenced by and a lot of books--people like Carl Jung, Stanislav Grof--where when I started diving into them, you also find aspects of, you know, like Mesoamerican cultures had their own cosmology, had everything.

So it's been a way to, like, blend in those ideas with my culture, where sometimes I couldn't find how to blend them.

And so with this exhibition, my goal was to, how do I blend both parts of these?

Like this kind of psychedelic ideas that arose in the, you know, in history in America, with also cultural stuff.

And I was able to find a lot of middle ground and create these paintings that combine them.

-"Cosmic Chicano" is the result.

Brian Martinez, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Yes.

Thank you so much for having me.