Las Latinas........by Janet Martinez

Fifteen minutes south of Aromas, San Juan Batista is nestled in the beautiful rolling hills of the Central Coast of California. The village is famous for it’s intact Mission and Museum, chickens wandering the streets and for it’s unique shops, restaurants and galleries. The Galeria Tonantzin is celebrating its 20th exhibit of Las Latinas Janet Martinez…….We will be having a Collective Retrospective Exhibition June 1 - July 29, 2012. Galeria Tonantzin celebrates 20 years of exhibiting women's contemporary art. 115 - 3rd St. San Juan Bautista, CA 831-623-2783 Hours: 12 - 5pm Fri, Sat, Sun The 20th exhibit of "Las Latinas" will take place during the month of May featuring women artists of Latina heritage including gallery co-founder Carmen Leon, long time exhibitor Pat Zuniga, and well known muralist Patricia Rodriquez. Other artists include Alejandra Oseguera and Helene C’de Baca.  Patricia Rodríguez, is a muralist and printmaker. She also creates box constructions with mixed media. Ms. Rodriguez co-founded the “Mujeres Muralistas”, a breakthrough group of Latina artists who painted 18 murals in San Francisco. She is the first Chicana artist to create a course on Chicano Art History, and a reader for the course at UC Berkeley, 1977. A native of Texas, she has resided in San Francisco Bay Area since 1958. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, BFA, and from Sacramento State University, MA. she has taught printmaking, mural painting, in many of the colleges both locally in the Bay Areaand at CSU, Monterey Bay and at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at UNM Los Alamos College, New Mexico, from 1990-1996. She recently completed a ten-year career as gallery curator for Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, in San Francisco. Her latest curatorial work was for Dia de los Muertos exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California, 2011. Her exhibitions; The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Mexican Fine Arts Museum, Chicago, Ill. White Gallery, UCLA, Daniel Saxon Gallery, Los Angeles, De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA., and The Triton Museum, Santa Clara, Ca. The reception for the artists will be held on Saturday, May 12 from 5 - 7 pm. At 6 pm during the reception Patricia Rodriguez will lecture on "The Chicana/Latina Art Movement - Then and Now" offering her insight from her early work with the "Mujeres Muralistas" to her recent curatorial experience at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, in San Francisco and the Oakland Museum of California.    Recuerdos de Mi Casa by Patricia Rodriguez  Janet Martinez and Jennifer Colby, Trustees/Directors Galeria Tonantzin, Center for Art and Humanities 115 Third Street, San Juan Bautista, CA 831-623-ARTE (2783)