Red Lodge Clay Center, Short-Term Resident (ASPN) 2019, Long-Term Resident 2019-2021, Short-Term Resident 2022
Born in a Mexican-American family, Jon is entertained by the absurd nature of the American-Dream. Jon completed his BFA at the University of Montana with a minor in Art History, and worked as a studio assistant for Julia Galloway, Casey Zablocki, and Anton Alvarez. Jon has attended Red Lodge Clay Center’s ASPN program, an Artist in Residency at Medalta, and is currently a Long-Term Resident at Red Lodge Clay Center. Jon’s work pays homage to the craftspeople and merging customs of the Americas through aggrandizing objects and ornamentation.
This work represents a personal narrative as a second-generation Chicano, and is an homage to the elaborate and diverse Latin American Craft-traditions before and after colonization.
My studio practice is explained as both a question and a statement; a curiosity of my ethnic identity and a pride in my Mexican-American heritage. Decorative patterning and bright colors are sourced from Mestizo prints of colonial Latin-America to represent the convergence of ethnic and cultural ideas that make up the Americas. This history is paired with personal symbolism that subverts traditional expectations of Latinx communities.
I aim to explore the fragile boundaries of my blurred personal identity within the diverse multi-ethnic background of the Americas.