For his latest solo exhibition, Miami painter Michael Vasquez mined his past for memories of the people who provided the support, encouragement and acceptance that helped him through his teen years in St. Petersburg. They were mentors, and like extended family. They were gang members.
Vasquez says he grew up in St. Petersburg where he went searching for friends as a youth and quickly became affiliated with gang members who filled a gaping void left by the loss of any male figure in his life.
The 26-year-old artist says that “How the Land Lies,” his upcoming show at Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, is “an exploration of the state of things in the area where I grew up in St. Petersburg and the allure of the gang with a particular interest in ideas of belonging and extended family.”
His show will include “Don’t Tell Anyone,” a painting of a rat skeleton strung up in a garage as a warning not to “rat,” and “Acceptance,” where it seems the viewer is being handed a red bandanna, and is on the verge of being accepted. Vasquez cites masculine symbols in the background of the latter work — a friend on a bench in the backyard, a weight bar and a lawnmower – that hint at the weight of this gesture and all that accompanies the red bandanna.
Recently, Vasquez answered 10 questions about his upcoming show.
So the gang members were your extended family?
Yeah, because I grew up as an only child of a single-parent mother. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters and I never really had a sense of family, so when I came of age and was venturing out into the neighborhood and making my own friends for the first time in my life outside of school, I would hold these relationships up rather highly. I really valued them because I didn’t really have anybody else in my life.
And they provided encouragement, support, and acceptance?
Exactly, people I looked up to who looked out for me.
Do you have any regrets about your affiliation with them?
No, I don’t have any regrets. I have friends who have made very careless mistakes in their lives and I was fortunate enough to learn from that and not have to make them on my own. … Some of my friends were sent to juvenile prison for a couple of years … but in actuality if they’re good people, which some of them are, they try to teach me from their own experience.
Do you hope your work helps overcomes stereotypes about gangs?
Well, the thing about wanting for people to overcome stereotypes that is tricky is that, like I said, the people I grew up with and that I paint, I know very well, and the ones that I paint, they’re good people who were important and influential in my life, and had a positive impact. But when you’re dealing with kids with issues growing up, it’s easy to be influenced and become a part of this and involved with a gang, but just because somebody becomes involved or makes a couple of mistakes doesn’t mean that they’re a terrible person, like at heart. But on the other side of things there are people I don’t paint, people who I don’t feel are worthy of the honor. There are a lot of terrible people out there who are very heartless and who don’t care about anything that really matters– people who epitomize the stereotype, who are that. So a lot of those stereotypes exist for a reason. I’m not sure I want a hand in helping to overcome …
Do you hope your work will help people look beyond the stereotype, and see the individual?
Right, exactly, which is good, because the individuals that I do paint are good people? It’s funny but people seem able to recognize that somehow. They can see some sort of innocence within the eyes of the people I portray.
How old were you when you came to know this gang?
The gang was there when I was 12 really.
Were you doing art then?
I was always doing art then, drawing girls’ names in middle school and gang symbols and comic book characters, and then in high school, I went to an arts magnet and got more of an academic approach.
What subjects have you explored in other shows?
Well, the gang life is probably the thing I explore most but in my mind at the root of that is ideas of contemporary family structure. The reason why I got caught up in all that was largely because of my family situation at home and not having a male figure to identify with, like a father figure in my life. It’s funny because I’ll make these tough gang-related paintings and I’ll have other works, like a painting of me and my mom at McDonald’s, or a painting of me helping my mom do the dishes, and these works address my relationship with my mother at home and the bond that we had which was strengthened by the lack of more family members, because it was just the two of us. Also, along with that come feelings of bitterness towards my father for leaving. I’ve made works to address that.
So the art is connected to a very personal place in your life?
I think all good art is personal. How else are you going to be able to really talk about these things unless you’re that directly connected to them? But the best art is when it’s personal experience that’s delivered and ultimately transcends that personal experience and becomes this universal thing.
What do you hope people take away from How the Land Lies?
I would want them to walk away and relate it to their own personal experience from their own teen years. I want them to think about their own groups of friends and the dynamics of their relationships with those people, and about the things that both intimidated and influenced them. So that’s the goal.
How the Land Lies runs through Nov. 28 at Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami. The opening reception is 7-9 p.m. Saturday.
