Artwork: Latina Activists across Borders

My large pastel drawing, She Who Wears Bells On Her Cheeks, has been published as the book cover for Milagros Peña’s, Latina Activists across Borders: Women's Grassroots Organizing in Mexico and Texas. In September of 2006 Ms. Peña’s publisher, Duke University Press, contacted me with an offer to publish my drawing. Apparently Peña had seen my artwork and thought it would make an appropriate cover for her examination of grassroots organizing conducted by Latinas on both sides of the U.S., Mexico border.

[ She Who Wears Bells On Her Cheeks. - Mark Vallen 1993. Chalk pastel on paper. Click here for a larger image. Used as cover artwork for Milagros Peña’s book, Latina Activists across Borders: Women's Grassroots Organizing in Mexico and Texas. ]

After the publishing house representative explained that Peña’s book would be a progressive, sociological analysis of border region women confronting issues of sexism, labor exploitation and domestic violence - I agreed to have my art associated with the project. I have no interest in doing commercial illustration for just any client, but on occasion a prospect will come along that dovetails with my own worldview - such is the case with Ms. Peña’s book. The Aztec Goddess of the Moon was named 'She who wears bells on her Cheeks' (Coayolquaxi.) My life-sized chalk portrait of an anonymous Chicana, portrays my subject holding a printed reproduction of the Moon Goddess.

Author and professor, Alberto López Pulido, said this of Ms. Peña’s Latina Activists across Borders: "Through powerful narratives and context, Milagros Peña finds a common and collective voice for Mexican, Mexican American, and Latina women. This work is groundbreaking because it provides a new vista by which to understand and assess the local and the global women's movements from a feminist perspective. Peña tells a story that has never been told and tells it very well." Mr. Pulido expressed precisely why I’m so pleased to have my artwork associated with this book.