(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Welcome everyone to the "Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series."

(upbeat music) (audience applauding) - Welcome everyone to the "Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series."

My name's Christina Hamilton, the series director.

It's great to be back after not being here for two weeks and to continue our season of thrive.

As we all are trying to turn the corner into spring.

It will happen.

It's almost here, we even change our clocks this weekend and today I cannot imagine a better person to get us there around the corner, than the thriving individual we present today.

Truly a man for all seasons Cheech Marin.

(audience applauds) Yeah.

(audience applauds) Before we get him out here for you though, a big thank you to our partners as today's event has presented with the support of the UOM Department of American Culture, Latina/o Studies program.

And our series partners, Detroit Public Television, and Michigan Radio 91.7 FM.

And I know there are folks in the audience today, I've met a couple of you who have driven across the street to be here and probably others who are here for Cheech.

And you have no idea what the Penny Stamp Speaker series is.

So let me give you a little bit of context, cause you might wanna join us again.

The Penny Stamp series, we're a program from the Stamp School of Art and Design at the university.

We look to present creative leaders like our guests today and the series takes place right here at the Michigan Theater every Thursday at 5:30.

And we're always free.

So I suggest if you are a first time arriver, make sure that you get one of our flyers on the way out, or find us online at pennystampsevents.org or find us on social media.

Sign up for email announcements, so you are in the know and plan to join us again here on Thursdays.

Please do remember to silence your cell phones.

And I just wanna note we will, once we're done with the stage program here, we will be able to open up for your questions.

We'll have a Q&A with the audience.

You'll notice there are microphones at the ends of these two aisles.

If you're in the balcony, you'll have to come downstairs.

So we will have a moment to have you ask your questions of Cheech.

And now for a little background on our guests today as yes, there are in fact two people who will be taking the stage because this will be a conversation format.

So as our interviewer today, we have Stamps School Dean Carlos Francisco Jackson, who joined us here at U-M recently from the University of California at Davis as an accomplished artist, professor, and an experienced administrator.

His own creative work reflects Chicanx art Praxis through community engagement.

But really folks, he's just a boy from LA.

A man of heart he is.

He is sincere and he has a quite a strength of purpose and has been very welcome state of renewal for all of us here, having him join us.

And then joining him, the man of the hour, Cheech Marin, a cultural icon, perhaps best known as part of the comedy duo, Cheech & Chong, as they proved entertainment gold.

Six of their albums went gold.

Four were nominated for Grammy's and their "Los Cochinos" album won the 1973 Grammy for best comedy recording.

The duo then made a fluid transition into films.

They started eight features together before Cheech also became known for his voiceover work with characters in many Disney blockbusters, you know "The Lion King," "the Cars series," and many more.

As Cheech himself jokes, "People know me from the womb "to the tomb."

In addition to his successful life in the entertainment industry and what brings us here today truly is that Cheech is a preeminent advocate for Chicano art.

In the mid 1980s, he began developing what's now the finest private collection of Chicano art.

And this notable collection has been featured in over a dozen exhibitions at more than 50 museums, comprised mostly of paintings, then drawings, prints, mixed media, artworks, photography, sculpture.

The collection now serves as the core of the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, which opened just this past June, 2022.

All in all, he's an amazing trailblazer.

He's a community leader who resonates far beyond the Chicano community that he helped to forge.

He's a part of all of us.

He helps all of us define the American experience.

Before we bring him out, we have one little treat to get started, we're gonna watch a very brief film clip from "Next Movie" from Cheech & Chong.

(audience applauding) Okay folks, now please join me in welcoming to the stage Carlos Francisco Jackson, and Cheech Marin.

(audience applauding) - Thank you so much for being here.

- It's so nice to be here in Michigan.

(audience laugh) haven't been in Michigan a long time.

(Cheech laughs) Oh, thanks for coming tonight.

So that is like the realest song, it's almost too real.

- Yeah.

- I gotta be in Spanish.

- Yeah.

(all laugh) I have Anana Panono, Anina Panino.

We're all very different across the political spectrum.

We fight at every time we come together and we all love each other so much.

- We do.

- Yeah.

- We do.

- So the Mexican American song, it came from the 1980 film, "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie."

- Ah-huh.

- And two years, which is two years after your first film and hit "Up in Smoke."

Which maybe some of you have heard of or seen.

(audience cheers) (Francisco laughs) So I was just, would like to...

I'm gonna bounce around, we're gonna look at some artwork and we're gonna talk about the center and we're gonna take questions and it's gonna be great.

- Okay.

- So, which is what you told me when you were reassuring me, it was all gonna be okay in the back.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- It's going, it's just fine.

- So can you share a little bit about "Up In Smoke," about the plot, talk about working with Tommy Chong and developing it.

- Oh yeah.

- I think you know, many in here have probably seen it.

There's some that may not have.

- Maybe.

- Maybe.

- Maybe.

- And just talk a little bit about how you got to that point, you know, how you got, what happened, like how did it happen?

- Well we had been making records for a long time, a period of about eight years.

And we made one album after the other.

And it was, they're very successful.

We had three number one albums in a row, which was unheard of for a comedy act.

You know, our competition was the Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, you know, so it was like we were outside of the framework of what comedians were doing.

And so we did that for a long time and we were always on the road.

I played Ann Arbor more than a few times, and we were just, we would put in between 250 and 300 days a year, on the road.

And I said, "Yeah."

That's a long time and so we gotta get off the road.

And I kept telling him, "We gotta get off the road."

You know, because, you know, we gotta make a movie.

And he, "Okay."

So he went from working one hour at night to working 15 hours a day every day with a movie, you know.

And he looked at me at one point, he said, "This was your bright idea, wasn't it."

(Cheech laughs) So we wanted, because all comedy teams, if you look in the past, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, all the famous comedy teams always made movies.

And so we said, "Well, we gotta make a movie.

"Well, how do you do that?"

We didn't know.

And so we started sitting about writing and we wrote and rewrote and rewrote and wrote.

And at the end of that writing period, we were supposed to get a deal, we didn't get a deal.

Okay, back on the road.

And then in the next year we got a deal to make a movie for Paramount.

And we went into it and we didn't really know what we were doing.

We had no camera technique or anything.

We were just, our method was set up the camera and be funny in front of it, you know.

Which was a revolutionary idea in Hollywood at that time, you know.

And so we had to come up with a story.

We're trying to tell, tie the bits that we had been doing together in some kind of narrative.

And so we need a story.

So, okay, we got it.

These two guys meet, come from different parts of the city and society and they wanna start a band.

But first they need to find a joint.

(audience laughs) Therein lies the plot.

(all laugh) I'm not kidding you.

You know, because it was following... Because we lived in the now in the present.

And it was for going from one situation to another, trying to find this proverbial joint.

Which we find at the end and we end up winning the battle of the bands, you know.

But it was that simplest of plot devices that really carried this film forward.

And that's the way we made movies from then on.

The less plot, standard plot, the better.

(audience laughs) - Wow.

That's amazing.

So.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- You're welcome.

- You may live.

(audience laughs) - And what, so what was, you know, the movie comes out and then what happens?

Like what happened?

- Shit the fan there man.

Like, you know, cause we were very successful in records and concerts, we were very successful.

And then, you know, you go through a period where you're very successful in the top of the world, and then, eeh not so much, you know, then come back down.

The gigs are getting smaller and blah, blah blah.

So, but everybody thought we were kind of done and then we made this movie.

(mouth blowing) I mean, it took off like a rocket, you know?

And it was a huge, a hit all over the world.

And that was the difference.

In movies, you could put... You could dub it in the native language or put subtitles so everybody around the world can enjoy the same experience at the same time.

And that's when Cheech & Chong really exploded because everybody knew what we sounded like.

And basically nobody knew what we looked like, you know, because they just hear these two voices coming outta the speaker and they didn't know who did what or you know, whatever.

And so, but now we're in movies and you could put the voices together with the person and that exploded all over the world at the same time.

So, you know, Tommy and I were living in Paris at the time cause we'd made "Corsican Brothers" there and we decided to stay for a little while, you know?

And so I finally came back to the US and I'd be driving down the freeway and guys in their cars were, "Hey look, look look."

What the fuck here?

Everyone was pointing at me, you know.

And because they had seen the movie, you know, and now they knew what we looked like and so it was a whole different deal.

- Interesting.

So Ann Arbor was an early bastion in the movement to decriminalize weed.

When in 1971, (all laugh) little local flavor for everybody here.

(audience applauds) - I mean, do I look like a criminal?

- Yeah.

(audience laughs) When in 1971, possession became a simple civil infraction with the small nominal fine.

- Aha.

- And so with Cheech & Chong's, "Up In Smoke," you became, in many ways, and maybe this is part of it, one of the faces of the recreational drug movement, at a time when marijuana or marijuana-- - I think we were more like gods rather than (audience laughs) - You were gods - My personal opinion.

- Excuse me.

You were gods of the recreational drug movement, (audience laughs) at a time when marijuana was not only illegal but vilified.

- Yeah.

- Did you see this as an act of protest?

Did you, like, were you trying to change the narrative?

Like what what was up?

- We were describing our everyday lives (all laugh) was really, you know, that was really it.

You get up in the morning to smoke a joint.

And then how we...

The object of our early days when we were struggling on the street and just trying to get any kind of gig is we had to come up with a $1.50 every day, somehow get our hands on a $1.50.

'Cause with a $1.50 we could make a Chinese meal of beef and greens and rice and we could eat, you know, but that was the goal every day.

So when we were going around LA when we came back from Canada, going out we had a little red wagon that we pulled with us and we'd be walking from one nightclub to another with this wagon.

And whenever we see a soda pop bottle, put it in the wagon, cause there was like a 3 cent or 5 cent deposit on the bottle.

So sometimes we made a $1.50 just in there, you know, so, hey, we were living fat man, you know, it was like, (audience laughs) it was like free bottles in the empty lot and Chinese greens.

It was great.

- So, you know, you end up developing this epic character you're pushing against and working with a stereotype.

You're fighting with it or fighting back against it at the same time.

Did you ever question yourself on where it was going while it was happening, while you were in it?

And when did you realize you were having an effect, like a social effect on the community?

Like when you were impacting the community, how they came to...

The way they were talking about things or the way that they had permission to engage, what was happening in their lives?

- Well, you know, we kinda discovered those characters almost by accident, because we had been doing a variation of that two guys in the car bit for a long time.

But it was just two regular guys, you know, you didn't know where they were from or so.

So we came back.

They didn't have any Chicanos in Vancouver, Canada, let me tell you.

(audience laughs) None, zero, zip.

And so when we came back to LA we were playing this one club and we were doing the bid and it was going okay, you know, the thing.

And then we were standing in front of the club trying to figure out how can we get them going, man, this is, you know, this is not going great.

And so this car full of low riders pulled up and right in front of us and the guy leaves and says, "Hey man.

You know where Reseda Boulevard is?"

I said, "Yeah, you're on it right now."

"See, I told you, you know."

And Tommy started cracking up, he says, "When we going back and do this bit, "do it as that guy."

(audience laughs) I said, "Yeah, okay."

Right, I didn't even think about it.

I didn't have, there was no pre-planning.

I just knew who that guy was because oh, I just seen him.

And so we started the bit with that and the club stopped and everybody in the club came from wherever they were and gathered in front of the stage, no music... Because it was a dance place, you know, they were dancing there.

And we had, you know, a star is born or characters are born right then.

And so from then on we started using that.

And then when we got to the recording studio, finally those two characters stood out, man, you know, it was like, and then you saw the audience kinda gathering from all over the city and all over the state and then all over the country.

And we were darlings of the F.M radio at that time, you know, because what are these guys?

Because comedians in our genre or in our age group, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, their records consisted of a recording of their live act, you know, and, which was fine, most comedians did that.

But we were different, we went in the studio and created all these scenes.

And so we were very different than everybody else.

And that's I think was our attraction, is we were different.

- That's amazing.

So did you ever think that back then, or even in the 10 or 20 years after that, marijuana would become legal?

- It was always legal to me.

(all laugh) - Good to know.

- You know, but we were really, really reflecting, you know, whatever we saw around us.

'Cause we came up right in that hippie era, you know, and it was all cool.

You gotta be careful, you know, where you do it and when you do it.

And I always had to be careful.

My dad was a policeman, you know, (audience laughs) LAPD you have 30 years, you know.

And there was two jobs in my family, clergy or law enforcement.

(all laugh) So I don't know, you know, I just, I was gonna be a priest, you know, because in Catholic, I don't know how many people here went to Catholic school, - [Audience Member] You always go there for something.

- That's it, man.

But they crammed being a priest down your throat, 24/7.

Once you get there, their going "Pray for a vocation, "pray for a vocation."

I pray for you to stop telling me about, pray for a vocation, you know.

And so, but I went, I was on my way to the junior seminary and my cousins as well.

And then I graduated from eighth grade, and then that summer I started going to a lot of parties.

And I said, "Well, let me get the straight now.

"There's just like no women in the, "I'm almost rethink this here."

And so I said, "Not for me, "but good luck on your quest there."

(audience laughs) - It's interesting.

It's, you've, you know, we at some point today, you know, we'll talk about humor and humor within the Chicano context, within the Chicano family, within the Chicano community, within the Chicano art movement.

But there's, these plants now are seen as very meaningful ways of healing.

- They've always been.

In the Mexican community anyways, there was always a salve that your mother put on your shoulder, your grandmother or whatever, make a tea out of it, you know, to soothe their nerves and menstrual cramps.

And it was always, you know, there.

It was nobody ever thought about it as being illegal.

You know, it's just a weed that grows out of the ground.

And so that was the attitude in my family, except for my father, he was a policeman.

So, you know.

(audience laughs) (Cheech mumbles) - Yeah, today there's, you know, institutes at major public research universities, like I know at the University of California, which is where I'm coming from, studying psilocybin and, you know, the effects of psychedelics.

- And we did the same thing too.

- Okay.

Yeah.

(audience laughs) Research.

- Yeah, very effective too, I mean.

- I'm very interested in discussing all of your research in this particular area.

- It's ongoing, you know, we don't know what the answer is.

(all laugh) - We're working towards a conclusion.

- Yeah.

- So, this is beautiful.

So you've charted a creative life and you've used this irreverent humor to support, to like really meaningfully change people's lives, support generations of artists, support an artistic movement that didn't have the capital needed to sustain, you know, the community's ability to make that work.

And you took all this that you were doing, which may have seemed, you know, comedy or it may have...

But it was very, you know, what you've done with your life has, from my perspective, has been very serious.

And I, we'll talk about this exhibition, Chicano Visions, American Painters on the Verge.

But this is my copy, it's all worn, I had it in the studio.

I lived with it, I probably slept with it.

Excuse me.

You know-- - Nice to know that about you.

- Thank you.

Yeah.

(audience laughs) So, and it's, you know, this, that's your legacy.

And so I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about your connection to the arts, you know, your creative life.

I mean, it doesn't just start with, you know, Cheech & Chong, it's something in you.

If you could just talk about being an artist and coming into knowing and, - Sure.

- Maybe just also how ceramics figures into that.

(Cheech laughs) - I was a professional potter at one point in my life, but we'll get to that.

No, I was very lucky, I had this group of cousins, there were four of us, and we were bright kids, went to Catholic school, liberal arts education, and was always trying to challenge each other.

Mainly the head cousin Louie, who was the oldest and smartest and most brilliant.

And he decided that we were gonna have like, our own AP classes.

And he was going to assign us different topics.

And we were supposed to go learn about that topic and bring it back to the group.

And I got assigned art, you know, Louie, "Okay, Cheech you learn about art.

"Okay.

How you do that."

And so I go to the library, that's where all the art books are, you know.

So I went to the library and every Saturday I would go in there and they wouldn't let me take out the art books cause I was a little, you know, I was young and then I was Chicano and they didn't know if they were gonna get their books back, you know.

But they will, you know.

But so they came with me and I developed a relationship with the librarians, and they would bring me their cool art books that they had to wear white gloves for and turn the pages.

And that's how I learned about western art.

"Okay, that's Cizer, that's good.

"That's Miro, that's Toulouse."

Is that how you say it?

Toulouse-Lautrec, okay.

And, then that way every Saturday, I learned about art and then I start going to museums because that's an integral part of that whole education.

Paintings in particular have to be seen in person.

They have to be seen in person.

(audience applauds) Because it's a medium that can only be experienced legitimately because of the nature of paint.

It changes, it's translucent, it's opaque it has as a bunch of different aspects.

But to see it in person is the experience.

Because I'm of the belief that paintings are alive and they're imbued with the creative spirit of the artist.

And they sent out this low hum every time you walk by it and you're influenced by it, you know, because oil paintings take years to dry, years.

And so every time you walk by, every time I walk by Carlos Almaraz painting in my house, I feel this.

(Cheech hums) And sometimes when I'm not feeling good during the day, I'll just walk by, (Cheech hums) you know, it's like getting a massage, you know, it's like a spiritual massage.

And so I learned about art that way.

And so then when I got to the position where I could afford to buy art, that's when I discovered these Chicano painters and they had already been discovered.

They weren't, you know, hiding in a hole somewhere.

You know, they were trying to make it just like any artist and I saw what they were doing because I saw the foundations that they were using to build their art movement.

And because they were all university and or art school trained.

And so I saw Cizer and Miro and Roscoe and all these kind of influencers plus their Mexican heritage.

And how those two things came together was a new form of interpreting that art, you know.

It's like the first time I ever heard The Beatles, you know, and I heard the beat... Well that's Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis and you know, Chet Atkins but it's in English with an English accent.

And then they started creating their own thing.

So you saw those two influences coming together.

And that's why, okay, so... And I was an inventor collector of something all my life.

You know, there's baseball cards or marbles or you know, buttons and matchbook covers.

I like had a tendency to collect all of them, put 'em into some kind of order.

That's just how, so I started doing that with art.

And luckily, I was making a lot of money at the time, and so I was out there buying art, you know, and I was like, about two weeks ahead of all the other art collectors, you know.

'Cause all of a sudden everybody got onto this.

And I wasn't fighting with anybody to try to get... and all the masterpieces of Chicano art were still out there available to be bought.

And so, "Okay, well I'll take that one."

You know, it's because... And I knew right from the beginning that I was putting together this collection for a grander purpose.

I mean, that was very obvious to me at the beginning because you know, who has room in their house for a 24 by 12 foot painting, you know, what couch are you gonna put that over?

(Cheech chuckles) You know, it's like.

And so I just kind of started, "Okay, this is going for something else.

"I don't know what it is yet, "but you know, it's going for something else."

- Okay, so before I get to some images, well maybe I'll just go to this image, but before I ask the question about this one, can you talk about ceramics?

- Oh, yeah.

Okay, so.

No, it's a big part of my life.

My last semester in college, I went to well, it's now Cal State Northridge, but it was Valley State College at the time.

And I always knew I was an artist of some kind.

I knew it, I just, you know, that was what I gravitated towards.

But I didn't have a medium, you know, I couldn't draw.

And I remember once in first grade, I was raised in South Central LA and we were right down from the Grand Central Market, so they took the whole class to the Grand Central Market in the first grade.

And everything that grows upon the earth was in that market.

And it was like this wonderland.

And when you're in first grade, you're like, what, six years old?

Somewhere like that.

And so we got back to class and the teacher says, "I want you to draw a picture.

"Everybody draw a picture of what impressed you most "about this market."

And so I had seen these big banana squashes, and they were huge, they were much taller than I was.

And I was always the littlest kid in the class.

And they asked, I said, they gave us the good paper and the good crayons and draw away.

So I drew these banana squashes, big yellow, and then little stick figure me next to 'em, you know?

And so the teacher goes around the class and she says, "Oh."

you know, critiquing everybody's work and "Oh, you used every single color, that's good."

You know, And it, (Cheech chuckles) it got down to my picture and she picked up and she goes, "Well, you'll never be an artist."

(audience laughs) You know-- - How many times has that happened?

- Oh, just that one.

It'll only need to happen once man, that was like a stab in the heart, you know?

And at that age, you don't know how to process it because the teacher's an authority figure.

Well, if she says, "I'll never, "I'll go, oh, I guess I, you know, "just probably be something else, I guess."

But I loved art and know I loved making it, and maybe it wasn't any good, but I didn't realize that art was something you could learn to do.

You know, I thought you were just born with it, you know?

And some people are just born with it and that ability.

But I thought it was like, you know, some people are tall, some people are short, some people can run faster or were stronger.

And so I just kind of crawled away in the corner and my artistic soul, withered up and died.

(Francisco chuckles) And so I was like, but I was always interested in art because in the Catholic religion, you go to mass every Sunday or as many days as they can get you to go.

And you look up at the ceiling and the church and these guys in sheets walking around in the clouds, And why are they barbecuing that guy in the corner?

(audience laughs) So right away, I'm intrigued, you know, typical, you ever seen Mexican comic books?

That's it, you know.

They're holy and bloody at the same time, I don't know how they do that, but.

So I was always interested, you know, and anytime the subject of art came up, I go, "Okay, I'm there.

I get it."

- And then in your last semester of-- - College, yeah - of college at what is now Cal State University Northridge.

- Yeah.

- You enrolled in a ceramics class?

- Yeah.

- What happened there?

- I had ulterior motives there.

(Cheech chuckles) You know, the last semester of school, you save every class that you have not purposely taken, you know, Social 101 or you know, economics or like, you know, something I'm really interested in.

And so you're gonna do those in the last semester.

And so I was standing in line to get a class, and this really cute girl who I knew from high school, I never talked to her, but she was in the line next to me and she says, "Oh, what are you gonna take?"

And she says, "I'm taking pottery, "you should take it with me.

"Okay, (audience laughs) "sure, I could do that."

(Cheech laughs) But once I got on the wheel and start centering clay, my life changed, it was like (mouth rumbling) disdain.

Anybody here throw pots, anybody?

Here we go.

You know, that feeling is the first time you center a big water clay.

(mouth rumbling) And your universe comes right down to that point, man.

And it is like a spiritual and physical experience like you'll never feel in your life unless you do this.

And so that, and it changed my life.

And so I quit all my other classes, I quit my job.

I got an $900 NADA loan and lived on that and made pottery from the time I got up to the time I went to sleep.

But coincidentally with that, we're in the middle of the Vietnam, or the starting of the Vietnamese War.

And I got persuaded by David Harris who came to our campus to speak.

He was a leader of the Draft Resistance Movement.

And we had a lot of speakers come to the school, like the Eldridge Cleaver, Floyd McKissick, Reies Tijerina, Timothy Leary.

And David came to speak and he's the one that made the most sense to me.

The way we stop this war is not to participate in it, you know, so that was the universal soldier kind of mode.

And I said, "Okay."

So we all handed in our draft cards and acquiring the wrath of the government.

And at that same time, the head of the Draft, General Hershey issued the directive that anybody who burned their draft cards or turned them in or protested at the draft, would be immediately reclassified and drafted and sent to the front lines of Vietnam.

And that was his fix.

What a brilliant motherfucker that was, you know.

(audience laughs) I just, you know, okay, so we knew it was a First Amendment issue and it was gonna go to court and it will be overturned.

Well, you know, we were hoping, but everybody was pretty much convinced of that.

But you were gonna wait three or four years in Leavenworth prison for that to happen.

And I said, "I don't think so.

"I think I'm going to fulfill my destiny "as a simple potter in the woods."

And that's what I did.

My teacher, he had this student, he was opening a pottery in Vancouver, oh not Vancouver in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, maybe he needs an assistant.

And that's all it took, I got on the dog and went to Canada and became eventually an assistant to a very famous Potter, Adrian Hanshak, who had won the Bicentennial Exhibition Award the year before.

And it was what a wonderful, it was the purest time of my life.

I lived in the mountains with, I chopped wood every day from my fire and went down to the river for my water and made pottery all day and it was just great.

- Amazing.

That thing that you're talking about being at the wheel, you know, touching the clay is that thing that, you know, I was drawn to art for other reasons.

And then when I got there, it was the making, the touching of the thing, the energy that you're talking about, that the painting emanates and the sticking of your hands into the earth and then using the simplest, you know, elements of fire and water to make something is not just to connect you to the land, right.

Your connection as it being in relationship to the land, which you are of, but also to the ancestors.

- Yeah.

That's exactly what happened.

(Cheech chuckles) My Mexican genes came popping out the first time I get through a cup, you know, like, it's like, "Hey where you been?

"Come on man, we got back orders, let's go get these."

And it was like, really, it was my Mexican, I finally had a medium.

This was my medium, I'm gonna be an artist, I'm gonna be a... No, I wasn't even thinking about being a world famous potter or, you know, paying the rent or any of this.

I just wanted to do this, this pottery out in the woods.

And it was, I was happier in than a pig in shit man.

And it was like, it was incredible.

You know, it was... And I went up to Canada and in Alberta and I got there and it was the coldest winter in Alberta in 80 years.

(mouth blowing) I had never seen snow before.

I was from South Central LA man.

- You're like me, you thought it only snowed in the mountains.

- Yeah.

Exactly.

Way, way over there - Way over there.

- Never in the city.

- No.

- Until I came to Ann Arbor and I was like, "What's going on?"

- Damn man.

(all laugh) - And they get this every year, huh?

- [Francisco] On the ground, in the city.

- On the ground, Jesus.

- Many days out of the year.

- It's amazing, cause we're going through these changes right now, where everybody getting snow, all the time.

- Yeah.

Okay, so you know the story of you in how you, you know, I feel like we could fall into this vortex just knowing, you know, what it was like in that clay, you know, working in the clay studio and what it felt like in the workshop and what it felt like touching the earth and making things and how it's connected to this larger story, it's obviously there.

And yeah, I hope at some point in the future we'll have a chance to talk about that more.

Because so many of our students here are in these studios and they are experiencing this and they're doing it for reasons that don't make a lot of sense, always, you know, socially, you know, which is why, whenever I talk to the students or talk to their families and the few opportunities I've had, I lead by thanking the parents and the communities that have held up these students for supporting their decision to try to live a creative life.

- Yeah.

- And how hard that can be, but how there's nothing else like it.

- Yeah, that's true.

I mean, it didn't please my father a lot.

(Cheech chuckles) I told him I wanted to be a potter.

"What the fuck?"

(Cheech chuckles) Looked at me, "I worked so hard, so you could be a lawyer "and now you want to be a potter?

"What is wrong with you?"

You know, like, "Well, it's my choice dad."

And so.

But yeah, it was, you know, once those gates open up and you find your seat, there's no other seat for you.

- There's no turning back.

- No, there's no turning back, you know.

- So this is, I think 1979.

This is an image of you, Tommy Chong, Tommy's son Paris, actress Lupe Ontiveros and Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union AFL-CIO, who's archives are actually nearby here in Detroit at Wayne State.

Detroit being, you know, the capital of American labor.

You know, you just did "Up in Smoke."

You're here, you know, using your voice to also advocate for the rights of farm workers to have more humane working conditions and to be able to live qualities of life that doesn't subject them to any type of violence.

What were you... What was your activist engagement like back then?

Like what was this, tell us a bit about this.

- Well, you know, I got invited to a lot of these events and met Cesar and he was a wonderful guy.

And you always... Every Chicano was kind of part of the movement at that point, and in some form or another, whether they went to protests or did this or that, but there were all these wave coming up and it enhanced everything that we did.

And so this was interesting in that I met a lot of the Chicano early Chicano artists during this movement.

Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero, Gronk, John Valadez, who I'll tell a story about in a minute.

There were all the OG LA Chicano painters because they were signed painters for the movement.

You know, they made the placards and they made the backdrops for the octos that Teatro Cappuccino was doing.

So that's my first mix with those guys, you know?

And, you know, one Chicano artist and then soon, you know a hundred Chicano artists, you know, because they're all, they have this network.

And so that's when it first got turned into, "Oh, maybe there's something going on here."

And then when I first saw Chicano paintings on the walls of a gallery, I go, "Well, why don't they have more galleries "and just not this one?

"Why aren't they in museums?

"Well, you know, they don't kinda want us."

And okay, "Well I want you, you know, "and I have the money to collect it."

So I started doing that, you know, and so it just seemed like a natural thing to do cause I was always a collector and I always loved art.

And so cool, here's something I can really identify with, you know, on a personal level, not just on academic level, but this was stories of my family and my culture that I grew up with all the time.

- And you know, I think that's part of the narrative of, or the story around your work, around your career and then this incredible like, you know, the thing you've created around amplifying and exhibiting and advocating for Chicano art is the way in which the, you know, not the Chicano movement, you know, social justice movement, the broader anti-racist movements, the civil rights movement was influencing your connections within community.

And the way in which that spurred your engagement with the work is really amazing.

- I mean it was something I could relate to, you know, "Oh, these people look like me "and these people look like my family in this thing."

And so we were a Chicano art at the first by the museum establishment was characterized as (mumbles).

And so every artist I told that to, well they say, "You're (mumbles)."

And they say, "Well, what's (mumbles) that we make?"

And we're supposed to?

And so I says, "Eh, don't worry about it.

"Just keep doing what you're doing."

You know, and that was it, you know, (mumbles), they went away shaking and scratching their heads.

Okay, all right, whatever that is.

And so we were encouraged.

And so when we opened the very first show, the Chicano Vision Show, and the first place we opened was at San Antonio and at San Antonio Museum in Texas.

And it was a real battle because Chicano, the word Chicano was a highly charged word.

And, you know, and everybody had an opinion on it, and their opinion was the right opinion, you know, because you don't know what Chicano means.

Because every Chicano you ask has a different interpretation of it, you know?

And so we were battling against the establishment, the art establishment, because no director wanted to put his head on the block and say, "Yes, this is Chicano art."

And because, you know, and a lot of things can happen.

And so finally one courageous director in San Antonio said, "Okay, we're gonna say "this is Chicano art and here we go."

And so it was a big success, but it's a very expensive proposition putting together to a very expensive proposition.

So I asked my friends in the art world, "What do I do with this collection?

"But you gotta show it, "like it doesn't do you any good under the bed "or in the closet or something like, "well how do you do that?

"Well, you get a museum show "and then you keep going.

"How do you do that?

"Well, you have to get sponsors.

"It's a very expensive proposition.

"You have to get, "Well, how do you do that?"

And so he goes, "Well you gotta go around people "who have money, corporations and stuff."

And so I go, okay, I got my little dog and pony show.

And me and some people, we went around to every corporate entity that there was, General Motors, General Mills, anything with the general in that man.

(audience laughs) We were like, "Yeah, they must have money.

"They're generals, you know?"

And we got close to a lot of people saying that they... And I got so tired of the process and all the political pushback from every side that the Army was really interested in sponsoring the show, cause they were the number one employer of Chicanos, the Army, you know.

So I did it almost to piss everybody off, cause I was tired of this shit man, you know.

And so finally the target stores and Hewlett-Packard put up the seed money to do the first show and then the target stores because they wanted to reach that audience, that audience, that Latino audience in a very hip way, you know.

Not like say, "Hey, you're Mexican, "we know Mexicans will buy this."

You know, it wasn't.

And so they put together a very artistic presentation and then they stayed with it for the duration of the tour, which was 14 years.

And there was seven major institutions that we did it, that did the show in.

And then we broke attendance records in every place from the Smithsonian to Waco Texas.

And so that got the impetus going and it was now a thing because museums are the last imprimatur of cultural acceptance once you have a museum, okay it's official.

And all the reviews that have talked about The Cheech right now, say that same thing, even these many years later.

Okay, now it's official, they have their own museum and okay, so we, you know, it was like pushing this, not even uphill, this boulder is just pushing it on a long, endless road, you know, (Cheech sighs) that we're gonna get these guys to see the light, you know, and that because...

But once you opened the crates, they started opening the crates in San Antonio, that's when it changed.

Because the prevailing attitude at the time was, "Well I don't know about Chicano art.

"Isn't that the guy sleeping under the cactus "with the sombrero and the donkey in the background?

"Well, no, no, that's not it, "maybe one guy, but I don't know."

(audience laughs) But when we opened the first show in San Antonio, I was in the loading dock when the crates came in and I started opening these crates and that's when it changed, cause they saw the paintings.

And so, and the loading dock, I saw all these people from the museum and they were looking around and we started out and then we're there for little while, and then they would disappear.

Where are they?

They didn't like the art or something?

And then they would come back with three or four other people from the museum.

And that kept happening until we... And so at that they got to see the whole array of the work and that's when it changed.

However, there was still pushback from the Chicano Academic Community because, you know, they liked me as a comedian, but who I'm I to say what's up about Chicano art?

I didn't have any PhD or unpaid student loans, you know, (audience laughs) I wasn't one of them, you know.

(all laugh) - [Francisco] It's too real.

It's like-- - Struck a cord did we?

(all laugh) - Yeah.

- Okay.

So let's look at some artwork.

- Okay.

- Okay.

So I'm gonna try and move us ahead a little bit, but I thought I would share a personal as how I come to this a bit personally.

And this is a work that's not in your collection.

- No, - This is Yolanda Lopez's.

- [Cheech] Yes, it is.

- Very iconic.

The artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe and I, you know, was around images like this.

I grew up Catholic, and I was the youngest of a very, very large family, over 41st cousins.

And I was...

But I was also, I think because I was the second youngest, I was privileged in a way.

And I grew up in a pretty comfortable environment, whereas many others in my family struggled.

And I got into college.

And, you know, even back then, I remember when I got my first acceptance to Cal State LA which was the first school I got accepted to, my mom just cried, you know, like, "Gracias Dios, gracias Dios, "thank you so much, God."

Like for this miracle, you know, that there might be a future, you know, that might not be about using my body to hard labor and which is what so many people faced.

And which was why it was so traumatic when I came back several years later and said I wanted to be an artist and devastated them.

But it was, I went to school, I took a Chicano studies class and right away, it was like, "Okay, wait, the conquest, "indigenous dispossession, "the church's relationship."

I was in all in these feelings.

And I was struggling to find a think about how who I was within all that knowledge of why.

And then all the pieces started falling down into place as to like why things are, how they are, right?

Why is the socioeconomic status of the community and the family like this?

And why are the patriarchal kind of relationships between the men and women in my family, kinda like this?

And it was Yolanda's work.

Who's actually was a mentor to your artistic director, Maria Esther Fernandez.

- Esther, stand up and take a bow this is Esther Fernandez who's the first director of the Cheech Marin.

(audience applauds) prestigious position.

- It is the position.

- And she turned me on to, we're trying to acquire these works.

- Okay.

- We're in the process of doing that, you know.

- Okay.

So Yolanda took this image that for Catholics is sacred, right?

You don't mess with that image, you don't mess with the Vatican's image.

And it was when I saw this image in a Chicano studies class through the slides projected onto the screen that there was a way that we could become, right.

That we didn't just have to be, what we were told we were.

That we had the agency or the power to become something else, right.

- It was really interesting.

And when we opened up in the San Antonio and the museum and there was this pushback from a certain segment of the student population.

They were studying Chicano studies and their position was Chicano art was only political art.

You could only do political art and be a Chicano and say, "Where was all the political art?"

And I'm standing right in front of the rest of the Palateros, you know, so, "Well how about this one?"

And so they were kind of getting agitated because we were giving them free tequila and beer, you know.

(audience laughs) So we said, "Tell you what, tomorrow morning "at the auditorium in the museum, "we're gonna have an open forum "and anybody's got anything to say on the subject, "this is the time to do it."

So the next morning we got up and I made it at 9:30, so it would weed out half the audience, man.

They weren't gonna get up that early man.

And so they got in there and they went back and forth between the veteranos and the new kids.

They wanted to get their art showing and blah, blah, blah, they went back and forth and this.

And on the desk was one of the OG Chicano painters, John Valadez.

And there's no more original gangster painter than John Valadez.

And as after one, all went down, and this older lady who looked like she had seen everything Chicano, and she said, "I have a question for John Valadez.

"Now considering everything they said today, back and forth, "do you still consider yourself a Chicano painter?"

And John thought about it for a minute.

He says, "You know what?

"Only if it bothers you."

(audience laughs) My hero, my hero.

Because there is an essential element of deference, you know.

And deference is not a human word.

The defiance in the makeup of a Chicano, you know, because "Hey, I'm tired of this.

"I'm not doing this no more."

You know, and whatever it is.

And so John represented that he became my hero from then until this day.

- So let's look at a little clip here.

It'll just give the audience a window-- - America is composed of immigrants and this is the ultimate American school of art.

(upbeat music) - I want other Chicanos to recognize themselves in the artwork and feel proud of our culture.

(upbeat music) - The ironic thing is that called car show, but you hardly see the cars.

(upbeat music) - We want to talk about space and art.

And they didn't wanna listen to us.

So it turned into a whole wall of conflict.

That's what this particular painting was about.

(upbeat music) - There was some congressmen that said, "Hey, we should be very wary of the Mexican Americans "because they come from a long line "of blood thirsty savages like the Aztecs."

- I'm asking, you to marry me.

- You belong to a different tribe savage.

- That just happens to be great paint?

(soft music) - I think blues are the colors of our La Raza because we live in the shadows of the American dream.

- So I put the cracks on the ground, because of what's happening at home.

My parents' marriage is falling apart.

(upbeat music) - Were Chicanos.

(upbeat music) - Chicano to me defines my Americanism.

- I like the sound of the word.

Cheech, Chema, Chuli.

(upbeat music) - And I define Chicano painting, by painting.

(upbeat music) - It's just a revolution to me.

(upbeat music) - For these museums, these institutions have gone from a "No, we don't even recognize you.

"This is not really art."

To, "Hey, we have to embrace this, "because this is part..." We're living in a city called Los Angeles, not Los angles.

(upbeat music) - So yeah.

That's great.

(audience applauds) I'm just gonna show a couple of images.

And then I'm gonna pause on one and then I would, you know, so you've talked about this a bit that, you know, the word Chicano as the way it's contested.

The way it's a debate.

And I would be, here we have Patssi Valdez, these are all works from your collection.

Patssi Valdez's room on the verge from 1993, who also is the cover of the catalog, Chicano Visions.

I brought this to speak about the importance of this book to so many like emerging young brown artists around the late 1990s.

But this is John Valadez and you.

- Ah, that's me and John.

- [Francisco] And this is his painting.

- [Cheech] The one on the left, yeah.

- [Francisco] Getting them out of the car.

- [Cheech] Yeah.

- From 1984.

Can you talk a little bit about naming this Chicano.

You know, Chicano visions about... And I'm gonna, we'll look at a few more works after this, but, and then we'll come to the center.

- Sure.

- Which also has the word Chicano.

- Chicano in it - Chicano in it - Of, you know, how did you encounter the word, when did you come to embrace it?

How has its meaning changed for you?

- Well, the term Chicano was an evolutionary term and the evolution of it is, is ongoing, it's happening as we speak.

But it depends on which Chicano you ask cause you're gonna get a different definition from every single one of 'em.

You know, my favorite one is, "Well they name themselves Chicanos "because, and they couldn't pronounce the correct word."

I don't wanna be in that group.

I don't wanna be in that kind of Chicano, you know.

Here's what I think about this, is when Mexicans left Mexico and settled in the United States and they were living in tin shacks around the border, that everybody presumed that that was.

And the idea was that they were no longer Mexicanos cause they had left their country and they were living in another country.

There were something less, there were Chicos, there were Chicanos, you know, not Mexicanos, they were Chicanos.

There was this satellite Mexicans living in Riverside or wherever, you know.

And, there was...

It was insult from Mexicans to other Mexicans.

And depending upon your attitude, it was a greater or lesser degree in insult.

But my father who died when he was 93 some years ago, and he always called himself a Chicano, you know?

And it really brought home to me, I came home one night and the family was having a dinner and my uncle Rudy and his family were there and he was telling this story about, he wanted to get his car fixed.

And he went down to the garage and they wanted to charge him $250 to fix whatever it was.

He says, "$250, gimme a pair of pliers "and a tinfoil, I can fix it.

"I'm a Chicano mechanic."

That's what Chicano means.

The can-do spirit, not gonna let anything get in your way.

And he was going to be... Rudy eventually turned out to be, the highest ranking officer policeman in the police force in LAPD, they named the Harlem Beck Station after him.

My uncle Rudy, who in true Chicano spirit, I learned when I was in my forties.

He wasn't really my uncle.

(audience laughs) You got any of those?

Yeah, what do you mean he's not my uncle?

He's been my, you know.

No he grew up on the same block with my dad when they were born.

Since they were born, it was always Uncle Rudy.

Well, it was like, "Okay, well I'm gonna make up "some shit too then."

(audience laughs) For y'all.

But that's a kind of, that rasquachi element is part of Chicano culture.

It is, if you were to put it in regular art terms, you will say it's found art or art that is, I don't, I can't even repositioned in another context, but it's rasquachi, a little bit funky, a little bit academic, a little bit sincere, you know.

But it was that Chicano.

You know, you were outside of, and it was specifically Mexican, you know, it was, and stilled mostly significantly Mexican.

But I think the evolution of Chicano and the whole concept is ongoing in its evolution because it's influencing now at that point from being ajeprofulkart to be influential in the art world.

And the young, especially the Latinx and their friends that they live with and they live around are adopting, you know, they're influence by that.

So that is how that influence works, you know, it's a description of your culture.

And your culture may be South Central, and your culture may be Simi Valley, you know, it depends, you know, but you describe what that is.

- So this is, we try and get through a few of these works.

Sunset crashed by Carlos Almaraz from 1982.

- He leaped to the forefront of the attention of the art world in general with a series of these car crash paintings.

And they were really a big hit.

And that's how he got it there.

- And then we have The Arrest of the Paleteros.

A big work by Frank Romero from 1996.

- This was indicative of what the city's attitude, this takes place in MacArthur Park.

And there was a lake there, and it was a gathering for all these street vendors that the city wanted to move.

They didn't want 'em to be there.

And so they sent the SWAT team after 'em, and this is a place where there was a lot of prostitution, drugs, gangs and they arrested the ice cream men.

(audience laughs) Misplaced enthusiasm I think.

- So try and get, I wanna make sure that we have some time to talk about the center, but can you speak a bit about, this is called Juarez Quinceanera by Judithe Hernandez from 2017.

This is a more recent acquisition.

- [Cheech] Yeah, I think it's been our latest.

- Can you talk a little, a bit about where, how you have been collecting work more recently?

I would, if there's time, hopefully there's time.

And I'd like to speak a bit more about Esther's influence and kind of what Esther is doing with you in the future with the center and with your collection.

But this is a new work.

- Yeah, it's a new work, but it's an older work.

Well, but it's a recent acquisition.

I think we're both working both ends at the same time.

We're showing up the beginnings of Chicano art with as many iconic works as we collect, but also encouraging the new end of this being made today, you know, and everything in the middle.

And that is still part, it's all description of culture.

You can call it Chicano, you can call it Mexican-American, you call it Latinx, whatever you want.

It's the same inspiration, description of culture and a thousand different shades of brown.

- [Audience Member] Woo.

(audience cheers) Whether from the most public political aspects of it, which was the beginning or the most intimate interaction of daily life.

That's what Chicano Art School describes.

- Yeah.

So we have El Verde by Cande Aguilar from 2020.

This is a more recent acquisition, more recent work.

We have Jacinto Guevara's 519 North Olive Street from 2019, another recent work.

And then an older work here by Carlos Almaraz from 1988.

This is also a big piece.

- [Cheech] Yeah.

- [Francisco] Right?

- [Cheech] Yeah.

- [Francisco] And lastly here.

- [Cheech] What is that?

It's too dark.

- [Francisco] I know, I'm trying do to my thing here.

- [Cheech] Oh there it is.

It's the Benito Huerta Exile off Main Street.

- [Francisco] This happens.

(audience laughs) (mouth rumbling) Okay.

- [Cheech] My powers are returning-- - [Francisco] Exile off Main Street by Benito Huerta from 1999.

And then finally the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum.

- There we go.

(audience applauds) I'm a firm believer in the adage that if you do good things, good things will happen to you.

And this was the product of this line of thinking.

I know a lot of other collectors now who collect, like size collection, not necessarily Chicano art, but other art.

And they get to the end of that collecting period, "What am I gonna do with this?"

You know, and so they look for ways.

And so I was looking for a way too, I'd kind of done the main bulk of the collecting and what am I gonna do with this?

And this offer came from Riverside, the city of Riverside, they had a building that they needed to re rep, what's the word?

Repossess?

No, not repossess.

- [Audience Member] Repurpose.

- Yeah.

There you go.

- There you go.

- And it was a town library.

It's a beautiful mid-century building.

And they had to repurpose this building.

And we had just done a show there "Works on Paper."

And it was the biggest show they ever had at the Riverside Art Museum.

And the town manager came up with this brilliant idea, instead of giving it away to a, you know, a science first children museum, let's offer it to Cheech for the collection and it will be housed there, you know.

And I didn't understand what they were saying when they first go, "You want me to buy a museum, "I'm doing okay, but I don't know if I'm a museum rich."

(audience laughs) You know, kinda like, (audience laughs) so like, you know, "No, no, no, "we wanna give you the museum."

They want to allow me to put the collection there and it'll be housed there permanently.

And they would take care of it.

And they, oh, okay, I guess, you know, and I just kind of relied on my intuition to say that was a good deal.

And it was like, you know, when you've seen "The Wizard of Oz" when they're standing there and the house is falling from the sky.

You know, that's where I was, you know, if you stand on the X, the house is gonna fall on you.

That's gonna be a museum and it won't hurt, it'll be good.

(Cheech groans) And it turned out to be that way, you know, it was a huge opportunity for Chicano to have a permanent place.

The first one in the United States or anywhere in the world, you know?

And that's.

(audience applauds) I can't tell you the feeling when I first walked by that building at night, and it was lit up with that sign.

(upbeat music) It's time for revolution.

I'm Cheech Marin and we're inviting you to reserve your spot for the inaugural showing of Cheech Collects.

So get your tickets today, we're looking for you.

(upbeat music) - [Francisco] That's so cool.

(audience applauds) - I got that name in there as soon as I could, you know.

Well, what do we call this?

You know what they have the bro, how about The Cheech?

Yeah, yeah.

And they're caught up in the moment, you know, so it's too late to change the name now.

(audience laughs) - So there's so much to talk about here.

The De la Torre Brothers came here and spoke at the "Penny Stamps distinguished Speaker Series" last semester, it was amazing.

Also, so we heard about this like, "Oh, Cheech is gonna build a museum in Riverside."

And we're all like, "Oh, what?"

And okay.

And yeah, and we heard about it and we'd like for a while, like maybe years, you know, that this might happen.

That there's this thing that was gonna happen out there in Riverside.

I at a weird moment in my life when I was already a professor and I was chairing an academic department in Chicano studies, decided to go back to school because I felt like my...

I wanted to write about Chicano art in a way that to feel better about the words that I was putting to the page, that they were more responsible.

And I was in the seminar and with mainly like, you know, people who had just graduated college and there was one other adult in the room in our core seminar that...

But we kind of just looked at each other.

But then we were kinda trying to ignore that we were the older ones in the room.

And sure enough, we had Cheech present in artwork and talk about it to the seminar.

And this person across from me presented a Chicano artwork that I had seen growing up throughout my life.

This particular artist had painted the Mural outside the East Side Cafe in Eler Sereno in LA.

And that was the person sitting across from me and the seminar room was Maria Esther Fernandez, who has now become a lifelong friend and collaborator, somebody who I think of as family.

We went back to school and instead had worked her way up from the entry door at a museum in Santa Clara, called the Triton, all the way to Chief Curator.

And then the pandemic hit.

And then you had one hire to make for your artistic director, the director of The Cheech and you hired Maria Esther Fernandez, this badass Chicano feminist who has an artist herself.

And it has like, fought her way advocating for these types of works to have true equity within museums.

That was your hire.

And I just would like to say in front of everybody here, thank you.

- Oh, my pleasure.

(audience applauds) - So the De la Torre Brothers came to town and it was very special, cause you know, they had a connection to The Cheech and we were thinking you were gonna, might be coming the next semester, but we didn't know for sure.

This, just talk a little bit about their work, about the opening and then, I'll advance a couple of images and then if you can talk a little bit about what you and Esther are trying to do at the museum moving forward.

- Well, it's culture, first of all, let me say we're very honored to have Esther to be our first inaugural director.

I don't think we could have picked a better person to do it.

And she's gonna lead it.

We're sending it out the first one in the battle, you know, go ahead, take a couple bullets and then we'll be back.

And I was like, but we're very-- - But the museum has been incredible reviews.

- Yeah.

- LA Times Christopher Knight, one of the most critical, you know, the chief critic of the LA Times.

- Yeah.

- One of the most critical, actually has a history of being very critical towards Chicano art.

- Yeah.

- Wrote this incredible review that actually feels like he understood exactly what it was you were trying to do.

The New York Times.

- Yeah.

- And everywhere in between.

- The week we opened, we were the lead story on the entertainment section of The New York Times, The LA Times, Art News, and a couple other ones of Hyperallergenic - [Francisco] Hypoallergic.

- Hyperallergic which is a prestigious newsletter, halocegenic, (Francisco laughs) get him outta here.

Voted us one of the top 50 shows in the world last year, so.

- Yeah.

And why the De La Torre Brothers?

- Pardon?

- Why were the De la Torre Brothers the first show?

- I'd been following the De la Tore Brothers, basically throughout their career.

They were glass blowers at first, and I was introduced to them by a gallery owner.

Oh, his name is escaping right now, but anyways.

Do you know who the name is?

- [Audience Member] Daniel Saxon.

- Daniel Saxon.

Thank you, man.

I've been recently diagnosed with CRS, can't remember shit.

(audience laughs) Baby you get to the age, you know, like, (Cheech chuckles) but I was following, he introduced me to the De la Torre Brothers who were glassblowers when I started... And then they, somewhere along the line, they started doing this lenticular work, it's gone now, but this lenticular work, which was, you know, when you get a little prize out of the cracker jack box, and it's those things that the eyes of Jesus changed and they follow you, that's lenticular.

And it's prismatic plastic art that depends on where you stand in relations to the subjects and the images changed to something totally different, you know, and it's like, "Whoa, this is cool."

And I started watching them develop this process for about five years, you know, and it was very crude at first.

And then they got better and then, and all of a sudden they started breaking through with works that were really fine art, and they were recognized as such.

And I started collecting that work, and then we commissioned them to do this, this is 26 by 13 feet wide.

In order to accommodate it.

We had to saw a big rectangle out of the bottom of the second floor, you know, for it to fit.

And it's, you know, it's appropriate, you know, because that's the first thing you see when you walk into the museum like that.

And it couldn't have been a better welcome, you know, to here's your first image of Chicano art its gon blow your mind.

And it will, and everybody that comes in and stands in front of this thing and they can't believe it.

Because the image is totally...

There's hundreds of images in here.

And if you move this way, there's a hundred more.

And then if you move that way, there's another, you know, so you could, we built it so you could go into the second floor where these people there are, and you can get really close to it, you know.

And there's two images of Cheech in there.

And it's like, you know, find Waldo, you know, wherever he is.

But it's spectacular, I mean, it's spectacular.

If you wanna make an impression, this is a way to do it by lenticular art.

- So I have two more questions, and then I'm looking to Christina to let me know where I am with time, but-- - Will you occupy the building we have?

- Yes.

Okay.

The De la Torre brothers came and visited one question about art, just like in the meaning of art.

And then I have a question about, well, I would like to hear a little bit more about you and Esther and what's next.

Like, what's your vision?

- Why what do you know?

(audience laughs) - What's next for the collection?

What's next for... What do you and Esther wanna do with the center?

Like what's its vision moving forward?

I know it's rooted in the collection, but now you have this space.

And then I also, lastly, I'm gonna try to get a question in about what do you think the value of an art education is today in this world?

So the first thing I'll throw at you real quick is the De la Torres Brothers were here in the Q&A, they said something really that struck me, that really challenged my thinking about my own training as an artist.

Einar answered a question, it started saying, "Art is a way about talking about things "in a vicarious manner."

And then, which was his way of saying, talking about the social responsibility of the artist and the ability to speak about things in ways that are not actually able to be felt in the world yet.

And then Einar said, he said, and this is the quote, "Art is a way of talking about things.

"When art is completely free of obligation, "then you can't help but flow what you have inside you, "which is riddled with all this stuff.

"Your preoccupations, your anger and your delight "is all gonna come out.

"But essentially, when you burden art with an obligation "to begin with, you are not free.

"It's a dichotomy of practice."

And then Einar went on to say, "That the purpose of art "is to be free."

And I've still been thinking about this.

You know, they're the artists that you decided to privilege with the first exhibition.

That felt so true to me.

But yet it was framed to me in a way that it was unexpected to me in a way, as a Chicano printmaker, poster maker who's raised under a tradition of obligation, which I still actually really do believe.

But that the purpose of art is to be free.

- Yes, it is.

It is to be free and to make that expression a free flowing thing, you know, because art arises out of your subconscious, you know, it really does.

The inspiration for art rise out of, you don't know where your dreams or just something you stand in front of a blank canvas or a piece of paper and you don't know what you're gonna do.

And at some point it takes over.

It's like writing, you know, you're maybe writing a screenplay or something.

You think, "Well, the characters are gonna do this."

And bullshit, they do what they wanna do, man, they take off and you just hang on, you know, and you're typing away and try to keep up with the things that they wanna say, these characters.

But that's exactly the same.

The Chicano, the first Chicano painters in LA especially felt that because they were told that it was just gonna be political art and everything.

And they go, "Is this Chicano art?"

Or is this just, you know, and they find, "This is, I just wanna make art," You know, and they came to that.

But once they had validated what they were doing, vis-a-vis the political end of it, and that lasted for a little while, you know.

And the thing is, every generation of Chicano artists that comes into this school, gives news from the front.

This is what my neighborhood looks like today.

And it's really revelatory, you know, when you see that, "Oh, this is kinda the same "and a little bit different."

So it ebbs and flows like the tide.

And the tide comes in and leaves a bunch of things on the shore, and the farther it comes in, the more things it leaves on the shore.

So we have generation after generation of Chicano artists coming into this arena with a little longer perspective, you know, and a little like, they're being treated different than the other original artists were.

So it's an ongoing evolutionary thing.

I think that's the meaning of Chicano today.

It's evolution of their tradition with whatever comes in front of them and they incorporate it into their art.

So it is always occurrent and as always, you know, ahead of the pack, so.

- And we're out of time, it's time for questions.

- Okay.

- But any last words about what you and Esther are gonna be working on next, and any parting words for the young artists here who are fighting for this creative life to have meaning and to sustain themselves in the world?

- Well, you know, what we're doing together Esther and I and the rest of the team, we have a great team in place, is to kind of fill in the pictures, you know, color in the background of what the things that we didn't know or there has not been represented before the American public on both ends.

Because there's new art being created and there's old artists being discovered and hasn't had a place in the museum, a museum, any museum now.

So we're trying to fill in both of those ends at the same time.

So it's a very kind of cool situation, you know, because you get to honor the origins and then honor where it's going at the same time, because it's, you know, I've studied art for a long time.

And I've studied all the schools of art, you know, the Ashcan and abstract expressionism, blah, blah, blah.

This is the longest lasting school of art in the America's history.

And I think it is the most important in its description of culture and there's nothing like it, you know?

And then we'll keep going because it'll keep evolving and we don't stand in the way of... Well, Chicano art occurred between 1968 and 1972, and then it went to the Post Chicano art, and then the who gives a fuck Chicano, you know.

(audience laughs) They wanna do that, the museum wants to segment it.

It's a through line.

It's a through line that is still occurring right now.

And so that's the strength of it, you know, and it becomes a part of the culture rather than something separate from it.

- You know what, thank you so much.

(audience applauds) Cheech Marin.

(audience applauds) What an honor.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

- So now, Christina.

- Carlos.

Cheech.

Wow, you guys, this was just incredible.

- Oh, thank you very much.

- Let's give it up again for this, for both of these guys.

Beautiful, beautiful.

- Thank you.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

(audience applauds) - So I knew we were gonna have long lines and I have to admit I could not stop these guys, cause this was such a fantastic conversation.

So we have a shorter time than ever for this Q&A was what I wanted to come out and let you guys know, just because, don't shoot the messenger, the theater does have another show that follows us.

So this is not just like an arbitrary thought.

I know that there are people here who have brought things for Cheech.

Everything that you have for Cheech, you can leave at the end of the stage and we'll make sure that he gets it.

But we are going to have a short Q&A though that I'll let Carlos run, but we only have about 20 minutes.

So Cheech is not doing signing, but he will accept your gifts.

So I will leave it back to you.

Carlos and Cheech back to you.

- Okay.

So-- - What do you want?

- Thank you.

- [Layla] Hi, my name is Layla and I wanted to ask you, how has racism or prejudice, if any, impacted your climb to success in the entertainment industry?

- I'm sorry, say that again.

- How did racism impact your climb and entry into the entertainment industry?

- Didn't impact it at all, cause I didn't pay any attention to it.

Really, I mean really that's the truth.

Oh, this is not for me.

Well maybe it is, you know.

Or if there was any loud protest against it, I just didn't pay attention to it, "Okay, next there's another opportunity."

- How hard was that?

- No, not you next.

(all laugh) - Cheech how hard was that to ignore it?

- It was easy.

Okay.

It was easy when you made up your mind at the beginning, this has nothing to do with me.

Your attitude has nothing to do with me.

- Wow.

- Yes.

- [Dave] Okay.

First of all, I wanna say, Dave, not who man.

- Thank you very much brother.

- But growing up I'm a Inland empire boy, it gives me great pride to know that you put your museum in the heart of the Inland Empire.

I mean, growing up you brought out the Chicano look, the Chicano way of talking, the cars, everything.

I mean, it was either between you or Robbie Benson and I went with you.

(Cheech laughs) But-- - [Cheech] And don't it make my blue eyes brown, yeah?

- Exactly.

(Dave laughs) But my question is, that museum, cause I used to go to that library a lot and that is a huge space.

- [Cheech] Yeah.

- And you are gonna fill all that space up?

- Yes sir.

- [Dave] Okay.

Yeah.

Cause I was down there in November and I didn't get a chance to go.

It was closed the day, right before we were gonna go, cause I think it's closed Tuesdays until-- - Come back home, you little Sheba.

- [Dave] Yes sir.

- I think Esther said there's, it's 48,000 square feet.

- [Esther] 62.

- 62 I believe.

- 62,000 square feet.

- [Esther] 624200 - Yeah.

- Which is dwarfs the size of the actual Riverside Art Museum.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause like I said, next time I'm down there, I'm gonna go down there and Sal just text me, tell me to tell you what's up again.

- [Cheech] Thank you brother.

- All right.

- Appreciate it.

Yes sir?

- [Audience Member] This ain't really much of a question, but a simple request.

Can I take a selfie with you?

- Maybe after the show, we gotta get, we're going-- - [Audience Member] All right.

No problem.

- Okay.

- Right here.

- Born in East LA you just song and I brought you a loaf of bread and a box of S'mores.

- Cool.

Thank you very much.

- And my question is, as a director and a producer, is there a specific Chicano artist you wanna make a film for?

- Is there a specific I don't know yet, you know, there's a lot of ideas swirling and wanna land, you know.

Making a movie is a very difficult proposition and it's like, at any point in the process, you throw your hands up.

"Ah, don't ask me any more questions."

You know, but there'll be one.

There'll be one.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- Thank you.

Yes sir?

- Actor Taio Perez, retired art teacher from Detroit Public Schools.

You inspired me in 1972 in (speaking foreign language) the album and he said, "I think it's Michoacana "and no its (speaking in foreign language) "My dear it's from Michoacana.

"I'm first generation Chicano."

I'm like, "Where, do you come from Dad?"

He goes, "Michochana, "We're are gonna go, Papa."

So it's my wife's birthday today.

Thank you so much.

- [Cheech] Oh, happy birthday.

- [Audience Member] We had a-- - Happy birthday wife, there you are.

How are you?

- Thank you for everybody.

- [Cheech] My pleasure.

Thank you.

- Question.

- [Audience Member] Hi Cheech.

- Hi.

- Thank you for being here.

- [Cheech] My pleasure.

- I created a artist in residency program, in memory of my son, five years ago he passed away.

And I wanted to ask you, what inspiration would you have for a grassroots artist in the Detroit area?

One of our artists in residence is here.

His name is Drew Pina Valdez.

- [Cheech] Hey, how are you?

- And he's a wonderful artist.

And what would he have to do?

Well, how would you inspire him to try to get work into your museum as a grassroots artist from southwest Detroit?

- Keep on making art.

First of all, that's the key.

Keep on making it no matter what, every day get up and make art.

Search out the areas where you can show your art, here locally.

And then search the internet for other places.

'Cause that's the easy way to do it, you know, because there's gonna be things that spring up that you don't know about.

Search those out.

Ask Esther, ask her where exactly, where she knows a little bit about it, but she'll direct you.

- Thank you.

- [Cheech] Okay?

- Thank you.

- [Cheech] Yes, ma'am?

- Before establishing your own museum, were there any specific art museums that you really resonated with or enjoyed walking through?

- Oh.

Yeah.

There's a lot of 'em.

In Washington DC, I always go to the National Gallery every time I'm there.

I don't care what they have up, I'm gonna go see it.

And it was the inspiration for, like, I did a tour of small paintings from the collection because I could play smaller museums and you didn't have such a long lead time.

Major museum, you're waiting six, seven, eight, 10 years to get in, even if they wanna do it.

You know, they put you in a queue and where you go.

But smaller museums and so they had an exhibition of small paintings.

And I was transfixed by them because they were really personal and I went there many times, I was staying there for a week.

And I went there, I think three times that week to see that same exhibition.

And I would see the same people in the end there were looking at the paintings and I'd go, "There's something resonant about small paintings."

So I put together a tour of small paintings and I was really successful.

Because the people that really collect art and have a large collection, the small paintings are the ones they take with them everywhere they go, you know.

So that's really, you know, it's beneficial.

Thank you.

- [Audience Member] Hello-- - But the National Gallery, if you're in DC go to the National Gallery.

- And it's free.

- And it's free.

- Yes, sir?

- Yeah.

I would like to give you this gift on Michigan Chicano Latino Raza history dating back to 1782.

- [Cheech] Okay.

- And I would like to also ask that maybe in the future you'll have an exhibit that will feature Great Lakes artists and in particular some artists from Michigan.

- I hope so too.

- That'd be great.

(audience applauding) I will.

- We'll work with Esther on that.

(audience applauding) - We're getting there, one museum at a time.

Yes ma'am?

- Hi Cheech, thanks for being here today.

- [Cheech] My pleasure.

- What you said about art coming from like the subconscious and just kind of coming to artists really resonated with me.

- [Cheech] Ah-huh.

- And I was wondering, I guess, how you feel about art that kind of just like randomly comes to someone or is like an arbitrary idea.

Do you think it has like a place within society or do you think it can be successful?

- Absolutely.

I mean all art starts that way, you know, and of course it has resonance and what you want to do is transfer that image that you see in your dreams or somehow this being reflected and perfect that art, perfect that art, you know.

Because it is all a combination between inspiration and perspiration, you know, that makes it.

But keep doing it.

And artists cannot help but being artists really, they can be better artists if they put a lot of effort into it.

But artists have to make art.

It's, you know, it makes 'em crazy if they don't.

(Cheech laughs) Because I've been married to a couple, so, you know, (audience laughs) you don't want that.

(audience laughs) Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

Yes ma'am?

- Hi, my name's Isabella.

Just thanks for coming.

My question is, so I come from Hispanic Latina background, but my family has really separated me from it.

How do you use, how would you say to use art to kinda get back into that heritage?

- [Cheech] Back into your art or?

- Yeah - [Francisco] How can, to get back connected to her heritage.

- I guess a number of different ways.

Ask your relatives what their experiences is?

Read, see, histories, go to things that were reflected or the whatever part that is, you know.

There's like, I was flabbergasted when I started touring with Tommy Chong at the beginning and we were playing Chicago and at the quiet night on Belmont Street.

And I was hungry between shows.

I said, "I think I'm gonna get something to eat."

And, "Oh, there's a Mexican restaurant "right across the street.

"In Chicago "What kind of Mexican food they have?

"Sopa the sour crowd or you know?

(audience laughs) What kind of, (Cheech chuckles) I swear to God it was like, you know.

And so I went up to the thing and they had the typical, they had the menu scotch taped to the window, you know, like.

- [Audience Member] Yeah.

- And I started reading, it's the real shit, you know, like, and then looking in there, it's all Mexicans.

And up and down the street, it's all Mexican restaurants.

And I was like, "Wow."

Went back to the club, I told the store or the club owner, he said, "Man, there's Mexican restaurant."

He said, "Oh yeah, well this is "the biggest Mexican population "in United States, outside of Los Angeles."

Chicago?

Really in the Midwest?

But it came out of the end of the twenties and the thirties with the advent of the railroads.

It could bring workers up without, you know, the hassle of crossing a wet border right through into the heart of America, Chicago.

And they dispersed all the jobs were available there, factory workers, agricultural workers, whatever they had.

And so, like, that was a big revelation, you know, that this is much deeper, in much more widespread than it was, it's not just East LA, right.

- But what Cheech said earlier about marijuana and how it was used as a healing technique in the family as a tincture, as an ointment to, you know, back aches or for cramps or whatnot.

There's, I think this is like the Chicana feminist practice really of like asking questions within the family of like looking at intergenerational relation... Like looking in through conversation for the ways in which the memory has been sustained.

- [Audience Member] Right.

- And that there are these stories there of the grandmother who did the thing, you know, to heal the kid in a way that was not traditional, you know.

And then the more we talk to our parents.

Cause sometimes, you know, they're working, they're not.

- Yeah.

- They don't even always knew that they were carrying that knowledge as well.

You know, and before you know it, you're talking about the generations and generations that have, you know, struggled in order to navigate all these realities.

And so, it's there.

I do think that that was a really beautiful answer.

Like, you know, to ask the question, to be in conversation and to like really read for the ways in which they may have even looked past some of the things that they were holding onto.

- My grandmother on my mother's side, I asked her, you know, cause I was supposed to do a report for school of my lineage, I guess, where all my ancestors came from.

And so my grandmother was the last one I said, and she was getting on in years and I said, "Nana, I was supposed to do this report.

"And my mom says, you were born in the United States "and my dad says you were born in Mexico."

And I says, "Where were you born?"

And she says, "Tucson."

Okay, Tucson.

And I walked away and she said, "Mexico."

Is this all Alzheimer's kicking in or something?

So I asked her again, "Nana, where were you born?

"I was born in Tucson."

Yeah, that's what I thought.

And I walked away, "Mexico."

I said, "Were you born in Mexico or Tucson?"

She says, "Tucson was Mexico by baboso."

(all laugh) She wasn't as dumb as I thought.

- Yeah.

- But that's what, you know, the boarder crossed her.

She woke up one morning, now she was an American.

That's how it goes sometimes.

(Cheech laughs ) - [Audience Member] Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

We have time for a couple more questions.

- Okay.

- We have until 7:15 I think.

So we have a couple more minutes.

- Thank you for being here.

I just have a question.

What would be your advice for like the working class like Mexican, who has like a little bit harder access to college education?

Coming from experience being like a working mom and stuff.

- What would my advice to them be as concerning what?

- [Audience Member] Like what would be your advice as to how to break into the art scene?

- The art scenes, keep making art and go to the places where they make art and talk to other people that make art.

Artists are influenced greatly by other artists, whether they want to acknowledge that or not, but they're greatly influenced by other artists.

So meet other artists, see where they're going.

You know, you can do something entirely different, but what's the inspiration for what the art you wanna do?

Find out what that is.

And that kinda, it's like, having wind and when you have a sailboat, get the wind and it'll fill your sails.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- I do think that thing to like make work is for the artists, for us artists, like that's the thing, to continue.

But that's what's hard when you're a working class person and you're managing a family and you're managing your life is to how to sustain that practice.

And I think we all struggle with that.

Even those of us who are even pretty well privileged to like, because everything in life pushes against the creative impulse to make.

And yet if the-- - [Audience Member] We wanna talk to Cheech.

- Oh yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

And so yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right here.

Thank you.

- Hi Cheech.

So as a Latina from Texas, I was really proud, I guess to hear about like your beginnings in San Antonio, and I have a lot of relatives there.

That aside, I just wanted to ask, like, if you could say one thing to the people in the arts sphere who still doubt the validity of like Chicano arts, like if there was one thing that you could say, what would it be?

- Don't pay attention to those people who downplay you, who are a negative push against, don't pay any attention to 'em.

- [Audience Member] Right.

- You know, really.

(audience laughs) I don't.

Sometimes they interfere in your life more than you want them to.

But it's telling yourself you do the right thing, don't paying attention to 'em and eventually concentrate on your art and that'll pull you through.

I mean, it's very simple.

- [Audience Member] Thank you for being here.

- You're welcome.

- Hi.

- [Cheech] Hi.

- My name's Alex.

I study a lot of art history and I'm taking a class on Mexican muralism right now.

And so when you talk about art as evolution, do you see those through lines from the work of Mexican muralism in Diego Rivera and artists like that to Chicano art as an evolution?

- Oh, absolutely.

That was their immediate inspiration, you know, because the murals in Mexico during that period were made for an illiterate audience that didn't, you know, couldn't read.

And so they were told the story in pictures, they could get that.

So that was, it was... And they were highly political, highly political about revolution that was going on in that country.

So yeah, and so it resonated with the young Chicanos, well, we're gonna do the modern interpretation, or the contemporary interpretation of that.

And so that's, there's still groups that do very, like East Los Streetscapers, they were the biggest muralists in East LA.

All of them responsible for all the iconic murals in East LA.

But it depends on what kind of art you wanna do.

You know, you wanna make a little small miniature pennies, you wanna make big murals, you choose it.

But find out the thing that resonates most with you.

- [Alex] I'm minoring in museum studies right now.

So I think it's very admirable that you've founded a museum, founding institutions like that adds so much validity to the art and the style and having a place, an institution that houses that is very impressive.

- If you do good things, good things will come to you.

I'm a firm believer in that.

- [Alex] Thank you.

(audience applauds) - Can you hear me?

Sorry, a little whoop.

One, thank you so much for being here.

- [Cheech] My pleasure.

- I was not expecting this, you have blown me away.

Really sorry, blown this away.

So, I didn't know you were a potter.

- [Cheech] Oh yeah.

- Have you ever been to Czech Republic?

- [Cheech] Ever been-- - Have you ever been to Czechoslovakia Czech Republic?

- [Francisco] Have you ever been to Czechoslovakia?

- Only in my dreams.

(all laugh) No, they-- - It's all pottery.

It's all of it.

It's all, - [Cheech] Oh yeah.

- It's all ceramics.

- My teacher was, he was there many times.

- Yeah.

- But you know, I was going through your, I mean, I'm 53 years old.

I've seen so many of your films.

I have, you know, everything from "Tarantino" to "Tin Cup."

Which by the way, there's that piece at the end of "Tim Cup" where you create this beautiful support of your friend who's doing this insane thing.

I mean, who else?

It's a very moving thing.

And your work has been very moving.

- [Cheech] Thank you.

- Through the years.

- If I can plug an up coming work.

(all laugh) I've got this movie opening up on March 10th.

It's called "Champions."

It's with myself and Woody Harrelson and some other actors.

- It is really a good movie.

I mean, it is one of the best movies I've ever been associated with.

And it'll tear your heart apart and make you laugh, like you couldn't believe it.

And it's about a basketball coach who has to teach a team with disabilities.

It was a Spanish film, this is a remake of it.

Comes out March 10th, it's called "Champions."

Please go see it, you'll really like it, I guarantee you.

- [Audience Member] Thank you so much for this legacy.

- Thank you brother.

- Maybe last question and then maybe we could just take some offline over here.

- Hi.

Buenos Aires my name's Erma Guzman.

I am born and raised in southwest Detroit.

I'm a current graduate student here at the School of Social Work and Museum Studies.

So I'm really thinking at that intersection, that museum as institutions play.

And I wanna say thank you first off, for even doing this and collecting as a art history student here in 2015, there was no one in the art history department who could even point me to Chicano artists or Latino artists.

And it was actually the American culture department who started to point me in that way.

So I'm very appreciative of this event.

But my question to you is, if you could talk to, and you kind of sprinkled it throughout, but if you could talk to the elements of Curanderismo and indigenous being in the Chicano art process.

- Well a lot of different artists are influenced by that in a lot of different ways, you know, and some that may be very obvious and some that may be not very obvious, you know, floating images and how they interpret those and how their dreams inhabit their paintings.

That comes out regardless of what they try to do to suppress it, you know.

Because it's a natural thing.

I don't try to ever tell artists, you know, what to paint or you should paint this, but nah.

That's the wrong thing to do because they immediately don't wanna do that.

You know, because they're artists and you know, don't presume that to be their source of inspiration because they have their own source of inspiration, you know.

Encourage their inspiration.

So that's kind of the way I navigate that.

And sometimes I've had conversation with an artist where I suggest kind of what I see of things to do.

Sometimes they incorporate it, mostly they don't.

And I, you know, it's okay because they're doing their art and art should be a very, a singular work, you know?

So that's what you do.

- [Erma] Thank you.

- You're welcome.

Thank you very much.

- I think we're out of time.

If we can just, maybe offline, we can take a couple more questions.

- Okay.

- But we'll do a bow-- - Thank you everybody for being here.

- Thank you very much for coming tonight.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

(audience applauding)