"The Gronkster-Another Portrait of a Downtown Los Angeles Artist"
by Jim Marquez

Internationally renown artist Gronk, born Glugio Gronk Nicandro on the eastside of Los Angeles known as 'Boyle Heights'�, a short bridge crossing yet still far away from the skyscrapers of Downtown, and raised by a single mom while tolerating public education including the famed 'Stand and Deliver School'�-Garfield High-and the local university, Cal State L.A., has, in less than his 48 years on this planet, become what most artists, hell, what most men, could only dream of: becoming a legend in his own time.

At least that's what the Oxford English Encyclopedia* has to say about Gronk, and many in the art world, both here and abroad, would agree. More of a 'conceptual'� artist than one who produces single portraits, Gronk likes to use the whole room; the entire gallery, stage, building, utilizing bright and dark colors, sculptures, pieces of furniture, entire series of paintings, and artifacts from a bygone era to convey bold feelings as universal as loss, isolation, joy, suffering, or rage. A mixture of German expressionism and controlled chaos. There are no boundaries to Gronk's visions, only those that the viewer of his world brings into the space.

As a teen Gronk had been part of the early 70s Chicano Movement taking stage with performance art troupe 'ASCO'� and quickly establishing his wildly creative spirit. As a solo artist Gronk continued to break the constricting label of 'Chicano'� artist and successfully combined his drawings, canvases and murals with digital technology and took art into challenging directions. Just recently Gronk had a successful run of the opera 'Ainadamar" (concerning the assassination of poet Federico Garcia Lorca during the Spanish Civil War) at Lincoln Center in New York City where he provided the complex set decoration and worked side by side with venerable stage director Peter Sellers.

At his studio, nestled within the skyscrapers he once gazed at as a child, Gronk lives, works, and seethes, constantly looking for varied artistic avenues to traverse. In a surprisingly sedate atmosphere, considering that this was the man responsible for the infamous series 'Tormenta'� & 'Hotel Senator'�, Gronk was kind enough to chat about his work, his methods, and his place in the Latino lexicon.

ME: At what age did you know that you wanted to be an artist?

Gronk: The early days when a pencil is first put into your hand, and, I began to draw. And I quickly noticed that I could do things other kids couldn't do when it was time to in class. Basically, I was able to create a world, and all the other kids would gather around and watch me do these things'�then that expanded into middle school. There was a teacher who asked me to stay after class one day, she wanted to talk about the things I was doing in art class, and I thought 'Oh no, I'm doing something wrong!' And she said, 'You're making these African masks with these elongated faces and complicated patterns on them, do you know you're doing that?' I said, 'Yes, I know'. And she said, 'And you've made 12 of them already and you take them home and never bring them back, so what are you doing with them?' I said to her, 'I'm burying them all over East L.A. because in the future I want an archeologist to find them and wonder how in the hell did they get here?' And she said, 'Look, you are going to take a lot of shit from a lot of people; don't listen to them! Just continue to do what you're doing.'

ME: A teacher gave you the encouragement.

GRONK: Yes, it was an adult giving an approval at a very early age that these kinds of ideas are good for a young person to have. I was in the 7th grade.

ME: Do you remember the first painting you completed?

GRONK: I never thought of painting as my strong point. It was never something that I thought, oh I'm going to be a 'Great Painter' some day. I thought I was a good draftsman, and I loved to draw. I liked the compactness that drawing afforded, which was just a single sheet of paper that you put in front of you, and for me, that held as much weight as a large scale painting. Painting came much later. Drawing was a skill I had, and I still to this day believe that's my strong point.

ME: How do you do the things you do so well?

GRONK: I did this piece recently, it's in the gallery downstairs {Gallery 727} and I was explaining it to a group of people the other day because they felt, perhaps, that it wasn't finished, that I didn't put enough detail. Well, the show was called 'The Streets of East L.A.' and I told them that my memory of certain aspects of my past, growing up in East L.A, is a blur, almost ghost-like. I cannot describe all things in total accuracy, it's like faded memory, so I prefer a phantasm, and the only clarity I have is of a street sign that is attached to the painting that says BROOKLYN AVE. And even that too is a ghost because the street is now called CAESAR CHAVEZ. So I use things from the past, I utilize information, subtlety, in my work. I'm somebody who does pieces that have biographical input. Still doing variations of those buried masks I did as a kid. But it's grown since then. Shapes and colors I recall from memory, maybe with fondness, they end up in the work, so it's not so literal; very conceptual.

ME: So what do you call yourself in terms of ethnicity? We have many names, apparently.

GRONK: I call myself 'Chicano' but I think that I am a product of a particular moment of time. I mean, the whole Chicano sensibility and identity thing took place when I was growing up. However, I didn't choose the name, someone else did. I wasn't there to take a vote on it, but I do like the fact that it does have the word 'chic' in it, so for me it seems like, well, why not call myself that?

ME: And how does one become 'GRONK'?

GRONK: I would be doing this no matter what, it was a given that I would be doing art weather success came along with it or not. I wasn't aiming for success, selling my work, those were not my goals, actually; it was just to do it. To me success meant, if you were exhausted at the end of the day and you used your hands and your mind to create something that you left behind on a sheet of paper then that's a successful person. Before 1985 I was with ASCO, which was an important learning time for me, being a collaborative artist with them. But in '85 I ended up doing a show at MOCA {Museum of Contemporary Art} with 10 artists that were picked as the ones who were taking art in new directions.

ME: How old were you?

GRONK: I was in my 20s. As to how: right time, right place, luck, chance, confidence, and talent, a combination of all of that, it was something that happened and I was ready for it, had it been five years before I wouldn't have been prepared to handle the situation of a major show. So what I did was a painting directly onto the wall of the museum the size of a football field, over 300 feet long, by 30 feet high. I placed this stage inside the museum and I did this painting live, and what happened because of this a lot of other places started to call and ask to do shows for them, and then it just snowballed, different galleries, so all of a sudden the world became a little bigger for me and I started to participate in a lot of things. But after six or seven years I was getting tired, I think my work began to suffer, I was spending less time in my studio. And as you get older you discover a new word: 'NO'. And you become more selective as to what projects you want to work on.

ME: You cut back on public appearances?

GRONK: Well, rather than strictly commercial galleries, I began to prefer alternative sites, like universities, institutions, where a lot of the time the work that I did was not sellable, they were painted directly onto the wall, so when the show was over they just painted over them. And I liked that ephemeral nature, it's something that doesn't lasts, just different layers, becomes part of the past. And it allowed me to work in communities, their museums, and people from all walks of life would come in, see me paint, ask questions, I'd stop, paint, chat, paint more, and sometimes ideas from those conversations made it into the work. And I wanted to show people what it's like to make art. I wanted my supplies to be visible, show them my brushes from Home Depot, to demystify the whole notion of the artist; I was there to talk, like a performance. Because many times we never get to hear the voice of the artist. And one aspect of this type of show is that there is no pre-sketch, and the institution shows you an element of trust that I would do something interesting. I enjoy that.

ME: How long have you been living in Downtown Los Angeles? You know, people refer to this building as the 'Gronk Building'�. Do you own it?

GRONK: 17 years. And no, I don't own it, but that's the rumor. But, I like living in an urban environment, I enjoy living in concrete, I like the history of the street here where I live, and that it means many different things to different people. And to see what is has become today: a big diversity of people in the neighborhood, and I enjoy all of that, that's part of the excitement of being down here, and it's about the discovery of things, so a lot of my ideas come from just walking out into the streets and picking up something new. The neighborhood is definitely inspiring. Living here in this building I've seen a slew of artists, writers, a great many of the Latino intelligentsia. I had one party here where if a bomb had gone off it would have killed just about every noted Latino artist and writer in the country. And besides, it's just plain comfortable too, especially for kids and their teachers when they come up to work on school projects that I help them with.

ME: Where has most of your work sold?

GRONK: Interestingly enough, outside of Los Angeles. For the past couple of years I did an artist-in-residence at the University of New Mexico. I did this animated piece for their planetarium. Took 2 ½ years to do it. Did lectures there, judged shows, then did the opera sets over in Santa Fe for 'Ainadamar'� before we took it to New York.

ME: Who buys most of your work?

GRONK: A good mix of Anglos, Latinos, museums, private collectors. Some have followed my career and bought pieces throughout. Oliver Stone is one, Cheech Marin, and others actually remain anonymous to me.

ME: What are you working on now?

GRONK: Peter Sellers was talking about another set collaboration for an opera, and I'm doing a DVD, a visual journey of art over the past 20 years, with drawings, journals, with a narrative by me and a couple other people.

ME: You ever think, as kid from East L.A., that you would be doing these things now?

GRONK: I'm lucky enough to be doing things that perhaps, some Latinos haven't had the chance to see, I know that. The inner workings of the opera at the Lincoln Center, back stages of the best museums in the country. And there is that sense of joy in others, they see you and know you are a person of color moving through this arena that sometimes we're not prevalent in. I walk into a museum and I see the people who are cleaning up and the security, and they're usually brown or black, and you're the first person of color they've seen who is walking through the front door with the museum director and going into the back office, and those people come up to me afterwards and they say, 'We never thought we would see somebody like you, like us, here', and to me that's very touching, that's very moving, but it's also very telling about our institutions.

ME: Do you ever feel that responsibility toward the Latino community?

GRONK: Well, I know who I am. I don't have to wear a badge all the time or a T-shirt. All I have to do is look at my hand, or look in the mirror. That's Chicano awareness to me. So when I'm lecturing to students I encourage them to take a look at their neighborhoods differently, or open their eyes to experience shapes, colors or forms so they can scrutinize imagery more. To become 'The Role Model'� I don't think I can be labeled as such. But, I do share my experiences with them, in the art arena, and that as a person of color young people of color gravitate toward me, looking at my work, and seeing that there's depth to it, that there's doesn't have to be stereotypes or clichés. So if I can help students see things in a broader picture and not to copy other Latino artists, that you can take many things from different sources around you; that your job as an artist is to always intake. The more you intake, the more you're able to give back. To be constantly learning. That I impart on the Latino students, the young artists that visit me.

ME: What do you think of the sudden upswing of the Latino is society these days in politics, art, literature. We just got ourselves a Latino mayor ( L.A. City Mayor Antonio Villaragoza). Ten years ago you didn't see so many Latino gallery owners, self-published writers, politicians.

GRONK: Well, I only hope that they're good at what they do. I mean, there could be an abundance of them, but if they're not very good at what they do, then what's the point?

ME: Who are some of the artists you admire?

GRONK: An Armenian artist from the 1930s named Gorky. He did abstracts that emotionally grabbed me, made me tingle. And film directors who I absolutely consider artists: Goddard, Bergman, Fellini, and especially Alfred Hitchcock, he visually communicated brilliantly, he was a master of framing shots. The Greek Classics, their statues, Mayan artifacts.

ME: Now for a silly question: If you were a dog, what kind would it be?

GRONK: I'd be a dog with no owner.

ME: Favorite vice?

GRONK: Chocolate.

ME: Favorite color?

GRONK: Brown, of course.


Gronk's work is currently showing at the Pompidou Museum in Paris as part of their new exhibit 'LA-Paris 1955-1985'�

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