About the artist:

Gamaliel Ramirez One of the great pioneer veterans of Chicago Latino art, Ramrez came to this city from the Bronx, and brought the Nuyorican cultural revolution with him. For over twenty-years, he has projected images of urban life, the struggles of Puerto Ricans and others in the urban turf, always with an element of self-portraiture (he is both the artist and Senor Everyman tossed, lost but always somehow finding himself between tradition and modernity, Puerto Rican, Caribbean,Latino and Anglo Amer ican big city norms) and always with a wry sense of humor and irony. Ramirez's image presented here was commissioned by the LASA local arrangements committee in conjunction with LACASA Chicago, to be used for the LASA program, teeshirts and posters, as we ll as for our LACASA post-LASA MLAC materials. Those wishing to see more work by this artists and other Chicago Latino artists should write LACASA Chicago at marczim@uic.edu.

The art work by Ramirez, entitled El pasado es el presente, was commissioned by the Chicago LASA Local Arrangements Committee (Mary Kay Vaughan,Chair; Fannie Rushing, Coordinator) as the program cover and general LASA impage for LASA98, with funding provided by the LASA Directorate and LACASA Chicago out of a budget provided by the Rockefller Foundation and the Great Cities Institute of the U. of illinois at Chicag (UIC)o--and with the stipulation that the art work could serve as the identifying image for LACASA's Post-LASA Mappying Latino/Latin American Chicago Conference. The art work will be printed on teeshirts and posters that will be on sale at LASA98 and thereafter. Those wishing to contacting Gamaliel Ramirez and other Chicago-Area Latino artists should contact LACASA Chicago at marczim@uic.edu.