We were lucky to catch up with Jacqueline Valenzuela recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jacqueline, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
As a first-generation Mexican-American I believe I have a good work ethic due to the sacrifices of my parents. They both migrated to the US in their teens. Prior to their individual migration experiences my mom had been working to help her family since she was 8 years old. While my father began working around the family ranch around the age of 3; also to help support his siblings. As teenagers they both left the only world they knew to create a better life in the states. Their experiences have largely shaped the way in which I go about my life. I chose to pursue an art career because I know something like this could’ve never been a possibility for my parents. They were faced with making decisions out of survival whereas I have the luck to be able to make decisions I am passionate about. This possibility to choose a passion has made me driven to chase a life my parents never had the chance or choice to chase. It’s empowered me to have a strong work ethic so that I can live out the wild possibility of being financially successful as an established artist. My family’s strong support of my choices also makes me strive to achieve highly. I feel that my success will only help to strengthen my family. It will also show my parents how their sacrifices paid off for my siblings and I. They instilled in us a strong work ethic, like so many other immigrant parents do with their families and children.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is centered around my personal experiences as a woman within the Chicano world of lowriding. Through my work I strive to reflect the deep roots I have planted in the lowrider community over the last 6 years of owning a 1975 Cadillac El Dorado, “La Playgirl”. I feel what is exceptional about my body of work is that it not only highlights my own personal experiences, but also reflects the stories of other women within these spaces. Women and lowriding have had a long history, for a large chunk of that history we have seen an overshadowing of the women with an eye candy or s*x appeal aspect in relation to cars. All the while there have been women lowriders who are actively working on their car builds, custom painting cars, and cruising their ranflas on the boulevards. Due to this I have found it necessary to highlight myself and these women to tell the stories that have long been overlooked. Being a woman lowrider has not only largely impacted my art practice, but it has seeped into other aspects of my life. For example, my art studio is within an automotive body shop. This has resulted in a deeper merging of my art career and lowriding. Even leading to me spending about three years strictly working in the automotive industry as a custom lowrider muralist. It also inspired me to create a brand of sorts that highlights the street wear aspect that is heavily part of the lowrider community. This brand is called “LoversXOnly”, the logo is in the shape of a car club plaque. Within the brand I have four subcategories: Marky Mark’s Kustom Paint, Piel de Mazapán, LoversXOnly, and the Playgirls Club. The first two subcategories focus on mine and my fiancé’s art careers and plays off of our Instagram presence. The LoversXOnly category highlights the merging of mine and my partner’s careers and relationship. It’s also an homage to creating a car club. Car clubs have historically been male only; creating a brand that highlights a couple’s love for lowriding directly challenges that male dominated space. Lastly, the Playgirls Club is rooted in my car, La Playgirl. This lowrider is basically my alter ego, and I’ve found her purpose is to be everything that I am too afraid to be in public. Thematically the car build plays on feminism, the idea of being a woman that’s “head honcho”, and embracing femininity (which is something I’ve been daunted by since my childhood). Overall these subcategories for this bigger brand have all grown out of the impact lowriding has had in my life and career.
In the coming months I will be releasing a few new designs for the brand as a whole. Also 2024 will be a year filled with more institutional level art exhibitions. This is especially exciting to me. As a woman who has faced many challenges throughout her lifetime I am beyond grateful to see that my parents’ sacrifices have led me to create an art filled life I never knew I could have. Being able to move from pop up art walks, to small gallery exhibits and now to museum exhibitions as well as gallery exhibitions with heavily established gallery spaces is truly an unexpected accomplishment of mine. This whole time I have just been creating and working towards maintaining an art career, however I didn’t know that lowriding and this constant work I have been putting in would result in such accomplishments.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Looking back now I would say the three important areas that have been impactful to my journey as an artist have been strong community, being goal driven, and networking. Having a strong community has been the main reason I have had the ability to keep going. Shortly after graduating from my undergrad in 2019, all I knew was that I wanted to keep creating work. My biggest fear was not having an art career after studying art for four years. Thankfully, during my undergrad I became friends with a few committed Latine artists. Seeing them continue to pursue their art careers encouraged me to continue on my path as well. Also when times did get tough or if I ever doubted my journey I found my community was right there to push me forward. This combined with being goal driven, due to my immigrant parents, also pushed me onwards. My goals constantly changed according to what life challenges came my way. At one point my only goal was to keep making work and exhibiting it, then during the beginning of the pandemic I had to make my career financially sustainable due to job loss, and after that challenge it was just the continuation of networking, creating and exhibiting. I’ve found in this last bit of goals I faced the most challenges. I started to put myself and my art out there more by applying to art opportunities like exhibitions, grants, fellowships. But, I’ve learned that sometimes you reach your goal instantly and other times you have to continue to constantly pursue that challenge to one day overcome it. Networking as mentioned above is one of the current areas I am leaning into. I feel networking is important because it is an opportunity to meet new people and introduce them to your art practice. This can be done in a multitude of ways: participating in art fairs, going to openings and speaking to strangers or being introduced to them, having an active and strong social media presence. Present day networking has resulted in various interview opportunities from KTLA: Unscripted, to Juxtapoz Magazine, and even LA Times Image. It has also allowed me to meet art directors and gallerists I never thought I would have the opportunity to work with. And lastly my networking efforts have given me a social media platform that allows me to create merchandise and sell out, or to have support when I curate exhibitions or when I’m in an exhibition. These three main areas I focus on have been the driving forces behind me successfully pursuing an art career.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I am always open to partner or collaborate with people. Some projects I think would be interesting to work on would be: more public interviews, art exhibition curation opportunities, new art series collaborations, and even zine collaboration projects. Interviews ranging from written articles or even podcasts are fun opportunities I am always open to. I feel that being able to speak about my work with others is extremely important and a vital part of building your art career. As for curation opportunities, this is a passion I have pursued since my undergrad. I wouldn’t call myself a full on Curator, but I do love to curate exhibitions that mainly highlight other artists who focus on the lowrider community. I’ve found that it’s very rare for creatives in the lowrider community to have exhibition opportunities given to them. As they tend to stay within the community centered area of the art world; such as art walks or pop ups. However I do believe that many of these creatives deserve the opportunity to be in larger and more established exhibitions. So I strive to give them a platform when I can through curation. As for artwork collaborations I feel these are important to the growth of any artist. I tend to only collaborate with my fiancé, but I feel that collaborating with other creatives can strengthen my career and my art practice. So I am always open to learning and growing as an artist. Lastly, zine projects are something I hold near and dear to my heart. I have self-published and distributed two zines thus far. One of my zines has even been awarded “Best Group Zine” for the Broken Pencil Zine Awards of 2022. I am currently in the process of creating two more. I find zines are a detrimental way to reach a community that may be unable to collect your work due to financial limitations. These are all projects I am passionate about for my own career and practice so I am very open to collaborate or partner with anyone who is equally as passionate. The best way to reach me for a partnership or collaboration would be through email. I have a link in my Instagram bio as well as a form to contact me through my artist website: www.jacquelinevalenzuela.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jacquelinevalenzuela.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/pieldemazapan
Image Credits
Dysfunktional Photography Jacqueline Valenzuela
