News

Dear Friends and Patrons:

Welcome to my newly updated art website which now includes current photographic and allied content on my latest works and activities.

Many of you have encouraged me to add new content to the site in recent years to stay current with my developments. I deeply appreciate your enduring support and your comments in response to what you find here from time to time.

Since my inaugural posting in 2006, during the ten years I spent working and painting in New York City (1999-2008), a lot has happened. If you visit my Photo section here you will find visual evidence to that effect.

In virtually all of my artistic pursuits, I have attempted to combine my creative development with conscientious engagement in public discussion and expression of contemporary social and political issues.

Following are highlights of my recent efforts along these lines.

MALDEF and the Diego Rivera Foundation

Throughout 2006, I was the featured artist of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), one of the nation's leading Latino-focused civil rights organizations. My original work entitled The Border Crossing was accordingly featured at major fund raising and public leadership awards events hosted by MALDEF throughout the year in major cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Antonio, Chicago, and Washington, DC. The featured work speaks to the challenges and opportunities facing Latino immigrants in contemporary American society. Later in 2006, I played a large role in co-organizing and co-hosting an important international conference of mural artists in Mexico City in collaboration with the Diego Rivera Foundation. That gathering concerned itself with practitioner mutual support and network building, as well as opportunities to advance global social justice on issues like immigration and human rights through public mural art projects. Each of these activities and events was a major success and I am grateful, in each instance, to all who were involved.

Featured Art on Various National Publications

During 2007, my art began being featured on covers and promotional materials of various professional philanthropy publications and reports that I was involved in helping to shape, including products of the California Endowment (California's leading private health funding institution), the Diversity in Philanthropy Project (a coalition of some 50 leading foundation trustees and senior nonprofit executives committed to increasing inclusivity in professional grant making) and the National Civic League (the nation's leading good government organization). Report and magazine covers (and collateral materials) on which my art was featured thus included Growing Philanthropy to Build Healthy Multicultural Communities, Shaping the Future of Philanthropy and the National Civic Review.

Move Back to California

In 2008, my wife Claudia and I relocated back to California, where I was born and where we have lived on and off for much of the last twenty plus years since we met. It was a big change after nearly a decade spent living in New York. Instead of moving back to Los Angeles, where I was raised, or the San Francisco Bay Area, where I completed most of my higher education studies, we decided to simplify, moving to a small town on the California Central Coast called Creston, located almost exactly between the state's two largest population centers. In Creston, we bought a wonderful ten acre ranch which we have since populated with a plethora of interesting physical projects (a plant and vegetable nursery, a chicken coop, and two tee-pees), as well as several new animal friends: three dogs, a stray cat, six chickens of various breeds, two Barbados black-belly sheep and five Nubian goats.

The move back to California has proven essential to the resuscitation of my artistic impulses and engagements. Since coming back to California, I have produced a good deal of new original art , most of it dealing with troubling public and social issues in our times presented ironically against a back drop of bright, happy colors and collage and acrylic textures.

Gallery of Graphic Arts

In Spring 2009, my newfound artistic direction brought me two important formal alliances. First, Jim Horton, principal of the New York-based Gallery of Graphic Arts (GOGA), where I have mainly shown my works in recent years, asked me to join an invitation-only group of founding artists called the GOGA Group. I am now therefore one of ten select artists to be exclusively featured at the gallery. All of the featured artists are well known New York creators and long time favorites of GOGA clients. (For more information on the GOGA Group, please see our website: www.gogagroup.com.) My latest works (some of which are featured here on my updated posting, along with an explanatory show statement) commenced our fall season on Tuesday September 15, 2009, just two days after my 50th birthday. The show, called Saving the Wishing Well dealt primarily with issues of environmental responsibility. It ran through October 4.

Studios on the Park and Allied Public Art Projects 

Also, as a welcome complement to my New York creative activities, I was additionally invited in mid-2009 to serve as a founding artist for an important new community arts center serving the California Central Coast. Called Studios on the Park, the new arts center is located in Paso Robles, the heart of the region's renowned wine industry. Along with 19 other regionally-based artists, I thus now show periodically at Studios in an open work-study space that encourages members of the broader community (and especially youth) to engage more fully with artists and the arts.

To advance this work, I have recently joined Studios on the Park's board of directors and helped to organize three well-received community mural projects during the past year, two of which anchored a new annual regional festival of the arts supported by the organization in partnership with the City of Paso Robles. Over 300 people contributed to our mural projects at the 2009 and 2010 festivals, both of which depicted scenes of wildlife and nature along the Salinas River. Each of these festivals was attended by over 5,000 people in total.

Earlier this year, in January, I organized yet another community mural project, this one involving local youth in the completion of a commemorative piece reflecting on the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

(The Photo section of this website features digital imagery of all the mural projects reported above.)

Finally, in April, I led another community based youth public art project in partnership with Studios, the Paso Robles YMCA and the Paso Robles Police Department, as part of the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate campaign. The project provided educational information to at risk teens about the history of the Holocaust and engaged them in the painting of six thematic panels on intergroup relations, peace and justice issues. The panels are now on public display at the Paso Robles YMCA. 

Conclusion

All in all, I hope you will agree, it has been a very active and creative period since my early website postings. Please let me know what you think of my recent activities and directions by touching base with me as indicated in the Contact section of this site. I welcome your thoughts, suggestions and ideas.

Events

Recent, Current & Upcoming Events

  • April:  During April and May, Henry A. J. Ramos served as master of ceremonies at a series of public events organized by the University of Houston-based Arte Publico Press, to commemorate the book release of Folk Treasures of Mexico: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection. The events occurred in New York City at the Americas Society (April 23), Mexico City at the Franz Meyer Museum (May 11), Houston at the Houston Fine Arts Museum (May 13), and San Antonio at the San Antonio Museum of Art (May 14). Additional events in the series are being planned for the fall, to occur in various West Coast and midwestern cultural arts venues. Special guests and presenters at these events have included: Ann R. Roberts, daughter of the late Nelson A. Rockefeller and the book's primary sponsor and promoter; Dr. Guadalupe Rivera Marin, daughter of the late, great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera; Dr. Marion Oettinger, president of the San Antonio Museum of Art  and the book's principal author; and Dr. Nicolas Kanellos, executive director and founder of Arte Publico Press. 
  • May: Henry A. J. Ramos was one of ten artists featured at the Gallery of Graphic Arts (GOGA) in New York City, in a show commemorating the first anniversary of the GOGA Group -- an artist's consortium formed by the Gallery in 2009 to enhance artistic collaboration, vitality and exchange on Manhattan's upper east side. The show opening took place from 6:00PM-8:00PM on Tuesday, May 4 at the Gallery of Graphic Arts. Also, on Saturday, May 29, Henry A. J.  Ramos partnered with local school art instructors and various youth and community artists in Paso Robles, CA to support a series of public murals based on the theme, Follow the River, Paint the Dream: Imagine the Possibilities. The mural panels dealt with issues of regional land and water conservation, and were completed in conjunction with the second annual Paso Robles Festival of the Arts. The completed panels are now being prepared for public display at various local public venues including the Paso Robles Public Library and Centennial Park. 
  • August: Henry A. J. Ramos will be helping to sponsor and co-host a series of events to support the restoration of the Diego Rivera mural, Pan-American Unity, located at City College of San Francisco. The events will include a VIP Gala at the City Club of San Francisco on August 26th and a Community Concert featuring Elena Duran at City College on August 28th that Ramos will emcee. The events are being co-organized with support of the Foundation of City College of San Francisco, AAA, The Herb and Nylda Gemple Trust and the Consulate General of Mexico.

Past & Recent Exhibits

  • 2010 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY ("Contrasts in Form and Color" with Moshgan Rezania)
  • 2010 Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (Berlin Wall Commemorative Mural Project)
  • 2010 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (group show: "Large Works")
  • 2009 Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (group show: "Cats and Dogs")
  • 2009 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (solo show: "Saving the Wishing Well")
  • 2009 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (inaugural GOGA Group show)
  • 2009 Festival of the Arts, Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (public mural project)
  • 2006 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (solo show: "The Heart Can Regenerate Itself")
  • 2004 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (group shows: "Small Works" and "Water Towers")
  • 2003 ABC-Kunstservice, Berlin, Germany (group show of German and U.S. artists)
  • 2003 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (solo show)
  • 2002 Anarte Gallery, San Antonio, TX (group show)

 

Copyright Henry A. J. Ramos, 2004