Exhibitions: Past

Ry Cooder/Vincent Valdez, El Chavez Ravine, 2004-8, oil on 1953 Chevy ice cream truck

El Chavez Ravine was commissioned by Ry Cooder, the Grammy Award winning guitarist, singer, and composer.  In 2004, Cooder hired San Antonio artist Vincent Valdez to paint a mural on a vintage 1953 Chevy ice cream truck, the subject of which would be the late 1950s displacement of the Los Angeles Chicano community by the developers who built Dodger Stadium.  Cooder’s album on this theme, Chávez Ravine, was released in 2004. For his research, Valdez used old maps of early Los Angeles and various texts and testimonies from the Los Angeles Housing Authority. He also interviewed residents and descendents of the Chávez Ravine evictions, and used Cooder’s album as a format for the layout and overall feel of the project. Valdez painted the truck in oils, which took nineteen months to complete.