As a kid growing up in Los Angeles, Maria Rosario Jackson will never forget those trips to St. Elmo Village. Cute cottages arranged around a colorful courtyard — with sculptures peeking through the shrubbery, forged from whatever was handy — it was home to a collective of wildly creative, free-spirited Black artists. Watching them create, right in front of her eyes, left her awe-struck.
Jackson — now chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, who’ll be speaking at the Irvine Barclay Theater at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7 — was also inspired by the richness of childhood trips to Mexico City, where grand murals and vibrant colors sparked a similar awe. Jackson, the first woman of Black and Mexican heritage to lead the nation’s preeminent public arts patron, passionately believes that we all need this kind of wonder. And she’s intent on putting it where folks may least expect to find it — in health care centers and federal buildings, in schools and on community centers, in museums and public spaces.
“I’m going to talk a little bit about my aspirations for us all to have artful lives as part of a just and healthy existence,” Jackson said. “We’re talking about an all-out, integrated role of the arts in society. It pushes up against the notion that the arts are in a silo or bubble or just extra. They aren’t just extra — they’re an essential and integral part of many things that we care about.”
Her parents, she said, were not artists — her dad worked for the U.S. Postal Service and her mother for Los Angeles Unified School District — “but they wanted us to have artful lives — vidas artísticas,” she writes.
“They looked to the arts to help my brother and me cultivate understanding and pride in our heritages. They also wanted us to be curious about other people and able to recognize our common humanity.
“From an early age, I knew that the work of artists, designers and culture bearers was foundational to expressing and…
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