2/19-3/15-2025. Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery & Museo Eduardo Carrillo present the collected works of Chicano artist and UCSC alumni Cruz Ortiz Zamarrón. Through the artist’s unique style, this collection of paintings and drawings captures the cultural and historical imagery of the West Coast Chicano experience in the 70s through the 90s. Zamarrón’s animated imagery spans from the playful and nostalgic in “Los Tios” to the grim and political “La Llorona lamenting the death of her children.” The artist’s contemporary imagery is peppered with Azteca Mexica references and Mexican folklore displaying an integration of his heritage into the everyday. Mentored by UCSC professor Eduardo Carrillo as a student and later as a friend and colleague, the viewer can see the influence the two artists had on one another. These works were collected by Carrillo and are a reflection of that mentorship and the growth that Zamarrón experienced in that time period.
Cruz Ortiz Zamarron (1953-2024) was a gifted storyteller. His multimedia artworks are rich with Mexican folklore, colonial history, and the life of a Chicano artist living in Santa Cruz in the 1970s. Born with Morquio Syndrome, Zamarron’s mobility and health were greatly impaired his entire life, however Zamarron was eager not to let his genetic disability define him. At nineteen he hitchhiked to California from San Antonio Texas and established himself as an artist in a new city. A joyful rascal by nature, much of the stories of Zamarron involve a significant level of mischief. One such story was on the evening of the artist’s birthday when he and a group of other UCSC art students painted the Virgin de Guadalupe on the side of the sand cliffs near the downtown Santa Cruz clocktower. Even though the mural was promptly removed by the city, in its short lifespan it spoke volumes to the local Latino community and it became a common sight to see flowers and offerings left at the base of the image that miraculously appeared days before the Feast of the Virgin de Guadalupe. This particular representation of the Virgin Mary is a valued icon specifically to the Mexican-American community symbolizing both a legitimacy of the Mexican people within the Catholic Church but also a connection to the Azteca-Mexican Coatlicue (koh-at-lee-kway) goddess of life, death, and childbirth. Zamarron emphasized this connection within his artworks, incorporating imagery both Catholic and Indigenous Mexican.