Roots on the Route: Building Community around Art with Alex! Jimenez
As Cyclovia Remix unfolds over 6 months of dispersed, pop-up events, we wanted to highlight some of the art inspired by open, people-centered streets that we celebrate at Cyclovia. Alex! Jimenez is an artist with roots in La Doce. She brings her perspective as a former scientist to a fastidious artistic process, working with elements of photography, illustration, watercolors, and digital mediums to create immersive pieces that reflect the environments in which they were made. Jimenez first designed a piece for Cyclovia’s route through South Tucson in 2017. This year, Cyclovia Remix is bringing back her wonderful design for a limited-edition reprint.
*Bring a plain t-shirt, tote, bandana or other cloth item to the Cyclovia Park Party on October 24th at Mission Manor to get your own special-release Cyclovia throwback print. The solar-powered Tanline Printing firetruck will be screen printing this design live from 11am to 1pm, and the first 15 are free!
Jimenez’s design for the South Tucson Cyclovia route was inspired by Mexican folk art. In particular, she drew inspiration from traditional Otomi embroidery styles. Often depicting rural and agricultural scenes, embroidery pieces known as tenangos use vibrant colors and unique designs to represent native flora and fauna of the Otomi region--what is now called the Altiplano, or central Mexican Plateau.
I want to make sure to acknowledge that the imagery is not mine. The motif is from Indigenous peoples in Mexico; I definitely did not come up with the idea. But I like using the vernacular of my people.
While creating an homage to Otomi embroidery, Jimenez included familiar images and figures to ground her motif in the context of Tucson.
I designed icons that represented Cyclovia and Tucson and were fun and whimsical. Like the paletero pushing a cart, and all the different forms of movement you can find at Cyclovia, like bikes.
Alex’s Great Aunt Dodie, a long time supporter of both LSA and Alexclamation Ink, models her t-shirt design and original Earth Day print.
Jimenez comes to the process of creating art with years of experience and deep connections. Another of her projects is visible from South 12th Ave. The “Talking Mural” near 12th Avenue and District Street celebrates the storied history of La Doce. A collaboration between Jimenez, Johanna Martinez and several volunteers, the mural features prominent local businesses and showcases historic hand-painted signs. Like much of Jimenez’s art, what makes this mural even more special are its interactive elements. Viewers can scan a QR code embedded in the painting to listen to a series of interviews with local business owners from Los Amigos Meat Market, Oasis Fruit Cones, Alejandro's Tortilla Factory, Arizona Palms Tinting and Rafael’s Tire Shop, all sharing stories of surviving as a small business on South 12th.
The Talking Mural was part of Jimenez’s larger Abecedario del Sur project. She photographed architecture and design on Southside Tucson streets to create a children’s alphabet book rooted in the geography and visual vernacular of the region.
Identity is a big part of my work. [The Abecedario del Sur project] is about appreciating what we have in colloquial art. You can have an aesthetic that is completely outside of designers and planners and end up with something just as interesting, but distinct, whereas a lot of development now tries to imitate or is just homogenous, modern design.
The Talking Mural on S. 12th Ave. [photo credit: Mamta Popat/ AZ Daily Star]
In addition to celebrating Southside visual culture, Jimenez’s work has effectively preserved it. In the six years since the Abecedario del Sur project came together, around a third of the businesses photographed have been affected by encroaching gentrification. As the urban landscape changes, their legacies live on through Jimenez’s book, available through her website.
The whole project is about culture and place and how unique the Southside is. Not only for its visual culture but the resilience and tenacity of people living there. I had conceived of the project right around the height of anti-immigrant rhetoric, particularly against Latin@s. I was in high school when SB1070 was passed, so definitely those conversations have always been in my head as a Mexican who then went onto college in upstate New York after high school.
Jimenez is continuing her place-based work in a new position as Tucson Water’s first-ever artist in residence. She has been working through various visual, auditory and temporal mediums to facilitate conversations with Tucsonans about our most precious resource.
Part of what I did over the summer was record monsoon rain sounds. That content is going to become a youtube channel, and I’m now building out visual content for audio recordings.
With an initial focus on the South and West sides of Tucson—areas where she grew up and feels most connected—Jimenez has been meeting folks at public events and visiting classrooms to create visuals that pair with rain storm audio that she recorded herself and collected through submissions from residents across Tucson. She’s recently been working on generating stop-motion animations of water droplets using custom stamps.
Jimenez believes in doing community engagement by making art with people and sees her evolving, collaborative projects as a way to “gather information, and just sort of listen to how people relate to water.” She hopes to invite local musicians to engage with the monsoon recordings to create unique compositions in the future. Plans are in the works to debut these communal art pieces at public events and a Día de San Juan party this Summer.
