Seattle Sidewalk
-Deloris Tarzan Ament
4/98

Chicano Artist Christopher Martinez-Luna is the son of migrant workers who settled near the border.   In his case, the Canadian border.   A recent art graduate of Western Washington University, Martinez-Luna transforms into art the emotional struggles he experienced growing up with Mexican roots in white-bread Blaine, Washington.

Cigar boxes, labels from Mexican foods-even bottles of hot sauce-embellish roughly framed figurative drawings done in charcoal and earth pigment.   The mood is somber.   The message is that Martinez-Luna, who has never lived in Mexico, feels alienated from both Mexican and American cultures, completely at ease in neither.