Memorial Park

In 2011, Los Angeles artist Roberto Del Hoyo painted the large 5-sided pavement art mural located on Memorial Park Stage, which functions as a cultural center where people can enjoy different kinds of entertainment and events such as live music. The stage was erected in 1957 under Mayor Ogden Markel, but the mural itself was not commissioned by the city until 2011. The iconography used in the Memorial Park Mural can be best described as a combination of community, unity, and religious and spiritual imagery. The colors used are consistent with those that make up the American flag, but blue seems to be the dominate color overall, possibly representing peace or harmony within the park's immediate Santa Ana Bristol Manor/Bristol Warner community. Some of the mural's images represent culture, education and unity - musical instruments, a graduation cap, a pencil, etc. The giant hands located at the roof of the stage potentially represent a "higher power," connecting religious thought with the local community. The eagle with the American flag shield at the top between the giant hands could also represent the narrative of American exceptionalism.  

Chicano Gothic is a 6 ft. x 20 ft. acrylic-on-cement mural located in the enclosed outdoor swimming pool area in Memorial Park, depicting the Orange County Chicano/Chicana working class in their dominant industries.  On the far left, an elderly man represents the fruit pickers in the citrus groves, and to his right a younger worker holds a hammer, perhaps as a factory worker or craftsman. In the center, a farmer stands next to his wife and young child. Behind is a lush green field where workers are bent over as they tend to it, and a large factory protrudes from the background as its large tower omits a plume of dark gray smoke that covers the sky. On the far right, a small house rests in front of the Santa Ana Mountains. The name “Chicano Gothic” and the portrait-like image of the farmer and his wife mimic Grant Wood’s iconic 1930 painting American Gothic. Like Wood's painting, the subjects of Vasquez’s Chicano Gothic have long, somber faces. In American Gothic, the man stands to the right and in front of the woman; however, in Vasquez's mural the woman stands on the right and side-by-side with the man, suggesting a disruption of traditional American gender roles. The workers’ humble blue clothing represents the blue-collar Chicano/Chicana working class, and Chicano Gothic is one of several murals that nods to Vasquez’s socialist ideology. Influenced by the contemporary realism movement, Vasquez sought to portray the working class not as idealized subjects, but as realistic portraits of the blue-collar Chicano/Chicana community in Orange County. However, the mural is also critical and satirical interpretation of American and Chicano culture. Vasquez was very critical of the predominantly white class that controlled the low wages and poor working conditions of the working class. He vehemently defended the blue-collar Chicanos/Chicanas, and Chicana Gothic shows the proud, hardworking, family-centered attitudes of his community. By doing so, Vasquez counters the kind of traditional image seen Wood’s American Gothic, subverting American mainstream culture by celebrating Chicano culture.