Chico Sierra – Art Criticism

“The Good Sun”

by Lori Bowen

Chico Sierra’s “The Good Sun” is set up at the Dedo Maranville gallery from February 13^th to April 4^th and features a wide selection of Sierra’s works. The show opened alongside a workshop from Sierra himself in which he painted the exhibition’s largest piece for an audience of students and other onlookers. A visiting artist to Valdosta, Chico Sierra originally hails from El Paso but resides currently in Kansas City.[1] With works focusing on topics such as cultural identity and the current political climate, Sierra’s Mexican and Indigenous roots are extremely present in his artistry.[2] This contributes to several motifs present throughout the gallery’s works, alluding to a larger overarching theme of cultural strength in the face of colonization.

Chico Sierra: The Good Sun

by Hayley Acevedo

In the Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, Chico Sierra’s exhibition The Good Sun brings together expressionism, cultural symbolism, and personal experience. As a Mexican-American artist, Sierra draws inspiration from his Indigenous heritage, combining it with expressionist techniques to captivate and immerse viewers. His collection of paintings feels alive and vibrant, encouraging deeper engagement with themes of identity, culture, and spirituality.

Chico Sierra: The Good Sun

by Shelby Hammack

In the second week of February of 2025, Valdosta State University’s Dedo Maranville Fine Art Gallery hosted Chico Sierra’s The Good Sun exhibition. In the beginning of the week, the visiting artist, originally from El Paso, Texas, performed live mural painting in the gallery, open for art and design students to view and converse with the artist. From start to finish, Sierra completed his 65” x 15’ painting, Slow Collisions, acrylic on canvas, prior to the opening of the exhibition. On opposing sides of the canvas, two bodiless heads, both appearing to be female, float in the vibrant pattern stained void. The two forces, facing each other, appear to collide in the near center of the canvas. In watching the development of the mural, Sierra moved about the canvas without evident rhyme or reason, which he claims is a regular practice in his artistic process.¹ While being the largest in dimension, Slow Collisions is only one of many in “The Good Sun” Exhibition; though this mural captures his central area of work, the larger majority of the exhibition illuminates a central theme among his work.

Chico Sierra: The Good Sun

by Sammye C. Hamilton

The Dedo Maranville Gallery has once again successfully hosted an artist that offers viewers new insight into art that is both visually appealing and inspires questions on cultural differences between viewer and artist. Chico Sierra does not blatantly specify his cultural background, but many aspects of his work give clues as to who he is as an artist and how his culture has been impacted in the past and how it inspires him as an artist.

How Chico Sierra Explores Cultural Identity Through Art

by Susannah Gray

In Chico Sierra’s exhibition on display at the Dedo-Maranville Fine Arts Gallery at Valdosta State University, we are able to experience thought-provoking art works which explore themes of culture, self-expression, indigenous identity, racial oppression and more. He experiments with several different materials and mediums, ranging from his 15’ mural Slow Collisions, to acrylic on canvas in several pieces, to acrylic paint on wood such as his work Blue Snake. The works are visually appealing enough to enjoy at face value, but the context of Sierra’s origins helps viewers in gaining a deeper understanding of the meaning or message each one contains. Sierra is a self-taught artist hailing from El Paso, Texas who is of Chicano heritage, meaning someone of Mexican heritage born in the United States. Anyone viewing this exhibition can benefit from learning more about the cultural conversation taking place within these artworks.