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Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.297.1, Connecticut Historical S ...
Latino Arts Cultural Heritage Bus Tour; Harwinton Fair; 2004
Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collection, 2015.196.297.1, Connecticut Historical Society, Copyright Undetermined

Latino Arts Cultural Heritage Bus Tour; Harwinton Fair; 2004

Subject (Puerto Rican)
Subject (Peruvian)
Date2004 October
Mediumslides
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.297.1-.21
Description2015.196.297.1: Slide showing Jonathan Chanduvi, son of Peruvian woodcarver Romulo Chanduvi, showing his father's workshop in East Hartford to visitors on Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.2: Slide showing ax throwing competition at the Harwinton Fair

2015.196.297.3-.8: Slides showing log rolling competition at Harwinton Fair

2015.196.297.9: Slides showing Jack and Jill sawing competition at the Harwinton Fair

2015.196.297.10: Slide showing Jonathan Chanduvi, son of Peruvian woodcarver Romulo Chanduvi, showing his father's workshop and tools in East Hartford to visitors on Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.11-.12: Slides showing Latino Arts Bus Tour, musical performance at La Casona - Graciela Quinones-Rodriguez (singer); Edwin Rios (guitar), Joe Diaz (cuatro)

2015.196.297.13-.14: Slides showing murals made by Victor Pacheco, on Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.15: Slide showing clay head sculptures made by Victor Pacheco, Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.16-.17: Slides showing visitors to Victor Pacheco's art studio, Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.18: Slide showing people gathered outside of El Mercado on Park Street in Hartford, Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.19: Slide showing Susan Holmes holding a tiple made by Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez

2015.196.297.20: Slide showing Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez showing a cuatro she has made, at her studio in East Hartford, Latino Arts Bus Tour

2015.196.297.21: Slide showing Jonathan Chanduvi, son of Peruvian woodcarver Romulo Chanduvi, showing his father's workshop and tools in East Hartford to visitors on Latino Arts Bus Tour
NotesSubject Note: The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Institute for Community Research collaborated with Manchester Community College (MCC) on a cultural tourism project in 2004-2008. Each year, three or four day-long bus tours visited cultural events and artist studios in ethnic communities living in different parts of the state as a way for new audiences to experience and meet Connecticut’s ethnic and occupational communities. The project goals included: 1) expanding awareness of unfamiliar art forms and heritage tourism assets, 2) encouraging access to little-known ethnic or occupational communities, 3) creating audience and artist interactions, 4) stimulating sales and commissions of traditional arts and foods, and 5) developing new partnerships with community organizations and artists. The tours were developed and led by the Connecticut state folk arts program director, Lynne Williamson, along with artists from each community. The partnership with MCC ensured that the tours were advertised in the Credit-Free Catalogue each semester. Audiences for the tours were primarily members of the Older Adults Association, a core audience for MCC’s Credit-Free courses.

Each day-long bus tour included a visit to folk artists’ studios or shops to observe them producing or selling their work, while engaging with visitors in discussions on the history of their communities and the background of their art form. Tours stopped at related landmarks and/or restaurants in the artists’ neighborhoods, or attended a local community festival. The artists and community groups visited gave insightful presentations on their cultures and artistic traditions. Each tour included a traditional dinner or lunch where visitors could sit down to eat and talk with the artists and community members. CCHAP received an NEA Challenge America Cultural Tourism grant for a pilot series of bus tours in 2004. Subsequent project funders also included the Greater Hartford Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.

The Latino Urban Arts Bus Tour visited the East Hartford studios of Peruvian woodcarver and furniture maker Romulo Chanduvi and Puerto Rican cuatro maker/woodcarver Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez for demonstrations and conversations. Quiñones-Rodriguez joined the tour as guide to Hartford’s Park Street neighborhood, a vibrant center of Latino culture, where visits were made to the newly renovated education center Mi Casa, the Victor Pacheco mural, the shops and food stands of El Mercado, the new Latin bookstore La Paloma Sabanera, and the Rey Bermudez/Victor Pacheco art and salsa dance studio. The day ended with a concert of traditional Puerto Rican music by ensemble Amor y Cultura and singers including Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez at La Casona restaurant.


Biographical Note: Biographical Note: Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican educator, social worker, artist and luthier who apprenticed with William Cumpiano (Easthampton MA) and has built cuatros, tiples, and bordonuas. Graciela is also a cuatrista and higüera (gourd) and santos carver. She served as an advisory committee and exhibiting artist and workshop leader for CCHAP’s three Puerto Rican projects, starting as a community scholar with Herencia Taina, CCHAP’s 1998 Taino exhibit project, researching the techniques of higüera preparation and decoration for use as household utensils, ornaments with Taino or political iconography, or musical instruments. She also worked as an artist-presenter for the Massachusetts Cultural Council summer institute on Puerto Rican cultural heritage for Springfield MA teachers. Graciela is a highly respected arts educator, woodcarver, and singer with the Connecticut Latin music group Tierra Mestiza; she is a CT Commission on the Arts Master Teaching Artist and Artists Fellowship winner. As part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in Year 3 (2000-2001), she worked with master luthier Bill Cumpiano. Together they built cuatros, tiples, and bordonuas, older forms of Puerto Rican stringed instruments. As part of the apprenticeship they built a cuatro on the basis of a photograph of an unusual form from the early 1900's, which has a bent wood body rather than a hollowed-out base. They demonstrated their partnership work at the Lowell Folk Festival in 2000.


Biographical Note: Romulo Chanduvi began learning the art of woodcarving and fine furniture-making from the age of twelve, growing up in Lima, Peru. He absorbed the techniques and styles of carving passed down in his family’s shop for generations, and served apprenticeships in private workshops in Argentina and Switzerland. Romulo began his career teaching furniture-making under the auspices of the AID Program of the United Nations, helping soldiers to acquire a trade after their military service. He continued to receive advanced training from master woodworkers, learning to work with tropical woods while practicing his artistic skills in Panama. Since 1993, when he received his green card as an “artist of exceptional merit,” Romulo Chanduvi has lived and worked in the Hartford area where he continues to create original woodcarvings as well as replicated museum-quality furniture for many organizations and private collectors. His Charles Street workshop walls are covered with carefully-arranged tools, vises, drills, and hundreds of chisels that Romulo has modified for use in hand-carving intricate details as well as to transform logs of exotic woods into extraordinary pieces of furniture. Each piece is built with authentic joining techniques of the appropriate period, and is finished with all-natural stains, resins, bee waxes, shellacs, and varnishes. His clients include several high-profile collectors in the northeast, and he recently created custom cases for the Sullivan Collection of 18th century porcelain at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Romulo also creates traditional woodcarving in the Spanish/Inca style. Romulo has been featured in several important exhibitions, including the Institute for Community Research touring exhibit Living Legends: Connecticut Master Traditional Artists, and the Wadsworth Atheneum’s installation of Faith and Fortune: Five Centuries of European Masterworks. and in a feature article in Home Living Connecticut magazine. Romulo’s son, Jonathan, carries on the family tradition in restoration, establishing a successful studio in New York.


Biographical Note: Victor Pacheco is a muralist, painter, and sculptor, as well as a lecturer in Visual Arts at the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. From his website (https://www.vicpacheco.com/biography.html): "Victor Pacheco was born in Fajardo, Puerto Rico and raised in Hartford, Connecticut. Victor attended the University of Hartford Art School in Hartford, Connecticut where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture. He worked several years for not-for profit organizations teaching youth in the greater Hartford area in Painting, Photography, Print Making, Video, Mural painting and design as well as ceramics. Victor was awarded a Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and Tourism as well as a Citation from the state of Connecticut for his dedication to the arts and his community. His murals depicting Puerto Rican themes and images can be seen around Hartford, and some have been preserved after dismantling. He has received awards and fellowships in Art, including: The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship, Rhode Island School of Design Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Challenge Grant and a grant from the Art Matters Foundation. Victor graduated from The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island with a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture. Victor Pacheco is currently living and working in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Pacheco’s work is an introspection of identity formation. Multiple viewpoints of identity are engaged, including societal facts, environmental references, cultural identity and community relations. Methods of research include: archival data, informal interviewing, and observations of past and present environments. Analyzing information is part of the process leading to inform, repel or attract a viewer of art. He promotes viewer participation, involvement, and interaction in the creative process as crucial in shaping, organizing and addressing the realities and identities of Latino and African American communities. The work serves as a portal to discussion and communication about issues relating to the environment, health and culture.”


Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
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