Vista Language Arts Lessons

  Jane Castillo-Los Angeles based artist with parents who immigrated from Columbia. "Hairball" Sculptures added to Castillo's personal journey  for developing her current art form. Castillo uses the symbolism and metaphor of hair as a marker of identity and gender; hair places you in the cultural hierarchy based upon the preferred color and straightness: you have either high hair or low hair.  To comment upon the large role hair plays in the life of its owner, Castillo makes huge hairballs of densely curled hair, formed painstakingly by hand, and then hung on ropes from the ceiling.  The hair is as artificial as the semiotic meaning of hair types, and, depending on its color, one ball can  knock the others about.  "Ecliptic Eccentricity" is a series of five large hairballs, four black and one blonde, a redesigned pendulum. The blonde hairball is on the end--position of power.  It can knock the  black ones around. Hair is a statement of artifice, truly an object

  Sandra Cisneros -novelist, poet, short story writer, artist, Chicago, Illinois 1954. Notable works: The House on Mango Street, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories Cisneros' early life experience provides themes for her writing.  She is the only daughter in a family  six brothers.  Her family's constant migration between Mexico and United States made her feel like she was "always straddling two countries...but not belonging to either culture." Much of  Cisneros' writing deals with the formation of Chicana identity and the challenges of being of  Mexican descent in an Anglo-American culture. HAIRS Everybody in our family has different hair.  My Papa's hair is like a broom, all up in the air.  And me,  my hair is lazy. It never obeys barrettes or bands.  Carlos' hair is thick and straight.  He doesn't need  to comb it.  Nenny's hair is slippery-slides out of you hand.  And Kiki, who is the youngest, has hair  like fur. But my mother's hair,