Driving down N street in Midtown Sacramento, you might see a seven foot statue of a dog – or fox, depending who you ask – mid-stride in a bright-yellow suit.<\/p>\n
The statue is called \u201cHomie, Walking the Dogs\u201d and was built by Gilbert Luj\u00e1n in 2000. While it originally sat at the Safe Convention Center before it was remodeled in 2018. After being stored for a couple years, he strutted over to the CLARA Center in 2020.<\/p>\n
The people down at the CLARA Center love looking out from their offices and admiring the swanky giant that stands outside their building. According to Megan Wygant, the CLARA\u2019s executive director, she sees people hanging out with him all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see people come up, you see kids playing on him a little, you see people walking around him. You see a lot of selfies with him,\u201d Wygant said. \u201cAnd usually, it\u2019s people who aren\u2019t aware they\u2019re being watched. Its kind of a very intimate, personal experience to just get to watch on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Diana Argueta, the operations manager there, Homie\u2019s what most people first notice about the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s definitely a really good marker for the building,\u201d Argueta said. \u201cSo if I\u2019m telling people like, \u2018oh, you know, we have like a very bright yellow fox man out in the front.\u2019 People are always like, \u2018oh yeah, the fox.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The statue’s almost devilish grin and bright orange color have led many people in Sacramento to think he\u2019s a fox. However, according to an interview that Luj\u00e1n gave to the Smithsonian\u2019s Archive of American Art in 1997, Luj\u00e1n built a system of symbols for his artwork. One recurring theme was these anthropomorphized dog characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started making these little dogs, and it became these pyramid dogs,\u201d Luj\u00e1n said. \u201cWhich was just an invention on my part, was to be the metaphor for indigenous Mexican-Indian heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
He started forming this system in the sixties when the Chicano rights movement, or El Moviemento, first started to take the hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cChicanos understood in the sixties\u2014at least, I\u2019m one of many\u2014who understood that we were Indian people,\u201d Luj\u00e1n said. \u201cThe European invasion that came over here in the fourteen hundreds\u2026 it was an invasion. It wasn\u2019t anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the early seventies, Luj\u00e1n started working with three other artists: Frank Romero, Carlos Almaraz and Beto de la Rocha. They called themselves Los Four, and made sculptures and murals together. They helped shape the burgeoning Chicano art movement, and held their first widely-recognized exhibition at UC Irvine in 1973. That show was curated by Hal Glicksman, Irvine\u2019s gallery director at that time. Glicksman said that they elevated graffiti to the station of fine art.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey sprayed graffiti and then they would paint over each other\u2019s work day after day until the painting was thick with paint. It looked like a Jackson Pollock, you know, splash and drip painting. But it was graffiti,\u201d Glicksman said.<\/p>\n
Luj\u00e1n said that with his work, he wanted to craft a vision of a whole new world based on the indigenous myth of Atzl\u00e1n, a paradise lying to the north of modern day Mexico. He called his version \u201cMagulandia\u201d after his nickname from high school. According to Glicksman, his classmates compared him to Mr. Magoo, an extremely nearsighted cartoon character.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went with a high school class to the county museum, and he stood in front of each painting up close, looking at the brushwork,\u201d Glicksman said.<\/p>\n
This world is where he said he implemented his system of themes and symbols, to show what this paradise might look like to him.<\/p>\n
\u201c[I\u2019m] trying to produce a world, a Magulandia, that represents another world – you know, the Wizard of Oz, the Emerald City,\u201d Luj\u00e1n said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m doing. I have buildings, I have dogs, people, carritos, kids on skateboards. I have a world that I\u2019ve developed all over these years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gilbert \u201cMagu\u201d Luj\u00e1n passed away in 2011. His work is on display at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture at the Riverside Art Museum.<\/p>\n
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