Artist: Fred Portillo

My name is Frederick Portillo and i just finished my undergraduate studies in Art Center's Fine Art program.  While there, I developed an interest to use my practice as an artist to facilitate the changes in the world I want to see happen.

In my personal life, changes I made to my diet and lifestyle made a markedly drastic change in many aspects of my life so that, I learned how education about our bodies and proper nutrition can be both emotionally and spiritually healing as well as empowering.  Because of this, I became interested in developing a community-run restaurant that doubles as a cultural space where the community can come together and learn about cooking delicious healthy food.

Growing up, I spent my life with a foot in one culture and class, all within the free-market of capitalist, pop-culture society in the U.S.  My mother came from a poor-rural family in Mexico and, having chosen to forego an education by puberty (somehow with parental approval), being exposed to anything related to forms of culture, as are understood within contemporary academic histories—art, philosophy, et al—was, for the most part, entirely out of the question for someone with our kind of background.  Which provided higher likelihood that I, would likely never have come to know of art as it is and was so far. 

Unfortunately, I grew up with a poor diet and lifestyle as countless other people do continue to in the most undereducated and economically poor of today’s society, by far.  It is for these and many more reasons that I choose to instrumentalize my artistic practice in order to advance a more culturally integrated, livable society that enhances the quality of life of its residents without diminishing the livelihoods of neighboring communities or regions; for me to be used by culture (society), as a producer of culture (art, philosophy).  I want to be a producer and enabler of culture, mediating the site between society at large and artistic-communities to strengthen community identities and engender new shared histories..   My personal history of poor lifestyle choices due to economic and intellectual climates adopted and fostered by this country have come to shape my understanding that food is a matter of social justice.