University Advancement

Public Relations and Strategic Communications

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For CSUN Professor, Lowrider Exhibit is About Art, History, Not Just Cars

(NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Oct. 15, 2007) — For Cal State Northridge Chicana/o Studies professor Denise Sandoval, a lowrider isn’t just a car. It’s art. It’s history. It’s a way for members of a community to express pride in who they are.

"Lowriding in Los Angeles goes back decades," said Sandoval, curator of an upcoming exhibition at the Petersen Automotive Museum, "La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels," that will explore the multicultural aspects of lowriding in Los Angeles.

"Lowriders were a way for working class people across the city to express themselves," she said. "These cars have become visual textbooks of community history, where people are not only expressing who they are individually, but also collectively. They talk about the struggles of being black and brown in L.A." "La Vida Lowrider: Cruising the City of Angels" opens Oct. 27 and runs through June 2008 at the museum located at 6060 Wilshire Blvd at Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles.

Sandoval explained that a lowrider is a car that is customized primarily to be low to the ground, usually containing a hydraulic setup for adjusting the height, with a fantastic candy paint job, chrome features and customized upholstery.

She said many people have misconceptions about lowriders, confusing their owners (referred to as lowriders) with gang members.

"These guys are dropping $50,000 to $100,000 on their cars. Believe me; these guys aren’t going to do anything that might jeopardize their cars. These are hardworking guys living in the suburbs," she said, adding that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was a lowrider in his youth.

"Lowriders in Los Angeles reveal not only their passion for classic cars, but they also speak to the importance of visualizing and communicating cultural identity and community," Sandoval said. "Using their vehicles as canvases for creative expression within the urban landscape, lowrider owners document the rich and vibrant social and cultural history of our city."

She said lowriding has its roots in America’s automobile history. After demand for new cars increased following World War II, a large number of used cars became readily available to anyone with limited means, including the working class and minorities. Sandoval said the new owners would restore and modify the vehicles to be the "finest in their neighborhoods," often painting them vibrant candy colors and incorporating artwork on the hoods and trunks, giving them an overall theme.

Among the vehicles in the seven-month exhibition will be "Chavez Ravine," a custom-built 1953 ice cream truck commissioned by musician Ry Cooder to promote his 2005 album by the same name. Artist Vincent Valdez has painstakingly chronicled the saga of Chavez Ravine, which was once a mostly Mexican-American, working class enclave that was bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium, on the truck’s exterior.

"This exhibit is basically the truck’s debut," Sandoval said. "The truck underscores how these cars become visual textbooks of community history."

Among the other lowriders in the exhibition are the legendary "Gypsy Rose," adorned with about 150 carefully painted roses; "Orgullo Mexicano," which has won Lowrider Magazine’s "Car of the Year" three times, and "Dressed to Kill," one of the first cars to be showcased by the magazine that hasn’t been on display for nearly a decade. The show will also include lowrider bikes, car models and car club jackets and other memorabilia associated with lowriding.

Sandoval said she became interested in lowriders while at graduate school. She was researching a paper for a class when she stumbled upon a Japanese lowrider magazine in the library.

"There was a Japanese girl posed on the cover just like on the American lowrider magazine," she said. "Inside, there were pictures of lowriders and guys wearing the baggy clothes, even Virgin de Guadalupe T-shirts. But instead of posing in front of locations in Los Angeles, they were all standing in front of places in Tokyo. I was stunned that this culture, which I thought was confined to Los Angeles or just the Southwest, had spread across the Pacific. There were very few scholarly articles on the subject, and I knew what I wanted to do."

Sandoval said the stories of the lowriders are the stories of Los Angeles, "at least working class Los Angeles. These are wonderful stories about our city that are not always heard by people. And now that tradition has spread. Lowriders are now telling the stories of their communities, their culture, around the world."