IT'S IN THE BAGS

Most mesh produce bags are made from poly-propylene, which is known for its strength. The compound’s crystalline fibers, when woven together, can hold 30 to 50 pounds of onions, oranges, potatoes, nuts, peppers or corn.

You’ve seen such bags at roadside stands and in the stocking areas of supermarkets, but Gloria Martinez-Granados sees them differently. To this interdisciplinary artist, those produce bags are history and heritage. They are pain and triumph.

We sit outside her Phoenix studio, in a sliver of sunlight, cross-legged on a blue-gray deck. It is the week before Christmas, and the high temperature is expected to be in the low 80s. Still, the air feels light, anticipatory.

“My family came here during the summer, and it was super hot,” Gloria says. “We packed up our truck — it was just full of our things — and we arrived right at sunrise. It was 5 a.m., and we were drenched in sweat. It was a very Arizona welcome.”

Gloria was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, but her family migrated to California when she was very young. She was
in fifth or sixth grade when a job opportunity for her father compelled them to cross the state line.

“I pretty much grew up in Arizona,” she says. “We lived in South Phoenix most of our lives; my husband works there, and I still have ties there. It’s home.”
 

And for as long as she can remember, “home” has also been the space she holds for art. When Gloria begins to weave that story, her voice catches. A bee hums along the roofline. The rumble of a box truck is punctuated by the roar of an airplane overhead.

“I get emotional when I start to make these connections between my childhood and my art,” she says. “When I was a kid, if you asked me what I wanted to be, I would have said, ‘An artist.’ Eventually, though, it changed. It became more like, ‘I want to be a secretary,’ or ‘I want to be a nurse,’ or something.”

Gloria admits that, as a student in the Phoenix public school system, she — like so many other kids — became acutely aware of the judgment, both actual and perceived, of her peers.

“You’re among this other group of individuals who have very different backgrounds,” she says. “You present yourself with these ideas, and whatever you’re presenting, you’re going to be judged on that. [Art] wasn’t the popular answer, right? And I didn’t know any artists, so how would I even achieve that? And I feel like when somebody uses the word ‘artist,’ it’s thought of as a celebrity, not so much like an actual artist. That’s probably what I was thinking at that point in time, as a kid — so impressionable.”

Instead, Gloria went to school to become a nurse. She was part of the inaugural cohort of Arizona’s first bilingual nursing program. There were 30 in the class. Only 14 graduated, and Gloria was one of them. “At that point in time, the way the laws were and the way policy was in colleges, I was able to go through school, as long as I didn’t get any federal funding,” she says. But she couldn’t go on to practice — because she didn’t have a Social Security number.
 

She was 21. She’d recently had a baby. She’d put in so much work. So, when she couldn’t get a job, she started searching for a place to belong.

Gloria and her husband, artist Reggie Casillas, were involved in the local art scene, as was her father-in-law, acclaimed Chicano artist Martin Moreno. The family frequented exhibitions and events in support of other local artists, and one day, Gloria had a revelation.

“I thought, Well, I don’t need to put myself in danger, giving a false identity to get a job or something like that,” she remembers. “I can make jewelry and then just vend at little local spots from time to time. I’m a stay-at-home mom at this point. So, doing that really gave me a sense of self and validated my … not just my identity as a professional or the ways that we identify in general, in society. ... It was more like, I’m a human being and I am valid, and what I produce is valuable, regardless of whatever value is given to it by society.”
 

That was 21 years ago.

Gloria went back to school under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which the federal government instituted in 2012. She earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in printmaking from Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in 2019. She has exhibited her work across the United States.

“I think my first inspiration was Frida Kahlo,” she says. “I was part of an all-women artists collective, the Phoenix Fridas. When we were sitting and doing all of that work together and engaging with the community, that was very foundational for me, and I really appreciated having that space. It’s not like you’re a teacher or a student — you’re just working together. And I think that in those types of spaces, you really start to push your boundaries.”

Gloria’s work is tactile, delicate, painstakingly executed. Her installation at the Phoenix Art Museum, The Uncertainty of Higher Education, features 2,200 lithographs of her student IDs to represent the undocumented students who graduate from Arizona high schools.

She finds family photographs and incorporates them into her pieces. She weaves and she stitches. She creates on those polypropylene produce bags and discarded leather, on paper, on chain-link fences, and in her dreams. She does beadwork, she continues to make prints, and she heals. “It’s all by hand,” she says. “The patterns themselves are digital, but that’s it.”

Now, she’s working with a photograph of her paternal grandparents. In the black-and-white image, they’re standing side by side. Until recently, Gloria didn’t know that her grandfather had been a bracero. Not even when she was working on Braceros: Can 48,900 Stitches Hold History?, a 2023 project that took her 211 days to complete. It hung at the Tucson Museum of Art.

In 1942, in the middle of World War II, the federal government instituted its bracero program, wherein American and Mexican diplomats agreed to send millions of Mexican laborers to the United States to address the labor shortage caused by the war. The workers were expected to return to their countries of origin when their short-term contracts had expired. By the time the program was terminated in 1964, the U.S. had benefited from the labor of 4 million Mexican workers. They were, literally translated, “laboring arms.”

According to the Library of Congress, “The United States and Mexico agreed on a set of protocols that would protect braceros from discrimination and poor wages. Nonetheless, discrimination continued and braceros experienced surcharges for room and board, deducted pay, and exposure to deadly chemicals.”

And so, the produce bags that Gloria works with hold more than fruit and vegetables. They hold identity and the joy, trauma, beauty and grit that goes with it. And if Gloria, who was approved for a Green Card last year, makes a mistake in her work, the pieces are so big that they won’t typically show it.

“It’s such a tiny little thing,” she says, “but all of it brings me back to migration and to people. It’s sort of like when you’re in a garden and every aspect of the garden is a reflection of your life. And that’s the same thing about migrants, right? This ‘illegal’ verbiage, or this ‘criminal’ verbiage … these labels are for the very few. You don’t see the whole other beauty of what happens from that migration movement that’s been part of our history. We’re not foreigners. We’re not aliens. You’ve given me an alien number, but I’m not an alien. I’m on my own continent.”
 

It is the end of January now, and the air is charged, heavy. Headlines drip with words such as “shooting,” “detention,” “mass deportations,” “protests” and “investigation.”

Gloria works, silver fingernails flashing against thread. The community is grateful.

“Latino art is needed because when the political systems around us start to fail or misrepresent our communities, art becomes a tool of survival and an outlet to reclaim control of our own stories,” journalist Darian Cruz says. “One of the things I love about it is that this type of work is usually a form of rebellion and liberation.”

Gloria’s daughter, RaeAna Casillas, knows working is a way for her mother to process the complicated emotions that collide within her world.

“Throughout her schooling and even today, my mom has always asked me, ‘Am I a real artist now?’ ” says RaeAna, who’s also a visual artist. “My answer has always been yes, because art, to me, is inherent to life itself. But now, she’s an artist with an identity. The work she does isn’t just hard because it’s hours of cross-stitching. The work she does is hard because it’s taken her whole life to constantly be broken down, rejected, repeatedly told no. Somehow, through all of that, she’s had to do the work of finding her own strength and story.”

In 2024, Gloria sliced her hand while washing dishes. She severed tendons. She couldn’t move her ring and pinkie fingers. She needed devastatingly expensive surgery. RaeAna, who was working for a nonprofit at the time, raised more than $20,000 through a fundraiser they called “Save My Mother’s Hands.”

“She’s inspired much of everything that I do today because of the vulnerability and passion I learned from her journey,” RaeAna says. “It’s important that people understand the humanity behind all immigrants the same way they understand the humanity behind my mom’s story and the work she creates today.”

Over time, Gloria healed, and in her studio, on this crystalline winter day, orange and red produce bags are stacked in corners. They await her vision, her patterns, her hands.

“I want people to talk about immigration,” Gloria says. “My art doesn’t give you an answer. It simply tells you: ‘You’re calling me a negative thing, and I’m not.’ ”

She also wants people to approach her art openly. And curiously.

“Some of my favorite connections to my work are from young people — they’re young, first-generation immigrants,” she says. “They tell me that they connected with the bags, that they knew the work was going to touch them on a personal level. It’s the art that makes you want to approach it, but it’s the story of the people in the art that makes you want to look at it more. You feel their presence. You feel their spirit.”

For more information about Gloria Martinez-Granados and her work, visit borderlesscreative.com.