By Lisa Thibodeau

Raffa Chavez’s childhood was scrappy, but he always felt the call of the spotlight. His parents worked as farm laborers to support him and his six younger siblings after they immigrated to the United States from Michoacan, Mexico in the 1970s. 

“I was born in Sonoma and came to Sacramento to do my undergrad in theater with a plan to go to Hollywood and be famous,” he says. 

But those dreams changed over time when Chavez became a father. “I used to live with one foot out the door,” he says, “but I have a 10-year-old daughter and am a family man, so now I have both feet planted in Sacramento.”

Chavez, who is self-taught and continuously evolving, is drawn to many mediums: film, photography, collage, poetry, painting and even martial arts such as boxing; though he is primarily a painter. 

After earning his theater degree at Sacramento State, Chavez went on to earn a master’s degree in Spanish while experimenting with different mediums. “I have a storytelling background as a writer and performer. I started shooting with Super 8 film, but I went backwards. I went from Super 8 motion pictures to 16mm then to shooting stills in film, whereas most people start shooting [with] cameras,” he says. 

This non-linear path eventually led him to selling his work. “People started buying my photographs and I was like, oh this is cool, so I started doing collage and from there it went to painting, so now I do a combo, but painting is still the greatest joy,” he says.

Activism and cultural roots are important components to his art. He often paints Mexican Americans, nature in crisis and images depicting demons and corruption.  

“There’s a lot of Chicano culture and Mexican culture in my work. There’s a level of activism in there and environmental justice is a key thing you will find,” he says. “We need to solve the issues that impact poor communities and what’s destroying our environment, so the discussion between those three layers is always going on.”

Chavez’s painting “Hombre Clavado” (nailed or pierced man) illustrates the frustration Chavez feels about the destruction of the planet. “The man is nailed to the floor and in this capacity you are mad about a lot of things, but you can’t move. There’s [a reference] to the political system. At the bottom you see I borrow from The Doors with, ‘We want the world and we want it now’ and there’s an Amazonian tribe demanding the return of the earth,” he explains. 

Martial arts are another passion for Chavez as he used to make art in his boxing studio. “I had a boxing gym slash art studio on 24th street for 15 years. People thought it was an art installation because it looked really cool,” he says. 

Boxing has naturally made its way into Chavez’s work as depicted in a self-portrait painting titled “El Campeon” (the champion), which shows a boxer with his fist raised up in the air. In the background is a farm worker pouring grapes from a bucket, a woman in a sombrero and a boy — a depiction of Chavez’s father — sitting in a field.

While he was working on this painting Chavez’s father passed away. Chavez wanted to honor his father’s hardship and connect it to his boxing. “My dad was known as a champion of picking, he picked the fastest and the most grapes, that was his claim to fame,” he says. He included a poem in Spanish in his painting that explains how his dad represented a champion to his son.

And as a multifaceted artist, Chavez also draws back to his theater background to express emotions and find different stages on which to perform. “Theater training with exposure to the set, the music, the script and the wardrobe make me a very dynamic artist. There’s a lot of drama in my work, a lot of feelings, a lot of story.”

Chavez’s work can be seen at Axis Gallery July 5-27 and during Verge Center of the Arts’ annual open studios event in September.

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics, the city had no editorial influence over this story. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.