SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Ms Garza has had several major one-person exhibitions in the United States including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden/Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in New York City in 1995; the Smith College Museum in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1992; and The Mexican Museum in San Francisco in 1987.
In 1991 she had a one-person exhibition titled A Piece of My Heart/ Pedacito de mi Corazón at Laguna Gloria Art Museum in Austin, Texas that traveled to museums in El Paso, Texas, Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California.
The San Jose Museum of Art organized a retrospective exhibition in 2001 that traveled to museums in New Mexico, Florida, and Texas at the San Antonio Museum of Art where it opened to record-breaking attendance.
Ms Garza’s artwork was the subject of an interactive exhibition for children organized by the Austin Children’s Museum in 2003 in Austin, Texas. The exhibition traveled for 5 years to children’s museums in the United States. In 2019 the John E. Conner Museum at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas acquired this exhibition “In My Family” and installed it permanently in the museum.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Four major traveling group exhibitions featured Ms. Garza’s artwork: Hispanic Art in the United States/ Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in 1987; C.A.R.A. Chicano Art/ Resistance and Affirmation, at the Wight Art Gallery, UCLA in Los Angeles in 1990; and Art of the Other Mexico, at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago in 1993; Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, at the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio in 2001.
PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS
In 1984 the San Francisco Water Department commissioned eight paintings titled The History of the Use of Northern California Water.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas commissioned a painting titled Barbacoa para cumpleaños (barbeque for birthday party) in 1993.
The San Francisco International Airport commissioned a copper cutout wall sculpture, 16 x 24 feet titled Baile (dance) in the year 2000.
In 2009 Ms Garza created 4 designs for outdoor metal cutout murals, measuring 14 x 48 feet each for New Hope Housing in Houston, Texas.
AltaMed commissioned 14 designs for a metal cutout fence totaling 4 ½ x 72 feet, for a rooftop terrace at their corporate office in 2011.
In 2015 The Institute of Texan Cultures at the University of Texas in San Antonio Texas commissioned a painting titled “A Plaza in Texas in the 1930’s, Los Tejanos”.
The Alameda County Arts Council in Oakland, California commissioned a painting titled “Mrs. Romero’s Retirement Party in Her Parents’ Backyard” for Highland Hospital in Oakland in 2015.
In 2017 the City and County of San Francisco commissioned two metal cutouts titled “Cycle of Life” of a California condor and a great blue heron in actual size for a new park on 17th Street and Folsom Street named In Chan Kaajal Park.
The National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC commissioned a metal cutout portrait of Dr. Walter Álvarez in 2019.
SPECIAL HONOR
On March 29, 2007 the Los Angeles Unified School District Board approved the naming of a new primary school in East Los Angeles the Carmen Lomas Garza Primary Center, a pre-kindergarten through second grade school that serves a student population of first, second, and third generation Mexican American.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Ms Garza’s artwork is in several museum permanent collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden both in Washington, DC; National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois; Oakland Museum of California in Oakland, California; The Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California; the El Paso Museum of Art in El Paso, Texas; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; and the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas in Austin.
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
Ms Garza was a recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and one from the California Arts Council.
In 1996 she was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for a special International Artist-In-Residence grant from the Mexican arts agency, FONCA, Fondo Nacional para Cultura y las Artes to reside in Mexico for two months.
In 2004 she received an Artist-in-Residence grant from The Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy.
PUBLICATIONS BY & ABOUT CARMEN LOMAS GARZA
In 1990 Children’s Book Press of San Francisco published Family Pictures/Cuadros de familía. Childrens Book Press published three more award winning picture books of Ms Garza’s artworks and short stories: In My Family/En mi familía; Magic Windows/Ventanas mágicas; Making Magic Windows: Creating Papel Picado/Cut-paper Art with Carmen Lomas Garza. By 2012 over 700,000 copies of the books had sold when the publisher Lee and Low Books of New York City purchased Children’s Book Press and continues to sell the books.
The Chicano Studies Department at University of California, Los Angeles in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Press published Carmen Lomas Garza in 2010, a scholarly monograph about Ms Garza’a artwork by Constance Cortez.
Since 1988 Ms Garza’s art has been published in numerous textbooks by publishers such as Houghton Mifflin, Holt Rinehart and Winston, McGraw-Hill and Pearson.
LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS
Ms Garza has presented keynote speeches, conducted workshops, and lectured at museums, universities, schools, and educator’s conferences since 1973 in the United States and Mexico.
STUDIO & RESIDENCE
Ms Garza has had her studio at THE POINT in the Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco since 1985. She has lived in San Francisco since 1976 and has been a self-employed artist since 1981 after working for five years at the Galeria de la Raza/Studio 24 in the Latino community of San Francisco.
EDUCATION
Master of Art 1981, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
Master of Education 1973, Juarez-Lincoln/Antioch Graduate School, Austin, TX
Bachelor of Science 1972, Texas A&M University (formerly Texas A&I), Kingsville, TX