Some SoCal residents spent their summer time on the seashore, or at their native rooftop pool; others spent it indoors, hiding from ICE brokers.
It’s why Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe spent his summer time documenting the melting of 36 ice blocks on sidewalks throughout the Inland Empire.
He traveled to 9 places, a mixture of parks, storefronts and gasoline stations, the place immigration enforcement raids have taken place up to now few weeks. In every spot, he positioned 4 25-pound ice blocks on the bottom and took pictures of them as they melted. He would periodically examine on the progress, he defined, and located that some have been smashed into items or utterly disappeared.
“I took it as a metaphor of what’s happening,” Picasshoe stated, referencing the current ICE raids going down throughout Southern California. “I was also thinking a lot about having these blocks of ice as almost a stand-in for people.”
This newest artwork piece is simply one of many many different Chicano-focused initiatives that Picasshoe has created in his hometown up to now three years. His objective, amongst the entire artworks, is to push its residents to mirror on the complexity of the Inland Empire’s Latino identification.
Perry Picasshoe and his father place an ice block close to the epicenter of the town’s month-to-month arts stroll in downtown Riverside on July 3, 2025.
(Daniel Hernandez)
Juan Carlos Hernandez Marquez is an rising Mexican American multidisciplinary artist from Riverside who goes by the stage title Perry Picasshoe. The moniker, which he created as a young person, is a play on Pablo Picasso’s title blended with an early 2010s social media time period “art hoe.” Beneath this pseudonym, Picasshoe first gained recognition for creating artwork that explored the complexities of his dueling identities of being an LGBTQ+ artist whereas surrounded by conventional Latino beliefs.
Whereas finding out visible arts at UCLA, he reimagined Sandro Botticelli’s portray “The Birth of Venus” with LGBTQ+ imagery, created a 9-foot-tall Christmas cactus in honor of the time he spent together with his father through the holidays and hosted a solo exhibition referred to as “Mystic Garden,” which showcased items impressed by flowers given to him by an ex-partner. It’s additionally the place he developed his signature red-dominant type in each his style and artwork.
“Red is my comfort color,” Picasshoe stated.
He suffered from occasional panic assaults whereas finding out at UCLA, he defined, which discouraged him from going to high school. It continued for months — till he discovered himself sporting a brilliant purple outfit, which introduced him a way of peace.
“It just kind of grew from there,” he added. “It just followed me everywhere that I went.”
Picasshoe additionally posted movies showcasing his items on social media. Like his paintings, his posts have been intricately filmed and edited with brilliant purple accents. They have been additionally accompanied by narration detailing the work’s inspiration, creation course of and which means. His efforts amassed him virtually 200,000 followers between TikTok and Instagram.
This speedy progress, each on social media and inside his community, introduced new alternatives to develop professionally in Los Angeles. But after graduating in 2022, he determined to proceed his profession in his hometown as a substitute.
“It was just a different pace that I was not ready for,” he stated. “The art scene out here is much more [based in] community, as opposed to [money] or clout. It’s more of making work that people here will get to enjoy.”
It’s a call that’s labored in his favor.
This 12 months, he’s been honored by the town on the Mayor’s Ball for the Arts with the Rising Artist award and acknowledged as one in all UCLA’s high 100 alumni entrepreneurs for 2025. Picasshoe’s choice to be an expert artist inside the Inland Empire additionally got here at a time when alternatives for Latino artists within the area have grown lately.
Cosme Cordova, long-time Riverside Chicano artist and Division 9 Gallery founder, defined that for many years, Latino artists thought-about Riverside a “boot camp” as a substitute of a metropolis the place they might make a dwelling. They’d earn some cash of their hometown, then journey to different outstanding places, like Los Angeles or Palm Springs, the place artists felt their work was extra revered. Because the years went on, he stated, the area people started to know the worth in supporting its artists.
“Then when the Cheech came, it’s got international attention, so it’s just gotten even better,” Cordova stated. “I’m starting to see a lot of artists now more genuinely focused on just trying to showcase their work here in Riverside.”
Essentially the most outstanding addition inside the area has been the Cheech Marin Heart for Chicano Artwork and Tradition — recognized colloquially as “the Cheech.” The museum is extensively thought-about the one area within the nation that solely showcases Latino-made exhibitions, together with a few of Picasshoe’s work.
Since returning to the Inland Empire, Picasshoe’s creative imaginative and prescient caught the eye of each neighborhood leaders and bigger establishments. Whereas internet hosting one in all his first solo exhibitions, referred to as “Red Thoughts,” on the Eastside Arthouse in Riverside, the administrators of the Cheech took discover of his distinctive type.
“They approach their work with abandon, with any medium,” stated María Esther Fernández, the middle’s creative director. “They had an installation and it was very interactive and immersive. I think pushing the boundaries of that is really fun and innovative.”
It will lead Picasshoe to work on a variety of initiatives in collaboration with the Chicano artwork heart for the following three years.
Perry Picasshoe stands in entrance of the Cheech Marin Heart for Chicano Artwork & Tradition in Riverside, Calif., on July 3, 2025.
(Daniel Hernandez)
Final 12 months, Picasshoe teamed up with Inland Empire-based artist Emmanuel Camacho Larios to curate an exhibition for the Cheech’s neighborhood gallery referred to as “Desde los Cielos.”
“It was a group show that explored what the term ‘alien’ meant in the context of Chicanxs, and alien in the political, the social and the queerness of it all,” Picasshoe stated. “I also made a huge painting for that one, the largest that I’ve ever done so far.”
The seven-foot-tall portray, referred to as “Simulacra of Guillermo Hernandez, Beethoven, y los Guachimontones,” depicts his late grandfather sitting on the mattress of a pickup truck alongside a small chihuahua. Within the background, looming over his abuelo, is a huge round pyramid constructed by the Teuchitlán folks. A golden pyramid, made out of Abuelita Mexican Chocolate bricks, was positioned in entrance of the portray; the bricks have been free for the taking through the exhibition’s debut.
After the time for his co-curated exhibition ended, one other set up named “Queer Wishes” was featured within the Cheech for an exhibition co-curated by the Eastside Arthouse’s founder and resident artist.
The piece is a three-dimensional black field with a white costume made out of tub towels and bedazzled gems displayed on a costume kind model inside. Subsequent to the model is a small black vainness desk and mirror with make-up and porcelain wishbones filling the desk’s floor.
“The first time I was really able to express myself was when I would get out of the bathroom, put my bath towel on and pretend it was a dress,” Picasshoe stated. “I know I’m not the only one with that experience of being in the bathroom and having that be the only time you have to yourself.”
Since debuting the set up on the Cheech, Picasshoe had hoped to take a step again from creating bigger community-focused items and spend time finalizing some private initiatives. Nonetheless, as immigration enforcement raids ramped up in Southern California, Picasshoe felt the necessity to create paintings to specific his frustration.
Picasshoe and his father drove the household truck to Fontana on July 3 to choose up three translucent ice slabs, every about 40 inches tall and weighing round 300 kilos, and introduced them again to downtown Riverside.
They arrived 45 minutes earlier than the beginning of the town’s month-to-month arts stroll, an occasion the place dozens of native distributors arrange cubicles to promote their paintings to a whole bunch of residents.
Picasshoe and his father slowly unloaded the slabs from the truck’s mattress onto a dolly and wheeled the installations out into the three chosen places: the entrance of the Cheech Marin Heart for Chicano Artwork and Tradition, the epicenter of the town’s month-to-month arts stroll occasion and the entrance of the Riverside County Superior Court docket.
A wood platform was positioned below every slab, with the phrases “life,” “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness,” written the other way up and divided between the three artwork items, together with a QR code explaining its which means.
He selected this present day, he stated, due to its excessive foot visitors. It was the very best alternative to assist some passersby really feel represented whereas confronting others with a tough fact.
“Art should be lived in,” Picasshoe stated. “It’s prevalent in a lot of my work, and especially this one, since it’s meant to be commenting on something regarding the public.”
