Partner With Us!
The artist known as Gronk was born in 1957 in East Los Angeles. In the 1970s, he and some artist friends founded a creative collective named ASCO (Spanish for “nausea,” the title of a book by French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre). Inspired by the the anti-war and Chicano Walk-Out movements of Los Angeles schools, Gronk and friends took to the streets, doing performance art and making films.
In 1972, Gronk and fellow artists spray-painted their names on a footbridge of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as a statement against the museum’s underrepresentation of Latino art. Almost forty years later, ASCO (including Gronk) was invited to exhibit its work at LACMA in an exhibit titled “ASCO: Elite of the Obscure, a Retrospective, 1972-1987.”
Gronk was the 2011 Artist in Residence at Fullerton College. Gronk’s Fullerton College Exhibit “Gronk Un-Secret” was described by OC Weekly art critic Dave Barton as “like taking a tour through the abstract personal imaginings of a friend generous enough to let you see the world from his point of view.”
In addition to the art show, Gronk also contributed the first centennial-commissioned mural to the Fullerton College ethnic studies building. The spontaneous, playful style provides a welcome balance to the familiar Spanish Revival Architectore of the building, showing that Fullerton College is becoming a place where past and present interact in meaningful ways.
"The same museum the collective defaced because its doors weren’t open to artists of their kind — Mexican-American, working class and poor, highly irreverent and politicized — is not just finally welcoming them inside but rolling out a red carpet for the occasion.”
— Randy Kennedy, The New York Times
“Every year, the artist-in-residence has a show of their work at our art gallery, and every two years, we do an exhibit of our growing permanent collection. The program is about people who have a heart for students coming here to talk about their craft and their career, with the hope of helping students figure out how to navigate the strange thing called a life in the arts."
— Bob Jensen, Dean of Fine Arts, Fullerton College
1957
Artist-in Residence 2011
Art