VICTOR PAYAN PORTFOLIO
Santa Ana Logo
Logo Created for Santa Ana City Council Campaign
2016
Keep on Crossin'
Ad created for my Keep on Crossin' Project for Re-launch of Oracle Odyssey Magazine, which includes my Keep on Crossin' Manifesto, Keep on Crossin' graphic and photo of Keep on Crossin' patch.
2014
Dreamocracy in America
Graphic Created for my National Dreamocracy in America Project, Funded by Creative Capital.
2024
Bolivian Beach Party 2
Digital Flier Created for Augmented Reality Art Experience that Was Featured Simultaneously in the Capas Digitales Exhibit in Palm Springs and the Bida Fair in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
2022
Rudos y Tecnicos: A Lucharrific San Antonio Extravaganza
Digital Flier and Poster Created for my Rudos y Tecnicos Project in San Antonio, Funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts' Idea Fund.
2010
Dia de los Muertos/Noche de Musica
Poster Created for Día de los Muertos Concert in Santa Ana.
2006
- Written by Victor
- Category: Uncategorised
MUSIC SAMPLES
Click on Title to Play Song
Silent Reverie
Pictures of Astronauts
Drinking San Ysidro
Whiskeytown Blues
Vampiros de Amor
La Leoparda
Contact:
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Victor Payan is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist whose work includes humor, video, performance, cultural criticism and music. He is winner of the Creative Capital Award, the California Creative Corps Fellowship and the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship.
Victor is a prolific songwriter, and his music draws from numerous influences and styles including punk, folk, protest, Americana, indie, Rock en Español, hard drinking and heartbreak songs. Hailing from El Cajon, California, Victor carries the same iconoclastic streak which inspired that city’s Holy Trinity: Lester Bangs, Iron Butterfly and Mike Davis. Maybe it’s the water.
His music is imbued with the same wit, warmth, depth and dreaming that informs his other work, which includes Keep on Crossin’, Dreamocracy in America, Aztec Gold with Lou Chalibre and the VOTOS LOCOS video game. Victor also served as Border Bureau Chief for Lalo Alcaraz’s pocho.com news satire website.
In addition to his work with the Broken Dreamers, Victor also fronts Los Tex Pistols and toured California taco shops as the Taco Shop Troubadour.
Victor performs a heady mix of favorites spanning his career and engages the audience with a fun mix of banter, humor and damn fine songs. Bring him to your venue. You’ll be glad you did.
Support La Pocha Nostra during the month of August
Everyone knows the pandemic has been devastating for artists and arts organizations alike. Venues were forced to cancel shows and performances overnight, leaving many artists without sources of income they had been counting on to get them through the fiscal year. Back in March, When La Pocha Nostra founder Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitronica Gómez crossed the Mexico/US into San Diego on the eve of the quarantine, they flew the Keep on Crossin' poster on their Facebook page as a sign they had safely crossed the border and as a symbol of their determination to KEEP ON CROSSIN’! To help Guillermo and La Pocha survive in these times, we are collaborating on a fundraiser by selling backstock of the Classic Keep on Crossin' posters. Get one of these classic posters for your collection and support La Pocha Nostra!
Keep on Crossin' Poster by Victor Payan and Perry Vasquez
- Details
- Written by VP Grande
- Category: Uncategorised
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Victor Payan is an award-winning writer, humorist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work promotes social justice, community empowerment, and tolerance through engaging and playful public performances that educate, enlighten, empower, and entertain. Through his “practical social practice,” Mr. Payan combines arts advocacy with performance strategies to engage civic leaders in policy change. He founded LAFTA: The Latin American Free Thought Agreement, Mexistentialism and the Keep on Crossin' Project, a multifaceted manifesto on immigration and borders of mind, body and spirit.
He is also Founding Director of Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA), which operates the TVGB Digital Maker Space, MASARTE Gallery and produced the OC Film Fiesta multicultural film festival.
Mr. Payan is recipient of the 2019 Creative Capital Award for his Dreamocracy in America project and the 2023 California Arts Council California Creative Corps Fellowship and Individual Artist Fellowship. He is also a recipient of the 2023 Tempe Vibrant City arts grant and the 2010 Idea Fund Grant, a Texas initiative funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and winner of the 2005 NALIP Latino Media Market. He was selected as the August 2009 City of San Antonio Artist of the Month.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Victor’s work has been featured in exhibitions, screenings and performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Weatherspoon Museum in North Carolina, the Bihl House in San Antonio, Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, the Sweeney Art Gallery in Riverside, as well as Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Montreal and Berlin.
Together with Sandra "Pocha" Peña, he created Aztec Gold with Lou Chalibre, a series of irreverent transdisciplinary interventions that utilize the iconography of Mexican wrestling to create cathartic “counter-absurdity” campaigns that inspire catalytic change, and Dreamocracy in America, a time-travelling transdisciplinary tour of America that picks up Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey into the American character where he left off, and completes his epic project by examining immigrant and refugee detention centers, Native reservations, and communities on both sides of the 1831 US border.
Through the Dreamocracy in America project, Payan and Pocha created the VOTOS LOCOS video game in 2024, designed to promote voting among first-time, immigrant and disenfranchised voters.
He has created artistic interventions to defuse and diffuse anti-immigrant tensions at public events in San Diego and Tucson, Arizona. He is a founding member of the Taco Shop Poets and creator of the web series For Realz Locas of East LA.
An accomplished arts administrator, Mr. Payan served as Director of Programs for the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC). He also served as Co-Chair of the Media Arts Committee for Luminaria, San Antonio’s citywide arts festival, and as a grant panelist for the California Arts Council, California Humanities, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the City of Los Angeles DCA and San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture. He worked as Latino Audience Engagement Specialist for the Bowers Museum as part of a project supported by the James Irvine Foundation Exploring Engagement Fund.
He has served as a consultant on the Arts Master Plans for Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Moorpark, Brea and Contra Costa County. He has also served as a consultant for the California Arts Council, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and California Presenters.
Mr. Payan’s experience organizing public events began in 1994 as Coordinator of the "Chicano Urban Experience in Contemporary Rock and Folk Music" series at the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. He was Coordinator for the City Heights International Village Celebration in San Diego and served as Music Coordinator for the Adams Avenue Street Fair.
His work in media includes serving as Associate Producer for the national PBS documentary series’ The U.S.-Mexican War: 1846-1848 and The Border. He has also created youth multimedia production programs in California and Texas. He also served as Border Bureau Chief for Lalo Alcaraz’s pocho.com news satire website.
An award-winning-writer, his work has been published in The Independent, The OC Weekly, San Antonio Current, San Diego City Beat, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Pasadena Weekly, El Aviso and the inaugural City Works Press anthology Sunshine/Noir. His website is www.victorpayan.com.