[SINGING] Mexican Americans don't like to just get into gang fights.

[SINGING] They like flowers and music and [SINGING] white girls named Debbie, too.

I've been a comedian and an actor and a singer and a writer, and now I'm an art collector.

Chicano art collector, that's what I do.

That's my new profession.

I like to surround myself with really good paintings.

And all the things that I've learned about art informs my appreciation of Chicano art.

I discover stuff every time I look at them.

Adios.

Originally the term Chicanos was an insult from Mexicans to other Mexicans living in the country.

The concept being that the, the Mexicans who are now living in the United States were no longer truly Mexicanos because they had left their country, they were something less, they were something smaller.

They were chicos.

They were Chicanos.

I was really comfortable with the term because I had never been to Mexico.

I didn't speak Spanish, but I know I'm part of that.

All of a sudden you stop being defensive about being a Chicano, and being very proud of being Chicano, because this is who we are.

We're original.

I'm of the opinion that all the Chicano artists somehow describe what's going on in their neighborhood.

I always call it news from the front.

This is what my neighborhood looks like.

This is what the people in my neighborhood look like.

This is the products that they buy.

This is how they fall in love.

This is a painting by Shizu Saldamando.

She's the perfect Chicana for me.

She's half Japanese, half Mexican.

And this is one of her friends.

Part of the Chicano definition is, is a defiance of what the accepted norm is, and they want to be seen as who they are today.

This is our neighborhood, and these are the people in our neighborhoods.

I went to school in LA, and my class took a field trip to the Grand Central Market, and the teacher told us to draw what impressed us the most.

So, I started drawing these giant banana squashes.

And so, the teacher walked around, admired everybody's art, and she got to mine, and she picked it up and goes, well, you'll never be an artist.

And I was like...

In college, I took a pottery class, and as soon as I got my hands on my first piece of clay, it's just... this is it.

This is what you're meant to do, you know?

You, you have found your calling.

But then I joined the draft resistance movement, and the FBI was after all of us.

So, then I went up to Canada, and lived in a little log cabin, chopped wood and made pottery.

I went to Vancouver and met Tommy Chong who was running an improvisational theatre company in a topless bar.

And I started writing for the group and then I started performing with them and everything.

And then the group fell apart, and Tommy and I stayed together.

What do we do now?

How about Cheech and Chong?

Yeah, that sounds good.

We were very successful and we made records and they were successful.

All of a sudden I had money.

From no money to a lot of money, and, and I could start buying art.

I was always interested in art.

I think I was 10 years old when I went to the library and took out all the art books.

And then I started going to museums at that age.

For a long time I was the only guy out there buying Chicano art, and buying on a mass scale.

I'm obsessive, and so I just let that path, take me where you will.

Oh, obsession.

Carlos Almaraz was kind of the first Chicano painter.

And it really spoke to me, his paintings, and, and how mysterious and how spiritual they are, you know?

Carlos theorized that the Chicanos were painting something unique, that if they came together like other groups of artists had come together before, they could make a big impact.

So, Carlos founded a group and they called themselves Los Four.

No, the thing is this, if you guys don't want to be hassled...

It was collective art with Carlos and myself, Gilbert Lujan and Roberto de la Rocha.

Yeah.

No, I mean, the point is I have for some control Of what?

Of money.

Artists, by definition, are very possessive of what they do and, you know, think they're right about everything.

No, I'd rather just go it alone if that's what you want out of me.

So, you know, we were always arguing over the kitchen table and doing drawings.

You really want to change what you've been doing all along...

They were serious painters right from the very beginning, but with a sense of playfulness, just like Picasso has a sense of playfulness, and Frank has his own sense of playfulness in his painting.

About 50 years ago, Cheech called me directly and, and I was learning about selling art in those days so I doubled my price and of course we bargained and then I let him have it for half.

So, this is actually how I got into working with collectors.

The thing about being a collector, what you learn is to hone your intuition about what is original, what is different.

I generally only buy something that has been haunting my dreams.

That's how I know.

When I got the collection up to a significant amount, I made the decision that people have to see this.

And we started the first big touring show called Chicano Visions, and it went to LACMA and the Whitney and the Smithsonian, 14 major museums.

The city of Riverside has a population of 317,000, majority Latino community.

In 2017, we were able to bring one of Cheech's touring exhibitions to the Riverside Art Museum.

It was a huge success.

We had tripled our normal attendance for an opening reception.

We had lines out the door.

In Riverside, our main library no longer functioned as a library in the 21st century.

So the city had a new library, but what would be a comparable use of this 60,000 square foot building?

The city manager at the time, John Russo, pulled me aside and he said, So, what is Cheech going to do with this collection?

And I said, well, you know, I don't know.

[LAUGHS] We can certainly ask him.

Three weeks later, we sat in a restaurant and in 45 minutes pitched the idea for a Chicano art museum to Cheech.

And at first I didn't understand what they wanted to do, and I said, you, you want me to buy a museum?

I'm doing pretty good, but I don't know if I'm museum rich yet, you know?

So, no, no, we want to give you the museum for the collection.

We were walking out, Cheech and I, and Cheech didn't want to turn around, but he whispered to me, he says, did that just really happen?

There's lots of art movements that have come out of Southern California, but none has a permanent home until now.

We've shown over 300 Chicano artists, and we're celebrating 131,000 people coming through our doors the first year of The Cheech.

This is from a young artist, Francisco Palomares.

I fell in love with this right away.

I mean a, a, a piñata in a John Constable landscape.

[LAUGHS] You know, the juxtaposition of those two images, and it looks like he belongs there.

I'm a product of East LA, the first in my family born in the United States.

My identity and my surroundings influenced me.

That allows me to reflect on the beauty and the celebratory aspects of my community.

The series where I juxtapose a colorful piñata in a classical landscape, it's just like in our real world where, we're Latinos, starting professional careers, and all of a sudden you look around and it's not your, your gente, your community.

The piñata is a reflection of all of that.

So, when we enter spaces that are new to us and you feel like, maybe I don't belong here, but yeah, you do belong and you are this exotic creature that brings that color and flavor into these spaces.

This is a painting by Gronk.

I don't even really know Gronk's real name, but he's just really developed his own style, always with a tormenta, la tormenta.

This is this dramatic figure here.

I really like painting as an art expression.

That's one thing the Chicanos are, they're great painters.

They, they never gave up the brush.

They don't just deal in concepts, you know?

They deal in actual hand to canvas kind of painting.

As a kid, I always did things to shock people, so I feel with my artwork I kind of like push it to a way where it's like, where people don't expect.

I usually kind of start with a central figure, which is, would be the head.

The head kind of isolates, cements it, in a sense where I can build off the head.

I've always, like, kind of focused on my creatures, like the octopus, germ, squid to be floating in the air, more like a dreamlike state.

I try to experiment a lot with details, with the Virgin Mary, with little drops.

And there's collectors who have told me, from one day to another, they find different little areas where they kind of, like, find joy.

Jaime came out of lowbrow art.

That's where I discovered him.

But it wasn't indicative of his Chicano roots, and so I started talking to him.

I said, why don't, put some Chicano elements in there and you could be the Chicano lowbrow guy, you know?

It inspired me to push towards more like a post-Chicano, pop Chicano artwork.

And now that I'm part of the Cheech collection \ I feel like I've accomplished something.

I was talking to you about this the other day.

Yeah, this is a wonderful piece...

I think what makes Cheech unique as a collector \is that he understands that the center has a broader mission.

I like this.

Do you see the wonder bread flying... We launched a research initiative to have oral histories on the artist, to research the works in the collection and identify gaps so that we can expand the collection.

Cheech understands that we do have more work is that he understands that the center has a broader mission.

I like this.

Do you see the wonder bread flying... We launched a research initiative to have oral histories on the artist, to research the works in the collection and identify gaps so that we can expand the collection.

Cheech understands that we do have more work to add and support artists in that way.

I started to bring my paintings off the wall and give them a three-dimensional form, and try to create my paintings but in clay.

The three sculptures that Cheech has were the beginning of the larger pieces to come.

Yolanda is a very good painter and a ceramicist as well.

I wish I was as talented as her.

But I can sing better so you know, it all evens out.

I've been creating these lovely ladies with the two chongos on the top of the head, which are like pigtails or buns.

Some people say they're me.

I don't really see a resemblance, but maybe, maybe.

Cheech has really exposed Chicano art to the world.

Some of my pieces that he collected went to Museo de Aquitaine in Bordeaux, France.

He's also commissioned me to create a portrait of his lovely wife, Natasha.

As soon as you walk into the museum there's a big piece by the De La Torre brothers.

They're the foremost practitioners in the world, I think, of lenticular art.

We had to cut out the floor to fit it in.

With lenticular pieces the image changes depending on where you stand in relationship to it.

There's hundreds of images in this, and they keep revealing itself.

And there's two images of Cheech in here.

You gotta find him.

I love how these, these doves appear and disappear.

But the main image is this transformer.

It goes from an ancient Aztec goddess to the modern age.

Right when we opened I was walking around, and there was this little girl, and she was standing in the corner and she could see her reflection.

And so, she was dancing with her reflection and she was part of the art piece now and melded in with all the other images.

It was a remarkable interaction with art.

Maybe the most remarkable I've ever seen.

Overwhelmingly, what people have said is that this has felt like a homecoming.

A homecoming for the artist, a homecoming for community, to see their culture reflected back to them in this way.

What a great moment for Cheech to have that collection that he built become an international platform for Chicano art.

Yeah, that's a nice painting, huh.

The part that collectors play is what gives an artist inspiration, resources, affirmations, opportunities, but it's also giving you emotional kind of refueling to, to give you that confidence that they're willing to put value in what you have been dedicating your life to.