Alberto Mijangos, RIP
Posted by ben on 19 Jun 2007 at 08:07 pm | Tagged as: r.i.p.
It is with sorrow that I write to say that Alberto Mijangos died in the hospital last night. When I last saw Alberto, he was weak, and was preparing himself for death. He asked me about reincarnation, and wondered why people would want to come back to this world. Why not go somewhere else? Those who knew Alberto well saw his attachment to this life and the beauty of this world — to which he dedicated his life — but also sensed his longing to transcend the mediocrity in which he saw most people living. In his work he strived to critique the failings of humanity, without “pointing the finger,” as he said. He saw himself struggling to rise above the fear, the insecurity, the shit of being human. Through it all, though, he always had faith in the possibility of transcendence. The last years of his life were deeply dedicated to the exploration of Taoist philosophy; not so much as a scholar, but as a practitioner, living out the principles of the Tao as well as he knew how. During my last visit with him, I read a poem to Alberto which concludes with the lines: “On the door it says what to do to survive / but we were not born to survive / only to live.” One could say many things about Alberto and his work, but perhaps his most important gift to the world was his ability to simply live. His death can do nothing to diminish that.
UPDATE: For those of you who did not know Alberto or his work, I plan to do a little retrospective on Emvergeoning in the coming weeks. Also, here is the poem I referenced above.
SEE ALSO: For more on Alberto’s life and work, see our posts on his Chones series and his T-shirt series.
Alberto was the type of person who could see beauty in a cracked, unlevel, dirty linoleum floor. There is so much beauty in that open-ness from someone of his talent, that I have tears in my eyes at the thought of it.
A huge loss for San Antonio’s art community.
Alberto Mijangos Escobar era mi tio, el fue hermano de mi madre, los recuerdos que tengo de mi tio, son muy especiales, pase muchos anos visitandolo, su partida nos ha dejado un hueco muy grande en nuestros coraznos, que Dios lo tenga en su hermosa Gloria
he was my art partner and friend.eight months later i walk outside our studio early in the morning and still look for him sitting there waiting for our morning talk, now i sit alone and wait. he’ll live through me like he will so many of us who knew him. ” love yourself and kiss your knees ” he would tell me, so that i would remain focused on experiential living. i cried, he listened and reassured me i to was an artist.
Me toco el placer de conocerlo cuando llegue aqui a san antonio en 1992. Me acuredo de su estudio el Blue Door y que me dejaba dibujar en su estudio para que no me aburriera mietras platicaba con mi papa. Era un buen hombre.