Joey Terrill

Joey Terrill (b. 1955) is a second-generation native of East Los Angeles, a region central to Chicano life, art and culture in the United States. He attended Cathedral High School where he became involved with La Huelga and helped with the United Farm Workers-led grape and lettuce boycott. During this time, he became aware of Sister Corita Kent, a longstanding faculty member of the Immaculate Heart College art department, who championed progressive, socially conscious artworks made with a pop sensibility. This stance corresponded with Terrill’s ambitions, and he enrolled there in 1973. As a student, he immersed himself in the burgeoning Chicano civil rights movement while exploring “hidden” networks of queer creatives (Gronk, Cyclona, Mundo Meza and, a frequent collaborator, Teddy Sandoval among others). Buoyed by a newfound sense of community, Terrill began a practice based on his life experiences, and by the mid to late 1970s, he was confronting homophobia and racial stereotyping in his artwork.