About Jimmy Longoria

Jimmy Longoria was born and raised on a farm in South Texas, and that humble beginning continues to inform his work today.  He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., working with masters of art, such as Rufino Tamayo, and business and creativity, such as Peter Drucker, Gene Rodenberry, Edwards Deming, and Isaac Asimov, while developing his own vision of giving back to the community through art, with the mentoring of these masters.

Jimmy’s unique and signature painting style is recognized for its dazzling color, contrast and multiple layers created with hundreds if not thousands of brush strokes. His mural technique and other forms of massive art-making are passed on to youth -wherever youth are found - through his organization Mentoring Peace Through Art.  In the program MuralWorks in the Schools, whole classrooms are turned into mural companies, where each student is given a job that challenges them to produce results.  In MuralWorks in the Streets youth are fully immersed in the process of deterring gang graffiti with exuberant community-based art.  In both programs, youth are introduced to Jimmy’s vision that giving back to the community is the highest form of art.

Jimmy’s commitment to giving back to our community led Target Corporation to label him as “Someone We’d Like You to Meet” in a 2004 national campaign featuring six people who embody Target’s spirit of giving back to the community.  The McKnight Foundation honored him with a Virginia McKnight Binger Award in Human Service in 2008, and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board awarded him the 2013 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Living the Dream” Award.  

Jimmy Longoria is the only Chicano/Latino/Hispanic to be awarded a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, and he is the only Minnesotan to have art in the permanent collection of Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, the largest collection of Mexican Art outside Mexico.  Jimmy’s art was chosen to represent all of Hispanic Art for a messenger bag, passport holder and luggage tag given to attendees of the 25th anniversary symposium of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, a national gathering of influential Hispanic leaders, government officials, and Fortune 100 corporate executives.

You will currently find Jimmy’s art hanging in the offices of prominent state Senators at the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul, and at the University of Minnesota Research and Outreach Center in Minneapolis.  He is preparing for an expansive campaign of community art in the summer to come.

Videos

Contact

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Resources / Links

• Mentoring Peace Through Art
• Star Tribune
• An Artist with a Solution
• Gang scrawls fade as mural grows
• Solutions Twin Cities
• Minnesota State Arts Board
• Jimmy’s art can be found at BISTRO 11
• From mural to canvas:  the art of Jimmy Longoria
• Murales de los Muertos
• Jimmy Longoria and R.T. Rybak on Vimeo
• Muralist on a mission
• Jimmy Longoria Paintings at Plymouth Gallery
• Hopkins Artist Decorates Obama Field Office
• Art Center gallery brings murals from tough streets to Hopkins
• Mural projects inspire detained youth
• Sun Sailor: The Future is Bright in Hopkins and Beyond