Heritage from Yakama tribe inspires artist

Mt. Hood’s Visual Arts Gallery is hosting a multi-media exhibit titled “Tmnanaxt Nchi Wanakni,” which translates to “Stories from the River.”

The exhibit opened Monday and will run through March 27. It features a mixture of mediums favored by Toma Villa.

“I like to work with some acrylic paintings,” Villa said. He also takes on sculpting and iron casting.

The pieces reflect Villa’s background as a Yakama Tribe native and as a graffiti artist. They are a collection of images of different aspects of the culture and life that revolve around the Columbia River, which flows through Yakama territory in eastern Washington.

Villa began drawing as a child and went through different phases. He got his start as a graffiti artist when he was eight.

“Me and a friend played in this storm tunnel,” he said. “We’d go down there, and it was like a cave. One day, one of my friends brought a can of spray paint and decided just to spray-paint dumb things on the wall.”

Eventually, Villa began paying attention to graffiti art and realized that it fascinated him. Growing familiar with the culture of graffiti in movies, he decided graffiti was something he enjoyed. “I saw this art aspect of people painting on walls,” he said.

Villa was born in Oklahoma, but his parents are from Portland and they decided to move his family back to the Pacific Northwest.

“On our way up, we drove through LA, and I saw this graffiti art, and it just blew my mind. I would see these names written on the wall, and I tried to put together this persona of who this person is, and it intrigued me,” he said.

Growing up in Southeast Portland, Villa was surrounded by people who were into graffiti, but he was one of the few who would continue “and take it as an art form,” he said.

Upon entering college, he was introduced to different forms of expression that  “opened a whole new door of art for me,” he said. He began to do some carving work, got into iron casting and did some drawing.  “Graffiti is kind of just the base of where my whole art form started. I just continued on from there.”

Villa has two daughters and loves to spend time with them and his wife, he said. He works with various organizations and recently completed a mural in Madras, partnering with school students in grades six-through-eight.

He tells aspiring artists to “do this art for yourself, not for anyone else – find what makes you happy, and follow your dreams,” he said. “Never dream too small. There’s always something better that you gotta fight for.”

He gains new inspiration from each completed project.

“Once I do a piece of artwork, it actually doesn’t really belong to me anymore,” he said. “It belongs to the viewer, and so that inspires – once you create something, it’s off into the world.”