In oil, acrylic, pencil, or chalk, Ruby Chacon’s artistic voice is unmistakable. Her work is not just the story of her family. It is a passionate, convincing evocation of beauty, love, pride, and, tragedy – all essential elements in the transformative and transcendent nature of her art.

Visitors entering the fourth floor gallery in the Salt Lake City Library will see the striking artistic representations of her personal vision shaped by experience, family history, and cultural context, along with equally vibrant expressions of a shared heritage by photographer Guadalupe Rodriguez. Gallery visitors should also take a few short minutes to see No Llores, her video artistic statement. Chacon shares quite extraordinarily not only her deep love for her family – particularly, her grandfather – but also a deep sense of respect for her ancestral roots – Xicana as derived from Mexikana.

Her artistic epiphany came amidst tragedy when her young nephew died several years ago. Chacon, now 36, recognized that she had let her life be defined by the stories voiced by others than her family – in school, in the neighborhood, and in the surrounding community. “I am relieved to get to be the one who tells my story, and not someone else who only has a small idea of who I am,” she says. “I paint what inspires me, what I see, what I feel, that is all. I am an artist who paints her Mexican family, the people around her, and the experiences that come with that. Through these paintings I say this is who we are, this is how we lived, and this is what we fear.”

And, Chacon’s story has become one of the most widely told artist stories in Utah. Print media, in particular, have become a prominent forum for her work, including many of the state’s most widely circulated newspapers, magazines, and books. A University of Utah graduate, she has an extensive list of gallery shows and exhibitions not just in Utah, but also in other locations, including California, England, and Japan. Named one of Salt Lake Tribune’s Utahns of the Year in 2006, she also received the Governor’s Mansion Award and the Mayor’s Award, both for visual arts.

She also has received several public art commissions, including a mural for the Catholic Community Center and a chalk art piece celebrating Mexican Independence Day for the Utah Legal Clinic and the now-closed Urban Bistro Restaurant. Chacon enjoys doing chalk art because some public citizens, who may never have visited an art gallery, can see first hand how an artist transforms an abstracted idea into a finished piece.

Chacon also credits her husband, Terry Hurst, a filmmaker, with helping her define her artistic identity:

“One day, after my husband told an elaborate and magical story to my son, he then turned to him and said, ‘come to me when you’re 25 and we’ll drink a cup of coffee together while you explain to me that you have now figured out why all stories are true and all stories are false.’ Although he was speaking to my son, Orion, it dawned on me that those pictures I drew as a child were the pictures of the way I saw myself, as La Loquita from Lowrider magazine. Although these are real people and part of our culture, it is not the only part.”

The show at Library Square runs through Sept. 29. More information about Chacon also is available at her MySpace page.