“I always wanted to be an artist,” Juan Cruz told a Herald American newspaper reporter in 1984.
He had been drawing since his family came to New York City from Puerto Rico when he was five years old and, according to his daughter Mia Worthy-Cruz, was still doing so in sketch books, when he passed away in Syracuse on Jan. 10 at the age of 82.
Many of his works will be on display at a memorial ceremony at La Casita Cultural Center this weekend. The public is invited to attend.
Cruz studied art at the Art Students League in New York City and at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1996, but he learned much of his craft in prison.
It probably saved his life.
“I had to do something in order not to go crazy,” he told The Post-Standard in 2003.
After spending a few years in the lower East Side of Manhattan, Cruz and his family returned to Puerto Rico, only to return to New York City in his teens.
“He found that he had forgotten most of his English,” a 1984 profile of Cruz said. “He felt like a foreigner and was treated like one by his peers.”
He fell in with a gang and on Aug. 23, 1959 shot into a crowd of people he thought were members of a rival gang. A young woman died.
At 17 years old, Cruz was sent to the maximum-security prison at Auburn, facing a life sentence.
Art would become his salvation.
Following the riots at Attica Prison in 1971, James Harithas of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse headed an inmate art program, and a visit to Auburn ignited Cruz’s passion.
“Art was my escape,” he said “When I started painting abstract, I really got to space out. I didn’t need anything, only what was inside me.”
He studied and worked in various styles and painted portraits of the loved ones of other inmates in exchange for packs of cigarettes.
Cruz painted whenever he could.
“The lights went out at 10 p.m., so one day when I went to church, I grabbed some candles,” he said in 1984. “After that I could paint by candlelight well into the night.”
Cruz began to be recognized for his talents while in prison. Artists and curators began a letter campaign to have his sentence commuted. In 1975, New York Gov. Malcolm Wilson ordered his release.
In the 10 years after getting out, Cruz dived into his art and devoted a lot of time to working with Syracuse’s young people.
From 1979 to 1981, he ran a pilot program funded by Youth Community Service where he was joined by young apprentices to paint murals on buildings on the South and West Sides of the city.
He worked as an interpreter and housing aide at the Spanish Action League and coached the football team at Fowler High School.
His artwork received attention from critics, collectors, and museums.
He had shows at the Everson, Syracuse University, Le Moyne College, Onondaga Community College, the Community Folk Art Gallery, and the State Plaza in Albany.
In 1988, his painting “Adam and Eve in Paradise” was one of 36 winners in the national art competition, ArtQuest ‘88, which featured more than 5,000 entrants.
Cruz would work with area children on several murals throughout the Syracuse area.
Besides teaching the kids new skills and a way to express their creativity, his murals, he said, “brighten up the community” and “give us something pleasant to look at.”
“As a kid, I worked with him,” his daughter remembered on one project. “I was his assistant.”
Cruz’s mural at Onondaga Commons on West Onondaga Street in 1994, sometimes attracted 50 young volunteers, who often went home with more paint on themselves than on the wall.
The mural’s scenes showed people fixing up houses and walking their dogs, police officers interacting with youngsters, children helping carry groceries and yards that are tidy and well-landscaped. “There are a lot of nice things happening in neighborhoods and this shows some of them,” Cruz said.
A year later, his mural at Skiddy Park created controversy and was painted over after some complained of its portrayals of Black and Native Americans.
“My subject matter is how I feel, pleasant or unpleasant,” Cruz said in 2003. “It’s true art for me.”
That year, he relocated back to Puerto Rico, where he planned on visiting family, “collect Social Security and sit in the yard and paint.”
He returned in 2008 to restore his mural at Onondaga Commons, painting a sun so large on a two-story section that it would “light up the whole West End.”
In 2011, he became the first-in-residence of the new Near West Side Initiative.
Some of Cruz-Worthy’s favorite memories of her father have occurred recently.
In September 2020, during the Covid pandemic, he wanted to go Green Lakes State Park to hike and visit the beach with his two granddaughters on his birthday.
“It was funny seeing him get completely filthy in the sand,” she remembered.
In 2022, the family visited the beaches of Puerto Rico together.
Juan Cruz is survived by his daughter Mia, who resides in New Jersey, a son, Omar Cruz, who lives outside of Washington D.C., and two granddaughters.
The memorial service takes place at La Casita, 109 Otisco St., Syracuse, on Saturday, Jan. 20, at 3 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
