Chris Trevilla – Nuvein Foundation for Literature and the Arts

Christopher is a 30 something arts advocate, poet, writer, actor, singer, and performer who was raised in the Southeast Los Angeles communities of Maywood and Bell who now resides in La Puente. Christopher is also a social worker for the developmentally disabled and their families throughout the San Gabriel Valley. His passion to promote the emergence and enhancement of the whole person through inclusion, education, arts, culture, and community involvement is rooted in his own personal experience and process as a multidisciplinary artist and organizer of Mexican-American descent. Among Christopher’s affiliations and associations have been the Santa Fe Springs Community Playhouse, Emerging Urban Poets, SGV Poetry Festival, Nuvein 3LP, Coffee House Writers, ZZyZx WriterZ, SGV Literary Festival, and other community arts causes.

Christopher identifies himself as a Mexican-American poet(a) . His short stories and poetry have been published by Candalyse Press, Uno Kudo Magazine, Being Latino Online Magazines, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, and other online and print publications. Previously, his works were hosted on Myspace through his blog series “Life Via the Muses” under the nom de plume “C•£•T”. He has also performed in a variety of Shakespearean productions across California. Christopher was also co-founder of the chicano rock group ‘La Recalentada’ along with fellow Nuvein director Timo Curtiss.

Among his artistic influences are Edgar Allan Poe, Aesop, Yolanda ‘Tongolele’ Montes, Robert Rodriguez, Jack White, Dita Von Teese, Kenneth Branagh, Frida Kahlo, Luis Miguel, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Eugenio Derbez, Betty Page, Marc Bolan, Michael Jackson, Tin Tan, John Alberto Leguizamo, the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, Elvis Presley, Robert Frost, Frank Sinatra, Pablo Neruda, Jim Morrison, Walt Whitman, Rocio Durcal, and many others. Pre-eminent among his influences in dance, theatre, and literary stylings is the astutely accessible and succinct observations and quips of Mario Moreno Cantinflas and comedic stylings of Roberto Gómez Bolaños “Chespirito”.

As a poet(a), Christopher’s writing emphasizes the sacred and the profane, the common mundane aspects of every day and forces it into psychosocialsexual symbiosis with the hidden revered mystical and misunderstood aspects of our existence with a few accentos and references to history, mythology, religion, and philosophy thrown in for a deeper and more meaningful utterance he calls “magiapoesia”. Currently, he is at work compiling his first anthology of this style of poetry.

Christopher has always been a big advocate of community change through active service, earned leadership, and continuous learning. This was a large part of him being recruited into the Nuvein Foundation by Enrique Diaz, founder of the organization, in 2010. Following Enrique’s passing, he ensured the continuance of the projects and efforts of the foundation, culminating in being elected President of the foundation, a role he served in from 2012 to 2015. Currently, Christopher serves alongside his fellow directors in guiding the messaging and outreach of the organization as head of Communications and Development.

Christopher’s vision for the Nuvein Foundation is that of serving to connect under served communities to experiences of arts and culture that they would not otherwise have access to as a result of an ongoing culture of austerity, isolation, skepticism, and division. The accomplishment he is most happy with is having helped Nuvein through its transition following the loss of its visionary founder, and his friend, Enrique Diaz. The fact the Nuvein continues its efforts is an accomplishment that fills his life with meaning. Christopher proudly serves, guides, partners, promotes, and assists many community arts organizations and collectives in order to promote arts and culture across many Southern California communities.

Photo credit – James Plascencia

Learn more about the Nuvein team.

The SGV Literary Arts Council was an idea based out of the 3LP project. Both the council and the project are not currently focuses of Nuvein, but many positive outcomes were met by pursuing these goals.

“We gather together now, all of us, simply on account of four reasons and four reasons only.

First, because it is beyond silly and escapes understanding that all us organizations, individuals, and groups that are working towards related ends [promoting literature, literacy, and creative expression or letters] should be so separate and apart from one another.

Second, because as much as our individual groups have achieved with our respective communities, and group of supporters, how much more could we achieve if we but work together, and we all need some form of help.

Third, because the San Gabriel Valley deserves our combined effort to unleash all of its suppressed, oppressed, and otherwise silent creative genius and force to be seen all around so as to rival other areas known for arts and culture.

Fourth and last, because we must think of those that will succeed us, those young artists and writers, poets and authors, that need us now more than ever, in stark times, to tell them ‘above all, in spite and despite it all, no matter what, write, write well, and write your heart out.” – Chris Trevilla

Beginning in March 2012, and meeting every two months afterwards, a collection of non-profits, writers clubs, poetry groups, and community organizations dedicated to the encouragement and support of writers of all genre began to meet in hopes of establishing greater partnerships between groups and members, as well as join together to provide greater support for each respective group.

Moderated by Christopher Trevilla, acting president of the Nuvein Foundation, and hosted by John Brantingham of Mount San Antonio College Creative Writing and curator of the San Gabriel Valley Literature Festival, this collective welcomes any and all groups, individuals, and organizations working towards the empowerment of human expression in the written and spoken form. Thus these groups have gathered to form the Literary Arts Council of the San Gabriel Valley.

Among the groups represented, involved, or included in this collective are:

Nuvein Foundation for Literature and the Arts aka Nuvein Foundation

Un Poquito Mas Arte! La Puente Art Walk (UPMA!)

San Gabriel Valley Literature Festival aka SGV LitFest

Valley Poets

Writer’s Club of Whittier – Poetry Workshop aka Whittier Poetry Group

ZZyZx WriterZ Group aka ZZyZx WriterZ

PoetryPalooza

San Dimas Coffee House Writer’s Group aka Coffee House Writer’s Group

A Few Lines Magazine aka A Few Lines

Creepy Gnome Magazine aka Creepy Gnome

Emerging Urban Poets