Jaime Cortez
Jaime Cortez is a Chicano graphic novel visual artist, writer, teacher, and performer. Cortez is also known for his role as an LGBT rights activist, and HIV/AIDS prevention work.
Cortez was born in the agricultural town of San Juan Bautista, California to working class parents. At eight years old he moved to Watsonville, California. He is the second of three children with two sisters.
Cortez was first introduced to the arts in elementary school but did not take his first formal art class until he was in seventh grade. During this time, Cortez describes his early passion for drawing as a way to cope with feeling like an outsider at school. As a self-proclaimed nerd, Cortez recalls this time as when "nerds were nerds, unlike now, when nerd is a code word for cool." Cortez further recalls that his love of drawing at an early age lead him to steal money from his mother's purse to buy a drawing pad. He filled this drawing pad with comic book imagery, and imitations of advertisements for beauty salon's.
He moved to San Francisco in 1993 and lived there for ten years among the city's queer Latino artistic community.
Cortez attended the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Communications and minor in English in 1987. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. Due to what Cortez describes as “working-class issues”, at this period in time he felt that studying art would be a frivolous subject matter.
Later in his life after establishing his career in the arts, Cortez attended the University of California, Berkeley where he pursued his Master's of Fine Arts (Art Practice), graduating in 2006.
Following his completion of college, Cortez spent two years teaching English at the Ichikawa High School in Yamanashi Ken, Japan.
Upon his return to the United States, an ill Cortez sought medical treatment for ulcerative colitis, and while at the doctor was asked about his sexual history by a nurse. In an interview with Colorlines Cortez recalls "The moment I told her I was gay," he said, "she literally took her hands off me." Thus, he witnessed firsthand the fear, confusion, and biases toward HIV/AIDS patients. Following this incident, Cortez became an HIV/AIDS prevention activist. From 1993 to 1995 he was Assistant to the Director of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and the Education Coordinator for the NAMES Project Foundation /AIDS Memorial Quilt from 1995 to 1997. Additionally, Cortez organized discussion groups for gay men to create a community and talk about issues, such as dating across HIV status.
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