As an artist who is interested in the fusion of genres and forms, the idea of image-centered vision, producing elaborate and complex metaphors, has dominated both my literary research and my creative work. Thus, along with my own writings which refer to the sources above mentioned, I have thought to investigate the mechanisms that exist between written vision and visual image.

I have used artistic creation itself for this purpose, and my approach has been to illustrate, usually with watercolors, collages and mixed media, verses or images from a text, developing them in their visual possibilities, and trying to remain faithful to the "narrative" of the text.

Poets of different times and cultures have served for this process of capturing the image in its ultimate reality: Spanish Americans such as Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, José Martí and Rosamel del Valle; Spaniards as Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti; Americans such as Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Walt Whitman; Italians such as Cesare Pavese and Rocco Scotellaro, and French such as Paul Eluard, Lautréamont, Charles Baudelaire, Gerard de Nerval and Roger Vitrac.

It is one way to link tradition with the instantaneous act of creation, so as to unchain a process which, in its turn, leads again to my own written poetry universe.

• Hernán Castellano-Girón was born in Coquimbo , Chile in 1937. He studied Pharmaceutical Chemistry in Santiago , but his artistic interests begun early in his life. He has been a writer, a poet, an actor, and filmaker, and specially an illustrator (or "translator into images") of the work of other poets such as Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, Rosamel del Valle, Vicente Huidobro and Federico García Lorca. He has participated in group art shows in many countries and has had one-man shows in Rome , Italy , Detroit , Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo . His artistic activities span over seven decades, from the 40's to the present. There's a Castellano-Giron's illustrated short story dated on 1948.

  To earn a living, he worked in science teaching and research at the University of Chile in Santiago until 1973, when the military dictartorship of Augusto Pinochet imperiled the lives of most of Chilean intellectuals and artists. He was forced into exile in Italy , where he lived until 1981, when he moved to the USA to pursue a doctorate in Modern Languages at Wayne State University in Detroit . There he studied under the direction of internationally renowned professor and scholar Ivan A. Schulman, obtaining his doctorate in 1987.

  He has published ten books, in the genres of novel, short stories, poetry and literary criticism. He has had individual an group art shows in several European countries and in the United States. He has published articles and essays in some of the best literary and scholarly organs of the Hispanic language and academia, such as Hispamerica , Cuadernos Americanos , Revista Iberoamericana and Revista Nacional de Cultura .

  In 1986 he was hired as a full time lecturer at the California Polytechnic State University , San Luis Obispo . In Cal Poly he made his teaching career, teaching Spanish and Italian languages and cultures, and Humanities. He retired in 2002, as an Associate Professor. In November 2000 he was awarded by the local poet's community as Poet Laureate of the City of San Luis Obispo . He is the only Spanish language poet who has received this honor.

  He is now Emeritus Professor of Spanish and Literature at Cal Poly.

• 2000, June/July “Self Portraits”, Art Lives Here Gallery, San Luis Obispo.

  2000, March “La presenza degli artisti cileni in Italia”. Chilean artists in Italy, including Antúnez, Matta, Smythe, Castellano-Girón and others. Rome, Italian - Latin American Institute (IILA). The same show was moved afterwards to Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Italy.

  1995, December "Into the Mix," a collective exhibition by ARTernatives, Space 31 Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo.

  1995, May Chilean artist/poet Hernán Castellano Girón "Drawings" and Puerto Rican artist Lillian Mulero "Lolita Lebrón: Silkskreen Series" 24th Annual International Literary Arts Festival. The Small Press Center, 20W. 44th St. New York City.

  1994, April/May "Voices behind the Mask," an exhibit by poet/artists, with Bettina Barrett, Jared Dawson, and Marguerite Costigan, Guernica Gallery, Santa Barbara.

  1992, May "Poetry as Art/Artists as Poets," Green Dragon Gallery, Santa Barbara.

  1988, October "Mythic Power Lines/The Poet and the Visual Artist," watercolors, texts and color xerox rayograms, with Donna Ohno and Janice Lincoln, Pontiac Art Center, Pontiac, Michigan.

  1978, Summer Visual poems in exhibition "Art is a Prison," La Bugade, Chartreuse Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, France.

  1977, Summer Visual poems in exhibition "Art is a Prison," Amsterdam, Holland.

  1971, Spring "Young Chilean Painters" exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, Santiago: two collages exhibited.

  1967, Spring Art Fair: collages and visual poems exhibited, Santiago,Chile.

  1960, Spring Pharmaceutical Society Art exhibition, Santiago, Chile. First Prize for watercolor.

  1959, September Student artworks, all Faculties, University of Chile, Santiago.

  1954, Fall High School Art Show, Liceo Aplicación, 2nd Prize for painting, Santiago.

• 2000, May/June “Dream Landscapes/The Snakes of Ahumada Street”, Art Lives Here Gallery, San Luis Obispo.

  1996, February "Forbidden Landscapes," a recent group of watercolors and multimedia artwork. ARTernatives Space 31 Gallery, San Luis Obispo.

  1993, Nov./Dec. "Orpheus' Eye/Brush," watercolors and gouaches.

  Santa Barbara's Contemporary Arts Forum, Partridge Gallery, Santa Barbara.

  1992, June "Hernán Castellano-Girón," a book display and watercolor exhibition, 1st floor, San Luis Obispo Public Library.

  1989, November "Images/Visions/Metaphors," watercolors based on Latin American, European and American poets, Cuesta College Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo.

  1984, January "Poets of Three Worlds," watercolors based on works of Spanish-American, French, Italian and American origin poets, Detroit Council of the Arts Front Room Gallery, Detroit.

  1980, December "Neruda and Lorca: two Poets of Liberty," watercolors. Workers Union, Istituto Superiore di Sanitá, Rome, Italy.

  1980, June "Neruda segreto," watercolors based on Neruda's poems. Carte Segrete Art Gallery, Rome, Italy.

•  El huevo de Dios y otras historias , short stories (Santiago: LOM, 2002).
  
  Un Orfeo del Pacífico , anthology of Chilean poet Rosamel del Valle, selection, introduction, notes and posface by H.C.G. (Santiago: LOM, 2000).
  
  Calducho o las serpientes de calle Ahumada , novel (Santiago: Planeta Chilena, 1998).

  El ilegible: 'las nubes y los años' , short novel (Concepción: Cuadernos Sur de Narrativa, 1988).

  Otro cielo , poetry (Concepción: Cuadernos Sur, 1985) .

  Los crepúsculos de Anthony Wayne Drive / Twilights of Anthony Wayne Drive, poetry (Detroit: D.O.M.E. Press, 1984). Bilingual edition translated by Emil Efthimidas with a postface by Waldo Rojas and illustrated by the author.

  Teoría del circo pobre , poetry (Ottawa: Cordillera, 1978).

  El automóvil celestial / L'automobile celestiale , poetry (Bari, Italy: Gea, 1977). Bilingual edition , translated and presented by Mario Lunetta.

  El bosque de vidrio , stories and collages (Santiago: Ars Nova , 1969).

  Kraal , stories and drawings (Santiago, Chile: book series "El viento en la llama" 1965).