Glugio Gronk Nicandro is a performance artist and painter, but also utilizes various techniques to express humor and his Chicano heritage. He uses thick layers of intensely colored acrylic paint to create expansive, expressionistic images.He helped form the Los Angeles artist group titled ASCO in 1971, consisting Willie Herrón, Patssi Valdez, and Harry Gamboa Jr. The word ASCO in English means nausea and was a multi-media arts collective influenced by European film, existentialism, and literature as much as the political context of living Latino in Los Angeles during that politically turbulent period. This group focused on promoting performances that dealt with social commentary and irony. The group participated in street performances such as Day of the Dead celebrations, anti-war protests, and movement/instant murals. The "instant murals" or spontaneous acts consisted of staged events against a wall.

Gronk then turned to drawing, paintings, and solo performances. In 1978 he began to keep a visual diary that now consists of more than 250 volumes. He utilizes his roots and his surrounding environment as a foundation to structure a narrative story through art. Some of his paintings include a theme of the melodrama of the photo-novelas popular in Mexico, a tabloid of papers.

His work ranges from the performance work of ASCO to mural paintings, including those at Estrada Courts in East Los Angeles. He has also collaborated with composer Joseph Julian Gonzalez on "Tormenta Cantata," a visual/musical piece performed in 1995 with Kronos Quartet at University of California, Los Angeles and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In this 2001 interview curator Cynthia MacMullin speaks to the artist in his studio about his early work with ASCO, Chicano art, and his love of painting.