Oct 27 - Feast Day of St. Abraham the Poor

What is it about tortillas?

My friend Joe Bravo has a show that opened tonight at KGB Gallery, just north of Downtown LA. Joe is a generous soul, a gentleman with a soft voice and calm attitude. Principally a graphic artist and designer, I've seen Joe around for a long time, and it is good to see him getting recognition and support.

After years of painting on canvas, Joe has received extraordinary attention with a series of paintings on tortillas: Tortilla Art. Beginning with renditions of rather anticipated Chicano icons, like the Virgin of Guadalupe and Che Guevara, he has moved, largely in response to an invitation to exhibit in Hong Kong, to include Chinese imagery. This painting (above right), of a Chinese songbird and poppies, is my favorite, possibly because it is quieter and more lyrical; less insistent on dominating the tortilla's humble surface textures and tones.

It would seem that part of the fascination with the concept of placing an image on a tortilla relates to the tradition of finding an image on a tortilla. It's technically referred to as pareidolia, the discerning of apparent faces and other figures on unlikely surfaces - like a tortilla, some wood paneling, water stains, and so on. There is even at least one movie about this, wherein someone notices an image of Jesus on a tortilla; and I seem to recall a play where someone finds the Virgin Mary, as well. The possibilities for taking this beyond fascination or simple reverence, all the way to kitsch, meanspiritedness, pathetic delusion, and greed, are pretty much endless. Here's a clip of a mother and daughter who contend a store-bought pretzel resembles Mary holding Baby Jesus - which they hope to sell for $1,000 to buy the girl a horse she wants.

I think, though, there's something more special about the tortilla, not just because it is handmade (although that's part of it), but also because of its centrality to Mexican identity.

Far as I know, the first artist to play with Tortilla Art is José Montoya, who created a pretty nice piece (detail, at right), entitled Cuautemoc on a Tortilla [sp], in 1971.

The hub of the universe of Tortilla Art, probably, would have to be the artist collective known as The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, headed by Rio and Rene Yanez and Jos Sances (?), that not only creates imagery on tortillas, but invites and assists others to create their own.

The work is decidedly uneven, in a popular art kind of way, but some of the work is dreamy and gorgeous. Two versions, both by Rio Yanez, are my favorites. The first, of iconic actress Maria Felix, appears at the top of this entry. The other, of Frida Kahlo, is so quietly moody, it almost converts into an icon all its own....

Oct 26 - Feast Day of Saint Damian dei Fulcheri

I've been thinking about icons a lot recently, and not just because there are many of them in my All the Saints series and other works.

I've been thinking more about icons as used by other artists and, in particular, how their treatment alters in some way their meanings.

Icons function as a sort of visual shortcut to a theme or an idea, or to a real entity; they create a space for contemplating something complex; something presumably meaningful and profound.

How that icon is "handled", how it is rendered or portrayed, adds another layer of meaning to the icon, and implies a possible reconsideration of the icon's central theme.

It's hard for me to think of an icon that lends itself (herself?) more to this layering than the Virgin of Guadalupe. The original, extant image of Guadalupe dates to either the 16th or 18th century, depending upon whose version of her-story you accept. And by the late 18th century, Mexican artists were taking respectful liberties with her image, festooning the pictorial space around her with lambs, cherubs, garlands of roses, ribbons, and devotees.

It's well known, of course, that Guadalupe, as presence and as symbol, has come to mean manifold things to people over the last two hundred years or so: liberation and repression, strength and subservience, Mexicanidad and assimilation, profound devotion and pure kitsch.

I see her as a real presence, profoundly in the present. As such, I see most popular depictions of her as celebrations, both of a positive spiritual force and of a sense of community; of what ties (or can tie) us together. This enables me to accept the depictions I find lamentable or troublesome (and that others might find disrespectful or objectionable) as commentaries on the dysfunctional state of this "community": if Guadalupe is reducible to her mere visual components - a blue shawl, a crown, and that brilliant aura - which are accessible to anyone to manipulate as they choose, well, this is a condition representative of a cultural approach (much in vogue) that views all visual/cultural elements as equally debased (or, hey, cute!) and free for the taking.

But I prefer to believe in the power of the meaning behind the image.

That said, there is a great array of representations of Guadalupe to be found on Flickr, at http://flickr.com/groups/virgendeguadalupe/pool/

Oct. 21 - Feast Day of St. Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins

I received a nice, surprise email this evening, out of the blue, from a reader who saw someone else's blog posting about my art. The post in this particular blog, Abbey-Roads2, actually focuses on an adjacent series of mine, The Daily Life of the Virgin of Guadalupe. But from this series the writer, Terry Nelson, moves on to describe All the Saints and my work in general as "expressing the innate dignity of the individual person occupied in the mundane minutia of daily life." This is certainly one of the goals of All the Saints of the City of the Angels: great to see it described so poetically.

Turns out that Terry's post was inspired by an article he saw posted online earlier today at California Catholic Daily. And this article, in turn, appears to be based, in large part, on the very nice October 11th Los Angeles Times article that Deborah Schoch wrote about All the Saints and me. Of course, it is very gratifying to see all of the coverage and interest in this work!

Oct 19 - Feast Day of the Inner Life of Mary

This evening I attended a book signing at Tropico de Nopal gallery, a great cultural community resource just west of Downtown L.A. This event was to celebrate the release of Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities by Laura E. Perez. There were several reasons to go: First, Chicana Art features the work of several longtime friends - Diane Gamboa, Yreina Cervantez, Gloria Alvarez, and Barbara Carrasco; as well as colleagues whose work I had admired from afar, such as Yolanda Lopez and Laura Aguilar. Additionally - astonishingly - this marks publication of the first book dedicated to the contributions of Chicana artists and writers. The third reason was a recent development: in a wondrous bit of synergy, the book's author, Laura Perez, had generously contributed a blurb for my upcoming book on All the Saints!

The evening was warm and embracing, full of great energy and communal accomplishment, and justifiably celebratory. I even felt like I was momentarily transported back to [a far better version of] high school, as I took my just-purchased copy of Laura's book around to be signed by friends.

It was only as I was driving home, recalling something someone said, that the evening's full impact hit home. When I first saw Yreina, after giving me a hug and saying she was happy to see me, she added, "I was hoping some of 'the guys' would be here tonight." I hadn't given it much thought then - I was just enjoying being among friends and colleagues, and delighting in Laura's rich, expansive discourse - but now I did a mental head count: besides myself and Reyes Rodriguez (Tropico's co-director), I recalled only two other male artists in the large crowd: Jose Lozano and Richard Duardo.

Yreina's words underscore the value and significance of Laura's book, and emphasize the struggles and accomplishments of the women this book celebrates: thoughtful, fascinating artists marginalized and largely ignored both by the dominant popular culture and by their male cultural counterparts.

Oct 18 - Feast Day of St. Luke, Patron Saint of Painters

Good word from my editor at Heyday: the proofs for our book should be air freighted in from Hong Kong sometime within the next two weeks. Unreal, almost, after the years of painting and writing, to contemplate an imminent "official" document of this journey.

And I have completed a "beta" version of the revamped All the Saints website. It's up now and ready for comment and recommendation.