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....