All the Saints of the City of the Angels

December 4th - Feast Day of Santa Barbara

2007-12-05T18:17:00.000-08:00

Why i love this world.

December 1st - Feast Day of Blessed John van Ruysbroeck

2007-12-01T23:12:00.000-08:00

A little birdie told me:
My book is now listed (and the cover illustrated) on the Heyday Books website, "COMING IN MARCH 2008." Things are starting to get real.

Nov 30th - Feast Day of St. Andrew the Apostle

2007-11-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

And here I'd always thought that Andrew was one of the more uninteresting saints....

Twice I'd encountered him on the streets of the City of the Angels: first, as San Andreas Avenue, on western Mt. Washington; and then, passing almost the entire north-south breadth of the city, as St. Andrews Place. Certainly St. Andrews Place is a fascinating street to study, traversing so many communities and economic classes of L.A. - even boasting a classic encounter between rich and poor at the intersection of St. Andrews and Venice Boulevard, where the wealthy neighbors to the north set an iron gate to keep out their meager neighbors a block to the south....

No, the problem seem to lay more with the saint himself - a stodgy sort of fellow, rustic and lacking in discernible character traits.

But I just saw, on the Patron Saints website, a great little legend or, better, superstition about the fellow:
"An old German tradition says that single women who wish to marry should ask for Saint Andrew's help on the Eve of his feast, then sleep naked that night; they will see their future husbands in their dreams."

Apparently, as patron saint of unmarried women, Andrew has been able to convince maidens over the years to shed their clothing in exchange for a little matchmaking. In this vein Wikipedia informs us that "In some areas in Austria, young girls would drink wine and then perform a spell, called Andreasgebet (Saint Andrew's prayer) while nude and kicking a straw bed." The goal of this slightly odd activity is that it would "magically attract [her] future husband."

It's such a fascinating idea, that somehow over the years a tradition developed, of thousands of women going to sleep in the nude the night of November 29th; and of sometime soon thereafter (for the belief must have had some efficacy for it to endure) these women would marry "the man of their dreams," as it were.

Why would St. Andrew have exacted such a bargain though? Why did he choose only to help women who sleep in the nude the eve of his Feast Day? What is Saint Andrew really like? How does he feel on his the morning of his Feast Day, as these women awaken? Now I have a great curiosity about him.... I'm going to have to think on this for some time.

Nov 6th - Feast Day of Saint Winnoc

2007-11-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

This morning I saw them - when did they appear? - six great pink, white, and creamy flowers on our silk floss tree in the front garden. A ladybird on the flowering jade tree outside my studio. Then, while writing this, an insistent, muffled knocking sound led me to watch a red-crested woodpecker working its magic on the dead branches of our apple tree.

Nov 3rd - San Martin de Porres

2007-11-03T18:36:00.000-07:00

Today we received the proofs for my book! My publisher, Heyday Books, in Berkeley, just Fedexed the proof from the printer in Singapore.

The layout is so lush, so rich and nuanced; so empathetic with the trust of the narrative and the paintings.

Totally apart from the fact that the artwork is mine, I love the look of this book. It has beauty, it has mystery, it has poetry, and it has wonder and pain.
When I met my publisher, Malcolm Margolin, he promised to be not
only a good publisher but a good friend. He has seriously undersold himself in both categories.
I am a very happy - and grateful - guy. Bless All the Saints. Here's to San Martin de Porres.

Nov 2nd - All Souls Day

2007-11-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

A misaddressed envelope bubbled up to the surface of the day's mail the other day. This happens with some frequency since we learned our mail route is considered a "training route" for new USPS employees. As soon as a mail carrier gets good at knowing where all our neighborhood mail goes, she/he gets shuffled off to a better route - and we get the next new guy. As it happens, this envelope was only off by one house, but the addressee name caught me off-guard: Stephen Strigle.

We moved into our home eighteen years ago; a rambling old cottage on a cul-de-sac, sharing a common driveway with the tottering two-story house next door. Because of the common driveway and the friendly warmth of our neighbors, we quickly got on intimate terms, sharing conversations in Spanish, home-cooked meals, and vigilance when one another was gone.

René was a handsome, very religious and elegant fellow who was being cared for by his sweet and long-suffering mother Irma, as he waited through the final long fragile months of health complications from AIDS. René doted on our then-young son, Jacobo: When the 1994 Northridge earthquake hit on a pre-dawn January morning, Irma told me that René's first words when she checked on him were "Está bien el niño?"

When he had been well, René related, he had hosted great rollicking parties (a discreetly walled outdoor jacuzzi, a huge outdoor above-ground swimming pool inside a circus tent), and his house would be overrun with guests. Now that he was ill, sedate, and moving gingerly through life's shadows, no one called, no one visited.

René passed away while we were in Mexico visiting family: I've always regretted I didn't give him a rosary and photo of Jacobo to take with him that last emergency trip to the hospital; it would have meant a lot to him. In any event, René visited me - a floating winged spirit - to say goodbye in the early morning darkness the day he died. "René se fué", I told Mimí in the morning, and it was true, we learned when we returned to L.A....

René's mother, Irma, stayed behind, first to put things in order and then, after all the legalities were dealt with, as ownership of the house passed to her and to her eldest son, Luís, they settled in. Our kitchen window faced their kitchen door, and soon a little community tradition developed: If we glanced out and saw either Irma or Luís step out onto their sunlit porch to light a cigarette, and if we weren't busy, we would rustle up a couple of cups of coffee and join them for a kaffe klatch. It leant a great feeling of connectedness to our daily lives.

It was also how we learned that things were about to change again, and that Irma was going to bear a second cross: her youngest son, Chris, a gorgeously flamboyant elf, had been diagnosed with AIDS and was going to need her care.

René and Chris could not have seemed more different. René was very religious and had a priest visit him for counseling and last rites; Chris viewed it all through the lens of Catholic kitsch and wanted a funeral that would be "muy gay." René, embarassed, refused to even pronounce the name of the disease that ravished him, much less own up to it; Chris was as out as could be. And Chris, at least, had a lover, Stephen, who remained with him to the end.

Chris' illness progressed much more rapidly than did René's: very soon we were visiting him in the hospital, drugged into a pain-free sleep. Our last visit there, Chris lay sprawled and splayed across Irma as she sat on the hospital bed, cradling her frail skeletal, still-beautiful son. Bathed in the afternoon light the scene was a perfect Pietá, and I badly wanted- but could not bring myself to beg permission - to return to the car for my camera to record this Passion image.

Before dying Chris made his mother promise to look after Stephen who, in a further punishing irony, was also diagnosed with AIDS. Stephen moved into a tiny room of Irma's and Luís' home and remained professionally active almost to the end, driving away each day, his leather briefcase in tow, to - where? I seem to think he was in law or medicine: medicine, I think. A Stephen Strigle appears on Google as a cytotechnologist working (and writing) on AIDS research in the mid-1980's to 1990's: maybe this was him.

Whomever he was to the greater world, Stephen was in a sort of holding place in our world. He had been part of Chris' life that had remained removed, perhaps willfully ignored, by Irma; he did not share the cultural characteristics of his caretakers; and he did not speak Spanish (Irma's only tongue).

However, Stephen had been disowned by his parents - or at least by his father - years before for being gay, so now this little world around our common driveway was what there was of home for him.

Home did not last long: Stephen passed away fairly quickly, at the hospital. The next morning Luís brought me a little sheet of paper with a phone number: Stephen's parents, somewhere in Orange County.

We had talked often, throughout Chris' and Stephen's illnesses, of this abdication of paerntal love. How was it conceivable, we wondered (without coming to any resolution), that a parent could disown a child? Irma and Luís felt it was cultural: a Mexican parent, they swore, would never abandon a son or daughter, and certainly never leave them as they died. But, from my experience conducting altar-making workshops with HIV+ recent immigrants in the early 1990's, I knew it did indeed happen, tragic and immoral as it seems.

So: the phone number. I wish I still had it. I tossed around in my head what I might say, whether I should rail against whoever answered for being so inhuman, whether I should ask them why they had acted - or really, not acted - as they did. In the end I just called and verified that I had the right number.

The father answered, and when I told him Stephen had passed away, he said only "Well I guess that's it."

"It?" I wondered. Your son dies and you say, well that's it, as though dinner's over, or a game on tv?

I added that Stephen had left behind a number personal items - a typewriter, some books, papers, and so forth; but the dad didn't want anything that had belonged to his son.

There's a lot I should have said then, or done; at the very least I should have asked to speak to the mother: we'll always have our share of "should have's." Presumably Stephen's parents will suffer through theirs.

Stephen had been blessed to be welcomed into Irma's home and care, but the three illnesses and deaths had taken a great toll on her, and now this house and Los Angeles itself were inalterably entwined in shades of sadness. Irma and Luís moved back to Nogales; a few years later Luís phoned to let us know, briefly, that Irma had passed on as well.

The house across our driveway has sat vacant for several years now. Its grey paint peels everywhere; its windows are all barred or boarded up; the back yard where the tented pool once sat is periodically overrun with vociferous, choking vines; and the persimmons and figs we once all feasted on barely announce themselves: dry, tiny and bitter from lack of water.

At the edge of the house, maybe fifteen feet from my studio, there's a chicken-wire avaiary. From the time we moved in it was filled with parakeets and finches; their singing provided an audio track to my painting and drawing - until René, Chris, and Stephen died, and Luís and Irma moved away.

Metaphorically, all this decay and loss is a bit overripe for an autumn tale.

I haven't crossed our driveway to clean the ex-neighbors' garden or to water Irma's old rose bush and bougainvelia because, after all, it's not my property: it's someone else's responsibility. But it is my life that's being affected by the loss and I should take responsibility for my life.

This envelope bubbled up to the surface of our mail the other day: maybe I should open it. Maybe I should start pruning back the plants I see from my kitchen window and studio, even if they're not mine, but because they remind me of Irma, René, and Luís. I could get a few parakeets, too, and spruce up the aviary. I'll name all the parakeets Stephen.

Oct 27 - Feast Day of St. Abraham the Poor

2007-10-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-26T23:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

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.