Am I Blue?

Quest For The Marine Blue: 2026 

Michael Sedano

It would have been 2020 when I spot the first specimen of a butterfly, new to me, that continues to hold my attention when I walk through gardens, now in search of the perfect foto of this gorgeous gem.

I looked up the one I photographed at a distance. I marveled at its name, “marine blue” Leptotes marina. It wasn't blue. It was mottled brown. Why is that speckled brown butterfly called Marine blue? 

Over succeeding months I wander perplexed as can be that this brown-speckled creature I see only at a distance, has “blue” in its name. 

Finally I see it, the blue! My photographer’s quest gains a high point in search of the blue. Once sighted once determined to see another. Today, like a blue moon you’ll see me standing alone, near a plumbago cluster or some anonymous shrubbery. 

I'll be watching a cloud of whitish grey insects that flitter incessantly, rarely landing. I hold the camera against my chest, poised to raise the viewfinder to the left eye as my right eye vigilantly surveys the flitting white souls, I seek the one or two who land near enough for a foto. 

And long enough. Touch-and-go is the Marine blue’s habit. When mating seems a good idea, the resting butterfly spreads its wings, opening the brown-speckled exterior to a glittery purple-blue inner wing with a blue fuzzy covering across its thorax. I'm not fast enough to capture instants when a second blue thrashes into the open-winged beauty and the pareja flits away.

Shadow and interior branches take away most of the glowing blue and purple. Out in open shade makes glorious, detailed portraits. Full sun gives intense contrast and, at the right angle, great color. I prefer a 100mm macro lens; it creates images of precision and detail.

Recent years have been tough for Leptotes marina sightings. Reliable sites became unreliable and sightings remained catch as catch can and way over there pa’lla you see the flittings of what might be Marine blue, or the more common Grey hairstreak. By the time I walk to the spot, they’ve flitted away. 

Only as October 2026 wraps for the year does my Huntington Library walkabout help me produce a current year once again blue foto. 

The image happens in full sunlight over my shoulder. It’s the only butterfly to land near enough for the macro lens’ focusing capacity. 

I step off the paved path onto the Huntington’s don’t-tread-on-me tierra, angle myself to within six inches of the creature, dance the lens in and out until I find the focus across the entire butterfly. I push the button. And again and again until the vista in the viewfinder is just leaves. The sighting for 2026 produces only a dozen fotos. I like one good enough to share, so as usual, I am satisfied to have what I have.

December 2022 marks the end of the fourth year Barbara and I lived with Alzheimer’s dementia. As sole caregiver—I would not have it any other way—I needed regular respites. 

A four-times a week respite most often finds me camera in hand at one of southern California’s large gardens, the Huntington Library and the LA County Arboretum. 

I walk and see what I can see and forget what I can forget and resolve the unresolvable. When I see a butterfly or bird my enormous complicated world becomes the limits of my viewfinder. For these fractions of seconds This is all there is. I am here. Press the button.

Here is my La Bloga column from a December 2022 walkabout when I exulted having found the answer to the question, why is that speckled brown butterfly called Marine blue? 

Mira nomás! 

2026. Here is the camera's full-frame view of the inch-long Marine blue. It doesn't land on a flowering bush, the Dalea bicolor where I'm standing. When it opens its wings I'm breathless. My quest is a foto showing how it gets its name and here it is. All I have to do is twist my body and lean forward and not fall on my face.

2026. The butterfly is oblivious to the happy photographer who's crept on his knees to a closer vantage spot and gets to move in for a close-up with the close-up lens. The tattered wing and fading color identify this as an old-timer making a few final forays in search of a mate and a place in the sun.

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From La Bloga Archives:

Mystery Mariposa Comes Into Focus

Michael Sedano

Original location: https://labloga.blogspot.com/2022/12/marine-blue-plan-comes-together.html 

Realms of green make up my oft-traveled routes when I consider how the morning light finds a bird or butterfly where I point my camera during my morning respite walkabouts at Huntington Library. 

Gulf Fritillary on Jessamine cluster

As a full-time caregiver, I know the vital importance of having time to myself. I buy two mornings with a visiting caregiver, and twice a week, Barbara attends a dementia daycare center, giving me six hours respite time all to myself to do with as I please. I pay a premium to walk the gardens of the Huntington Library two hours early, so that's what I please. 

Fritillary rests on Savila penca

A photographer gets the early light and not a lot of foot traffic to scare off the critters that draw my lens. The membership is worth the money and, membership has its privileges. You get the whole place to yourself, casí.

One morning I stalked the Aechmea flowers along the rainforest trail. My eye catches a white fleck against deep green. The tiny moth, or butterfly, flits erratically about, touches down but doesn’t land. 

I wait it out. The white speck flits in and out of the shadows, touching and flitting, disappearing into the leaves only to reappear a few plants away.

Then it lands. I approach and the white speck flutters away. I get a fuzzy foto that I identify as a Marine Blue butterfly. I'm intrigued. The name belies the look of this brown mottle winged soul. 

I add the Marine Blue to my inner alert list. I begin filtering the view sensitive to those flitting white specks on a horizon. Not the White Cabbage butterfly, nor an assortment of white moths and hover flies and tiny bees. Rarely catching a glimpse of the elusive Blue, I stay alert with high hopes.

Butterfly and bird photography takes what nature provides. When I see one, I see one, rarely three, in the distance. I see those white flecks and have no clue to the blue. 

"Ah ha!" moment: Marine Blue shows its color

Spring is in full flush in late March when I see my first blue Marine Blue butterfly on an unfamiliar plant. I get a foto at long distance. 

I see a few folded wings on this plant subsequently, but despite long waits there, not a one Blue parks and opens its wings to show off its hidden spectrum. The butterflies park and flit, I stand and fret.

Unsatisfaction is not dissatisfaction. You can do something about nagging unsatisfaction. Something has nagged at me since that inroductory sighting at the Aechmea, something about this tiny erratic mysteriously-named life. I need to get a close look, and I need to get a macro showing all the details and reason for giving this beast its name, Marine Blue butterfly.

My walkabouts at the Huntington Library and at the Los Angeles County Arboretum a few miles away  grow more intent on finding the Marine Blue . 

I capture many a Fritillary, a Monarch and a Swallowtail. Dozens of Colibrí bring my heart joyful moments of pure respite as I hold the floating creature in the viewfinder, slow my breathing, anchor the lens to my body, synchronize eye brain finger decisive moment and press the button. 

But none of the fotos feature the Marine Blue butterfly. 

I grow more deliberate in my walkabouts, choosing trails where antes I’d spotted the Blue, stopping on a trail on a sunny morning watching for flitting white specks, even shaking a plant now and again to see what flies out. No Blues. 

The Mother Lode. The Elephant Graveyard. The Diamond Mine of the 7 Dwarves! Uncle Scrooge’s Money Vault. Eureka. 

I find the place where Marine Blues come to feed on crisp Fall mornings when the garden offers little else. 

With changing seasons, Butterflies have become scarce, and with Winter around the corner I’d abandoned thoughts of capturing the elusive Blue in 2022. 

Weeks had passed without a sighting when songs of feeding Colibrís stop me in my tracks. The birds hide behind thick branches so I planned to walk on to the Sausage Tree flower where hummingbirds might await.

I whirl toward the path when a white fleck catches my eye. 

Only a Blue flies like that. Then a second and third appear like magic and so it is. They fly into a ray of mid-morning sunlight and catch the light. They target a non-descript bush growing like a barrier between the path and a spectacular red Esperanza tree where the hummingbirds lurk. 

Not a barrier plant at all! It is the Marine Blue motherlode, Dalea bicolor. I stand stunned at the sight of this endless parade of flitting white specks that circle about the plant then land. The insect dances upon a flower cluster, dips its proboscis into the well of nectar. Then they spread their wings to catch the light and lighten my heart.

I won’t label my quest after a Marine Blue an “obsession” although I admit to growing frustration last Summer when I couldn’t find the Blue in the garden, and that grew into a klnd of anxiety that when I did see a Marine Blue, I had the wrong lens or I couldn’t get near enough with the right lens. And I'd nearly abandoned hope for this year of seeing them again. 

That’ s all in the past now because I know where Dalea bicolor grows at the Huntington. And I've seen the Marine Blue at just the right light when their wings shimmer with diamond dust painting the hidden reaches of their namesake wings. Ay de mi.

The Marine Blue led me to the Dalea’s tiny flowers to teach me to appreciate "nondescript" dust-catching bushes growing in the shadow of spectacular ornamentals. 

Órale, that was no obsession but a well-defined goal pursued with a deliberate process of looking. Looking just at the world as I find it. Looking and not thinking about all those caregiver duties and responsibilities that you can’t see when you’re making a photograph of one particular six by four inch slice of the real world there at the end of your lens and that’s all there is for right now.

Sabes que? This close up is why.

Día de Muertos: Poetry & Literary Reading 2026 by Xánath Caraza

Día de Muertos: Poetry & Literary Reading 2026 by Xánath Caraza

 

Xanath Caraza

Join us for our literary celebration of Día de Muertos: Day of the Dead. Listen to our featured readers, authors Xánath Caraza and Elvira Barbosa, share their literary creations. It will be a pleasure to have you join us. Please register in advance.

Xanath Caraza

Elvira Barbosa

 

Elvira Barbosa

Elvira Barbosa is a professor at the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), Apucarana Campus, Brazil, and a researcher specializing in linguistics and literary studies. As a novelist, she is also deeply interested in Brazil’s cultural memory and the ways in which history continues to shape contemporary society.

 

Drawing on her family roots in the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais and Bahia, Barbosa brings both emotional sensitivity and historical precision to her fiction. Her work explores the complex dynamics of power, memory, and identity with particular attention to the social structures that have shaped—and continue to shape—Brazil.

 

Nadja’s Secrets, her debut novel, weaves together literary fiction, social critique, and psychological depth. Through the voices of women and other figures marginalized by official history, the novel illuminates the contradictions, silences, and enduring emotional legacies that pass from one generation to the next.

 

She lives in Paraná, Brazil, where she teaches, conducts research, and continues to write literary fiction.

 

Xanath Caraza

Xánath Caraza

 

Xanath Caraza

Xánath Caraza is a traveler, educator, poet, short story writer, and translator.  She writes for La Bloga and Revista Literaria Monolito. In 2023 Red Teardrop received Gold Medal for Best Fiction Book Translation—Spanish to English for the International Latino Book Awards. In 2024 Tejerás el destino / You Will Weave Destiny received Honorable Mention for Best Bilingual Poetry Book—one author for the Juan Felipe Herrera Award, Internation Latino Book Wards. In 2023 La mariposa de Jackeline / Jackeline’s Butterfly received Bronze Medal for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Award—One Author Bilingual for the International Latino Book Awards. In 2022 Perchada estás / Perching won honorable mention for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award-One Author-Bilingual. In 2021 It Pierces the Skin received Bronze Medal for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Book of Poetry. In 2020 Balamkú received second place for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Book of Poetry Award. In 2019 for the International Latino Book Awards she received Second Place for Hudson for “Best Book of Poetry in Spanish” and Second Place for Metztli for Best Short Story Collection. In 2018 for the International Latino Book Awards she received First Place for Lágrima roja for “Best Book of Poetry in Spanish by One Author” and First Place for Sin preámbulos / Without Preamble for “Best Book of Bilingual Poetry”.  Her book of poetry Syllables of Wind / Sílabas de viento received the 2015 International Book Award for Poetry. She was Writer-in-Residence at Westchester Community College, NY, 2016-2019.  In 2023 Caraza received a grant from the University of Missouri-Kansas City for writing her manuscript Sangre de vainilla / Vanilla’s Blood.  Her book of poetry, Corazón de agua /Heart of Water, was published in the Spring of 2024. Caraza was the recipient of the 2014 Beca Nebrija para Creadores, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares in Spain.  She was named number one of the 2013 Top Ten Latino Authors by LatinoStories.com. Her books of verse Where the Light is Violet, Black Ink, Ocelocíhuatl, Conjuro and her book of short fiction What the Tide Brings have won national and international recognition.  Her other books of poetry are Tejerás el destino / You Will Weave Destiny, Lips of Stone, Fără preambul, Μαύρη μελάνη, Le sillabe del vento, Noche de colibríes, and Corazón pintado. Caraza has been translated into English, Italian, Romanian, and Greek; and partially translated into Nahuatl, Portuguese, Hindi, and Turkish. 

 

Xanath Caraza

Poetry Connection: Connecting with Poets at Hollister Ranch

  

Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2023-2025

Last week Santa Barbara’s Poets Laureate received an invitation from Rick and Kathy Sawyer to spend an afternoon reading poetry and enjoying the beauty at Hollister Ranch. I was eager to attend this year because I know how special the coastline is above Santa Barbara. Hollister Ranch is a working ranch miles beyond Gaviota. I’ve passed through the signs and seen the ocean from the vantage of the 101 numerous times over the past two decades on my way back from Solvang, Santa Maria or beyond. I’ve been hiking in Arroyo Hondo and enjoyed concerts at El Capitan. The area with its twists and turns and deep drops to the ocean makes you feel worlds away from Santa Barbara, even though it’s just a half hour further north along the 101 coast.

The unusual warm temperatures we’ve been having due to El Niño (and global warming) meant that an afternoon in October felt like a summer day in Mexico or Hawaii. After lunch and reading poems at Hollister house, I thought I would simply dip my feet in the ocean and then drive home. However, the bubblebath temperature of the water coaxed me deeper into the ocean until I was floating far from the shore with other poets. I want to make a point of swimming in the Pacific Ocean more often. The water was refreshing and soul soothing.

This year’s poets retreat at Hollister Ranch was attended by Rick Sawyer, Kathy Sawyer, Jasmin Sawyer, Jessica Teona Schley, Steve Beisner, Melinda Palacio, George Yatchisin, Chryss Yost, Paul Willis, Sharon Willis, and David Starkey. It’s been a great week for hearing poetry and enjoying the company of local poets and friends. Except for the Sawyers and Jessica Teona Schley, everyone in attendance was also at George’s recent event, Spirits in the Air, Potent Potable Poetry, Halloween Season Edition 2026 at the Good Lion. Spirits in the Air featured ten readers who read a poem of their own and as well as someone else’s. Today’s poetry connection will feature two poems: one by Steve Beisner that Stephanie Barbé Hammer read and one by Elizabeth Perez. Both Stephanie and Elizabeth were first time attendees and readers at the poetry event dedicated to drinks or potent spirits.

Second Line

by Steve Beisner

In memory of Everette Maddox

We leaned against the bar, 

taking sanctuary in the cool dark,

four of us staring and talking truth and lies 

to each others’ faces,

through the sweet alcoholic haze 

and the dusty mirror behind the bottles.

Liza Jane ran through the door 

in red short pants and her top spillin’ out,

“There’s a second line comin’.”

We poured our drinks into plastic go-cups 

from Krewe of Chaos, 2006, 

and flowed out to stand on the sidewalk 

where the street shivered with bodies and music.

Somebody shouted, “Oh, yeah!” 

and we broke free, 

chased happy feet down the street

after brass horns, waving white handkerchiefs, 

red bandanas, and bar napkins over our heads.

Liza Jane was gettin’ hot.

“Why y’all celebratin’?” yelled the man 

with a cheap camera and a Texas accent.

Liza Jane dropped her arms and danced the 

shimmy with her bottom and shake it with her top,

so close to Texas that his face got hot, 

till his wife pulled his arm to go.

Liza jus’ laughed, “Take a caution, 

let your hair down, an’ answer this, Darlin’,

Why y’all not celebratin’?”

Steve Beisner is a computer programmer, a musician, and a writer of fiction and poetry.

He claims that he did not invent the computer, but was there when it happened.

His taste in fiction and poetry reflects the strange beauty of real life.

*an earlier version of this column was published in the Santa Barbara Independent

Elizabeth Pérez is a Cuban American writer and associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was named a finalist for several literary prizes in 2024 and 2025, including Gunpowder Press’s Alta California Chapbook Prize. Her poem “Independence Night” won the 2025 River Heron Editors’ Prize. Pérez is also the author of two award-winning books on Caribbean and other Afro-Diasporic religions: Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, & the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (2016) and The Gut: A Black Atlantic Alimentary Tract (2023).

Like the River, All Are One

                                                                                         

Like the river, we are all one

     Sometimes, past memories pop into my head, probably like they pop into yours, when you least expect them, memories we thought were lost to time.

     Recently, I walked into the Camaguey Market, which started off a Cuban store in east Mar Vista, on Venice Boulevard, but, for the past twenty-years, has catered to a diverse group of shoppers, Latinos, Anglos, Hindus, and Muslims, because of its broad range of products, from all types of tropical fruits and vegetables, to different meats, and wall filled with colorful spices from around the world. If an Argentino needs a "mate" cup, Camaguey has a variety of choices.

     I hear different dialects of Spanish, from South to Central and North America, the Caribbean, as well as languages from the Middle East and Asia, mixed in with a lot of chatter from USC and UCLA students, who shop on the cheap. Funny how an image or a smell can evoke something we haven’t thought about in years, like after leaving Camaguey, loaded down with fresh bolillos, bananas, avocadoes, eggs, and milk, I was right back in Bangkok, Thailand, a 19-year-old Chicano soldier on a week-long R&R from Vietnam.

     We’d been on an operation in the Central Highlands, a mountainous region of the country, lush, beautiful, and deadly. Many villages in the valleys and mountains had been isolated for generations, each village with its own culture and rules, where words like "Democracy," "Communism," and "Dominoe Theory" meant nothing, as alienated as they were from the politicians in Saigon and Hanoi. Many of the villagers had never laid eyes on a “White” man. By 1967, to protect themselves from foreign invaders, the village sons, Buddhists, had joined the V.C. to fight the Christian outsiders, even the North Vietnamese Army, many of them Catholic, strangers who flooded into the mountains and valleys, were suspect.

     I was glad to be out of the field, even if only for a week. I had made a bold move, if I do say so myself. I had decided to wait eleven months before taking my R & R, figuring when I returned from Bangkok, I’d only have a couple of weeks left on my tour and be on my way home. When I’d told a friend my plan, he’d said, not mincing his words, “That ain’t smart. What if you get zapped? You'll miss out on R&R.”

     Me? I had no doubt I’d still be alive, a childish thought, now that I look back on it.

     When I arrived at our hotel in Bangkok, the elegant, four-star Inter-Continental, I checked into my room, pure luxury. I’d never stayed in a hotel. In fact, I’d never been on a plane before I joined the army. The only time I'd been away from home for an extended stay was camping out with the Boy Scouts and sleeping in pup tents.

     No more than a few minutes after entering my room, I heard a knock at the door. A short man, probably in his early thirties, stood there. He introduced himself as Mr. Dom and handed me his card, offering me a 24-hour chauffeur. Long story short, I “caved in” and hired him, $100 for the week. A few guys I’d met told me I was nuts, until, each night, sloshed from hitting all the clubs in Downtown Bangkok, Mr. Dom was there to drive us back to our hotel.

     He’d pick me up each day at noon and take me on a tour of the city. He hinted, one day, that the James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, was playing downtown. I didn’t want to spend an afternoon in a movie theater, but I could tell he was dying to go, so I went. Hundreds of people waited in long lines to buy tickets, like the opening of the Ten Commandments. Mr. Dom said he had a connection. I handed him some bills, and in a few minutes, a guy was ushering us in through a side door.

     That’s kind of how the week went, Mr. Dom there whenever I needed him, like the time I had a crazy hangover, from a night out, a throbbing headache, messed up stomach, so I told him to take the day off. I needed sleep. Instead, he forced me to shower, dress, and get into his car. He drove me into the jungle. We stopped at an outdoor café. I was dying. He ordered me a bowl of hot broth, steaming, red chiles floating around the top. I drank it up, sweated, but began feeling better. He said I had to see the golden Buddha. He drove me to a religious site where the statue of a fifty-foot golden Buddha stood in the middle of a garden, pilgrims carrying candles in honor of the great teacher.

     Before I knew it, I was in line, a lighted candle, Mr. Dom at my side, and I was joining the pilgrims, on my knees bowing. When we finished, my headache was gone, and I was cured. A miracle, who knows, maybe better than Lourdes. On the way back to the hotel, Mr. Dom called out to a woman walking on one of the busy city streets, the river on the other side. He said, “My friend. Okay I give her ride home.”

     I was game for any new experience. She was probably older than I, in her twenties, young and pretty. She spoke broken English, well enough to have a conversation. Mr. Dom drove her home, to a bamboo house built on stilts above the busy Chao Phraya River. She invited us inside. Dom parked his car, and made a gesture to me indicating she worked as a prostitute. Once inside the house, the young woman’s mother welcomed us. She prepared the afternoon meal on something that looked like a hotplate.

     I was following Mr. Dom’s lead, making our way through the crowded house, barely able to walk between the beds and bits of furniture. The young woman wanted to show me around. She took me into her bedroom, separated from the main room with a curtain, which remained open. She showed me her wardrobe, a closet filled with a large assortment of dresses and shoes she said American soldiers had bought for her. She asked, “You Mexican boy?”

     I said I was. When I told her I was 19, she called me, a "Baby." Her mother invited us to a small table outside on the porch, water and a canoe beneath us. She brought a pot of tea. We ate, talked, and watched the sampans and boats shuttle up and down the river. It was as if we’d known each other all our lives. I could’ve sat there for days it was so peaceful. After our meal, I listened as Mr. Dom and the young woman talked in Thai. Mr. Dom turned to me and asked if I would consider going to the PX and buying food and other supplies for the family. I was confused. I didn’t’ know anything about a PX in Bangkok. Dom assured me he knew where it was, and with my military I.D. I could shop there.

     A half-hour later, he and I were walking through the aisles of a large military department store, the shelves filled with everything American, from televisions to toasters and food. I told Mr. Dom to pick whatever he thought the family needed. When we returned, the old woman was delighted with the bags of groceries and household items we carried inside. For a while, I forgot I was American and they were Thai. We were people, sharing a home-cooked meal, and friendship. Then, I remembered, why I was even here, and my heart sank.

     When I returned to my artillery battery on a mountaintop a half-hour helicopter’s ride outside the town of Tam Ky, my head was still in that simple bamboo home along the Chao Phraya River, and two weeks later, I was back home in Los Angeles, the memory buried deep, only to be mined one day, years later, after a trip to a neighborhood store with the strange name, Camaguey.

The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar

The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar

Written by Sonido Reyes

*Publisher: Versify

*Language: English

*Print length: 384 pages

*ISBN-10: 0063358395

*ISBN-13: 978-0063358393

*Reading age: 13 years and up

2026 Schneider Family Book Awards Honor
MPIBA's Reading the West YA Longlist

From bestselling author Sonido Reyes comes a poignant and searingly honest companion novel to the multi-award-winning The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School, following beloved character Cesar Flores as he comes to terms with his sexuality, his new bipolar diagnosis, and more mistakes than he can count.

Seventeen-year-old Cesar Flores is finally ready to win back his ex-boyfriend. Since breaking up with Jamal in a last-ditch effort to stay in the closet, he’s come out to Mami, his sister, Yami, and their friends, taken his meds faithfully, and gotten his therapist’s blessing to reunite with Jamal.

Everything would be perfect if it weren’t for The Thoughts—the ones that won’t let all his Catholic guilt and internalizations stay buried where he wants them. The louder they become, the more Cesar is once again convinced that he doesn't deserve someone like Jamal—or anyone really.

Cesar can hide a fair amount of shame behind jokes and his “gifted” reputation, but when a manic episode makes his inner turmoil impossible to hide, he’s faced with a stark choice: burn every bridge he has left or, worse—ask for help. But is the mortifying vulnerability of being loved by the people he’s hurt the most a risk he’s willing to take?

Review

"Deeply cathartic." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Offers an accessible and worthwhile peek into what a struggle with serious mental illness looks like for a teen." - Booklist (starred review)

Sonido Reyes is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School, The Luis Ortega Survival Club, The Broposal, and The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar. They also have contributed short stories to the anthologies Transmogrify! and For the Rest of Us. Sonido writes fiction celebrating queer and Mexican stories in a variety of genres and age categories. He serves as the vice-president of My Galvanized Friend, a nonprofit focused on providing access to and amplifying LGBTQ+ writing, art, and creators. Sonido also co-hosts the podcast Bidi Bidi Book Pod, which celebrates queer and trans BIPOC authors and stories.

Aflredo de Batuc Artist on the Cusp of Dos Culturas

Noted and Notable: A Film About Alfredo de Batuc

Michael Sedano

How many years ago was it that I attended Frank Romero's holiday sale? As I enter Romero's Frogtown studio a nondescript fellow staffs a table holding prints and a ceramic mask that I instantly fall in love with. I buy the ceramic face that resembles the moon and is a distinctive motif created by an artist I know only by name, and his work. A Mexicano with long-time Los Angeles roots, his artistic sensibilility captures abstract figuration in a wholly unique style.

It turns out that nondescript fellow is the artist himself, Alfredo de Batuc. I am happy to have met the artist even though at the time I had no idea of our encounter. Time passes and the more I see of de Batuc's work, the more I look for an opportunity to acquire more.

Michael Sedano models one side of the de Batuc ceramic sculpture in the form of a mask.

Fast forward a few years and I buy "Las Cuatas," a de Batuc serigraph celebrating Día de los Muertos and Self-Help Graphics.  Self-Help Graphics awakened Southern California to DDLM whose numerous events launch holiday sales and exhibitions. The "Las Cuatas" serigraph is a pastiche of the Frida Kahlo painting Las Dos Fridas. The artist invites me to his home to pick up the work, the last copy of the production run. 

Getting to de Batuc's home leads me past a row of timber bamboo--the raw material for making güiros. Happily I take home my print and have permission from the landlord to return and harvest a goodly supply of bamboo.

Moving into the unforeseen future, news reaches me that Alfredo de Batuc is stricken by Guillain-Barré syndrome. De Batuc's condition is perilous. The artist community comes out to raise funds and keeps their colleague in mind with healing thoughts and deeply felt wishes for his complete recovery. 

Now in present time, de Batuc's recovery has been slow and impressive. He is making art again, albeit small pieces owing to the fatigue that sets in quickly, and the effects of recovering from paralysis. 

In a major show of progress, filmmaker Roberto Oregel and Alfredo de Batuc hold a showing of Oregel's film covering de Batuc's artistic accomplishments and his illness. Lejanías y Nostalgia features biographical narrative and interviews with some of Los Angeles' most prominent artists who share their concern and admiration for the fallen artist (link to trailer).

The showing is held at Consulado General de Mexico, across from McArthur park near downtown Los Angeles. The audience of artists and well-wishers welcomes the film enthusiastically. The audience knows we are privileged viewers, owing to the scarcity of showings of Oregel's film. The engaging film's high production values allow it to stand alongside any award-winning documentary. Lejanías y Nostalgia The Art of Alfredo de Batuc needs to be seen.

La Bloga's Michael Sedano does his metiche thing and contacts Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum, urging the museo's film curator to add showings of  Lejanías y Nostalgia The Art of Alfredo de Batuc to the museum's ongoing film series currently showcasing noted European artists like Van Gogh, and fictional English artist Gulley Jimson. 

De Batuc's work, most widely known from his only mural, is puro Los Angeles arte, and the Norton Simon's audience deserves to know this artist. De Batuc's LA City Hall motif will instantly identify the artist as quintessentially El Lay and if there's justice in the world, buyers will empty the artist's storage racks. 

Although the museo is not currently acquiring new work, sharing the film will be a feather in the NSM's cap and evidence of the museum's commitment to high artistic merit and public service. An interesting coincidence, Norton Simon himself experienced  Guillain–Barré syndrome, a compelling parallel between de Batuc and the museum's namesake.

Aida Velasco, Alfredo de Batuc, Roberto Oregel

The Consulado's Aida Velasco interviews the filmmaker and artist to expand on material Oregel's superb script covers, as well as delve into territory not disclosed in film.

Aida Velasco, José Vicente Borjón, Alfredo de Batuc, Roberto Oregel

A delightful moment occurs when Vice Consul José Vicente Borjón tells the audience he's searched the Consulado's files to discover a foto of de Batuc pictured standing at the artist's singular mural in Hollywood of Dolores del Río. De Batuc's delight receiving the gift is palpable.

Thousands, if not millions, of people annually drive past 6529 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90028 and know that mural, but likely do not know the artist's name nor his oeuvre.

José Vicente Borjón, Aida Velasco, Alfredo de Batuc,
noted collector and gallerist Molly Barnes, Roberto Oregel

How I treasured my Las Cuatas print, and my mask. The serigraph was consumed, along with all my works on paper and bronze, by the Eaton Fire. One mask fragment remains, recovered from the ashes.

Chicanarte Moving East from Los Angeles: Pomona's Galeria Yasmin

Pomona, California has a rich history of showcasing Chicana Chicano artists at the DA gallery. More recently, just around the corner from the DA arrives Galeria Yasmín (link). 

Galeria Yasmin, firmly committed to social justice and community, is both a gallery and a law office. Operated by arts educator Yasmin Cardona, the space welcomes not only painters and sculptors, but also poets.

La Bloga-Tuesday was pleased to attend the most recent iteration of the gallery's Third Sunday Open Mic. Here is a portrait gallery of the readers, who identify themselves only by first name. It's an engaging lineup of writers at varying stages of growth; poets with a future, poets with a book, and accomplished performers.

Victor is a young poet reading with confidence.

Juan brings an effigy of the current U.S. president. As
Juan recites his poem he dismembers the piñata-like figure.
There is no candy, just hot air inside the empty vessel.
Art imitates life, que no?

Angel Guerreo is an accomplished performer whose work reflects keen understanding of humanity,
social justice, and human rights.

Julia C. Gaytán is the feature poet. Her debut collection, Ion Love, from publisher
Riot of Roses (link) reflects the poet's mathematical and scientific background. Hers is an
engaging set replete with chemical allusions and a young poet's loves and insights.

The reader and MC is unidentified. 

Galeria Yasmin's Poet-in-Residence Matt Sedillo is a highly accomplished performer and
author of several well-received volumes.

Kimberly Hartman reads with confidence.

La Bloga will undoubtedly attend future events at Galeria Yasmin so look for a profile of the venue in an upcoming La Bloga-Tuesday.