Falling Off the End of The World

Falling Off the End of The World: Faces In Gregg Stone’s Velvet Dragons Exhibition

Michael Sedano

Viewers will think whatever they’re prepared to see in the woman’s portrait. Who is she? How’d she get here? What happens to her after this day? Gregg Stone points at the figure and puts context into the painting 

In Mexico a man, a breadwinner, can abandon a woman and children with no accountability. A single mother left to fend for herself and her kids needs money every day. Some women, like this woman, turn to the streets to get the cash to survive. Velvet Dragons is a show about such women.

Gregg narrates wistfully. This woman wears an ineffable innocence, her ojos hinchados look directly at the viewer. The longer one looks at her face the more her youth evaporates into sorrowful inevitability at what is to come. The woman’s boyfriend has her hooked on heroin. Criminals kidnap the woman and cut her body to pieces when the boyfriend doesn’t pay his debts. She leaves three kids behind.

Stone paints realist portraits of prostitutes and life in Tijuana’s Zona Norte. Stone’s Velvet Dragons exhibition, curated by Man One at Chinatown’s Eastern Projects Gallery, (link) surveys the artist’s thirty-five year exploration of this Tijuana milieu.

Earlier work on small canvas, reflect Stone’s enduring interest in architectural shape and color, elements to flavor his portraits with authenticity and ambiente. Stone's backgrounds define the scene and the artist devotes as much skill to setting as to subject. Several of the structures, now razed, exist only in memory and Stone's watercolors.

Later paintings in the show reflect an artist increasingly satisfied with his medium and evolving style. Gregg decides to work big. His more recent, large scale paintings, are the exhibition’s attention-holding focus.

Calling Gregg Stone’s work compelling understates what holds viewers to linger at each painting. Prurience may fuel some viewers, along with voyeuristic fascination with honest portraits of desperation and pain. Artists and critical viewers will linger at each hanging to study Stone’s control of layered watercolor and photo realism. Everyone will bring their own eyes to the exhibition to fill in the stories.

Gregg Stone engages visitors with puro enjoyment and intimate details of a painting

Faces, settings , bodies, clothing, light, shadow, tell stories and raise questions. At first sight, the subject’s story is the whole painting. Linger and make eye contact with that woman and her story becomes personal, not hers, yours and whatever you make of that person frozen in the moment.

A Gregg Stone painting tells its own story and on its face that is the story. Talk to Gregg about a painting and he grows wistful and wet-eyed with memory. Like writers write what they know, Gregg Stone paints what he knows. He knows these people and the spaces they inhabit. His is a welcome presence among his subjects. Stone has turned an understanding ear to these people for a quarter century. Stone returns their openness by creating unjudging portraits of people many viewers approach with bias and pejoration.

Gregg Stone's brush and pen find people at the end of their rope, tilting at the edge of the world. What comes after remains in the collector's imagination, outside the frame.

Gregg Stone grows emotional narrating the career of the woman in the painting.

A short-haired woman stands back to window, about to light a cigarette. Her clothes hang from rods positioned above her mattress. Tubing curls on her dresser top, a medication bottle tells us this person is ill and alone. 

The painting is a diptych. In the second frame purple cloth hangs from the ceiling covering half the wall’s institutional green paint typical in cheap Mexican dwellings. A yellow tablecloth decorates the backrest of a sarape-covered couch. Demanding visual stimulation in her space, the woman has affixed prints to the soffit running across her ceiling. The woman’s world is a confined emptiness.

Stone relates the woman is from the United States. A lot of the workers here come from el otro lado. This woman’s life’s path brings her to this emptiness, to TJ to work the streets. Here is her refuge, her private world.

Her boyfriend addicts her to heroin and methamphetamine. When the asshole doesn’t pay his debts, gangsters drop this woman from the international bridge. 

White Fence, a well-recognized Boyle Heights gang, is the context of a diptych that stops people in their tracks. The right side, white lettering on black field, offers a roster of names including Spooky Travieso Grumpo Droopy, and a pair of cartoonish homies posed like temple pillars guarding massive letters, WF. 

On the left, a woman looks toward those placas. She is tattooed on arms, neck, jaw, cheek. Despite the bright illumination, sunglasses rest above the bill of her cap. One tattoo, W on her right arm, suggests she’s from White Fence. 

Something happened, she had nowhere else to go, and now she works TJ streets. Maybe she’s thinking of those placas and how there’s no place like home.

Eastern Projects Gallery occupies the corner of College Street and Broadway in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. It’s a short walk from the metro. The spacious gallery hosted a Magu retrospective recently and Eastern Projects is establishing itself as an important showcase for arte. 

The opening night, July 25, was a celebration of Stone’s work and a reunion of friends and collectors. The Artist Talk on Saturday, August 1, 2026 | 5:00 - 8:00 PM promises to bring many of the same gente to Chinatown.

Also on display is Stone's personal collection of prison work, renderings of imaginary women, cars, text, anguished people, on starkly white tee shirts and pañuelos. 

Gregg Stone’s work is precious but his prices are in the low thousands. I see no red dots during my stay. Gregg tells me he’s happy to share the work, understands chacun à son goût rules the market and his work isn’t for every taste. Maybe. I observed a dealer approach the artist proposing a deal to sell all the paintings. That's what salespeople call a definite maybe.

Velvet Dragons runs through August 22. Eastern Projects Gallery opens noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Fotos From An Exhibition

Author Hiroko Falkenstein, Gregg Stone's wife, greets visitors. La Bloga reviewed Falkenstein's recent Alzheimer's caregiver's story (link).

Mario Trillo, photographer and fashionista artist, with a friend.

A browser examines each pañuelo, giving the work well-deserved appreciation.

Gregg Stone enjoys conversation with visitors and potential collectors.

Dos poemas por Xánath Caraza y Naty Blásquez

Dos poemas por Xánath Caraza y Naty Blásquez

 

Hoy les compartimos dos poemas “Los días circulares” de Naty Blásquez y “Agítense en su recuerdo” de Xánath Caraza. No olviden que el próximo martes, 28 de julio, de 6 a 7:30 p.m. en 4Regiones, Primo Verdad 23 en Xalapa, Veracruz, las que escriben compartirán poesía con los xalapeños. La profesora Malena Flores será la maestra de ceremonias para este evento poético y los asistentes podrán compartir un poema al final de la sesión. La entrada es libre y para el público de todas las edades.

 

Xanath Caraza

Para corresponder el apoyo de 4Regiones se sugiere el consumo de una bebida.

 

Ojalá nos acompañen y traigan un poema para celebrar la palabra.

 

¡Qué la poesía nos salve!

 

 

Naty Blasquez

“Los días circulares” por Naty Blásquez

 

Pero de esta catedral sin luz

salen moscas de flor podrida

y me baño con el agua verduzca

de los rezos dominicales.

 

Me bautizo, soy pecadora

y cambio mi nombre

porque esta manera

de llamarme no es mía

sino de la que se fue

con el alma de mi madre.

 

Polvo seremos

SOY

porque me desmorono

a cada instante

a cada flechazo de indiferencia.

 

Me vuelvo aire en

estas cuatro paredes

me impregno en las sábanas

y ya no camino con los

pasos toscos de mi herencia,

ya no me trenzo el

miedo de generaciones,

ya no paso mi mano

por el pecho

para sentir si sigo viva.

 

No quiero ser siempre

el mismo instante

de beso y despedida,

de despertar y el desayuno,

de la noche y la cama

la noche y la cama.

 

Ser yo la que se repite

y no el día,

siempre el mismo día.

 

Ni volver la cabeza al crucifijo

y llorar por lo que no hice,

por lo que no pienso.

 

Tampoco hacer reverencia,

ni sonreírle a figuras de cera

para que me salven del

martirio de despertar

sobre la derecha

y pensarme la vida

y pensarme el hambre.

 

Y entonces ya no

llamar catedral

a esta patria mía

que se desnuda.

 

Y saberme libre,

atravesada por la luz

que negué,

llamarme agua verduzca,

agua noble,

agua de flores de fe.

 

Levantar el ojo al interior

y saludarme en el sueño.

 

Sonreírme despojada de cadenas.

Sonreírle a mi patria,

a mi patria desnuda.

 

 

Xanath Caraza

“Agítense en su recuerdo” por Xánath Caraza

 

Como hiedra nace sobre el árbol. Su crecimiento es canto del bosque. Un crujir en las ramas colma el vientre de deseo. Espera. Sigue cuidando su esencia para el momento justo. La genealogía se expande y recuerda los ancestrales troncos, las viejas ramas que estuvieron antes que ella. Dioses ceiba, agítense en su recuerdo. Como serpiente de cascabel hagan sonar las ramas. Que los labios se humedezcan, la boca muerda la piel y las pupilas se alarguen.

 

 

El árbol

espera

su esencia

como serpiente de cascabel

 

“Agítense en su recuerdo” es parte del poemario Ejercicio en la oscuridad de Xánath Caraza (Lobo Estepario Press, 2021). 

Xanath Caraza

Scholar, Dropout, Leader, Mentor

In Memoriam: My Mother: Scholar, Dropout, Leader, Mentor On Her Heavenly 100th Birthday

By Thelma T. Reyna

My mother, Maria Elia Guerra—small-town Texas girl known for her beauty and school smarts—was destined for great things. But she was smitten with a Laredo sailor stationed locally and dropped out after the eleventh grade to marry him. He was a junior high dropout, and poor…but she was smitten!

She married the sailor—Raul Clemente Tellez, my father—and they went on to have nine children. Their rocky 20-year marriage ended inevitably in divorce, which broke my heart, for I loved him deeply, as I loved her. But this is her story, how contradictions filled her life and defined her. But overall, a propitious beginning for the stellar student was waylaid by a teenaged couple—he aged 19 and she 17—who made unwise decisions and moved too fast.

A high-school dropout, my mother was my first mentor, my first role model of female leadership and success in the professional world. Lacking educational credentials, my mother turned to her native intelligence to break past the gatekeepers. She scored highly on the entrance test and quickly became a highly-ranked administrative supervisor at the local military base. She was queenly, a turban-like “beehive hairdo” adding six inches to her height. “She liked to run the show,” my cousins tell me. Energetic, highly competent. Never shied away from speaking out. Never feared challenges in this male world. She became a rare Mexican-American woman leading White people, mainly, in their work, telling high school and college grads what to do. Mom was also the only career woman in our poor neighborhood. 

But she didn’t acquire a veneer of gentility. She cursed “like a sailor,” my uncles would say. She had a facility with, and penchant for, profanity. She learned it from her father, my laconic Grandpa Guerra. Even in calm kitchen-table conversations devoid of conflict, smiling, engaged, my mother peppered her sentences with curse words. “Just a habit,” she intoned nonchalantly, when criticized. But her tongue became an excoriating furnace of fire when angered. Her mother once chastised her, saying, “Las maldiciones de una madre duelen mucho.” Yes, indeed. Because of the environment her words created, I vowed as a young girl to avoid profane language, and have upheld this. Ironically, my mother’s focus on being her natural self taught me behaviors in the opposite direction.

Conversely, my mother’s tough but kind heart provided respite and refuge to disenfranchised souls. Like stray pups taken benevolently in, fed and housed, runaway kids, or kids kicked out of their homes by draconian parents, found a landing spot in our house. Admittedly, with two young girls in our home, this was risky. But my brothers watched their friends and sisters like hawks, always protective. We had five bedrooms and three bathrooms, sufficient space for those in need of compassion.

Finally, piety didn’t lose against the arts of the occult, both domains embraced by my mother. She consulted tarot cards and fortune tellers. She traveled a hundred dusty miles to lie under the healing hands of curanderos in remote ranchitos. In evening hours, if churches had locked their doors for the day, mother sat on their steps, rosary in hand, and whispered the prayers she could recite in sleep. But such it is with our culture, where tradition and modern community allow dualities to co-exist.

This was my mother, replete with contradictions: incompletely educated yet brilliant; lacking glass-ceiling-breaking credentials but making up for this through her native intelligence and drive; rising in the professional world yet clinging to crude, profane habits diametric to her new persona; speaking tough yet sheltering discarded youths; and dabbling in occult practices while continuing to practice her conventional religion. Our family survived and thrived to our utmost, but financial stability escaped my mother, though she worked hard all her life. My love for her does not dim with time.

IN MEMORIAM
Maria Elia Guerra Tellez Ruth
July 27, 1926 - September 11, 2008

  

 

 

Chicanonautica: A Whole Lotta Little Apocalypses Going On

  

by Ernest Hogan

There’s a whole lotta little apocalypses going on. Apocalypcitos? Apocalypsettes? Apocalypsoids? Another interlinguistic breakdown?

Not only did I mess up my schedule last week, but there’s smoke from wildfires darkening the skies, ICE is shooting people, the denizen of the White House continuously secretes incoherent stream-of-semiconsciousness, the wars are getting worse . . . keeping up with it all is becoming impossible.

Meanwhile, while the rest of the planet has been following the World Cup, I’ve been checking YouTube for coverage of the running of the bulls at the Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain. More happens in one encierro than in entire shelves of novels. I’m reminded that modern life is running through crowded streets with dangerous beasts. It always blows my mind, as we said back in the 1900s.

I also get ideas for my sci-fi bullfighting novel–something that the world doesn’t seem to want, but that probably means it’s what it needs. Maybe if I pitch it as being about a woman on a spiritual quest . . .

I’m also getting ideas for a sequel to my unsold novel Zyx; or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin. Anybody out there interested in publishing a Chicano vs. AI novel? I’m wondering how long the publishing industry as we know it will continue to exist. 

Who knows when my books will go back online on Amazon again . . .

I’m seventy years old. I’ve given up on trying to be commercial in a world where the corporate masters of global culture are being taken over by hallucinating AIs. And I keep getting all these ideas! This deranged world is a treasure trove of inspiration!

Guess I should just keep going, work on my bucket list novels, and keep looking for openings in the chaos that will allow me to sneak in, cause a little trouble because it happens to be the right thing to do.

And the really weird thing is I can’t stop. My monstrous imagination never sleeps, it has no off switch. I’m just going to let it go wild, do my best to make what it produces into something that someone will be amused or terminally disturbed by. 

Maybe it’s my real job.

If I need diversion, I’ll read more of Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda. Does Carlos count as a Chicano or a Latino? Is Peru the Mexico of South America? A Chicano does seem to be someone who pushes the limits. Latinos are what show biz thinks they can sell. And Hispanic is what law enforcement calls us.

I knew some Castaneda fans once who were . . .

There goes my brain again.

Ernest Hogan keeps on writing. The Father of Chicano Science Fiction refuses to die!

Carmela Full of Wishes-- Los deseos de Carmela

Written by Matt de la Peña. 

Illustrated by Christian Robinson. 

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers

Print length: 40 pages

ISBN-10: 9780399549045

ISBN-13: 978-0399549045

Reading age: 3 - 6 years

Grade level: Preschool - 3

In their first collaboration since the Newbery Medal- and Caldecott Honor-winning Last Stop on Market Street, Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson deliver a poignant and timely new picture book that's sure to be an instant classic.

When Carmela wakes up on her birthday, her wish has already come true--she's finally old enough to join her big brother as he does the family errands. Together, they travel through their neighborhood, past the crowded bus stop, the fenced-off repair shop, and the panadería, until they arrive at the Laundromat, where Carmela finds a lone dandelion growing in the pavement. But before she can blow its white fluff away, her brother tells her she has to make a wish. If only she can think of just the right wish to make . . . 

With lyrical, stirring text and stunning, evocative artwork, Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson have crafted a moving ode to family, to dreamers, and to finding hope in the most unexpected places.

Los deseos de Carmela

Hasta ahora el cumpleaños de Carmela no puede ser mejor. Hoy es lo suficientemente mayor para acompañar a su hermano en su recorrido por la ciudad.  La tarde que pasan juntos se llena con la magia de lo que ven a su alrededor: desde el brillante sol de los campos hasta las golosinas en la vidriera de la panadería. Pero cuando recoge un diente de león que crece en el concreto, se pregunta qué otra cosa podría desear ... y decide entonces salir en busca del deseo perfecto.

En esta nueva colaboración, Matt de la Peña y Christian Robinson, galardonados por su trabajo en Última parada de la calle Market, que ganó la Medalla Newbery y Mención de Honor Caldecott por la edición en inglés, han creado una oda, conmovedora y actual, al coraje de los soñadores y al poder de la esperanza.

Review

"The award-winning team behind Last Stop on Market Street portrays Carmela’s Spanish-speaking community as a vibrant place of possibility, and Robinson’s acrylic-and-cutout spreads introduce readers to street vendors, workers in the fields, and sweeping views of the sea. Sensitively conceived and exuberantly executed, Carmela’s story shines."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Full of rich details, sharp and restrained writing, and acrylic paintings that look textured enough to rise off the page . . . Another near-perfect slice of life from a duo that has found a way to spotlight underrepresented children without forgetting that they are children first.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review 

“Carmela’s journey of wishing, waiting, and wanting resonates on many levels; an important addition to bookshelves everywhere."—School Library Journal, starred review 

“[A] beautiful book about the love of siblings and community. . . . A must read for everyone.”—School Library Connection, starred review

Matt de la Peña is the Newbery Medal-winning author of Last Stop on Market Street. He is also the author of Love; A Nation's Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis; and six critically acclaimed young-adult novels. Matt teaches creative writing and visits schools and colleges throughout the country. Matt lives in Brooklyn, NY. You can visit Matt at mattdelapena.com or on Twitter @mattdelapena.

Christian Robinson is a 2016 Caldecott Honoree and also received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor for his art in Last Stop on Market Street. His picture books include the Gaston and Friends series; Leo: A Ghost Story; School's First Day of School; The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade; Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker; and many more. You can visit Christian at theartoffun.com or on Instagram @theartoffun.