Artist's Studio: Frank Romero y Los Many

Studio Open House & Sale: Frank Romero and Friends

Michael Sedano

Frank Romero’s studio looks like any other anonymous structure lining the ill-maintained road at the far southern boundary of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights. I would have missed the address but for a dozen or so mariachi milling about excitedly, and equally excited gente pulling open a chain link gate disappearing into the magical spaces of the artist’s creative lair.

Romero’s neon and wooden sculptures, drawings and paintings cover the walls of the cavernous space. Collectors and connoisseurs recognize Romero’s signature pieces like the palm trees and carruchas installed at The Cheech. Romero himself sits in the joyous surrounds, accepting commissions for on-the-spot creating. 

Numerous artists staff tables and easels displaying their work for sale. One table holds dozens of serigraphs by late master printer Richard Duardo, including several of his iconic Frida Kahlo images. I watch enviously as a visitor gets a bargain print—a slight blemish lowers its cost but not its value.

For many visitors, the highlight of the event is the Plaza de la Raza Mariachi group. High school kids sporting mariachi traje play effectively and several take solos belting out Mexicana hits and a pop hit.

 

Frank Romero completing an on-the-spot commission.

Customer happy with his Frank Romero carrucha

Rubén Esparza with a study for a large scale work

Goodby artist magu. 45 artists on the walls. On-Line Floricanto.

East Los Says Goodbye to a Great Friend. Magu, ave atque te wacho.

Michael Sedano

Gente my age joke about getting old but sabes que, when a friend dies the death signals the start of an inevitable slide to a Dorothy moment, the last to go will see the first ones go before her. Him. That fate underlay the morose undertone of the festivities memorializing Gilbert Lujan, the artist Magu. It’s an awareness Ruben Guevara, Funkahuatl, alludes to in his “Some haiku for magú” that appeared in La Bloga,

So, what’s new Magú?
Getting ready to join you
Just a few more years

Laugh in the face of death, dying, and grief. The morning dawned with a chill that led to a brilliant and temperate afternoon, especially for the gente in the shade. Out on the island, Emcee Richard Montoya suffered the radiation with loud equanimity. There was plenty of sadness and laughter as speakers and performers held the stage in music, dance, ritual, thanks for the life of our friend who is dead.

Ese, magu, here’s some of what it took to send you off right. Your familia did it up just right. The beautiful arbol de vida grew out of your first altar. Naiche and your carnal Mark drove the Family Car right up to the front door like they owned the place and carried your ashes down to the stage. Right behind your carrito comes Mario Trillo in his delivery van looking bad. Then Mario Guerrero in his white trokita. Then a whole bunch of vatos and their rides. A fine line up and shiny send-off.



Speeches, and Ave Maria, all the verses, in Latin (you woulda dug it, brother), danzantes working to a hard pounding drum. Speeches from your friends. Richard emceed--introduced Mountain to the gente—and kept the ball rolling for all the tributes, paeans, and a bit of chisme but with love. Don’t hang your head, magu, you deserve every word.

You did not deserve the deliberate triple pass by that LA Sheriff helicopter with the muffler turned off. Hey, do you think it was a tribute? The way the craft approached wide of the bowl, circled around like the widening gyre except tightening until the spiral took it directly over your primo’s head was no accident. Rrrrraaaaaaaa the beast flew low and slow above your altar so no one could hear your primo’s chistes. Ni modo. The ducks swam and fussed unperturbed. That was cool.

Mardy was the perfect familia matriarch. The kids made this happen. Obviously your legacy is taking care of itself. The kids are shouldering the responsibility of dealing with your estate. They’ll do fine, magu, they are good people.

It was good hearing you speak at your own memorial, definitely via Memorex. I thought you were going to get the last word in, but then Wayne Healy kicked my ass with his “final letter to magu.” If you can, get your hands on Brooklyn & Boyle. Able put the whole issue in your name, Wayne’s letter and Funkahuatl’s haiku are in there, an interview with Mario plus other good stuff. And check out LA Eastside, great detail fotos of the shrine your familia all put together. Ya stuvo, brother.

Te wacho, magu. Qepd.

Visit Read! Raza for a high resolution foto show with commentary on each frame. Click on a photo for an enlarged view in a new window.

Visit magulandia.com for updates on the estate and magu's archive.

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Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery Hosts Major Chicano Mexican American Painting Exhibition

Add a new venue to the eastside’s host of significant art exhibition spaces. Continuing through January 1, Glendale California’s Forest Lawn Cemetery hosts forty-five artists in a sweeping survey of painting and drawing by raza since 1960, Adelante! Mexican American Artists: 1960’s and Beyond.

The museum literally tops the cemetery’s collection of noted sculptural reproductions. The drive up to the museum from San Fernando road meanders past a magnificent David sparking in monumental whiteness. It’s kitsch, but it’s glorious.

At the top of the hill, an ornate church and the museum. Parts of the plaza look west, across the valley as far as the smog allows. Visitora stand on the edge of the quiescent San Rafael fault, the upthrust cliff supporting the rear patio defining the eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley. The breathtaking view rivals what’s hanging inside.

News of the show springs out of nowhere. Forest Lawn’s regular art-based pitch beckons with its reproduction of The Last Supper for casual tourism, and grief counseling for others. Bringing art brings in people, bringing in big time art brings in crowds. Bringing in “Mexican American” art brings in the area's growing demographic.

The event is a rousing success. Funkahuatl was on a groove with The Eastside Luvers, pounding out the oldies. Little Willie G did a special unannounced guest appearance that had the gente around me sighing in sweet memories. Talk about oldies. It is a good crowd that achieves the cemetery’s objective of showcasing itself.

Forest Lawn Glendale Museum joins a trend among local cemeteries to stage chicana chicano events. For instance, this DDLM brings the twelfth annual Hollywood Forever Cemetery fair and the second at Pico Rivera’s Rose Hills. Here, beautiful as its setting, the Glendale site has a small footprint atop the hill. Putting together a major DDLM fest in the space presents logistic nightmares. Pero a ver.

The show, of course, speaks for itself. Still, Forest Lawn p.r. people did not respond to a last-minute query. The event’s website offers useful information, other than crediting the curator’s role. The site proclaims:

“¡Adelante! Mexican American Artists: 1960s and Beyond” is a collection of works by an array of both established and emerging Mexican American artists, and includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography.

Many of the pieces are on loan from the Cheech Marin collection, the website reveals. Marin deserves recognition for sharing his work so generously. Sadly, the event at Forest Lawn Museum is so successful that moving about the exhibit during the opening reception is a wonderful exercise of etiquette, interpersonal communication, and just plain bumping into strangers. I accidently rub Judithe Hernandez’ butt and can offer only a passing nonverbal apology.

Visitors passing through the rear door take in some excellent bronze sculpture in the anteroom to Adelante! The first thing a visitor notices how close everything is. The unnamed curator’s decision to hang such a rich array of visual delights in such tight proximity to rival work is boon and bane. It’s a good way to get one’s head spinning but still one’s head gets to spinning turning from one delight to the next to the next to the… Clearly the choice between show a lot of artists and art or show a lot of wall was made for the former.

This is a fabulous exhibition. Gente in the greater L.A. should get in their cars and make the trek up that long drive to the top of the hill where Glendale becomes L.A. Check out the geography. This show, because the walls are so crowded, is a wonderful feast for the eyes that requires unhurried and multiple visits. The show is free.

When you leave the cemetery, turn left onto San Fernando Road and take it south a couple miles. Turn left on Roseview Avenue. Drive up to the corner and have a big bowl of cocido at King Taco on Roseview and Cypress Ave. Tell them La Bloga sent you.


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On-Line Floricanto 2d Tuesday month 9

Featuring: Leticia Diaz Perez, Elena Diaz Bjorkquist, Victor Avila, Avotcja, Sylvia Maltzman

Today’s La Bloga On-Line Floricanto reflects the larger scope of poetry’s response to SB 1070: five voices speaking for human rights, the pursuit of happiness, respecto al derecho ajeno. In other words, quintessentially American values, in the sense of both the United States of America and America the continent.

Today, the moderators of the Facebook group Poets Responding to SB 1070 found compelling five poems: A first grader sees things stacked against her. A budding teenager brutalized for doing the right thing. A voter’s abandonment of hope. A second take on invisibility, allusions to a dream denied. Today’s floricanto closes with a painful reminder of our “Americanness”.

"1st Grade Lunch" by Leticia Diaz Perez
"Algebra I" by Elena Diaz Bjorkquist
"The Invisible Man" Victor Avila
"In the Shadow of Carijama" by Avotcja
"Zero" by Sylvia Maltzman



1st Grade Lunch
by Leticia Diaz-Perez


Skinny little white girls
in my 1st grade class
open up the brown bags
and take their lunches out

it's
Wonder Bread
Wonder Bread
peanut butter sandwiches
grape and cherry jam

they don't seem very happy
with the contents of their lunch bags
and look around the table
to see who they can pick on
that's when they spot my entree
that I'm happily devouring
and one skinny little white girl
starts putting on a face
" What is that stuff you're eating,
is that Spanish food again? "

Debbie, Jenny, Cindy, Sue
decide my lunch is over
they poke into my rice
with their peanut butter fingers
yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk- yuk
bugger fingers in my rice
" Will you leave my rice alone
Debbie, Jenny, Cindy, Sue?
I'm going to tell Miss Peters..."
and they laugh and laugh and laugh

so I stomp into the classroom
to straighten out the matter
Miss Peters is correcting
this morning's spelling tests
I stand right right beside her
and show her my white rice
" What are you trying to tell me? "
she asks so quite annoyed
as she opens up her lunch bag
to take her sandwich out

"Debbie, Jenny, Cindy,Sue
they poked into my rice
and now I'm very angry
because I have no lunch."
Miss Peters rolls her eyes
and bites into her sandwich
her mouth makes funny noises
she takes a sip of coffee
and clears her throat before
she tells me oh so calmly
"Remind me, will you dear,
to write your mom a note
to fix you simple sandwiches
instead of Spanish food?
It does create a problem
between you and the others
and smells so quite unpleasant
that it becomes a bother.
Now go back to your table
and finish up your lunch
cause' lunchtime's nearly over
but remind me, will you dear,
to write your mom a note?"

Skinny little white girls
in my 1st grade class
Wonder Bread
Wonder Bread
peanut butter sandwiches
grape and cherry jam.

© Leticia Diaz-Perez
September,2011


Algebra I
by Elena Díaz Bjorkquist


He was a big, blonde, dumb
Star football player,
A lone senior repeating Alegbra I
With a class of freshmen.

I sat in front of him,
A shy, Spanish-speaking Chicana.
He got F’s.
I got A’s.

He tried to cheat
Off my midterm exam.
I hid it from him.
Retaliation swiftly followed.

A powerful blow fell
Full force upon my neck.
My world darkened in pain
That didn’t go away.

I saw Mr. Pfeifer staring
At me through coke bottle
Glasses, but then looking away.
Did he see?


The football player hissed,
“You tell, you get more.”
My stomach churned,
I swallowed bile.

The next day, I asked Pfeifer
To move me closer to the board.
I never told a soul
but never forgot.

I heard the football player died.
Did he ever remember
What he did,
Ever regretted it?


Elena Díaz Bjorkquist ©2011


The Invisible Man
by Victor Avila


They searched the White House
for the President.
They looked long and hard
but just couldn't find him.
Environmentalists asked,
"But who will protect
the trees, air, and land?" -
Apparently not
the Invisible Man.

Through the tunnels of the Capitol
a more expanded search began.
But the Tea Party beasties were roaming
and afraid to confront them, the President ran.
The working poor asked, "Who will stand with us
against corporate vampires and their greedy demands?"
Certainly not
the Invisible Man.

So where is the person we voted for?
The promise of change never came.
Now the rich buy bigger mansions
and look for ways to destroy the minimum wage.
We are desperate and hungry
and take any menial job we can.
No thanks are given to
the Invisible Man.

Conspicuous by his absence in Wisconsin,
on his watch the Dream Act was shelved.
He let them whittle Health Care Reform to nothing.
But that's just another day in Washington
and the prowess of
the Invisible Man.


So when some bright-eyed kid says,
"I want to be President."
Answer them, "Oh, yes you can!"
But first you have to learn how to hide in a closet...
All hail to the Chief-
The Invisible Man.



IN THE SHADOW OF CARIJAMA

for Connie Williams, Jackie Artman, The African Queens,
Malonga Cascalourde, Jacque Barnes, D’Midas,
Carlos Aceituno/Regina Calloway & Fogo Na Ropa,
Sistas-Wit-Style, Mas Makers Massive, Val Serrant,
The Bay Area Blues Society, United Sisters, All-Ah-We,
Diamano Coura, DJ Miller The Killer, & Avotcja

by Avotcja


I was there
Standing in the shadows
Of a revelry denied
I was invisible
Pushed to the side
Hidden
Like yesterday’s Bacchanal
And the slavery we danced in spite of
I was invisible
Unseen like the pain we sang in the face of
Nobody saw me
Crying
Lost in the shambles
Just another invisible nonentity
An embodied phantom
Standing alone
In between the naked homelessness
Of the Ghosts of Carijama
And another trampled on dream
In a now fenced in Park
In a passionless neighborhood
I left unnoticed
Swam all the way home
Wrapped in an ocean of sadness
Swimming in tears
A bitter tasting travesty
A sea of furious, foul tasting tears
Seasoned
By hundreds of years of unstoppable pride
Just waiting for the right time to be reborn
But you better know
Though I may have been invisible
I was never alone
And I was always there

Copyright © Avotcja


Zero

in honor of the anniversary of 9/11

by Sylvia Maltzman


Someone shot a hole through me
where words should be.
I stutter and halt,
English verbs struggling to sputter into life,
a stalled airplane crashing into my chest,
thoughts crumbling into ashes.
The paper I should scrawl upon
floats to a rubbled street,
burning as it lands,
pierced by a thousand shards of blasted glass.
The pen bleeds in my hand,
the hand that ought to write the heart,
but the heart
disintegrates within me like grated drywall.
The steel resolution of my spine
turns molten;
I am a vacant skull,
eyes floating in a liquid metal puddle.


Someone shot a hole in us
where words should be,
where monuments of light or stone or steel
should rise.
Fall’s harvest yields no fruit palatable to the eyes or soul,
September’s blue pinstripe suit unsuitable for mourning.
How bury the dead when they cannot be found?
Memorialize the souls when they are but vapor?
Epitaphs—can they be written on monuments to the missing
when talking heads deliberate minutiae?
Two millennia and a day from now, will there be sufficient dust
To send these ragged souls to their Elysium?
Perhaps then the words of ghosts could write themselves
on monoliths of peace.

10/07/09


BIOS
"1st Grade Lunch" by Leticia Diaz Perez
"Algebra I" by Elena Diaz Bjorkquist
"The Invisible Man" Victor Avila
"In the Shadow of Carijama" by Avotcja
"Zero" by Sylvia Maltzman

Leticia Diaz-Perez was born in Virginia and raised in Michigan.She attended the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a BA/English and American Literature and an MA/Spanish and Latin American Literature. While at the University of Michigan she co-hosted "Radio Caliente" at WCBN FM , one of the first Latino radio shows in the Ann Arbor area. It was at WCBN that she interviewed Latino writers Pedro Pietri, Tato Laviera, Trinidad Sanchez,Sandra Cisneros and Piri Thomas-inspiring her to start writing and telling her story.Leticia has taught Spanish at the University of Michigan and in the Michigan public school system. She also taught in the New York City public school system, (4th grade bilingual teacher) where she had the opportunity to work with a group of beautiful children who had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic.Leticia is currently working on her first book of poems, "Sugar from the Sky".

Elena Díaz Björkquist, a writer, historian, and artist from Tucson, writes about Morenci, Arizona where she was born. She is the author of two books, Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon. Elena has been on the Arizona Humanities Council (AHC) Speakers Bureau for ten years performing as Teresa Urrea in a Chautauqua living history presentation, and doing presentations about Morenci, Arizona and also the 1880’s Schoolhouse in Tubac.

Elena is co-editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos, an anthology written by her writers group. The project was funded by AHC. She is nearing completion of another collection of Morenci stories entitled Albóndiga Soup and is co-editing a new anthology entitled Our Spirit, Our Reality; our life experiences in stories and poems by the Comadres of Sowing the Seeds.

A SIROW Scholar at the University of Arizona, Elena conducted an oral history project funded by AHC; “In the Shadow of the Smokestack.” A website she created contains the oral history interviews and photographs of Chicano elders living in Morenci during the Depression and World War II. Another project funded by AHC and the Stocker Foundation is “Tubac 1880’s Schoolhouse Living History Program.” Her website is www.elenadiazbjorkquist.net/.

Elena is one of the poet moderators for the Facebook page “Poets Responding to SB1070.

Victor Avila is a California educator. He has been teaching in public schools for over 22 years. Victor is a widely published poet and a winner of the Chicano Literary Prize. He also writes and illustrates ghost stories for GHOULA Comix. Three of those stories will be published in GHOULA Comix # 2 in October.

photo by Howard Dy

AVOTCJA (prounounced Avacha)-Musica, Poeta y Loca is a card carrying Music fanatic/sound junkie & popular Bay Area Radio DeeJay. She’s a lifelong Musician/Writer/Educator & is on a shamelessly Spirit driven melodic mission to heal herself. Wanna go???

Peruvian Poet Camincha says:
“AVACHA's poetry is music and Avacha's music is poetry. Both are as hot as fire and as soothing as snow flakes. And in both she brings the best of her talent in Spanish and English. Listen to her. Read her . Enjoy her. Celebrate her.”

Sylvia Maltzman is a poet who has spent most of her life in Miami, Florida among the various flora, fauna & amazingly varied human beings who have sought out this place for sanctuary. She is co-hosting one of the Miami events for 100 Thousand Poets for Change in September. Her poem "Zero" will be one of the poems she will read for this event.

9/11 gente and art news

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

As Teresa Puente, a journalist and blogger on the faculty at Columbia College Chicago and editor and publisher of Latina Voices, states:

"Of the 3,000 people who perished at the Twin Towers, around 20 percent were born outside the United States, according to FactCheck.org. You can read about them and other 9/11 victims in the New York Times' "Portrait of Grief" series.

"There also were dozens of 9/11 victims who were Muslim. President Obama reminded us of this fact and that we are not at war with the Muslim people who are overwhelmingly peaceful.

"There were 14 undocumented spouses and children of workers killed at the Twin Towers who sought permanent residency after the attack, according to the New York Times."

9/11 affected the world, including the Latino world, and in observation of its upcoming 10th anniversary, La Bloga received the following message from Denver reader and artist Robert Maestas:

"You are cordially invited to a “Tribute to 09/11/01” art exhibit at the Chicano Humanities & Arts Council (CHAC) Gallery, 774 Santa Fe Dr. in Denver from August 31 – October 1, 2011.

"As one of the 5,201 official entrants for the World Trade Center Memorial Competition, this exhibit has a very special meaning for me. My artistic tribute is my way of presenting an opportunity for the people of Denver and greater Colorado to recognize, reflect and continue to show their support for the 09/11 remembrance in the upcoming 10-year anniversary.

"Please inform your family, friends and colleagues and thank you for your support of the arts"

Robert Maestas, Artist

www.robertmaestas.com

Es todo, hoy

Two early heartfelts

[Jpegs taken from CHAC Valentine's Day showings, 2010 or prior years.]

This first piece doesn't begin in a "heartfelt" fashion, but bear with.

There's an adage about Life being the cruelest teacher: first it gives the test, then it gives the lesson.

Actually, there's something just as cruel that's omnisciently administered in U.S. public schools, that's called the pre-test. Those of you sans children or who've never personally benefited from this experience and don't know how lowly it can make children feel, well, don't despair; at some point in your remaining life you or yours may yet undergo the uplifting rigor of a pre-test.

Why test children--even five-year-old kindergartners--on something they know little to nothing about? For the sake of the BASELINE, a word teachers and students come to know as well as their daily schedule.

A schoolchild's progress (or lack of) and effectiveness of the teacher's skills (ditto), you see, justify the expenditure of millions of dollars and sustain thousands of jobs for "academic" number-crunchers and bean-counters whose existence depends on providing DATA to politicians, education corporations and administrators with the justification for cutting teachers, jobs and closing public schools so charter schools can be opened.

Even Colorado's entry into Obama's Race to the Top includes monies to be used for software, hardware and more numbers-people to cure our academic incompetence in international teaching standards. The thinking is that, if we're behind countries like Singapore, China and Denmark, it must be the teachers' fault.

Those millions of dollars and thousands of jobs might instead have been channeled into classrooms to teach children. Maybe with more teacher assistant paraprofessionals--try raising the educational level of 32 third graders by yourself all day long. Or more education specialists instructing in the classroom--try finding time to give differentiated one-on-one to a special ed kid in that same third grade room. Or more office staff to support teachers with children's behavioral problems and counseling--yeah, try teaching while one kid is hitting others and then being informed, "He's your fault and problem."

But our society doesn't believe in spending money in something so obviously beneficial because its targeted scapegoats are the teachers. The final solution is DATA and the obligatory pre-test.

In my case, for the sake of whatever self-esteem my first graders might salvage from such gauntlets, I regularly tell them that an answer of "Right now, I don't know." is acceptable. Thus I get many pre-tests with such responses. After all, how much would a six-year-old know about an index?

So, this week this teacher gave one of those pre-tests. Among other questions, was the following:
"Explica qué es un diagrama." ("What is a diagram?")

A few students had some idea. Most had none and responded as expected.

But one of the flaquitas, F__, usually does well or better in all subjects, She's a beanpole of unassuming ability, soft-voiced and reserved delight, who even after five months seems to enjoy deliberately driving me pre-testy by holding her pencil like she's attacking a steak, which in real life she probably doesn't do very often.

She also has within her a determination that won't allow her to easily admit failure. So, she tried. And she thought. And she dared to write this:

"Diagrama es el día de las fiestas de las abuelitas." (It's grandmothers' day.)

[Monolingual spoiler: F__ had deconstructed diagrama into "dia", which with an accent is the word for "day" (diá), and "grama" into a pochismo denoting grandmother.]

Amongst the teachers that day, it earned instant, funniest phrase of the week, because it demonstrated her imagination, her attempt to find sense in a nonsensical exercise--no matter her misinterpretation--and belied the intentions of pre-testers.

She brought more than laughter to our end of the building. She rejuvenated my tested-to-death teaching soul with her inventiveness and resourcefulness. Whichever cruel teachers, Life or otherwise, come her way, hopefully she'll continue putting her mind to them and send the inane scurrying.

And that's why I believe the episode with F__ fittingly, heartfelt.

_____________

Denver's CHAC Gallery
Milagros del Corazon
Miracles of the Heart is Underway!

February 12th, Friday night 6 to 9pm at Space Gallery across the street from CHAC is the site of this year's incredible Milagros del Corazon Auction. Join us for our Silent Auction that will feature hundreds of beautiful hearts designed by local Denver Artists, schools and our community supporters. Choose from numerous donated art pieces and services. Proceeds from this event will benefit our year round cultural arts programming!

Live classical Spanish guitar music by James Garcia.

Tickets: $7 per person or $12/couple and may be purchased in advance at CHAC. 303-571-0440 or click here for more info. (Artists go to "Artists News" for latest details on participating in the show.)

About CHAC
The Chicano Humanities & Arts Council (CHAC) was founded in 1978 by a group of visual and performing artists. The organization was established as a place where Chicano/Latino artists were provided with a venue to explore visual and performance art and promote and preserve the Chicano/Latino culture through the expression of the arts.
The gallery offers two shows each month by local visual art exhibits and performances by area musicians, actors, dancers, writers and poets. Other popular annual events include the Members Season Opener in January, Santos & Crosses in August, El Dia De Los Muertos in November and our Luminarias de la Guadalupe & Christmas Mercado in December.

Es todo, hoy,
RudyG

Three Art Shows at East Los' Chimaya Gallery

Michael Sedano

This week has started out as a gallery week. Sunday, bloguera Ann Hagman Cardinal relates an experience with an irritating woman who made it her business to fault Cardinal's choice of clothing. Although the altercation happens in a department store rather than an art gallery, it is a fine piece of performance art that would have made a superb set of photographs.

Monday, bloguero Daniel Olivas extols the entrepreneurial treats he discovers down in the OC, Santa Ana to be exact, at Calacas, one of those welcoming mercantile and arts hot spots the internet hasn't managed to kill.

Today, I'm happy to introduce ChimMaya, a spot of entrepreneurial genius located in eastern East Los Angeles. ChimMaya has the distinction of being one of those rare eastside galleries to have gotten some ink from the Los Angeles Times. Felicidades, ChimMaya.

El Lay gente will find a trip to this Land of Nod (it is at the east of ELAC) well worth their time. Art collectors with a few thousand dollars can pick and choose from a tempting array of genuine bargains in the three shows running concurrently, 16 X 20, Duality, and Frida.

Visitors on a summer vacation jaunt into Southern California will deprive themselves of one of LA's hidden treasures if they do not find time to make the trek out the Pomona Freeway. Beverly Drive is not in Beverly Hills, but ChimMaya has all the cachet of a chicano Rodeo Drive.

In addition to artwork, Chimaya Gallery offers a dazzling array of women's accessories, particularly purses and exquisite sparkly jewelry. I ran into poet extraordinaire Olga Garcia at the register, as well as Margaret Quiñones-Perez from El Camino College, whose husband Monte Perez, of Moreno Valley College, was buying his wife a glamorous trinket. Garcia emailed me that "I had to control myself at that place yesterday. I did buy the best yellow purse ever! Unfortunately, the art was way out of my budget." My feelings exactly. If I had unlimited funds I would have bought ten or twelve of the works on display.

Ricardo Ortega's stunning pair of canvases captured many an admiring eye. The dark triple portrait expresses the model's beauty stunningly. Unfortunately, the not-dancing Shiva-like figure is so compellingly imaginative that it steals the show.

The woman in red, above, was dancing like Shiva when I happened upon her. Seeing the camera, she stopped and stepped out of the frame. "No, no," I implored, I need people in the shot." She obliged admiringly. I wish gente would realize they have more right to space than a camera. Don't duck under the lens, don't step out of the shot, don't halt your forward progress.

Ortega's wall stands alongside the Frida show featuring San Diego and Baja California artists, in the West Gallery.

The signature piece, the blue Frida illustrating the show poster, is far subtler than web colors allow. It will make you stop and stare, then come back and stop and stare again.

The Frida collection includes one stunning portrait that depicts middle-aged Frida, what she must have looked like at the end of her life, or maybe older. So many paintings, including Kahlo's own, depict her at younger ages, so this older Frida stands uniquely beauteous.

Sadly, I did not photograph this gallery, owing to close quarters and lingering gente, testimony to the enduring popularity of Frida images.

In the main and east galleries, Chimaya was opening the 16 X 20 group show featuring 32 artists. The 16" x 20" canvases hang side by side, encouraging comments and comparison of various painters' styles. This wall shows Dolores Haro, Aydee Lopez Martinez, Yolanda Gonzales, Joe Bravo. Opposite wall, not illustrated, contains additional work by Bravo, Gonzales, Ernie Herrera, and other outstanding creators.

The north gallery offers "Duality," a perplexing display of stylistic syncretism that left me scratching my head in confusion, wishing I could have engaged painter CiCi Segura Gonzales in an extended platica about her work. Filling the east wall was a large abstract canvas of colors and shapes that offers little to challenge the eye and, had this been her single contribution, would have led me to about face in search of something interesting. I have nothing against Segura's abstracts; I own a small piece bought at the now-closed Carlotta's Passion.

On the north wall she hung a circus triptych of colorful doll-like figures that resemble illustrations in a children's picture book. Although well executed, the canvases would have limited appeal to a wide audience. This was evidenced by the passersby who spent scant moments scanning the canvases.

Ni modo, I thought, when I looked to the south wall of the room where people stopped and studied, conversing excitedly about the work here. Arresting portraits. Compellingly executed, dramatic, and highly refined technique. These, too, are "circus" pieces, though the reference is irrelevant to the quality contained within the bounds of each portrait. As the artist notes in her statement, I was inspired by the photographer, Irina Ionesco, who was born into an eastern European circus and worked as a snake charmer. She challenged me to create paintings of her exotic photographs. They lent themselves well to the darker mood that runs through my small circus scenes. My abstracts capture the rhythm and color of the theme. I wish I could show you close-ups of all these, the highlight of the show, which is tough to say when I think of Shiva, most of the Frida, and numerous pieces not mentioned here. Silence on my part is no excuse on your part not to visit ChimMaya. This is a trip you owe yourself, even if just to get that fabulous yellow purse. Oh, that's right. Olga Garcia purchased that one. Better get there soon, que no?

That's the second Tuesday of July, 2009. A Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here, or on your way to East Los and ChimMaya gallery and boutique. Thank you for visiting La Bloga.

Ate,

mvs

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Cristina Acosta: Luminous Work, Lasting Art

Cristina Acosta

Guadalupe with Crown, the World is Her Heart

La Conquistadora/The Corn Maiden/Dine Spider Woman

Exhibit: Reshaping the Divine - Contemporary Hispanic Retablos Exploring the Divine Feminine

When: Summer 2009

Where: El Museo Cultural, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Click here to see this series of Hispanic Retablos.

This is quintessentially female, strong, sinous, visual art. It is a contemporary re-visioning of traditional retablo, hinting at the aesthetic of popular commercial artists like Laurel Burch, but containing a depth of spirit. There is a certain richness, an evanescence emanating from the figures portrayed.

Acosta has an ability to make a heart connection with the observer beyond the demands and trends of the marketplace, or the prevailing winds of "fine" art communities and critics. I find Acosta's work to be completely accessible, capitalizing and re-visioning icons from a metizo heritage, as well as feminist ideas of the female God-force.

She's also creative in the use of precious and mundane material in the creation of these retablos. In an in depth look at her site, piece after piece reveals she is truly a renaissance woman balancing comerciality with content and succeeding admirably.

Take a look at what Cristina herself has to say about her work:


Over the past twenty years, my series of Madonna retablos came to me in ebbs and flows via a series of powerful dreams. The dreams started during my pregnancy with my daughter. For the entire pregnancy I dreamt of being a woman on a journey north across dusty plains and through arroyos as I mostly walked behind an oxcart. The dreams ended in a room lit by a wooden candelabra filled with tallow candles and the birth of my daughter, Isabella Pilar in 1993.

I called these dreams my Maria Dreams because in the dreams, I/she was named Maria. Seeking the meaning of those dreams over the years brought me down a path I could never have imagined and deepened my understanding of my cultural heritage. Searching for the meaning of my Maria Dreams eventually lead me back to New Mexico, the land of my Ortiz ancestors.

My paternal grandmother, Catalina Maria Ortiz Acosta, born in 1904, was the daughter of J. Nestor Ortiz and Maria Elena Salazar, descendents of the original Spanish settlers founding the cities and villages throughout New Mexico. Researching my family genealogy (my grandmother spoke vaguely about her ancestors), I discovered that my direct ancestors had participated in the initial 16th and 17th century migrations of the Spanish, traveling North from Mexico City into the region that is now the State of New Mexico. I read books about the era and became fascinated by the types of experiences my female ancestors must have had while living on the New Mexican frontier for generations. With this research nurturing my experience of my personal history, my calling to paint Madonna’s began to take shape.

Born in Los Angeles to an Anglo mother and Hispanic father, early on I was aware of cultural concepts because of the differences between the two sides of my family. Despite their differences, Catholicism was the central theme for my parents. Celebrating their devotion resulted in religious images from the Americas and Europe scattered throughout our home and those of our relatives. Images of Mary the Mother of God as the Guadalupe, Conquistadora and many other versions were always present. Along with those images were displayed American Indian items from the Ortiz ranch.

The artifacts from the Ortiz family ranch consumed my imagination from as far back as I can remember. Handmade Indian blankets and pots, and even a gold menorah (referred to as a “candelabra” by my grandmother) made by Ortiz ancestors generations past (some of the men were renowned filigree gold smiths). Those as well as the chili ristras hanging in my grandmother’s kitchen hinted at another world far from the Southern California beach scene of my childhood home. For reasons I can’t sufficiently articulate, the mix of these images and experiences coalesced into my calling to visually explore and create new images of the Madonna as an expression of the feminine divine.

Each of the retablos I paint results in a new vision of the sacred. For example, painting La Conquistadora opened the door to re-balancing the dominant patriarchal and European view of the divine with the North American native and feminine. In La Conquistadora I layer symbols of the Dine Spider woman and the Puebloan Corn Maiden, seeking to blend the indigenous ancient female images and concepts harmoniously with the Catholic image of Mary. The result is a Madonna that hints of ancient goddesses many thousands of years old at the same time she conveys the current blend of cultures in the Southwest.

I create my work in the traditions of the Spanish/Mexican retablo to reinforce my expression of reverence and convey the intimate experience of sacredness. I find antique, reclaimed timbers for the substrate. I mix gold, silver and copper metals into my oil paintings to both embellish the image and in homage to the gifts my ancestors created for me with their existence. The vintage gold glazed ceramic tiles come from a tile company that operated near my childhood home in Southern California during the 1950’s and 60’s. When I finish a retablo, I write a blessing on the backside of the retablo to convey love to all who view the images.

My Maria Dreams from over a decade ago continue to influence this series of work. May you find your own meanings and blessings within these images.

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And from none other than our own recently published Rudy G,

Win a book!
Midnight, Friday, June 26 is the deadline to enter to win a copy of the just-released Needles & Bones anthology, featuring a fantastical story by La Bloga contributor Rudy Ch. Garcia.
Click here for details.

Lisa Alvarado