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.

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

Farewell to A Fine Art Treasure: ChimMaya at 19

ChimMaya / CM2 Closes After Two Decades Service to the Community

Michael Sedano

The world said good-bye Sunday to East Los Angeles’ celebrated art gallery, CM2 / ChimMaya Gallery. Founders Steven Acevedo and Daniel Gonzalez brought fine arte to East Los Angeles, representation to a community of painters and graphic artists, and affordable masterpieces for the walls of nascent and veteran collectors. Every year was their best year.

La Bloga discovered ChimMaya in 2009 (link). The place was extraordinary for its range of subjects and styles, all within the compass of Chicana Chicano art.

Michael Sedano wrote: 

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.

 

This 2009 exhibition occurred in ChimMaya’s original location where it had the luxury of space allowing multiple large shows simultaneously:

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.”

This 2009 La Bloga-Tuesday column’s first impression is echoed in commenter Anita Rehker's experience:

Mr. Sedano's experience at ChimMaya is thoroughly echoed by my own and by friends whom I have taken there. From the moment you enter the front door, beauty in a variety of forms greets you not only through the artists' works, but from every corner of the gallery. The dedication and commitment of ChimMaya's owners, Steven and Danny, is on display throughout. Their obvious respect for the artists is matched by their commitment to the East LA barrio. In my estimation what sets them apart is the heart that they invest in every event. Whether it's a book signing, a music performance, or a new artist's exhibition, I try never to miss it for purely selfish reasons: the art is as provocative as it is uplifting; I meet fascinating people; I have the opportunity to purchase art at a price that is fair to me, to the proprietors, and to the artist. Everyone wins! So thank you ChimMaya for all that you do for the local community and metropolitan Los Angeles. 
Anita Rehker

 

foto:CM2, 2026

La Bloga celebrated ChimMaya’s Eleventh birthday in 2016 (link) when the gallery celebrated with a blockbuster show that forced comparison with ChimMaya’s most popular exhibition, its annual Frida Kahlo tribute. 

But ChimMaya is more than the annual Frida show. Month-in, month-out the gallery brings in work from a solid list of accomplished raza artists. Steven Acevedo, the gallery’s artistic director, has a keen eye for talent and he regularly welcomes emerging artists to display work in one of the four distinct spaces within the gallery.

Rick Ortega, Mario Trillo, Mario Trillo

ChimMaya was a place where artist and collectors could talk about the work and feel no pressure to make a deal.

As I prepare to wrap up my visit—my wife acquired a Frida purse from the ChimMaya boutique—I stop to talk with Cici Segura-Gonzales. Her eight foot panel features the ancient raices of Mexican history, Olmec head, Toltec stele, and screaming tribal gente converging on a grotesque naked tiny-penised Donald Trump. A jaguar opens its jaws to swallow the cowering Trump, who stands in a pool of his own urine. 

No pressure to acquire it; Cheech took one look at it, the artist tells me, and bought it.

Cici Segura-Gonzalez' canvas is immediately purchased by a museum

Gallerists Steven Acevedo and Daniel Gonzalez announced the closing with a powerful month-long exhibition of work exemplifying the gallery’s practice of hanging new names and diverse styles alongside established artists advancing their artistry. 

Bargain hunting collectors weren’t scavenging the walls; ChimMaya prices are (were) affordably low low low. The represented artists, like the gallery, want their work to hang in people’s homes so they don't charge millionaire's prices, it's an inherent compadre discount.

Daniel Gonzalez and Michael Sedano

A few hundred dollars or under $3000 for exquisite quality are bargains already. People line up at the cashier to pay asking price and chatter how they wish they could afford one or two more. The people with two pieces regret passing up that third gem. Sad-eyed gente stand away browsing the $25.00 cases knowing even these are out of range.

ChimMaya tapped an ill-served demand when only northeast LA’s Ave50Studio (link) regularly hosted art shows in the metropolitan area. 

Ave50 remains as “the other” razacentric art gallery on the eastside, with freeway-distant Pomona galleries the next best thing. Casa0101 has a tiny gallery space. Plaza de La Raza hangs large shows intermittently and could take up the slack. 

A ver.

With the farewell to Steven and Daniel, the local art market hovers in limbo between westside galleries who would welcome the traffic--maybe--and what remains to be seen over here east of the LA river.

Ave atque vale, ChimMaya Gallery.

SHG at 50: Nine Scholarly Looks

 Review: Tatiana Reinoza and Karen Mary Davalos. Self Help Graphics at Fifty: A Cornerstone of Latinx Art and Collaborative Artmaking. Oakland CA: U of California Press. 2023. Link.

Michael Sedano

The “garage sale” at Self Help Graphics drew hundreds of people, an energetic assembly convening collectors waving dollars, artists showing wares, neighborhood visitors enjoying the festive ambiente. 

During the year, SHG hosted artist ateliers and other community-centered art-making endeavors, building inventory for its annual sale. People like me browsed stacks of serigraphs aiming to take home original arte at prices under $300. 

Tatiana Reinoza and Karen Mary Davalos share the story of Self Help Graphic’s inception and institutional praxis, its influential place in Chicanarte, and Chicanarte’s place in the art marketplace. It’s a serious, scholarly work that deserve the time it takes.

The anthology collects nine scholarly articles centered upon a venerable Los Angeles community arts organization founded in 1970 and formally incorporated in 1973. The book offers insights into Chicanarte’s place in art history, Self Help Graphics (link).

Davalos observes one raison d’etre for SHG’s ongoing influence in helping inform understanding of Chicanarte, the organization  privileged “social values and ethical practices not authorized by the art market or museum world.” Another reason emerges when reading between the lines for SHG’s longevity and leadership: the people running the place know what they’re doing.

Founder Sister Karen Boccalero, then Tomas Benitez, ran the place as a thinking artist’s refuge. Art-making began with talk, with community, with agreement. There’s an interesting insight into an unspoken conflict between the organization’s interests and artists’.

At first, SHG wanted artists to sign over the © to the organization. Under that model, SHG would sponsor the creation of a silkscreen, publish a run of multiples, share the money with the artist, and SHG own the ©.  Yolanda Lopez objected, others agreed, and the policy was changed so artists owned their own work.

Benitez is quoted as saying SHG’s © status quo ante was to the artist’s benefit, but the article doesn’t explain the argument beyond that. In what ways is depriving an artist ownership of one’s own work an advantage to the artist?

Despite this one perplexity, the anthology will be a welcome addition to any collector’s library. Reading the essays will help organize ways to understand one’s own collection and find directions to expand, even if its origin is not SHG, nor serigraphs. 

Davalos’s “Contributions” essay enumerates SHGs contributions to art history including west coast conceptualism, punkero and goth aesthetic, queer art, rasquachismo, abstraction, minimalism, domestiacana, psychedelia. She doesn’t discuss graffiti, spirituality, pop, expressionism, and abstraction, but says the subjects merit study.

The final essay in the anthology addresses the elephant in the room when assessing the nature, growth, and effectiveness of any arte, and that’s sales. “Creating Infrastructures of Value: Self Help Graphics and the Art Market—a Conversation with Arlene Dávila.” While the conversation doesn’t offer solid advice on pricing, representation, and making a living selling your own art, artists will appreciate the chapter’s professional point of view.

University of California Press does art a favor, printing on coated paper that adds depth and detail to the numerous color and B&W plates illustrating the essays.

Click here to link to the publisher's page for this title.

Click here to link to Libromobile to order a mail order copy. 

Click here to visit Self Help Graphics' website.

Review: Some Final Beauty

 …and Other Stories

Review: Lisa Alvarez. Some Final Beauty And Other Stories. Reno and Las Vegas. U of Nevada Press, 2025.

Michael Sedano

Laurie, the miscreant working off her community service sentence, in the first story, "Everyone Was Singing 'Freiheit,'" struggles against empathy for the gente in the church building where the priest easily detects Laurie’s attempt to cheat the sentence by claiming to be in two places at the same time. “Bilocation,” the priest tells her, is something only a few Catholic saints managed.

The abashed Laurie is no saint yet despite her self-involvement and ennui, she cares about an old guy left behind after an earthquake evacuation. When old Max dies, Laurie walks off into the sunset with ambiguity in her wake. The reader wonders, will Laurie go straight or remain in her current state of suspended animation between her past and the unstated future? 

The opening story prepares readers to have a high tolerance for ambiguity. Laurie's struggle between her better self and her damaged persona defines a constant unspoken theme in Lisa Alvarez’ eleven stories of challenged women, crummy men, good men, hopeful women, in various forms of bilocation, constrained by present circumstances. 

Alvarez liberates some characters by giving them a future that resolves past circumstance, freeing others in their present time in leaps of perception and insight.

Alvarez doesn’t like to spell out endings, preferring to leave stories hanging in ambiguity or unfinished, both constituting varieties of bilocational perception. Does she, or doesn’t she? Can the past be like the present that was the future back then?

Psychological and emotional portraiture, together with keen attention to tiny details, blend with lightly concealed roman à clef portrayals to make reading Some Final Beauty (link) lots of fun, even in the face of the enormity of some people’s behavior.

The book’s second story, “A Pretty Penny,” introduces another running theme, social and neighborly activism. Robyn and June struggle to live as lesbians and that doesn’t work out—Robyn moves along to Isla Vista, a UCSB degree, a husband and kids. June stays in LA, disappointing her father that she is a “cultural worker”. The work doesn’t pay enough to pay the rent, so she lives by working numerous odd jobs.

One night, June sees a group of taggers across the street whose labor sends the woman into a reverie of the night she and Robyn tagged “War is Menstruation Envy” on a Federal building wall. She bounces back and forth from her now to her then, the unbothered kids spraying, Robyn and June on the lookout.

Many of the men in Alvarez’ collection are shits. There’s Cody, the fentanyl pusher at his victim’s funeral. There’s an unpleasant actor whose teevee persona matches his behavior in a restaurant. When the place can’t serve his wants he whines and embarrasses his two daughters. I’m not a teevee watcher, but I can see a balding unpleasant whiner in the, perhaps, eponymous role as himself.

A more telling roman à clef story pictures a lightly disguised Joan Baez and Antonio Villaraigosa. In an understated and sufficiently vicious take-down, the mayor begins the story hoping to talk the singer down from a black walnut tree. Alvarez paints a favorable up from nothing political success story for the mayor, before the reader sees him as a self-interested hypocrite whose interest lies not in rescuing his idealized folksinger but in repairing his crumbling public image. He used to be an ése and now he’s an object. Topping it off, he’s a philanderer who’s as likely to drive home to his wife, as to his upscale apartment in the Valley where his Sancha awaits.

Alvarez’ penultimate story, “False Flag” pulls readers in two directions. Linda, a sympathetic single mother, lives next door to a curmudgeonly man, a “gruff but reliable neighbor, who performs good deeds on one face, acts a total jerk on another. Is Matthew just another crank or a crypto hater?

Linda realizes the wingnut neighbor was at the Capitol on January 6. She reports him to the FBI who show up and arrest the scum. With him absent—in a good way while so many other men in other stories absent themselves in dastardly ways—Linda’s child Willow will care for the hens left behind. “We need the eggs,” Linda laughs, not guilty at all at fingering the traitor (my word.)

Eleven stories, eleven lives bouncing against their own histories, battered by circumstances, some escaping, other characters stuck in one place—maybe stuck; the author won’t tell. Lisa Alvarez' collection makes an enjoyable read that you can consume in a single sitting then leaf through to remember great phrases and characterizations, nod at familiar places and recent historical events, and share with friends and writers who enjoy seeing how it’s done, and done well.

Hot Tip For Arte Lovers!

Art enthusiast takes a 'selfie' with Linda Arreola (center) and Abel Alejandre

Saturday, September 6 arrived with hard decisions. There is a Judithe Hernandez exhibition, Rick Ortega in another venue, Will Loya at Avenue 50's new location, and, my choice, Linda Arreola at LAUNCH gallery in Hollywood.

Arreola's finely wrought architectural abstracts reflect a keen eye, steady hand, imaginative uses of color and respect for her neighborhoods, like the foto here, Arreola's celebration Eastern Avenue that borders Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles, the heart of Chicana Chicano LA. 

Paintings and sculptures fascinate viewers in this compact exhibition space at 170 S. La Brea, Los Angeles 90036. 

Be forewarned, Siri may direct you to Inglewood where there's a 170 S. La Brea. That is not where arte happens, it's a vacant structure near a good Soul Food restaurant. The real Launch LA is a short drive from Hollywood Blvd and Musso and Frank restaurant.

Coming to La Bloga-Tuesday: El Gluten-free Chicano and Guest Chefs

Gluten-free dining becomes problematic when restaurant staff don't know their ingredients. Cross-contamination looms as a constant threat to safe dining. Home cooking the only way to enjoy wondrous cuisine and feel entirely safe and content.

La Bloga-Tuesday will offer menus and recipes to please any palate and diner, even those who tremble at the words, "gluten-free." Next week launches the first in the series. 

Muralist on Monte Vista. Margaret Garcia At the Muck. y más

Introduction: Nothing Says 'Resist!' Like Love and Arte

Michael Sedano

With political subversion coming from treacherous national elected officials, nothing says  'Resist!' like  expressions that reaffirm love and community solidarity. Arte makes precisely those expressions. Today, La Bloga-Tuesday celebrates Love, Alma, and Arte with a spotlight on noted colorist painter, Margaret Garcia's current exhibition at Fullerton, California's Muckenthaler Cultural Center. 

Gluten-free and wheat-eating visitors headed to Fullerton will find a welcoming host and staff, and fabulously delicious and freshly-prepared Egyptian food, at Tasa2Go.

La Bloga-Tuesday adds a closing note of appreciation for the multicultural pleasures of the Taiko Drum festival closing this year's Nisei Week Festival in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo.

Please share your views on murals, taggers, arte, good food, and other values inherent in diversity, equality, and inclusion, by clicking the Comments link at the foot of this page. Remember to click Notify Me to follow up on your comments.

Madeline the Muralist on Monte Vista and Avenue 50

Few sights signal a community’s decline than heavily tagged murals. For years, vandals with spray paint layered their crud atop Daniel Cervantes’ 2004 mural celebrating United Statesian indigenous people. Then, in 2019, the venerable Avenue 50 Studios awarded a contract to famed artist Pola Lopez to restore the cultural treasure at the foot of the long neglected, now-defunct, Autry Museum of the American Indian.

La Bloga follows Lopez' progress, noting the hopeful beginning, the funding skirmish that stuck Lopez, and Assistant Angel Guerrero, with a hot sun, boundless spirit, and dwindling support from political leaders and locals. 

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2024/01/chicanarte-comes-more-alive-than-ever.html

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2020/01/open-letter-to-cultural-leader-gil.html

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2019/08/community-treasure-needs-more-treasure.html

The work completed and exposed to vandals, Lopez exacted a promise from an elder of the Avenues clicka. He promised members would respect the mural and prevent peewees from tagging it. As of August 2025, the mural remains untagged.

A single panel of 120' of mural near 4725 Marmion Way, a short walk from the Metro train stop.

On a recent drive-by to verify the community support for the Cervantes-Lopez creation, I happily noted the arte remains sullied only by the elements. And, on the drive up Monte Vista to Avenue 50, a happy note, a new mural at the corner!

This is New Mexico artist Madeleine, working in the morning shade to lay down her colorful design for all who pass this place. 

Monte Vista turns West, down to Marmion Way and the indigenous gente mural. Looking along Avenue 50 toward Figueroa street, the eponymous gallery’s signage is all that remains of the priced-out former flagship of northeast Los Angeles arte and culture. Ave50 may have departed estas partes, but arte remains.

Madeline and her color palette: May This Mural Remain Untagged

At the Muck: Margaret Garcia

the Muck website: https://themuck.org/

"the Muck" the CEO and its devoted supporters term the place, in north Orange County's City of Fullerton, California's Muckenthaler Cultural Center. Muck hosts vibrant arrays of arte and summery entertainments, for example, last September, Shattered Hearts Illuminated Minds: Visions of Clarity, a glass show that attracted excited viewers from across Southern California and out-of-state visitors.

The Muckenthaler's current exhibition, Margaret Garcia Rostros, lugares, y momentos runs through September 16, 2025, allowing ample time for multiple visits and, for collectors, opportunity to acquire some magnificent works of portraiture, landscapes, and Garcia's spectacular fire paintings.

CEO Farrell Hirsch led the Muck through Trump's plague years into new vitality and regional leadership

Garcia enjoys numerous friendships with artists and collectors, a fact well evidenced by the people gathered at the midweek opening. The location in northern Orange County brings people unfamiliar with the artist and her work. CEO Farrell Hirsch happily announced one of the centro's board of directors traveled from a southern beach town to purchase a Garcia painting. In fact, eight pieces sold, at last report.

Margaret Garcia greets guests.

 

Rhett Beavers chats with writer, "the other" Margaret Garcia

That eight canvases found new collectors is testament to the impact on first sight of Garcia's paintings. Waterscapes, portraits, burning palms and structures, urban streetscapes all feature Garcia's powerful brush strokes and impasto technique, none of which people see when struck by the artist's compelling use of color and composition.

In foto: waterscapes, a fire painting, a calavera moment

La Bloga-Tuesday attended the opening reception on August 14, with an ulterior motive. Michael Sedano's blue portrait hangs in the show.

Michael Sedano left and right

In February of this year. (link) La Bloga-Tuesday shared the story of my sitting for a studio portrait before Garcia and a group of her workshop painters. Looking into myself in those bluest of eyes evokes these thoughts:

I am already so numb that the fire has not affected me very much more than the sun rising or the moon setting, nor any other daily occurrence, everything’s the same as everything else. I sit here in the studio, staring into space unfocused and empty as the air in front of my eyes.  I’ve lost everything I ever owned,  everything Barbara and I owned together. The life we shared, together, I still own--treasured memories; all the rest was stuff. Everything I ever owned, into ashes, all gone into ashes. And it doesn’t matter.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas On the Road

Gourmet Food, Modest Settings, Barata y Buenissima

Dining on the road for Celiacs and other gluten-averse gente poses notably difficult challenges. Menus don't often mark their menus with "gf" or similar notations that assure a diner of safe choices. Staff often lack training and knowledge to reassure a skeptical celiac. "It shouldn't have wheat," is never a good answer. "I'll ask the chef" is perfect. 

The good choices are ethnic food. There are pitfalls, though. Mexican kitchens tend to start their red sauces with harina de trigo, "but only a little." Middle eastern places often use falafel mixes containing wheat. So know your ingredients and always ask and verify.

Tasa2Go, Egyptian food, catches my eye on a Google search. I call ahead to make sure; I haven't eaten Egyptian food before. The fellow on the phone isn't sure about falafel but the  cardamom-flavored rice and bbq meats have no wheat nor barley. After the Garcia show at the Muck, I head downhill only a few miles and search for a sign among several restaurants sharing a parking lot and address.

Drive into the lot, behind the garish signs, and there's the modest logo featuring Remon, the owner's,  caricature. Remon, almost Ramon, que no?, assures customers their food comes after a lengthy delay--all their bbq is cooked from scratch, and slowwwly to allow the smoke flavor to infuse all the way to the bone. 

The half chicken comes atop a bed of parsley, with cardamom-flavored rice. The two sides I select, pickles and garlic sauce, make savory accompaniments. Hot Egyptian tea makes an ideal complement.

Nisei Week In J-Town LA

Crowds attending the 83d iteration of Los Angeles' Nisei Week affirm this year's theme, “kansha” (感謝), or gratitude. After the two-year Trump Plague hiatus, the festival returned to the community in 2022 and this year hits its full stride.

As a drum- and percussion instrument maker, and long-time Taiko enthusiast, I made it a point to get to Little Tokyo early to enjoy the full lineup of Southern California Taiko groups. Taiko is an event not to be missed and I am grateful to have enjoyed the work of talented drummers from UCLA, and the local Buddhist temple, and my current residence, Pasadena, whose Taiko club numbers over 100 drummers.

Taiko is drumming, fancy stick work, acrobatics, and dancing. Energy abounds at every Taiko performance, drummers infect the audience with smiles and infectious rhythms. This year there is a surfer stomp-type taiko song!

Wait 'til next year isn't something only Dodger fans usually say. It's something Taiko fans always say, with hope of sustained joy over the hours of performance. 

Review: Regalos. Gluten-free Caldo de Pescado. Eaton Fire Survivor

Guest Reviewer M. Miranda: Regalos by Elisa A. Garza. Lamar University Press, 2024. ISBN-13: 9781962148160

A Poetic Exploration of Family, Feminism, and Cultural Expectations

M. Miranda

Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and former writing and literature teacher. Regalos was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and her most recent chapbook, Between the Light / entre la claridad, is in its second edition from Mouthfeel Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Ars Medica, Rogue Agent, and Huizache, who nominated her for a Pushcart Prize.

Regalos by Elisa A. Garza delivers a deftly crafted exploration of family, tradition, and cultural expectations framed within the intimate and layered experiences of a Mexican American family from South Texas. Garza masterfully moves between Spanish and English, creating a bilingual rhythm that reflects the duality of living between two cultures. This interplay of languages adds depth and authenticity to the poems and grounds the reader in the rich cultural heritage that shapes the characters’ lives in these poems. 

Garza writes with precision. Every word in these poems feels purposeful, and each line is rich with controlled emotional depth. I was reminded of Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah. Like Dove, Garza’s control of language and lineation elevates the narrative. Regalos is intellectually stimulating, honest, and authentically Chicana. 

In the book's first section, each poem is intended to capture the weight of love, self-sacrifice, and duty framed by a culture where marriage is seen as the highest virtue. The imagery and narrative vividly illustrate the complex ways tradition unites and divides women and highlight their shared experiences. The poems in the first section of the collection, such as “This is How You Cook Rice,” “All Señoritas Get Married,” and “Soy chicana, or Feminism for the First Century,” vividly capture this tension. 

Especially compelling is the narrative arc of the poetic voice—a character who, despite her deep love for family and sense of duty, recognizes the constraints of prescribed roles and seeks a different path. She yearns for love, but dreams of a partner unbound by cultural expectations, and machismo–– “Mi papá me dice que / men are hard to find. / This is his way of telling me / I am taking too long. / Posible, pero I am not looking / por un esposo; I want a partner . . . .”

In sections two and three, Garza explores sensuality and the desire for intimate connection without sacrificing equality and freedom instead obligation. Many of the poems in these sections offer a vision of love that is both tender and radically different than those of other women in her family. The speaker dreams of love–– “Cool sheets, I yearn for warmth, / for a body at my back. / All morning, I dream a man / with an angled face will walk / across this room, his stare / intense as the first long rain / of fall.” In “Mangos,” the poet unabashedly delights in erotic love. This poem underscores her rebellion against the taboo of sexuality. 

Throughout this collection, Garza also highlights the geography of South Texas and the women who worked the land and held familia together. While the reader senses the poetic voice's resistance to replicate her bisaabuelas’, abuelas’, and mother’s upbringing, the poems also skillfully balance affection and gratitude with critique. Their strength and self-determination are a testament to the evolving awareness of the speaker’s identity and drive to break out from traditions that hold her back. 

Regalos is a heartfelt and thought-provoking work that resonates with its themes of family, culture, resistance, and the journey toward dismantling the enduring patterns of patriarchal ideology. It does so without sacrificing the love and respect for the matriarchs who held everything together for the next generation of Chicanas. This collection reimagines what it means to love, respect, and redefine one's role within a Chicana lineage, bridging past and future with both reverence and quiet rebellion.

About La Bloga-Tuesday's Guest Reviewer

M. Miranda is an author, editor, and writer. 

Her books of poetry include The Lost Letters of Mileva, Cracked Spaces, and On the Edge of Dread, How Beautiful (forthcoming from Green Writers Press, 2026). 

 

Invitation to the Portrait Studio

An Offer I Can't Refuse 

Michael Sedano

It's an early morning call. Would I like to sit for a portrait in a few hours at a workshop in Margaret Garcia’s Northeast Los Angeles studio? Knowing I'd regret turning her down, I jump on the offer and call my friend Thelma Reyna to join me for an hour of fascinating immersion into the world of Chicanarte. Garcia's one of the foremost creators in Chicano painting with a tradition of outstanding portraiture. I cannot miss the experience and want to share it with my friend.

I’m the second sitter in Margaret Garcia’s (link) envisioned portrait series. I sit facing her, we chat and the artist probes and creates with questions and brush and color.

Four other painters, Bonnie Lambert, Lynn Dwyer, David Balfour and Lupe Arellano, paint me from their perspective seated in a semicircle surrounding my easy chair. While the other artists paint on stretched canvas, Garcia works on a wooden box.

David Balfour, Lynn Dwyer, Bonnie Lambert finding inspiration 

Garcia visualizes this series of portraits on gallery walls, their stories so compelling the images thrust out from the flat substrate to demand attention while creating a narrative mosaic of people seen at critical junctures of their lives.

 

Garcia and I chat desultorily about her process. She’s well aware my critical moment is being a refugee from the fearful Eaton Fire that ravaged my community and destroyed my home. 

Garcia’s portrait of me tells of the lingering horror of fire while distilling an hour’s sitting into the singular image laid bare on the back of that box.

It's going to be a memorable exhibition. Third in the series will be a woman, wife of an accomplished painter, who faces the chaos looming over Chicanos and Mexicans from the current U.S. campaign of racist terror.

Arte makes a difference. Los Angeles and Garcia’s community are filled with stories and Margaret Garcia’s brush will find the most compelling ones as she rounds out this series of portraits. 

For more information on artist Margaret Garcia, click here.

Melinda Palacio sits for a book cover.

Ventura Museo Exhibition.

Los Angeles Major Retrospective.