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Cholo graffiti in East Los Angeles with Cheech Marin / Part Tres: Gusmano Cesaretti

6/2/2025

Last March I started a 4 part series of interviews
with Cheech Marin,
from MOCA’s website/exhibition:
‘Art in the Streets’ by Jeffrey Deitch...

Let’s continue with Cheech’s exploration of the roots of East L.A. graffiti and his conversation with the photographer…

Born in Fratina di Porcari, in Lucca, Italy. Gusmano Cesaretti studied at Collegio Cavanis. His father gave him a beautiful photo camera for his 14th birthday. It became his instrument.
Gusmano has expressed himself through a wide range of mediums from photo journalism, editorial, fashion and commercial work to feature films, documentaries and conceptual art. All bear his own special personal vision and style.

“I’m interested in people, and I want to capture society in my photographs in a way that looks beyond the obvious”
–– Gusmano Cesaretti

CHEECH MARIN: "Although the origins of American graffiti are typically traced back to New York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s and 1970s, an earlier history began in the barrios of Los Angeles decades before.
Here a subculture developed among Mexican-American youths who were both detached from the culture of their parents and, because of widespread discrimination, prevented from identifying as entirely American. ‘The Pachucos’, as they called themselves, dressed in extravagant, dandyish zoot suits, and they didn’t stray far from the small neighborhoods where they lived.
Gangs emerged as a means of asserting cultural pride and maintaining control over their communities, and street writing was a way of defining territory. Gang life further evolved after the Los Angeles riots of 1943, known as the Zoot Suit Riots, in which racial tension erupted into a series of brutal confrontations between white military servicemen and the young Pachucos.
In the postwar period, Pachuco culture developed into the Cholo gangs of the 1960s.”

CESARETTI: “When I came to LA in 1969, I drove around, exploring the city. I was going into East LA and the Mexican neighborhoods, and I started seeing writing on walls, and I couldn’t figure out what it meant, but it was beautiful and exotic.”

CESARETTI: “When I first started photographing graffiti, I didn’t know it was written by gang members. But people would come up to me to ask why I was taking pictures, and then they would explain, this means this, that means that. And so I started to understand the language and the symbols. I met Chaz (BOJÓRQUEZ) in 1972-73, and he took me around, exploring the neighborhoods, and he explained everything about the graffiti to me.”

CESARETTI: "In Italy, graffiti is everywhere, and it’s been around for centuries. Pompeii was a huge red-light district— there were houses of prostitution (The Lupanar) , there were smoking rooms where they used to smoke opium, and people would write notes on the walls or names or leave messages to each other, like, “So-and-so, she’s fantastic, you should try her next time.” So merchant marines in ancient times would come to Pompeii and say, “Hey, let’s look for Marina or so-and-so.

"In Italian, "sgraffiare" (Sgraffito) means 'to scratch the surface'—you just need a nail or a knife or a rock, or a spray can, and you can leave a message on the walls."

House covered with sgraffito in the village of Pyrgi, Mastichochoria of Chios / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgraffito#/media/File:Pyrgi_house1.JPG

CESARETTI: Graffiti around the world has merged into a similar style; it all looks the same. But Cholo graffiti remains very strong and pure. The gangs have gotten tougher—they deal in drugs, they have guns—but Cholo style hasn’t changed. And they’re still writing like they did forty years ago.

Street Writers:
A Guided Tour of Chicano Graffiti.

On moving to Los Angeles in 1970, Gusmano Cesaretti was struck by the vibrant visual culture of that city’s Eastside and set about documenting it.
He captured the cars, the fashions, and the tattoos of East LA as well as its Cholo graffiti, a style that was wholly free from New York influence. Cesaretti’s entrée into the local graffiti culture came when he met the young Chaz Bojórquez, a resident of Cypress Park and perhaps the city’s most artistically inclined graffiti writer at the time.

Although the book has long been out of print, its images have circulated for years among graffiti aficionados in multiple generations of Xeroxed copies.
Considered to be the first book published on street art subculture, this photo essay developed when Cesaretti became fascinated with the unique style of Chicano graffiti that was evolving in East Los Angeles.
He teamed up with graffiti legend Chaz Bojorquez, who explained the evolving language among the local street artists as they toured the neighborhood.
Cesaretti recorded Bojorquez as he shot photos, transcribing his words and forming them into the accompanying text.

This book was out of print for decades and reprinted in 2021 by Arte Povera Foto Books.
Rare in the trade, an essential addition to any street art or Chicano studies library.

Gusmano Cesaretti

Curator and Publisher
Cesaretti has curated many exhibitions, starting with his gallery Cityscape Foto Gallery, which he founded in Pasadena, California in 1977. He was instrumental in arranging the exhibition of several major works by Los Angeles street artists in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's blockbuster 2011 Art in the Streets show, including the Chosen Few MC motorcycle club. In 2014 he started publishing Los Angeles FOTOFOLIO, an underground journal of black and white photography by well-known and emerging photographers that is distributed free of charge in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, and Mexico City.

Books and exhibitions
Cesaretti's photographs have appeared in many books and magazines as well as several artist monographs, including Street Writers (published by Acrobat Books, 1975), 5 x 5 = 24 (published by xx, 1979), Fragments of Los Angeles (published by Damian/Alleged Press, 2013), and Dentro le Mura (published by Arte Povera, 2014). His work has been exhibited at the Huntington Library, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Cesaretti has since worked on nearly a dozen feature films as a producer and has continued to work in documentary photography in Latin America, Haiti, and Southeast Asia.

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Cholo graffiti in East Los Angeles with Cheech Marin / Part B: Chaz Bojorquez

5/5/2025

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Let’s continue Cheech’s exploration
of the roots of East L.A. graffiti
and his conversation with…

CHAZ BOJÓRQUEZ: "Some people date the first graffiti in LA back to the 1930s, when shoeshine boys would mark their spot on the street by writing their names on the wall. There are tags by the Los Angeles River that date back to the ’40s, painted with sticks and tar. Before spray cans were invented, most of the graffiti was made with paint and brush."

"Chicano gangs were originally formed for protection, in response to racism. When people think of LA gangs, they usually think of drug dealing and violence, but the Chicano gangs were originally more about taking pride in a neighborhood.

By 1943, when the riots happened against the Latino zoot suiters, it created the foundations for the Cholo culture. Graffiti was a way to define your identity and say, “This is Latino territory.” This is our roll call, our names written on the wall—that’s what’s called a "placa". Placas are usually placed at the edge of a neighborhood, marking the territory for an individual gang. It says, “This is ours.” When I see a tag, I see a complaint; I see a whole bunch of tags, I see a petition."

"I lived in the neighborhood of the Avenues gang. I was not a gangster, I was a hippie, my cousins were gangsters in prison, and my friends were surfers—but we were all the same, there wasn’t a distinction that you had to be a gangster to tag. We were always at the same liquor store tagging. You could tell the little guys by the bad handwriting, and they would write low, at eye level. And the older guys, they would write bigger and taller. But was it about being the highest and all that? No, that was not the case. Your tag was allegiance to your community. You never went out of your neighborhood to tag.

"The gangs used Old English type because it was seen as the most prestigious. It was on your birth certificate, the newspaper—the LA Times."

MARIN: "It’s a co-opting of legitimacy and a form of code-switching. Switching from one language to another, one culture to another—the formality and the prestige of that and adapting it to your own style—you say two things at the same time."

BOJÓRQUEZ: "And then there’s that other style, ‘Teen Angel’. It’s a script, for tattoos and drawings. We used to write beautiful script letters on the side and back windows of lowrider cars, you know, words like “Pillow Talk” or “Sad Boy,” all that stuff."

MARIN: “I’m so tired of being alone.”

BOJÓRQUEZ: “They use ‘Teen Angel’ for tattoos across the neck. But it would never go up on the walls; nobody does that in the streets.”

MARIN: "You were studying art while you were tagging, right?"

BOJÓRQUEZ: "I started taking art classes when I was about fourteen years old, before I was tagging. I was very aware of the art scene of the time—Andy Warhol, the Ferus Gallery guys—but I did not see a Latino face. Then I was going to the Chouinard School of Art in ’67, and again I was very disappointed because I did not see a Latino face anywhere. That’s why I started tagging—for myself."

MARIN: “In 1972, the Chicano art collective Asco tagged the outside of LACMA, because the museum didn’t show Chicano artists. Two years later, the museum gave another Chicano group, Los Four, a show. But for the museum, it was barbarians at the gate. It was, “Okay, we’ve shown it once, you’ve had your day.”

BOJÓRQUEZ: "Exactly. In art school, I became disillusioned.
I wasn’t getting support from my art teachers or anything like that, I was getting kicked out of school because they didn’t see any value in my fine-art work. So, I said, fuck school, I’m just gonna go back to graffiti at night.

That’s when I came up with the image of Señor Suerte. It mixes a lot of different styles from the ’60s. The skull, of course, is Mexican, from Día de los Muertos. But also at that time, there was the black civil rights movement—I copied that look you saw in movies in the 1970s, like Shaft and Super Fly, with the pimp daddy hat, the fur collar. I liked that look."

MARIN: "Who doesn’t like that look?"

BOJÓRQUEZ: "I was smoking a lot of dope, so the first drawing had a joint, but then I thought, I’m not gonna put drugs in the street, that’s disrespectful. You know, it was the Latino morality. So I crossed his fingers and took the joint out."

"The first time I tagged my skull symbol I did it freehand with a spray can, and it came out badly. So I turned to the latest technology of the ’60s—plastics—to cut out a stencil with more detail and total control. My first tag was on the 110 Freeway from downtown LA to Pasadena, when you’re coming out of the freeway tunnels; I tagged the spiral staircase. That was ’69, and it stayed there ’til the Olympics in ’84. Then, about fifteen years after that first tag, I started seeing it tattooed on gangsters from the Avenues gang. It’s become a symbol of protection: If you get shot and have the skull tattooed on you, it will protect you from death. So since then, I put it away, I don’t make T-shirts, I don’t make nothing—it belongs to them, because they live and die for it. It’d be stupid to commercialize that image."

MARIN: "Is danger part of graffiti? The more dangerous and hard to do, the better—to put it in the spot where you know the guy is fucking rappelling off something to get there?"

BOJÓRQUEZ: "That’s the style from New York. It’s been taken up by new guys, but that’s not West Coast Cholo. I only tagged in Highland Park, I never went out of Highland Park. One time I did Hollywood because I worked at this job, but otherwise when I see young kids hitting all over the place, that’s New York mentality—me, me, me. It wasn’t our tradition. One writer would write for the group, and our tags were about us."

MARIN: "Real little micro-neighborhoods, man. And essentially that particular gang that was in that neighborhood lived and died for their four-square blocks."

BOJÓRQUEZ: "It’s clannish, it’s really clannish."

MARIN: "So at the moment that mass transit comes in, that separates it from marking territory?"

BOJÓRQUEZ: "I don’t see gangsters on trains. I’ve never hit a train. I never see trains."

MARIN: "Well, buses."

BOJÓRQUEZ: "Tagging buses, that’s a younger man’s game, from the 1990s. We never hit buses. We didn’t hit churches or buses. When New York–style graffiti started coming in here about the mid-1980s, all the young kids went all New York gaga. The documentary Style Wars came out in ’84, and it changed overnight. There was the excitement of the world movement out of New York.
But I want to say that New York was the first to take graffiti to heart because they took their pieces and put a frame around it and made a gallery, the FUN Gallery and all of that.
And they changed it into a product—like Haring with his Pop Shop. But it didn’t last. New York is all about “Been there, done it, next thing.” Then there were the anti-graffiti laws, and that closed off the subways. What happened over here was, it just stayed gangster."

MARIN: “Is that a good thing? Are we supposed to think globally or should we cling to the specificity of our four blocks?”

BOJÓRQUEZ: “What’s unique about LA is that we bring our culture into our graffiti. Cholo culture is Mexican-American culture, and our style carries our culture. To the world graffiti movement—99.9 percent New York–influenced—Cholo is a subculture on the West Coast, but we choose to write with cultural pride in our letters and that’s our strength.”

MARIN:”But I think it’s gonna be impossible with every generation, ’cause every generation of kids will interpret it in their own style. Who gets to define what Chicano is? Every generation of Chicanos defines what it means to be Chicano for them, and they have just as much right to say it as a Chicano that grew up in the ’40s does.
The biggest controversy I had when I exhibited my art collection under the title Chicano Vision was using the word "Chicano". “Can we call it Mexican-American art, or Hispanic art, anything but Chicano art?” By definition, it was not art if a Chicano did it; it was agitprop. At the same time, the radical political activist Chicanos, they didn’t want anybody else using that name but them. I was just a fuckin’ dope-smoking comedian. Those Chicanos thought they made up the term in 1968. But I thought, hey, that’s finally a term that defines who I am. I’m not a Mexican, I hated Mexican-American, Hispanic, fuck that. I’m a Chicano.”

Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.:
Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection

The Cheech Marin collection is notable for classic examples of Chicano art produced from the inception of the Chicano movement to the present, with a concentration in painting from the 1980s and 90s. This exhibition includes a number of widely exhibited works by such first-generation Chicano artists as Carlos Almaraz, Margaret Garcia, Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Frank Romero, John Valadez, and Patssi Valdez, whose artistic careers began during the Chicano civil rights movement in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, as well as works by such younger artists as Vincent Valdez and David Flury. Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A. is a Los Angeles-focused selection of Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, an exhibition of the Marin collection that toured nationally between 2001 and 2007.

BOJÓRQUEZ: “I fought for that word "Chicano". And I believe that Cholo graffiti is Chicano art. Chicanos were the hard ones to convince. They said it was anti-Chicano because Chicano was family, religion, farmworkers, border and migration issues, not this bad-boy stuff— “it undermines what we’re doing, it’s not art.” I started out as just a tagger, but then I came to define myself as a graffiti artist—and I really had to defend that word "artist". Now I don’t just work in the arts, I do graphic design—I work in culture.
But the only way to stay where I’m at is to stay pure. I’m always going back to the original letters of Old English to build my foundation, but I include my own style of control of Asian calligraphy. I like the traditions of Cholo and the expressive spirit from Asian philosophy. I came back to my community feeling more like I better get up in my four blocks. I constantly ask myself, how can I paint more pride or strength—how do I add balls to my letters?”

Chaz Bojórquez (b. 1949, Los Angeles)
grew up in Highland Park, where he created a graffiti icon that was adopted by the local gang.
Bojórquez first encountered graffiti as a young boy while exploring the concrete riverbeds of the Los Angeles River.
The markings he found there introduced him to the Cholo graffiti that Chicano Angelenos had been developing since the 1930s. While a student at Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) in the 1960s, he developed his signature character, a stenciled, fedora-wearing skull named Señor Suerte.

Bojórquez’s position as one of the city’s premier Cholo graffiti artists was cemented in 1975 with the publication of photographer Gusmano Cesaretti’s book:
Street Writers: A Guided Tour of Chicano Graffiti.

Working on canvas since 1979, Bojórquez mixes powerful variations on Cholo fonts, informed by his study of Asian calligraphy, with the iconography of the Day of the Dead and other traditional Mexican folk imagery.
An elder statesman of the Los Angeles street scene, he has exhibited widely and has worked on numerous graphic design projects. The monograph
The Art and Life of Chaz Bojórquez
was published in 2010.

CHAZ BOJÓRQUEZ
Draws his inspiration from Los Angeles where he was born, grew up and still lives. He received formal art training at Guadalajara University of Art in Mexico, California State University Los Angeles and the Chouinard Art Institute now known as Cal Arts.
Under Chinese Calligraphy Master Yun Chung Chiang, Chaz developed a deep understanding for written language. He worked as a commercial artist in advertising and film before concentrating on painting.
Chaz is the “Godfather of Los Angeles Graffiti Art”.

“I put 50 years in of writing. I am an Original. We started this stuff. We not only had the best book... but, it was the very first book” –– Chaz Bojórquez

https://streetwriters.com/pages/the-artist
ARTE POVERA FOTO BOOKS
Independent publishing company dedicated to releasing limited edition photography books rooted in culture.

https://streetwriters.com/pages/contact-media-inquiries
CONTACT
Arte Povera Foto Books, Inc.
PO Box 421203
Los Angeles, CA 90042
Email: [email protected]

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Laurence Linkus: Posthumous Art Exhibition!!

3/24/2025

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(Cheech Marin’s interviews with Cholo Graffiti Artists will have to wait!)

This exciting
Art Show
announcement
just came across my desk!

!Come one!
!Come ALL!
Come and enjoy Link’s Art!
Haggle! Barter! Bid! Brawl!
-!! Make an Offer !!-

Original Paintings! Drawings! Sketches!
Prints! Illustrations! Photography!

This is a FANTASTIC opportunity
to see what may be the last exhibition
(in the U.S.)
of this World Famous Artist’s
Fine-Art Corpus!!

Link and Bonnie’s daughter, Daena,
doesn’t want to have to ship
all of Link's AMAZING art-work
back to Germany!!
She would much rather have it all go to friends, colleagues and patrons
who will enjoy and cherish it!

RSVP to Daena’s eMail: [email protected]

(or just CRASH the party!
That’s what Link would do!)

"Do I need to remind you all of what happens to the $-VALUE-$ of the works of
Dead-Genius-Artists!?!"

600 Maulhardt Ave.
Oxnard, CA 93030

And
since this is still a "Mural Blog"...
here's a link...
to some of Link's mural work!

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Cholo Graffiti in East Los Angeles with Cheech Marin / Part 1

3/3/2025

1 Comment

“Here’s an interesting series of 4 posts
that I have put together from the MOCA’s
‘Art in the Street’ website.
The exhibition took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles,
from April 17 to August 8, 2011.
(See more about the show here)"

Free Graffiti Font Downloads

"The MOCA site features a great interview with Cheech Marin in conversation with three East L.A. artists, each with close knowledge of cholo-graffiti. "

Cholo-Graffiti style

"They all came up around the early 70’s, (when I was in High School), just before the New York Graffiti style came to the west coast. This was all way before I picked up a brush and started teaching myself how to paint… and discovered how interesting the soon-to-be dying art of sign-painting was!
Back then there were guys still making a living as sign-painters and writers, and I could always make a few bucks fumbling my way through the odd sign-job or menu-board, and I liked learning all about lettering styles."

New York Graffiti style

But I never did any graffiti or tagging!
Well, almost never. Mainly because I couldn’t see any money in it! I did manage to paint quite a few large bill-boards and record-covers and movie posters for the studios and record stores in Hollywood, before the vinyl industry and large format printers took it all over.
(But that’s a tale for another blog.)
This one is about graffiti and street-painting.
Anyway… I have always been fascinated with lettering styles and the history of fonts and such, so now that I am semi-retired, and in my (early!) seventies, I’m taking the time to explore and understand the graffiti culture better.”
-Roberto Quintana WFA aka ‘sQuint’

Here’s the start of Cheech’s interview…
Cheech Marin:
“Although the origins of American graffiti are typically traced back to New York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s and 1970s, an earlier history began in the barrios of Los Angeles decades before. Here a subculture developed among Mexican-American youths who were both detached from the culture of their parents and, because of widespread discrimination, prevented from identifying as entirely American. The ‘Pachucos’, as they called themselves, dressed in extravagant, dandyish zoot suits, and they didn’t stray far from the small neighborhoods where they lived. Gangs emerged as a means of asserting cultural pride and maintaining control over their communities, and street writing was a way of defining territory. Gang life further evolved after the Los Angeles riots of 1943, known as the Zoot Suit Riots, in which racial tension erupted into a series of brutal confrontations between white military servicemen and the young Pachucos.*

Military Servicemen (with Clubs) and young Pachucos (with Zoots)

"In the postwar period, Pachuco culture developed into the ‘Cholo’ gangs of the 1960s. Derived from the Aztec word 'xolotl', meaning “dog,” the word Cholo had been used in the United States as a derogatory term for a person of Mexican heritage, but in the ’60s, Mexican-American activists reclaimed the term—along with 'Chicano'—for themselves, transforming an ethnic slur into a badge of pride. Cholo gang members, like the Pachucos, emphasized the creation of a uniquely Chicano youth culture based around the streets.”

This photograph of three men sporting variations on the zoot suit was taken by Oliver F. Atkins.

And Here’s a video-interview of Cheech about his own story…

Cheech Marin Tells His Life Story
(Full Interview/ VLADTV)

There have been some great comedic duos that have brought us countless laughs over the years... There’s been Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. But none of them represented the era of counterculture and hippie free love as much as Cheech and Chong.

Back in the '70s and '80s, this comedic duo achieved commercial and cultural success with their stand-up routines, studio recordings, and feature films. Their story and career are one of the most unique in comedy history.

The Legendary comedian and actor appears here on VladTV, where he spoke about his career, childhood, and family life. Cheech explains how he formed his comedy duo with Tommy Chong and how they transitioned that success into a string of classic films. Cheech also talks about his solo success in film. Later in the interview, Cheech offers his thoughts on the shift in attitudes towards marijuana and much more.

-AND-
Check out Cheech’s FANTASTIC! Art Collection
at his very own Art Museum!

The Cheech Marin Center
for Chicano Art
and Culture
opened in June 2022
as a public-private partnership between RAM (Riverside Art Museum), the City of Riverside, and comedian Cheech Marin
—one of the world’s foremost collectors of Chicano art!

A significant portion of Cheech’s collection will always be exhibited and can continue to be toured at venues across the nation and throughout the world!

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The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves

2/4/2025

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This post was scheduled for the first Monday of February…
However Monday, February 3, 2025 was:

A Day Without Latinos:
The Peoples Fight for Justice
https://brownrock.org/2025/02/02/brown-people-matter-the-peoples-fight-protest-for-justice-in-downtown-los-angeles/
(Thanx Elaine!)
I hope you missed me! -RQ

"Here's another one of my favorite
books from my library!"

“The Shamans of Prehistory”
Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves
by Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams

• Harry N. Abrams, 1998
• ISBN 0810941821 (ISBN13: 9780810941823)
• Hardcover, 120 pages
From:
https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/books/shamans_of_prehistory.php

This startling book reveals a new way of understanding the remarkable images painted or etched on rock walls by the people of prehistory.

Noting the similarity of prehistoric rock art with that created by some contemporary traditional societies, archaeologists Jean Clottes and David Lewis-Williams suggest that the ancient images were created by shamans, powerful individuals who were able to contact the spirit world through trance and ritual. In many societies throughout history, shamans have been consulted to try to change the weather, foretell the future, control the movements of animals, and converse with the dead.

With an abundance of full-color illustrations, Clottes and Lewis-Williams draw on neuropsychology and ethnography to follow prehistoric shamans into their trance states. The authors shed light on what these artists were thinking and how they may have worked.

On these pages, Paleolithic art and life are seen in a new and astonishing way.

Since the first report of cave art (at Altamira in 1879), attempts have been made to explain the purpose of the mysterious drawings. Art for art's sake; totemism; hunting, destructive, or fertility magic; and modern structuralist theories have all been proposed. Clottes (The Cave Beneath the Sea: Paleolithic Images at Cosquer, LJ 4/1/96) and Lewis-Williams (cognitive archaeology, Univ. of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) propose a new theory emphasizing the shamanic aspects of Paleolithic cave paintings.

After an unavoidably technical chapter providing the basics of shamanism, the authors examine Paleolithic paintings from across France and Spain, noting the use of animal figures, composite figures combining both human and animal characteristics, and geometric designs that are all common elements of shamanism.

The bulk of the book is both fascinating and thought-provoking, and while it is not likely to be the last word on the subject, it is an important contribution to the field. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Theory of prehistoric shamanism

Some of Clottes's most publicized contributions to the study of prehistory have come not in the form of field research, but in his efforts to propose a plausible theory of the psychological and social context in which prehistoric cave art was created.[3][5] In 1994 he joined with South African anthropologist David Lewis-Williams to study prehistoric art in light of known neuropsychological phenomena associated with shamanic trances.[3][5][6] Together they concluded that there is a strong argument for believing that much of prehistoric art was in fact produced in the context of shamanic practices.
In 1996 they published their findings in the book Les Chamanes de la Préhistoire: Transe et Magie dans les Grottes Ornées (published in English in 1998 as
The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves).[5]

The book received heavy criticism from some other researchers, with some objections stemming from a reluctance to use modern ethnographic or psychological observations as a basis for speculating on the meaning of prehistoric art, following clumsy early-20th-century attempts to do so.

Other experts found the ideas compelling, and suggested that academic infighting or jealousy may have played a role in the criticism.[3]

In response to their critics, Clottes and Lewis-Williams published an expanded version of their book in 2001 (Les Chamanes de la Préhistoire: Texte Intégral, Polémique et Réponses).
David Lewis-Williams later went on to develop aspects of their thesis more fully in his own book The Mind in the Cave[6] and its sequel, Inside the Neolithic Mind (co-authored by David Pearce).[7]

Jean Clottes is a prominent French prehistorian.
He was born in the French Pyrénées in 1933 and began to study archaeology in 1959, while teaching high school.
He initially focused on Neolithic dolmens, which were the topic of his 1975 Ph.D. thesis at the University of Toulouse.
After being appointed director of prehistoric antiquities for the Midi-Pyrénées in 1971, he began to study prehistoric cave art in order to fulfill the responsibilities of that position.
In the following years he led a series of excavations of prehistoric sites in the region.
In 1992, he was named General Inspector for Archaeology at the French Ministry of Culture;
in 1993 he was appointed Scientific Advisor for prehistoric rock art at the French Ministry of Culture.
He formally retired in 1999, but remains an active contributor to the field.

James David Lewis-Williams is professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
David Lewis-Williams, as he is known to his friends and colleagues, is regarded as an eminent specialist in the San or Bushmen culture, specifically their art and beliefs.
His book, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (Thames & Hudson) won the American Historical Association's 2003 James Henry Breasted Award.
His most recent books are:
Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods (Thames & Hudson) co-authored with David Pearce and published in 2005,

Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion, published in 2010, and

Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art, co-authored with Sam Challis and published in 2011.

Review from Booklist:
With an abundance of full-color illustrations, Clottes and Lewis-Williams draw on neuropsychology and ethnography to follow prehistoric shamans into their trance states. The authors shed light on what these rock artists were thinking and how they may have worked. On these pages, Paleolithic art and life are seen in a new and astonishing way.

“The most obvious question about cave art is why is it there, and Clottes, a prehistoric rock art expert associated with the French ministry of culture, and Lewis-Williams, a South African professor of cognitive archaeology, propose an elegant answer in this beautifully illustrated volume.

They begin by documenting the universality of certain cave art images, then suggest that these paintings are shamanic in nature.

They make their case in a fresh and lucid discussion of the methods shamans use to achieve altered states of consciousness in order to get in touch with the spiritual realm, then, shifting to a neuropsychological perspective, characterize the types of hallucinations experienced at the three main stages of trance: geometric shapes, objects of religious or emotional significance, and visions of animals, monsters, and people.

The three sets of visions are depicted gracefully on cave walls deep beneath the surface of the earth, the perfect setting for a journey to another world.

This is a handsome and quietly thrilling solution to an old and essential mystery.” —Donna Seaman

Reviewed by Barnaby Thieme, 8/22/2012:

The good folks at Erowid have posted my (Barnaby Thieme) review of The Shamans of Prehistory by Jean Clottes & David Lewis-Williams, two prominent authorities on paleolithic cave painting.

I (Barnaby Thieme) am sympathetic to the book’s central argument that many painted caves served a ritual function related to archaic forms of shamanism, but I found their specific cognitive-archaeological model to be under-developed.

Clottes and Lewis-Williams ground their theoretical framework in an altered states model of shamanism and speculate that early shamans may have utilized visionary plants to induce trance states. The Erowid site which hosts a massive online archive of information relating to psychoactive plants and chemicals and their use.

You can read the full review here.

Beginning some 35,000 years ago, hundreds of cave sanctuaries throughout southern France and Spain were lavishly adorned with beautiful and evocative paintings and engravings. Prehistoric artists carried out their work with remarkable stylistic continuity for over 20,000 years.

Since this world of buried art was rediscovered and explored in the last hundred years, these paintings have been admired for their rich, expressive depictions of animals and geometrical patterns.

But what do these paintings mean, and why were they created? How were these caves used?
At various times, scholars have interpreted cave paintings as art for art’s sake, hunting instructions, sympathetic magic, totemistic representations of clan identities, or symbolic vocabularies with complex systems of meaning.

In The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves, two prominent researchers argue that many European caves are linked to shamanic ritual practice and initiation. Renowned expert Jean Clottes, who served as principal researcher of the magnificent Chauvet cave of southern France, co-authored this book with South African cognitive archaeologist David Lewis-Williams, a specialist on the San culture of the Kalahari, which practices rock painting to this day.

At 120 pages, this book is essentially a long essay laying the basis for the authors’ shamanic hypothesis and attempting to ground it in biological terms.

While I (Barnaby Thieme) found their central thesis to be underdeveloped, the authors do an admirable job of surveying the available evidence, providing a valuable analysis of the known art.

The book is lavishly illustrated, though the pictures are rarely captioned with date information.

In the book’s introduction, the authors present a brief account of shamanism as a religious paradigm. They focus on the role of shamans as expert practitioners who carry out supernatural feats by entering trance states through various means, including the use of visionary plants, isolation, fasting, chanting, and dancing. In these altered states, they travel into the heavens above, or into a world beneath the earth, where they encounter spirits and animal powers who assist them in their work.

The authors argue that the visionary states experienced by the shaman conform to a three-stage model that characterizes trance or altered consciousness, including those evoked by ritual practice and those caused by psychoactive substances such as LSD.

The authors interpret the generality of their three-stage model as evidence for a shared biological process at work, one that is triggered in different ways but produces a similar experience.

Stage one of their model consists of the appearance of vivid, luminous, geometric patterns.

In stage two, the fuzzy and ambiguous geometric images begin to take on meaningful shapes and symbols, as the subject “recognizes” them as outlines of known shapes (e.g. horses, lions, etc.). The transition between stages two and three is often marked by an experience of passage, such as moving through a tunnel or flying. Stage three involves frank hallucinations of otherworldly symbols and beings.

This model is used throughout the book as a framework to explain the universality of characteristic shamanic visions, such as the magical flight, which may be interpreted as the transition between stages two and three. Many cave paintings can be interpreted as reflecting one or more of the stages. This may indicate the caves were ritual or initiatory centers that either depict or help elicit shamanic visions brought about through various means.

In my (Barnaby Thieme’s) opinion, the model is inadequate as an explanatory mechanism, and unable to do the heavy lifting Lewis-Williams and Clottes require of it. Its key terms are extremely vague—especially the central concept of “altered states”.

This term can refer to a vast array of states of awareness, including alertness, stupor, delirium, hallucination or bliss. Even if we restrict ourselves to visionary situations that involve both visual distortions and frank hallucinations, we still find a diverse set of experiences that is poorly characterized by this model.

The authors suggest at several points that the fitness of their altered-states model to the evidence may indicate that hallucinogenic plants were ritually used. To evaluate that hypothesis, we need to examine which hallucinogens fit their three-stage model, and ask if they were available in Europe in prehistoric times.

I submit that the classical tryptamine and phenethylamine hallucinogens, such as psilocybin or DMT and mescaline, are the best fit for their altered-states model.
Unfortunately, these are overwhelmingly found in the New World, and were probably unknown within Europe until sometime long after the caves had been painted.

What potentially hallucinogenic substances were most likely to be available in the late Stone Age in Europe?

I suggest the following candidates: carbon dioxide, cannabis, opium, Amanita muscaria, Syrian rue, and solenaceous plants, including datura and belladonna.

At the right dose levels, carbon dioxide intoxication does fit well with the three-stage theory, as we learn from the extensive research of Dr. Ladislas Meduna. The authors do not mention carbon dioxide intoxication in this book, but Clottes speaks of it in his Cave Art (Phaidon, 2010), where he speculates that some cave chapels may have caused carbon dioxide intoxication due to poor ventilation and this could have played a role in the paintings.

The problem with this theory is that high levels of carbon dioxide rapidly cause unconsciousness and death; indeed, the gas is frequently used to euthanize animals. Hallucinations generally occur at the threshold of unconsciousness, and it’s hard to imagine how any shaman could fall insensibly into a visionary stupor in the depths of a cavern thick with carbon dioxide, and then live to tell the tale.

Psilocybin-containing mushrooms may have been known in Europe in prehistoric times, but the evidence for this is extremely tenuous. Surprisingly, the authors don’t consider the famous rock art bee-masked being that may be covered with mushrooms, found on the Tassili plateau of southern Algeria. But the link between that image and psychoactive mushrooms is speculative, and Algeria is a long way from Dordogne.

Cave paintings usually depict easily recognizable animals in crisp, elegant outlines, either isolated or in small groups.
Modern visionary art inspired by hallucinations, on the other hand, frequently emphasizes figure-ground ambiguity with crowded visual fields saturated with suggestive images.

It would also be remarkable to find a long-lived visionary bestiary so limited in its repertoire. We frequently find horses, aurochs, and mammoths, but almost never snakes, insects, or birds. What kind of visionary artist doesn’t paint snakes?

I don’t believe the theory works much better with endogenous altered states. Trance states evoked by meditation, chant, isolation, prayer, or dance are no less diverse than those evoked by psychoactive substances. I don’t see the three-stages model as a good description for my (Barnaby Thieme’s) experience of any of them.

It’s entirely possible, or even likely, that psychoactive plants were part of the spiritual tool kit for Homo sapiens in the Paleolithic, but I don’t see clear evidence linking them to cave art.

I (Barnaby Thieme) am also a firm proponent of the shamanism model for understanding Paleolithic cave art, but on comparative grounds, such as those advanced by Mircea Eliade.

The structure of many cave sanctuaries strongly suggests an initiatory domain, easily recognizable from sacred spaces used by cultures today. The placement of key artwork in remote, difficult-to-access chambers implies a journey. The animal images are of an archaic character that fit extremely well with what we observe in contemporary shamanic cultures, such as among the Intuit, Tlingit, or Haida. And some of the composite “sorcerer” paintings are richly evocative of trance states or initiatory visions of a well-known type.

Purchase Book
The Bradshaw Foundation Book Review

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Eaton Fire Update!

2/3/2025

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This is to inform my Throng-o-Followers, my Posse,
and my many Friends and Family…

All is well at the Art and Soul Productions’
Studio, Estate and Compound!
"I sustained some minor wind damage and some ash and smoke infiltration, an inconvenient evacuation, loss of power, and some really pissed-off felines!" -RQ

The Night of the Fire! View from my Studio.

But!...
The Devastation to Altadena
was complete!
"My Heart goes out to all of my Dear Friends
(at least 10+!)
who have lost their homes,
and to the entire Altadena community!"

"We are all 'Altadena-Strong'!
but the suffering and destruction will take a long time to heal and recover from.
Below are a few links to follow if you wish to help and/or stay informed:"

Altadena Fire Recovery Information & Resources
https://recovery.lacounty.gov/altadena/

Disaster Recovery Centers
https://recovery.lacounty.gov/recovery-centers/

Recovery Altadena
https://www.recoveryaltadena.com/

EATON FIRE RELIEF & RECOVERY FUND
https://pasadenacf.org/funds/eaton-canyon-fire-relief-recovery-fund/

2025 Eaton Fire Emergency Resources
https://www.altadenalibrary.org/news/emergency-resources

How You Can Help Today
https://www.redcross.org/local/california/los-angeles/ways-to-donate.html

Altadena Town Council grapples with Eaton fire recovery, rebuilding, in early forum on next steps
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2025/01/22/altadena-town-council-grapples-with-eaton-fire-recovery-rebuilding-in-early-forum-on-next-steps/

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Virgin Goddess, VHestia, Appears at Random Drive-By!

1/6/2025

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'Vhestia, Goddess of the Hearth', 36" x 36" (0.914M x 0.914M), Mixed Media on Panel, by Roberto Quintana 2024

We interrupt this Mural Blog to report a Goddess sighting
at the Random ‘Slow Down’ drive-by gallery
in Highland Park, California.

The Apparition of the Goddess was first seen to manifest
at 200 N, Avenue 64, on January 1st, 2025.
The Miraculous Vision is expected to last throughout
the blessed month of January,
at which time a limited edition of
25 framed giclee’-prints on canvas,
of VHestal-Icons will be made available
to Devotees of the Hearth-Goddess,
for a small sacrifice.

The Original Fine-Art-Manifestation,
3' x 3’ (0.914M x 0.914M) / Mixed Media /
on Laminate Panel of the
Apparition of the Virgin of the Hearth
will be offered up to the
‘Most-Blessed Follower’
for a more substantial sacrifice.

Only Fungible-Tokens-of-the-Realm
will be blessed as legal tender for
the sacrifice and indulgences.

Random Custom Framing and the Slow Down Gallery
http://www.randomframing.com/index.html
Creating frames that protect, enhance, and increase the value of your art.

Random Custom Framing
is a small design oriented shop with over twenty years of experience in producing great frames.
They will listen to your needs and together they will make the right choices for your art.
At Random Custom Framing, They pay attention to detail and employ the latest framing techniques, suited to the media.
They use the finest, museum-quality materials to not only enhance the design but to protect and preserve your artwork.
They value the trust you place in them with your artwork and take great care in storing and handling the pieces in our shop.
They understand that display context is important.
They offer in home design and consultation to make sure that your newly framed artwork fits into the intended environment.

Bringing Random to You.
http://www.randomframing.com/consultation.html

We Offer In Home Design and Consultation.
With over 25 years of experience working with artists and collectors we can assist you with most all of your art needs. Our services include;
• Assessing the framing you currently have, updating the look and quality
• Working with conservators on pieces that have been damaged
• Design and advise framing solutions for unframed work
• Work with you to acquire new artwork
• Arrange, Hang and Install your artwork
Call or email for more information

Employing Our Skills as Craftsmen to Enhance Your Art
http://www.randomframing.com/woodshop.html

At Random Custom Framing, we appreciate the aesthetics of natural wood. We make our own frames, using maple, walnut, cherry, mahogany and basswood, as well as carrying vender-supplied molding in a variety of materials.
We’re good at problem solving, and we have the expertise and the equipment to customize molding profiles to suit your particular needs.
Our finishes provide your frame with its own personality.
We apply:
• Paints to match colors
• Stains to enrich the tone and bring out the wood grain
• Chemicals to age or change the color and enhance the clarity of the wood
• Aniline and plant dyes to color the wood evenly and deeply
• Waxes and rubs to add color and complexity to the final finish

http://www.randomframing.com/location.html

About Kate and Douglas
http://www.randomframing.com/about.html

Douglas Johnston and Kate Burroughs are the husband and wife team behind Random Custom Framing.
Kate spent some time with Aaron Brothers and Art Center College of Design.
Douglas spent his time in his workshop and the kitchen.
Together their skills and style, interests and inclinations make Random Framing the most awesome shop on the Eastside.

The Birthplace of VHestia

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Maxfield Parrish’s ‘Old King Cole’ murals

12/2/2024

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“Here are some fun murals
by one of my favorite artists and muralists,
Maxfield Parrish!
I have received so much joy from studying Parrish’s work,
and I have learned a great deal from his paintings and illustrations, and his compositions!
I especially enjoy his light-heartedness
and the uplifting beauty of his color” -RQ

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxfield_Parrish
Maxfield Parrish (July 25, 1870 – March 30, 1966)
was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. His career spanned fifty years and was wildly successful: the National Museum of American Illustration deemed his painting Daybreak (1922) to be the most successful art print of the 20th century.[1]

Maxfield Parrish was approached in 1906 by hotelier John Jacob Astor
(who was later struck down in the sinking of the Titanic) to create a mural to go above the bar at his hotel, The Knickerbocker, on 42nd Street. Though Parrish was a non-drinking Quaker. He relented when Astor offered him $5,000 (the equivalent of $130,000 today) for the work, a small fortune at the time.
Parrish crafted a painting centered on the children’s rhyme about Old King Cole, with Astor painted atop the throne.
Legend has it that Parrish cheekily painted Astor’s King Cole while passing some royal gas, flanked by knowingly smirking attendants.
Though the mural’s time at The Knickerbocker was short lived, Parrish’s Old King Cole mural has been lovingly restored
and remains atop the bar at what is now New York City’s
St. Regis Hotel.

The text below is by
Norman Vanamee
from an article:
Walls of Fame.
from the St. Regis Magazine..

ISSUE 3 – 2014

New York’s murals, scattered in bars and restaurants, mansions and civic buildings, have become partof the city’s fabric. But Maxfield Parrish’s Old King Cole, which sits above the bar of The St. Regis New York, is one of its most beloved
and contains an extraordinary link to the man who commissioned it, John Jacob Astor IV.

– The Back Story –
On a chilly November night last year (2013), about 120 people squeezed into the King Cole Bar and Salon at
The St. Regis New York.
The star of the night was a brilliantly-colored painting, just back from a $100,000 restoration and rehung in its place of honor above the bar where it has presided over similarly
chic events for almost eight decades.
One hundred and ten years ago, John Jacob Astor IV asked a young artist named Maxfield Parrish if he would like to paint a mural to hang in the bar-room of The Knickerbocker Hotel, Astor’s glamorous new flagship on 42nd Street and Broadway in New York City. The fee was $5,000, extremely generous for the time, but it came with caveats.

First, the subject of the painting had to be Old King Cole, and second, while Parrish would have complete artistic freedom in how he depicted the nursery-rhyme character, he had to use Astor as the model for King Cole’s face.

“At first, Parrish wasn’t sure he wanted the job,” explains Laurence Cutler, chairman of the National Museum of American Illustration and an expert on the artist.
“He didn’t like being told he had to do anything.”
Parrish had other concerns as well:
he came from a conservative Quaker family that frowned on alcohol and wasn’t thrilled that his work would hang in a bar. Plus, he had already painted a version of King Cole for the Mask and Wig Club, a private theater club in Philadelphia.

King Cole mural for the Mask and Wig Club by Maxfield Parrish

But Parrish’s father, Stephen Parrish
(1846 – 1938)
an established artist with connections in Philadelphia and
New York society, encouraged him to reconsider.
“Basically, he explained how unadvisable it would be for somebody just starting their career to say no
to somebody like Astor.”

Parrish had recently moved from Philadelphia to Plainfield, New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Lydia, were expanding a small estate they had built
called The Oaks, which they would live in for the rest of their lives. He realized that the fee, the equivalent of $130,000 today, would set them up well and accepted the commission. He began work on Old King Cole in a studio that was
too small to hold the whole mural, so he painted
the three 8 feet x 10 feet panels one at a time.
He placed the king in the center,
flanked by jesters and guards.

It was a more dramatic, less cartoon-like depiction than his first version of Cole for the Mask and Wig Club and,
when it was installed at the hotel in 1906,
it instantly became part of the fabric of a city
and a culture hurtling toward the excitement
and excesses of the Roaring Twenties.
“The Knickerbocker Bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish’s jovial, colorful Old King Cole was well crowded”
wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise.

Parrish picked a good time to accept a mural commission.
At the turn of the century, wealthy industrialists like Astor
were building mansions as quickly as they could
and hiring artists to adorn the walls.
“It was the golden age of American mural painting,” says Glenn Palmer-Smith, a painter
and author of Murals of New York City.

Established artists were able to command huge fees,
but the appeal was more than just financial.
The country had recently glimpsed the nuance and complexity of mural painting at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago,
which featured frescos and murals by some of the US and Europe’s most prominent painters.
American architects and artists were eager to embrace the medium.

Not long after the fair,
ten of the country’s best-known illustrators and painters, including Henry Siddons Mowbray and Robert Lewis Reid, collaborated on a mural depicting the history of law for the lobby of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division building on Madison Avenue, which opened in 1900. “Can you imagine ten top artists collaborating on anything today?” says Palmer-Smith.

Parrish went on to paint eight additional murals over the course of his long and influential career,
including The Pied Piper in 1909 for the bar at
the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

But Old King Cole is arguably his most famous. It has all the hallmarks of his later illustrations and prints, including bold, luminous colors, classical architectural forms,
and an impish sense of humor.
“It launched his career,” says Laurence Cutler. “Immediately afterwards he received a commission to illustrate a cover for Harper’s Magazine, and from then on he worked non-stop for the next 40 years.”

When the Knickerbocker closed in 1920, Old King Cole went into storage, then briefly hung in a museum in Chicago,
and was finally installed at The St. Regis, an Astor-owned hotel, in 1932. There, at the heart of Millionaires’ Alley,
as 55th Street was called at the time,
it made the transition from artwork to icon.

Longevity alone might explain the King Cole Bar’s popularity – New York City has been torn down and rebuilt so many times that its residents develop emotional attachments to places and things that survive the constant reinvention. But it is Parrish’s painting that patrons love and return to see over and over again.

“Parrish had a bet with his friends that he could paint absolutely anything,” said Palmer-Smith. “Old King Cole proved it.”

“Here’s another one of my favorite books from my library!” -RQ
(This is my second version. The first one fell apart and got paint all over it!)

Maxfield Parrish
Hardcover – Illustrated,
January 6, 1997
by Coy Ludwig

A compendium of the life and work of Maxfield Parrish,
it is an essential part of a Parrish library. For the collector,
the publisher has included a value guide to some of the products that bear Parrish images.
Examples of Parrish's most famous book illustrations are shown, including selections from Mother Goose in Prose and the Arabian Nights. Also included are his famous magazine covers-from Life, Collier's, Harper's Weekly, etc., as well as all the landscapes that he painted for Brown and Bigelow, who reproduced them as calendars every year from 1936 to 1963.
One of the highlights of the book is the chapter on Parrish's technique, examining in depth his materials, favorite methods, and unique way of painting. In addition, there is a lengthy excerpt from an unpublished manuscript
by Maxfield Parrish, Jr., explaining step-by-step his father's glazing technique and use of photography in his work.
This definitive study also contains numerous revealing excerpts from Parrish's unpublished correspondence with family, friends, and clients.

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Genoski, Atlas, and Saturno

11/4/2024

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Murals On The Street:
Resurrection!!!
And then... once in a while, the Ghost will get restored or repainted or reincarnated
or re-born and resurrected!!!

Here’s what happened when
Genoski and Atlas
from my previous post:
http://www.artandsoulproductions.com/blog/murals-on-the-street-ghosts-genoski-and-atlas
collaborated with
Saturno!
to ReCreate a mural
to replace their last one.

Beyond Colors and Shapes.
A Fusion of Past, Present, and Consciousness.
"My latest project has taken my creativity to new heights, painting a mural of enormous dimensions on the main facade of The Regional Library of Blanes, the Catalan town in Spain, where I grew and flourished as an artist." says Saturno

"This project represents a return to my roots, an opportunity to merge my passion for art with the place that saw me grow.
The artwork has sparked a sense of awe and excitement among locals, unaccustomed to witnessing this type of artistic expression. The creation process has been a spectacle that attracted both the curious and art enthusiasts alike."

"This mural has become a gathering point, a place where the community comes together to admire, discuss, and share their appreciation for art. The interaction with the local audience has profoundly enriched my experience as an artist, witnessing people immerse themselves in the visual narrative I've created, establishing an emotional connection with my work.
More than just an expression of my artistic vision, the mural is also a tribute to the community that witnessed my growth. It's an honor to contribute to Blanes' cultural landscape in this way, reminding everyone of my roots and elevating my art to new heights." -Saturno!

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2 (Two!) Individual Artist Grants Now Open from DCA!

10/7/2024

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We Interrupt this exciting series of blog-posts on ‘Ghosts’
and ‘Resurrections’ for a timely announcement just in from
the City of the Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs!

Feel Free to share these with your creative friends! -RQ

1). 2024 City of Los Angeles (COLA) Independent
Master Artist Projects (IMAP) Grant Program

The COLA-IMAP Grant Program allows accomplished artists to create a new “mid-career” solo work with the freedom to re-focus on themselves and their core impulses. The COLA-IMAP grant category honors a spectrum of the City’s avant-garde artists who:
   •   Are dedicated to an ongoing body of excellent work.
   •   Represent a relevant progression through their pieces or series over the past 15 years (or 8 years for a dancer/choreographer).
   •   Exemplify a generation of core ideas in their field.
   •   Are respected by their peers and are role models for other artists because of their distinguished record.
Approximately 6-12 COLA-IMAP grant-contracts will be offered for designers/visual artists (including architects, graphic designers, and product designers including fashion designers), literary artists (poets or fiction writers) and performing artists (including choreographers who wish to make and perform individual dance works, musicians who wish to compose and perform individual music works, and multi-disciplinary theater artists who wish to invent and perform solo works).

The Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) will organize an online and/or printed catalog to promote the entire set of COLA-IMAP grantees as “creative treasures” and document/market the group as one cross-section of the exciting Los Angeles art scene. DCA and community partners will also attempt to showcase a curated selection of each master-artist’s new work in either a gallery exhibition or performing arts showcase

Amount: $10,000

- AND -

2). Neighborhood Engagement Artist Residency and
Creative Optimism-Uplifting Promises Grants

Neighborhood Engagement Artist Residency (NEAR) grants support freelance teaching artists, social-activation artists, and social practice artists in community-based, participatory projects in self-selected non-arts venues within the City of Los Angeles. Competitive NEAR projects will gather, connect, and inspire participants and audiences who have little exposure to the proposed type of cultural opportunity. NEAR projects should be structured as eleven or more free or low-cost sessions culminating in one or more presentations that are open and promoted to the general public (proposing at least eleven workshops is the ideal duration for community engagement; however, applicants are encouraged to propose projects that can be scaled back to five workshops with one public presentation, as DCA staff will notify NEAR applicants next May about whether the City budget is able to provide NEAR grantees with either a $12,000 or a reduced $6,000 service contract)

Creative Optimism–Uplifting Promises (CO-UP) grants support collaborations between a local nonprofit social justice organization and a creative teaching artist (a freelance artist or an artist already working within a non-profit arts organization in the same community as the social justice organization). In some cases, a third partner, acting as a host site for the project may also be named. Eligible collaborative projects should be: 1) new or launched within the past four years, 2) free or low-cost for participants, and 3) culminate in at least one free public presentation that will be accessible to the general community. CO-UP residences should be structured as eleven sessions ending in one public presentation. CO-UP residencies are funded at $15,000 with $12,000 allocated for artist payment and $3,000 allocated for the social justice organization’s administrative expenses (meritorious CO-UP proposals that cannot be fully funded at $15,000, may be converted to a NEAR project consisting of five workshops and one culminating event with a budget of $6,000 — DCA staff will notify CO-UP applicants next May about whether the City budget able to provide grantees with either a $15,000 or a reduced $6,000 service contract)

Depending upon its budget for FY25-26, DCA aims to support approximately 15-22 residences at either $6,000 or $12,000 (ideally one for each of the city’s 15 Council districts) and an additional 10-15 CO-UP residencies at $15,000 each.

Application deadline for both grants is
October 25, 2024, at 11:59 p.m.!

Department of Cultural Affairs
City of Los Angeles
201 North Figueroa Street, Suite 1400
Los Angeles, CA 90012 US

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Murals On The Street: Ghosts!! / ‘Genoski’ and ‘Atlas’

9/2/2024

0 Comments

Sometimes I come across some really nice mural out there that I want to share with you…
and many times I will document them...
only to have them Painted Out!
Or Tagged over!! Or Defaced!!!
or Destroyed by negligence,
or by time and the weather,
Or Re-Painted!
They have been Ghosted!!
Here is one now!

This one is right around the corner from my home and studio!
(The mural went away and was replaced by another one.)

As far as I can tell, this is a collaboration
between two artists!
Genoski and Atlasgraffiti

Photo by James aka Urbanmuralhunter. https://www.flickr.com/photos/atelier_tee

‘Woman and Rose’
at 3404 Union Pacific Avenue in the Boyle Heights,
Los Angeles, California.
Mural by:
Gino Genoski Gaspara aka @genoski
Gino is a resident artist at Klockwork Tattoo Club.
He is a very talented Tattoo Artist and is very open to tattooing different styles and isn't afraid of large scale graffiti projects.

- and -

Atlasgraffiti aka @atlasgraffiti
Rick Ordonez,
also known as Atlas and known colloquially as
the "kitty cat tagger," is an
American graphic designer and graffiti artist
from Alhambra, California.[1]

In early 2010, Atlas transitioned from creating large ornate graphics to drawing stylized cats, particularly on or near
Pasadena Freeways.
In an article for LA Weekly, Ordonez was described as
a “cat-lover" who kept cats as pets.

Atlas: Los Angeles Graffiti Documentary (2005)

Later that year, Atlas got his own show entitled "Rick Ordonez: Kitty Litter" at Mid-City Arts in November 2010.
Gallery manager Medvin “Med” Sobio stated "I saw them and thought it was something completely different. Everybody’s out there doing big, bad graffiti things [to show that] 'I’m a big, bad guy,’ and here he is, doing cats." Ordonez remained anonymous for the show.

Here is a good interview with Atlas about his career as a Vet, VFW, Graffiti Artist and his transition into Fine Art.

THE CORNERSTORE
Atlas | Transitioning from graffiti to fine art.

And a documentary about his platoon from:

THE WOUNDED PLATOON

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Update to: 21 Murals for Uvalde, Texas

8/30/2024

0 Comments

! BRAVO !

"I just received word that a featured artist
from this blog, helped to sponsor
the 'Healing Uvalde' Mural Project!
by selling two (2!) of his paintings!!
and contributing the proceeds
for the painting of the murals project!!"

!BRAVO!
!! Joe Bravo !!

“Roberto, Attached are the two paintings that were purchased by Jaime Casillas of Oxnard.
The proceeds went towards funding the mural project
in Uvalde to paint portraits of all the students who were killed.
Feel free to post on your blog.
Saludos," -Joe Bravo

Joe was featured here
(4-1-2024)
for his “Water is Life” mural,
in Highland Park.
http://www.artandsoulproductions.com/blog/joe-bravo-water-is-life-mural

“Nice Job, Joe!
Bravo!!” -RQ

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21 Murals for Uvalde, Texas

8/5/2024

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“Art Saves Lives!”

“Well, sadly, not in this case…
But these murals not only serve as a remembrance of the many innocent victims of the Robb Elementary School Shooting in Uvalde, Texas,
but they give witness to the people and places impacted by gun violence all across the United States.
I was going to post this in a series of blogs and stretch this important topic out over several months.
After all, 21 murals and nearly 27 artists
is a lot to digest all at once!
However...
the impact of 21 senselessly lost lives is too horrible
to be diluted over several posts.
They were all taken in 77 minutes!
So here they are, all together!

I am dedicating this post to all of our
Legislators and Representatives,
and especially to our
’Supreme’ Court Justices
and their recent cowardly and shameful ruling
on 'bump'-stock gun legislation.”
-Roberto Quintana

In Remembrance of
the Robb Elementary School
Shooting Victims

“I know that art heals, that art can calm,
that art can point us in a positive direction.” -Abel Ortiz

The idea for the 21 portrait murals came from Uvalde resident Abel Ortiz, an artist, art professor at Southwest Texas Junior College, and founder of Art Lab, a local art space.

“I thought it was going to be one mural,”…
“No, you know what? I’m thinking twenty-one murals!
It needs to be monumental!
It needs to be across town,
and not just in one place.
And so, the idea was born.” -Abel Ortiz

At the same time, future collaborators,
psychologist and art collector Dr. George Meza
and Monica Maldonado, founder of MAS Cultura,
were thinking about how art could benefit the community.

Before the portrait murals, Maldonado had worked with artists to complete three “Uvalde Strong” murals.
Soon after, Maldonado and Ortiz were connected and Maldonado joined as Project Manager.
Dr. Meza and Abel were already in contact and the three joined forces on the mural effort.
Dr. Meza spearheaded their fundraising efforts to raise more than $30,000 through his Facebook group "Collectors of Chicano/Latinx Art and Allies."
Together the trio made the idea of 21 portrait murals a reality and actualized the Healing Uvalde Mural project.

“…I kind of knew, you know, we needed to get people on their feet on the ground doing something very concrete and specific and that was going to be the murals, and that’s why I called them the ‘healing murals’ because with trauma there are many pathways to healing.” -Dr. George Meza

Mural Project Remembers Uvalde’s Lost Lives
by Tiffany Hearsey May 23, 2024

UVALDE, Texas — Heavy rains blanketed the small town of Uvalde, Texas, the night of the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. Uvalde resident Abel Ortiz recalled of the downpour, “it’s almost like the heavens opened up and all the tears came down.” On the morning of May 24, 2022, a gunman entered the school, killing 19 children and two teachers and injuring 17 others. Ortiz, an artist, and art professor at Southwest Texas Junior College, wanted to do something to help the families and community. Drawing on his artistic background, he spearheaded the Healing Uvalde Mural Project, a series of portraits of the victims displayed across buildings in downtown Uvalde. The murals, he explained, “were intended to provide comfort for the families,” and offer “a sense of calm, a sense of reflection.” They not only serve as a remembrance of the victims, but bear witness to the people and places impacted by gun violence in Uvalde and across the United States. Ortiz surmised, “the community can respond to the mural, to the image, reflect, contemplate, and think about possible changes. The lives of the children and teachers honored in the Healing Uvalde Mural Project were neither the first casualties of gun violence nor the last. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), gun violence is the leading cause of death among children and teens. Ortiz said, “If there’s any art that I wish didn’t exist, [it] is this art, because that means the kids would be alive.”

Ortiz partnered with Monica Maldonado, founder of Austin-based nonprofit MAS Cultura, who acted as program manager. She brought 50 Texan artists to Uvalde in the months following the shooting to paint the 21 murals, all volunteering their time and services, free of charge. The families of the victims gave their permission for the project, and many participated in the creation of the murals of their loved ones. Each image tells a story about one life — the person’s hobbies, hopes, and dreams, and the family and friends they loved and who loved them — through re-creations of the children’s drawings, ranging from rainbows and cartoon characters to sea creatures and puppies, signifying dreams of becoming a marine biologist or veterinarian, to lyrics of favorite songs, among other tributes.

Tess Marie Mata
age: 10
Mural by Anat Ronen

“In the bracelet, there was a little butterfly charm that didn’t really register as such in the original reference. While I was painting, I asked Veronica if there’s something else that might be more important, more meaningful, that I could replace it with. She said, yes, actually there’s this heart charm her grandmother gifted her and let’s see if you can integrate that...And the next day I put it in...It's the little things that mean a lot at the end.” -Anat Ronen

Xavier James Lopez
age:10
Mural by Amado Castillo III

“When Felicia (Xavier’s mom) sent me pictures, I noticed that he was always wearing a shirt of the bear, so I asked the mom about the bear t-shirts. And she said, “Oh, man, they were his favorite... I would buy them at DD’s Discount fashion store and he would wear those until they were faded." -Monica Maldonado

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez age: 10
Mural by Joey “WiseOne” Martinez

“Annabell was an honor roll student and she took a lot of pride in that. She took school seriously, it was an important part of her life that defined who she was. She loved animals and would rescue them. Her hopes and dreams were to become a veterinarian.” -Monica Maldonado

“You can feel the hurt in that community,” artist Joey Martinez reflected when he first came to Uvalde to paint Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez’s mural. “I think it was really important to be there for everybody,” he said. With guidance from Annabell’s family, Martinez included a Uvalde Coyotes logo and a sketch of an A+, a nod to her honor roll credentials — aspects of the 10-year-old’s personality in which loved ones and visitors alike can share. The mural also contains a cell phone with the text “I love you,” which she and her best friend, 10-year-old Xavier James Lopez, would send to each other each night before bedtime. Xavier was also killed in the shooting and his mural sits right next to Annabell’s, their close bond solidified in art. Their union was also honored in death, when the two families buried the children next to each other.

Makenna Lee Elrod
age: 10
Mural by Silvia "Silvy" Ochoa and
Courtney Jimenez / Courtney Arte

“Murals,” artist Silvia “Silvy” Ochoa said, “are beautiful tools to communicate.” She added, “They can make you feel, can help you remember.” Ochoa’s painting of 10-year-old Makenna Lee Elrod is an array of positive memories and symbolic imagery that aims to heal the traumatic memories surrounding her death. “Trauma” comes from the Greek word meaning “piercing” or “wounding.” Through art, a mending of the wounds can occur. Ochoa’s mural depicts Makenna in the bucolic farm where she grew up, surrounded by three butterflies that represent her and her parents, and four trees that symbolize her and her siblings. But it’s the rainbow adorning her shirt that stands out. Makenna’s parents gave Ochoa a photo of their daughter holding a rock with a rainbow she had painted on its surface. Ochoa wanted to include the rainbow on the mural and place it on her chest, and invited each member of Makenna’s family to paint the rainbow. After the portrait was completed, the family shared with Ochoa that Makenna had been shot in the chest. “That’s where she lost her life,” Ochoa told me through tears. “Her family gave her life on the mural in the same place.”

Layla Marie Salazar
age: 11
Mural by Alvaro Deko Zermeño

Alvaro Deko Zermeño’s Artist Statement:
There are no words to describe the level of pain that Uvalde has gone through so being able to use art to try and bring even the smallest bit of comfort to the families, to the community was worth every minute in the sun. It was an honor to meet the Salazar family and hear about Layla.
Layla was energetic and quick to entertain her family and friends. She loved track and because of her drive and focus, she was one of the fastest in her class.
The mural took 5 days to complete and there were times that it was difficult to look at her photo, knowing that the mural would barely scratch the surface of who she was.
On Día de los Muertos, we find ourselves at a point where grief and celebration meet. I hope that the families and the city of Uvalde know that we stand beside them and that their children will never be forgotten.

Jose Manuel Flores Jr.
age: 10
Mural by Albert “Tino” Ortega

“Jose had a big heart and lots of love for the game of baseball. I did the stars coming out from his chest so the stars that are on each side of him, they pretty much call us back to where his heart is, just to signify his love for the game.” -Tino Ortega

Eliahna Cruz Torres
age: 10
Mural by Filiberto Mendieta
Assisted by Nikki Diaz

“It was her first year playing softball.
She was a natural athlete and didn’t even know it...Once she started playing, she became obsessed with the sport and practiced every day. The day of the tragedy Eliahna would’ve found out that she made the All-Star team... Also, there is a cat at the bottom...the cat’s name is Dexter and when Eliahna passed away, he didn’t leave her room for two weeks, he waited for her.” -Monica Maldonado

Uziyah Sergio Garcia
age: 10
Mural by Richard Samuel

Richard Samuel’s Artist Statement:
My Brother
I'm not even sure where to start. The emotion and experience that comes with being a part of a project like Healing Uvalde is life-changing. It’s an opportunity I dropped everything for. I was perfectly matched up to paint Uziyah. A beautiful soul whom I had so much in common with. I learned we both love spiderman, and gaming, are very athletic, love sports, and express unwavering loyalty and love to our loved ones. It was almost as if we were one in a parallel universe. Meeting Uziyah's family, hearing their beautiful memories, and also reconnections through dreams provided me with all the inspiration possible to complete the mural. The amount of appreciation the town of Uvalde had for this project is mind-blowing. Literally, every 5 minutes painting, another car passed by thanking us, asking if we needed water or food. Some cried, some smiled, and some shared beautiful stories. By the time I was ready to leave Uvalde, I realized that this is the best thing I've ever done in my life. I hope my little brothers in heaven welcomed him with open arms because he's one with us. Gone but never forgotten.

Jayce Carmelo Luevanos
age: 10
Mural by Ruben Esquivel

Ruben Esquivel’s Artist Statement:
Jayce Luevanos loved dinosaurs and ninjas. His favorite colors were blue and green and he loved making coffee for his family in the mornings. Jayce would write love letters for his loved ones and sign them with “I love you!”
It was important to me that his family be part of the process and felt included in the mural. I reached out and asked to be connected directly with the family. We had a few phone calls and talked about things that Jayce loved, his family shared some memories and together we began conceptualizing the design. The month leading up to my arrival in Uvalde was nerve-racking. When the time came, I was nervous to finally meet Jayce’s family but they greeted me with open arms and with no hesitation and treated me as one of their own. We were family. His siblings were eager to assist me and helped me paint parts of the mural; After all, this piece is as much theirs as it is mine.
The outpouring support from Jayce’s family and the entire community was humbling and unlike anything I have ever experienced. Jayce’s family would spend every evening and sometimes into the early hours of the morning with me, watching me paint as I poured my heart and soul into his mural. I wanted to create a space where Jayce’s friends, family and even strangers could come to spend time with him, see him, talk to him, and feel his presence. A place for healing. I wanted his family to be able to come see that sweet sparkle in his eye whenever they needed to.

Jacklyn “Jackie” Jaylen Cazares age: 9
Mural by Kimie Flores

“Javier [Jackie’s father] really wanted the Eiffel Tower.
... At that point, we didn’t even have the Eiffel Tower on the mural and originally didn’t understand the importance of it. Then one day I was invited to the family’s home and when Javier opened the door to her bedroom all I could see was the Eiffel Tower everywhere. She had the Eiffel Tower on her bedspread, Eiffel Tower paintings, and an Eiffel Tower jewelry holder. Her dream was to go to Paris to the Eiffel Tower. ... I called Kimie and said we have to add the Eiffel Tower to the mural” -Monica Maldonado

Maranda Gail Mathis
age: 11
Mural By Luis Angulo

Luis Angulo’s Artist Statement:
“Maranda is described as a shy kid who liked being in nature, picking-up river rocks and feathers. I received a picture of Miranda standing in a creek facing the camera. Her arms are outstretched as she shows the camera the river rocks she found. I took this image and added more elements to it, trying to imagine a place that Maranda would have liked to explore. In her hands instead of river rocks, she has an Amethyst crystal, her mom's birthstone. In the water are eleven Koi fish, the same age Maranda was at the time of her passing.”

Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio age: 10
Mural by Ruben Esquivel
and Carmen Rangel

Artist Statement:
We wanted to portray the most authentic Lexi, so we reached out to those that know her best, her family. We learned that Lexi loved sunflowers and butterflies, she was a proud Libra and force to be reckoned with. Like her mother, she dreamt of attending St. Mary’s University and of one day becoming a lawyer. She played basketball and softball and had a fondness for math. Lexi and her five siblings were like peas in a pod. All of this is illustrated in Lexis larger than life mural in Uvalde, Texas.

Alithia Haven Ramirez
age: 10
Mural by Juan Velásquez
Assisted by Sarah Ayala

Juan Velázquez’s Artist Statement:
Me and @sarahrayala [Sarah Ayala] got to meet Alithia Ramirez's dad and for me it was the most emotional part of the trip, I didn’t know what to say so I just told him “I’m so sorry” He liked the mural and specially that one of the characters we painted on her shirt was from a Father’s Day card she made for him. He said she wanted to be an artist and now her art (the characters on her shirt) are in a mural.

Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia age: 9
Mural by Abel Ortiz

"Because she won the basketball championship the Saturday before, so I decided to make it into a sports card design and at the bottom, it says “all-star”...She does have the number 21 on her jersey. That was her actual number, twenty-one, that was her mom’s birthday and that’s why she chose that number when she was in the basketball team." -Abel Ortiz

Rojelio Fernandez Torres
age: 10
Mural by Floyd Mendoza
and Jesse de Leon

Floyd Mendoza’s Artist Statement:
I had only known Jesse de Leon for about a week when we found ourselves in front of a blank wall in Uvalde. Our plan was for Jesse to cover the characters, while I tackled the portrait. To my surprise, Rogelio’s family was so hospitable. My first memory I have of Rogelio’s mother, Evadulia and her sisters was them unloading a cooler of water for us. However, it wasn't until I wrapped up Rogelio’s facial features that I began to see the family open up. In which Evadulia stated “it's like he's standing in front of me.” As we made progress on the wall, it was as though this family was healing before our very eyes. They went from being quiet that morning, to laughing and playing music that same night. I was amazed at how this family was so united and close throughout this project. I’m super honored to have been able to contribute to this project.

Jesse de Leon’s Artist Statement:
To have the privilege to use my gift and passion for this Uvalde project, was humbling. To create this memorial for this angel Rojelio Torres, was life changing. Speaking to his aunt Precious she gave me insight on who he was and what the family envisioned. She spoke of his love for Pokemon cards and playing football with his cousins. He was the life of the party and was always the first on the dance floor! He was a gifted child who was so giving and loved his friends and family.

Maite Yuleana Rodriguez
age: 10
Mural by Ana Hernandez

“We decided to give the mural an oceanic theme since Maite wanted to be a marine biologist. Maite Yuleana Rodriguez was smart, compassionate, loved science, animals, the color green, Attack on Titan and had just taught herself to sew.” -Ana Hernandez

Amerie Jo Garza
age: 10
Mural by Cristina Noriega

"My own daughter Paloma was born only 4 days before Amerie and is also a girl scout, an artist, and a sweet girl who is a friend to everyone. The similarities gutted me in a way that words cannot explain. Painting Amerie and bringing some healing to her family also helped heal my own grief over the unfathomable loss." -Cristina Noriega

Nevaeh Alyssa Bravo
age: 10
Mural by Brittany “Britt” Johnson

Britt Johnson’s Artist Statement:
The mural for Nevaeh Bravo is a collaboration between me (Britt Johnson), Efren “ER” Rebugio, and Nevaeh. One of the first things the family shared with us was Nevaeh's kindred love of painting and drawing. We felt connected to Nevaeh in this way. They provided images of her drawings which included a heart, two birds, a rose, and a handwritten note that reads “I love you.” We knew how important Nevaeh’s drawings were to the family, so we recreated them to be prominent in the background. We also incorporated some of her favorite things like the colors purple and pink, butterflies, softball, and the TikTok symbol. To complement the symbol, there is a comment box that can be used by Nevaeh’s family to write messages to her. In the mural a third bird was added that symbolizes Nevaeh’s two brothers and one sister. The two roses symbolize Mom and Dad. Nevaeh’s portrait is nestled in between both elements to signify the embracement of her family. Curls cascade over her shoulder to show the way she loved to wear her hair. It was an honor to paint for the Bravo family. We are grateful for their kindness and patience throughout the process, and we enjoyed their company while we painted, especially hanging with our dog Charlie. They are always in our thoughts and prayers.

Jalilah Nicole Silguero
age: 10
Mural by Albert “Tino” Ortega

Albert “Tino” Ortega’s Artist Statement:
The subject matter of Jailah Nicole Silguero mural was selected in part for the similarities with my own daughter.
The process of creating the portrait was done in collaboration with Jailah’s family to celebrate her likes and interests.
The halo and glowing light represent a sense of passing and purity. Her family was able to partake in the creation of the mural in hopes to bring a feeling of inclusion in the memorial of their daughter and sister.

Irma Linda and Joe Garcia
Mural by Cease Martinez

Cease Martinez’s Artist Statement:
When researching to do this mural I discovered that Irma LOVED being a teacher and loved her students. I learned that she was a great mother and had been with her high school sweetheart, Joe, coming up on 25 years. Speaking to family and friends, I found out they were practically inseparable. Sadly, this was true even in death. This was the inspiration for painting them in a niche box, often used for devotion or alters. I named it "Amor Eternal" or eternal love. We were blessed to have several of Irma and Joe's friends and family stop by during the process, providing stories of their love.

I wanted to include a quote or scripture on part of the wall space. Their daughter gracefully provided a lyric from one of their favorite songs bringing it all together.

Eva Mireles
Mural by Sandra Gonzalez

Sandra Gonzalez’s Artist Statement:
As a teacher and a muralist, it was important for me to honor the life of a teacher who was passionate about education and died as a hero.

“On the morning of July 23rd, a week after Eva’s mural was painted, I drove up to the mural location and noticed two ladies sitting across from Eva’s mural. I assumed that they were volunteers and approached them. It turned out it was Eva’s best friends, Katie and Lilly. They looked at me and said, “we’re having coffee with Eva”. They shared stories, a particular one about Eva doing Karaoke to Diamonds by Rihanna.” -Monica Maldonado

These murals, as remembrances, also tell the story
of lives violently cut short.
At a memorial to the victims in downtown Uvalde,
a resident expressed her opposition to them.
They’re painful to look at, she explained.
“The families shouldn’t see their kids like that …
they should have seen them grow up.”

The 21 Healing Murals tower over Uvalde’s landscape, greeting all who gaze upon them
with warmth and benevolence.
They aim to provide healing for the families and community through remembrance of the lives taken.
As they honor the victims, they also bear witness to the gun violence that brought about the project,
violence that, two years after the shooting, has continued across the nation.
Ortiz said, “As you walk from one mural to the next,
it’s almost like you’re stitching a wound,”
but, he added,
“Unfortunately, that wound reopens
every time there’s a new shooting.”

One of the country’s deadliest mass shootings,
the Robb Elementary shooting was also one of the greatest law enforcement response failures.
While an 18-year-old former student armed with
an AR-15-style assault rifle stalked the halls and classrooms for 77 minutes, nearly 400 law enforcement officers,
including US Border Patrol agents and state and local police, remained outside the school, even as children called 911 from their classrooms for help.
A Department of Justice report described the response as “cascading failures.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said,
“lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” if law enforcement agencies had followed generally accepted practices and gone immediately into the school
to apprehend the shooter.
As of May 22, families of the students and teachers killed or injured at the school settled a lawsuit with the city of Uvalde for $2 million and are suing
92 officers with the school district,
individual employees,
and
the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Related:
Through Art, Texans Memorialize Victims of Uvalde Shooting June 7, 2022

Google Doodle Shares Artwork by 10-Year-Old Uvalde Shooting Victim July 18, 2022

Abstractions That Epitomize the US’s Inherent Violence
July 24, 2023

Tiffany Hearsey
Tiffany Hearsey is a freelance journalist.
She covers criminal justice and the occasional horror flick. Visit her website at tiffanyhearsey.com.

More by Tiffany Hearsey https://hyperallergic.com/author/tiffany-hearsey/

The murals and artists can all be found
here.

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Joerael / One Down Dog Mural

7/1/2024

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!Murals On The Street!
Often I come across some really nice mural
or hand painted sign out there
that I want to share with you!
Here’s another One…
( ...Down Dog that is!)

One Down Dog Mural
- By -

J o e r a e l

"Working with Joerael is a magical, creative and collaborative experience. He has consistently exceeded anything I could have ever dreamed up. Each time I've expanded my business Joerael has come to make it more beautiful, and each time I am blown away by his creations. His work is intentional and inspiring and it breathes life into otherwise bland spaces. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Joerael on many occasions and look forward to our next collaboration...hopefully in the near future!"
-Jessica Rosen, Founder One Down Dog

Yoga + Fitness in Eagle Rock
At the heart of Eagle Rock is our second studio, nestled between and convenient to Glendale, Glassell Park, Highland Park and Pasadena, the middle child that we love oh-so-much. Our signature ODD graffiti marks the spot and you’ll find a friendly staff member ready to greet you at the end of a long hallway. If a place could make an expression, our Eagle Rock studio would constantly smile.

MORE
- j o e r a e l -
MURALS
Selected murals throughout the US.

"imprinting dimensional states of being"
WASHINGTON,DC 2018

Joerael's epic mural at The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. This mural spans the length of 2,052 square feet and artistically shares the history of the local Piscataway Tribe.
The Piscataway are 'the people where the rivers bend' and call the DC Bay Area their homeland.

This work was created in collaboration with members of the Piscataway Tribe. The mural is in honor of the Piscataway people whose ancestral land is currently the United States capital. This work touches upon the complexities and histories of indigenous activism in the DC bay area. Joerael took his time and made sure to hold himself accountable to in-depth research and interviews with the tribe Sebi and Gabrielle Tayac of the Piscataway tribe. Joerael developed relations and learned about the tribe's roots in activism. Joerael also included in each design the diversity of the tribe and the resilience of survival.

A deep bow of gratitude for Piscataway Tribal members
Sebi Tayac and Gabrielle Tayac.
Their contributions, time, and stories supported manifesting the mural into reality.

Sky Railway
SANTA FE,NM 2020-2021

Dragon and Wolf murals for Sky Railway in Santa Fe.
photos by Micha Gallegos.

CONTACT
Joerael is available for your next project.

“My work is survival, love, history, and soul and my guiding intentions are to use my art to transform and activate spaces and energy – to be part of the mosaic of transformation – a mosaic of folks standing up for justice and inclusiveness in their way and through their gifts.”
explains Joerael...
“I remember clearly as a boy in San Angelo, Texas, watching on television as the Berlin wall came down, and being captured by the vibrancy and ephemerality of the graffiti, and sensing the transformative effect art can have on a moment in time and the people experiencing it. And that single experience has informed how I approach my role as an artist.”
- JOERAEL NUMINA

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Atelier Saint-Luc and Blackwing pencils

6/3/2024

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“I’ve been hanging out with Ian Roberts and his posse over at ‘Atelier Saint-Luc’ recently and we’ve been compositioning and drawing and critiquing and having a great time!
No mater what your medium or genre is, drawing and composition are essential skills to develop, even if its just for thumb-nails and working out ideas or organizing your thoughts in a visual language.” -RQ

Video: Why This Cult ‘$40 Pencil’ Almost Went Extinct

With wax in its core, the Blackwing pencil was said to write faster than its competitors on the market, quickly earning a coveted status among creatives. Disney animators, artists and writers like Steven Sondheim and John Steinbeck added to its reputation. So why did these pencils reselling for anywhere from $40 to $200 almost go extinct?
Watch the Video!

0:00 The story of the Blackwing
1:28 Supply chain
4:12 Why the pencil disappeared
6:14 What’s next for the pencil?
Video from the Wall Street Journal.Style

Thanx to: Deanna Parisi

Here are a few of the drawings I did
with Ian last month!” -RQ

Thanks to Ian Roberts… What a Guy!

https://www.ianroberts.com/
https://www.ianroberts.com/contact/

While your there…scroll down and
Discover his great Youtube videos!

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Happy Link-o de Mayo!!

5/5/2024

3 Comments

Happy Birthday (in Memorium)
to my good friend, mentor, partner,
best-critic and sometime frienamie:

Laurence 'Link' Linkus
born May 5, 1952 passed-away in 2018.

“Link's untimely passing has left many beautiful murals and paintings unfinished...
and unpainted.
It has been a pleasure and an honor
to have worked with such a talented painter and artist. Link taught me, inspired me, and challenged me.
Link kept the bar very high...
well stocked, and very well decorated!
As these images (below and here) show,
Link was an incredibly talented, prolific and dedicated artist. He was versatile and worked in many genre, and in many media.
He leaves behind a powerful body of work that I hope to (continue) documenting and share with you all as best I can.
While Link was pretty good at documenting his work with a camera, he never got around to transferring his photos into pixels for this digital media, and consequently never had a website!
As I scan what we have of Link's portfolio I will add his artwork to this slideshow until I have it all better organized and we have a better way of sharing Link's impressive and masterful artwork.
In respectful and loving memory”
-Roberto Quintana de Foster, WFA

“I miss you Bro!” - your pal ‘sQuint’

3 Comments

Joe Bravo: 'Water is Life' mural

4/1/2024

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‘Water is Life’
mural in Highland Park a community effort

Founded in 1893,
'The Occidental' is the official student-run newspaper of Occidental College in Los Angeles, written, published and distributed for students, faculty, staff, parents and community members.

Joe Bravo, a Highland Park-based artist best known for making art on tortillas, said he hopes to visualize California’s ongoing water crisis by making a mural visible to the public.

Bravo found his love for art while growing up in Calexico, California making figurines with mud and swords with scrap wood. Although he is now retired, Bravo continues to use artwork like “Water is Life” to uplift his community.

According to Bravo, this project has been a community effort from the start. He said there were several community meetings where local residents could give their input on the project; additionally, students from Burbank Middle School and art interns from Rock Rose Gallery helped paint the mural, which is located on the wall of Parkside Laundry.

“Parkside Laundry is perfect because it’s right across from the park,” Bravo said. “Murals are usually on a busy street, or they’re really inaccessible to the viewing public, but here, people can come sit down, have a barbecue and enjoy the artwork. So hopefully it will uplift the community.”
For Bravo, painting murals helps brighten up the concrete community.
“I want it to be a total community involvement, It was a good experience to see different aspects [of] the community [members] who wanted to participate.”

Standing on top of a scaffold in Highland Park on the side of Parkside Laundry on Avenue 63, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and clothes covered with specks of orange, blue and white, artist Joe Bravo applies strokes of green foliage to his mural-in-progress as he talks about his career.

“The Water is Life” mural in the process of being painted in Highland Park in Los Angeles, CA. Nov. 1, 2022. Anna Beatty/The Occidental

"Joe Bravo
is more than just the world's greatest
tortilla artist!"
Written by Cynthia Rebolledo Sep. 21, 2023

"My art is the sum of my life's experiences," the 73-year-old says. He is an accomplished artist many times over: a muralist, a graphic designer, a portrait artist. But what have earned him worldwide attention are his innovations in tortilla art. On large flour tortillas lacquered to preserve them, Bravo paints vivid icons rooted in Mexican heritage: Emiliano Zapata, Che Guevara and the Virgen de Guadalupe. His collections of tortilla art have appeared in local galleries throughout the U.S. and traveled as far as Hong Kong.

Che Guevara, La Virgen de Guadalupe and Emiliano Zapata, acrylic on flour tortillas. Courtesy of Joe Bravo

Using tortillas as a canvas dates back to Bravo's days at Cal State Northridge, when a fortuitous final project for an art class led him on a journey that would become integral to the development of his aesthetic.
Born in San Jose, California, Bravo grew up in the border town of Calexico and spent his childhood crossing the border to Mexicali, where his tías and cousins lived. As a boy with few toys, he constructed slingshots, wood swords and mud figures to keep himself entertained. He moved to Los Angeles County with his family in the early 1960s and attended junior high and high school in the port town of Wilmington.
In college, Bravo joined the Chicano civil rights movement, which he still calls El Movimiento, a distinction that makes it more of a philosophy than mere history. With pieces and installations that were both dynamic and responsive, he joined the wave of artists that documented what was going on. Bravo also served as graphic artist for the student Chicano newspaper, El Popo (first published in 1970 by students concerned about the lack of a Chicana and Chicano perspective in newspapers) and organized the first Chicano art exhibit at CSUN recognized by the art department.
"I like to think that maybe some of my activism contributed towards the change" at the school, Bravo says. Today, CSUN's Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies is the largest of its kind in the country offering all kinds of art classes while examining the identities that inform Chicana visual expression, creative production and cultural activism.

During his time at CSUN, Bravo also had an unconventional art final.
"I had an art project due and I didn't have the money to buy canvas," Bravo says. He had just finished eating breakfast, and his eyes settled on a bag of corn tortillas sitting on the counter. Bravo painted five tortillas with Mayan codices and assembled a hanging mobile. He passed his final but the mobile crumbled to pieces shortly after an encounter with the Santa Ana winds.
After graduating in 1973 with a bachelor's degree, Bravo worked as a commercial graphic designer, freelanced for various advertising agencies and served as art director for Lowrider magazine. In addition to his graphic work, Bravo also painted murals in the late 1970s as an artist-in-residence for the California Arts Council. Among the pieces he worked on: The Wilhall mural at the Wilmington Recreation Center, restoration of The Great Wall of Los Angeles along the L.A. River, and a mural depicting the history of Highland Park that still stands at an AT&T building in the neighborhood.

Bravo eventually reconnected with his tortilla art in 2001 after a conversation with a friend from CSUN. "I remember her saying she thought my college art project was a great political and cultural statement and it got me thinking. I decided to give it another try and started experimenting with different varnishes," he says.
This time, Bravo swapped corn for flour tortillas and went bigger: from 13-inch to 28-inch tortillas. Instead of buying them from a local mercado, he got his tortilla canvases custom-made by Tortilleria San Marcos in Boyle Heights. To prepare them, Bravo singes the flour tortillas over an open flame and applies multiple coats of varnish. The process makes them flexible yet sturdy. He reinforces them by adding a final coat of acrylic, and burlap on the back. The burn marks take on a life of their own, inspiring Bravo's designs.
In recent years, Bravo has devoted more attention to his murals, culminating in large pieces of public art that interweave symbolism and social justice. He aims to preserve and tell stories about the community for future generations. You see it in his Highland Park mural, "Water is Life," with images of trees, bald eagles, and nopales with prickly pears. At the center is Toypurina, an indigenous medicine practitioner that led a rebellion against the San Gabriel Mission in 1785. Even the late P-22 makes an appearance.

"When I get the opportunity to do my own work, especially a mural, I try to put my own passion, opinion and outlook on certain issues into it," Bravo says during a break. "I believe that if God gave us a gift, we're supposed to share it with the rest of the world."
Although he no longer creates much tortilla art –– aside from the occasional commision and his #TortillaTournament appearances –– Bravo's masa mastery runs deep.
When asked what tortilla he prefers to eat, Bravo says without hesitation, "Corn. I like painting on flour but when it comes to eating –– corn. I just like my maíz. It's in my blood."

“I’m just trying to do my part,”
- Joe Bravo

The project is sponsored by:

La Plaza de Cultura y Artes,
501 N Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012
https://lapca.org/

and
LA Council District 14
Councilman Kevin de Leon
https://councildistrict14.lacity.gov/

and
The Highland Park Neighborhood Council.
https://www.highlandparknc.com/what-is-a-neighborhood-council

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Chicano Park Museum, San Diego. Part Dos

3/4/2024

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The History and Future Of The Park...

Chicano Park, located in Barrio Logan, is one of San Diego’s most culturally significant landmarks with a story rooted in collective activism and the power of art.

WHY CHICANO PARK IS ONE OF
SAN DIEGO’S MUST-SEE CULTURAL LANDMARKS
By Maura Fox / San Diego Union-Tribune
APR. 19, 2023

Photo by Howard Lipin

Located beneath Interstate 5 and the on-ramps for the
San Diego-Coronado Bridge, the park was established in 1970 as a result of protests not long after construction of the bridge was completed. Today, it stakes the claim of holding the largest collection of outdoor murals in the world, with more than 100 of them painted on the freeway pillars, depicting messages and images of strength, struggle and community in Indigenous, Mexican and Mexican American history.

“I consider the park to be a sacred space, and I say that because of the rich history behind it, with regards to the many steps and many stories and many activities that have happened here,” said Alberto Pulido, a University of San Diego professor and member of the Chicano Park Steering Committee, which serves as the steward of the park.

Just as the park is connected to the past, it’s also closely linked to the current community, its ongoing activism and its future. There is a newly opened Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center next to the park, and new murals are being painted, with many younger artists rising up to contribute.

Here’s a look at the history and significance of the park, along with its artists, murals and hopes for the future.

History
In the early 1900s, Barrio Logan was part of a larger area known as Logan Heights. Its Mexican and Mexican American population grew as a result of immigration after the Mexican Revolution, as well as a development boom along the waterfront, which led to an increase in job and housing opportunities in the area, according to a historical survey done for the city in 2011.

However, by the 1930s, the Great Depression led to economic instability and Mexican workers faced racism, hostility and deportation. A report examining redlining practices in the 1930s in San Diego found that the area containing what’s now known as Barrio Logan, Logan Heights and Grant Hill was given a “D” letter grade by the Federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, meaning it recommended its lenders refuse to give loans in the area, saying it was “occupied by mixed races, colored, Mexican, lower salaried white race, laborers.”

During and after World War II, the Mexican American community in Logan Heights grew, in some cases because of the Bracero Program bringing in more workers from Mexico. In the 1950s, the neighborhood was rezoned and transformed from a mostly residential area to mixed-use, where metal shops, junkyards and factories were built around homes. Highly industrialized, the neighborhood became “the city’s auto junkyard capital.” Heading into the 1960s, a social and economic protest movement was growing among Mexican Americans, many of whom preferred to use the term Chicanos.

In 1963, the California Department of Transportation built Interstate 5 through Logan Heights, followed by the San Diego-Coronado Bridge construction four years later, effectively cutting the neighborhood in half. The northernmost part was called Logan Heights, with the southern part referred to as Barrio Logan. Thousands of residents, whose homes were in the construction’s path, were forced to move.

The attempted construction of a highway patrol station in the area in 1970 sparked an organizing effort by Barrio Logan residents and Chicano activists, who protested the development, occupying the park for 12 days until an agreement was reached between the community, state officials and the city of San Diego to support the creation of a community park.

Salvador Robert Torres, often referred to as the “architect of the dream,” was the visionary for the park’s design and murals, saying at the time that “Chicano artists and sculptors would turn the great columns of the bridge approach into things of beauty, reflecting Mexican American culture.”

By 1973, mural projects had begun. In 2013, Chicano Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2017 it was established as a National Historic Landmark. Today, the park is technically owned by the California Department of Transportation, though the artists own the murals.

.Chicano Park Named National Historic Landmark
Jan. 11, 2017
“The revolutionary part of the park is that the vehicle of destruction, which was the bridge and the pillars, was redefined by the community and through the creative spirit of art,” Pulido said. “And now it’s ours.”

Prominent Murals And Artists
Over the past 53 years, more than 100 murals and sculptures have been created under the freeway overpasses, with new ones in the works. The pieces depict key moments in Indigenous history, revolutionary struggles and achievements, Chicano identity and important figures like Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo and Emiliano Zapata. Find a map of the murals here.

The first mural painted in the park, in 1973,
is “Historical Mural,” located on Logan Avenue on the side of the I-5 freeway on-ramp. Created by Toltecas en Aztlán, a collective of Chicano artists that also founded the Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park, the mural presents a sweeping history of Chicano culture and the contributions of Spanish, Mexican and Mexican American people.

One of the most well-known murals is “Hasta La Bahia,” translated to “All the way to the bay,” which can be found toward the center of the park overlooking National Avenue. Painted by Victor Ochoa in 1978, the phrase refers to a campaign throughout the 1970s and ‘80s to extend the park to the San Diego Bay.

Ochoa is a pioneer in Chicano Park’s history and community, has painted or contributed to dozens of murals in the park and served on the Chicano Park Steering Committee.

“I paint murals from the attitude of the ‘60s and ‘70s, which is kind of issue-oriented,” Ochoa told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2021. “I want people to be proud of who they are. The history of the community is really important to me.”

Along with “Hasta La Bahia,” Ochoa’s other murals in the park include “Revolución Mexicana,” completed in 1985, and “Brown Image,” a tribute to Mexican American lowrider culture and the newest mural, completed in 2022. The mural was painted using airbrushing techniques with gold metal flakes, traditionally used to paint lowrider cars.

San Diego, California - January 25: Roberto R. Pozos, 60, helps paint a five-story mural called “Brown Image” on a pillar in Chicano Park that features images from car clubs from the 70s on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022 in San Diego, California. Eight artists are airbrushing the piece and using techniques that would typically be used to paint a lowrider car. The pillar is being painted a candy apple root beer color mixed with 30 pounds of metal flake which is about 18 cars worth of material. A fundraiser for the volunteer artists will be held on Feb. 5. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Mario Torero’s “Colossus,” painted in 1975, is another mural that shouldn’t be missed, depicting an Atlas-like figure who seems to be holding up the freeway on-ramp.
Like Ochoa, Torero is one of the park’s original muralists and activists.

Women artists were also critical to the park’s mural development. Yolanda Lopez was an accomplished muralist and advocate for young female artists, including a group called Mujeres Muralistas, who completed the mural “Preserve Our Heritage” in 1977.

Charlotte “Carlotta” Hernandez, an artist and singer, designed the Chicano Park logo, which today resides on a pillar with the phrase “La Tierra Mia,” or “my land.”

New Museum And Educational Opportunities

San Diego, CA - October 08: Community members celebrate the opening of the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022 in San Diego, CA. The opening exhibit is “PILLARS: Stories of Resilience and Self-Determination,” which tell the history of Chicano Park and Logan Heights. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

There is also a rotating gallery to showcase local artists’ work.
The museum has partnered with the Logan Heights Archival Documentation Project, an effort led by Pulido, who has been instrumental in documenting the area’s history with help from students.

The project’s detailed research on key places and moments in Logan Heights history, including the timeless restaurant.
El Carrito and the original Logan Heights library, can be found on the museum website here.

Visiting Chicano Park
Plan to spend at least an hour walking around the 7.4-acre park and admiring the murals, or bring a lunch to sit on the grass or at one of the many tables positioned throughout.
Before going to the park, it’s helpful to know general information about the murals and their significance, so try to stop by the museum first. Other information can be found in this 2015 Chicano Park Murals Documentation Project.

The Chicano Park Steering Committee also leads walking tours through the park for visitors to learn even more.
While a large portion of the park and its murals reside between Logan and National avenues, visitors will also find additional murals in the basketball courts on Logan Avenue, along with a community herb garden. Make time to walk around the surrounding neighborhoods, as well, where there are shops, restaurants, art galleries and more murals painted on gates and the sides of buildings.

The museum is open Friday through Sunday
from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Future Of The Park
Cindy Rocha, Hector Villegas , Patricia Cruz and Cesar Castañeda are among the newer muralists in the park. To paint there, a muralist must first bring a design to the Chicano Park Steering Committee for approval and ensure funding to complete the work.

Cruz, who is also a member of the steering committee, said that the younger generation is aware they are standing on the shoulders of the artists who painted before them in a more “revolutionary” era.

However, the new generation still has issues to contend with in Barrio Logan, Pulido said, citing gentrification concerns and poor air quality. Barrio Logan suffers some of the worst air quality in California, according to regulators, and concerns over how the city responds to pollution in the neighborhood remains a top issue for the community.
“It’s more than murals and pillars,” Pulido said. “What will Chicano Park look like 20 years from now? Will we still have this energy?”

Artists are still painting new murals today.
Mario Chacon, an artist and community advocate,
is currently working on a mural on the southwestern side of the park — but Pulido notes that as less space becomes available, there’s more competition for artists to claim a pillar or location to paint.
From 2016 to 2022, 17 murals were added to the park. Several murals, painted decades ago, have also been restored.

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Eliot Arts Magnet Academy / Art Deco Foyer

2/5/2024

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Hey! There’s a new BOSS in town!
A new Boss Graphics boss that is.
The ‘old’ Boss, Larry Lousen has retired,
just in ‘time’ for the new-Boss, Trinidad Marin, to take over!
Larry is finally going to have all the time he needs
to keep all those CooCoo’s and Banjo’s
running smoothly!
And Trinidad has some BIG shoes to fill!
And as many Re-Paints and Gym Interiors as he can handle!

So here’s the first project I got to work on
with Trinidad and The Crew.
I think The Crew did a great job scaling-up the designs!
And many Thanks to the principal: Benita Scheckel and the amazing Staff at:
Eliot Arts Magnet School!

Here’s the Art Deco Foyer project before:

Foyer entrance to main hallway.

Foyer north wall.

South wall staircase and west exit door.

Here’s the project in progress:

Foyer entrance to main hallway.

Foyer entrance to main hallway and north wall, from staircase.

Foyer from main hall towards exit.

North wall/stairway.

Foyer from main hall towards west exit.

Foyer from main hall towards west exit and north wall.

Foyer entrance to main hallway and north wall, from staircase.

And here’s the finished
Art Deco Foyer!

Foyer entrance to main hallway and north wall, from staircase.

North wall towards exit.

Foyer west wall exit.

Foyer from main hall towards exit.

North wall/stairway.

Charles W. Eliot Arts Magnet Academy!
2184 N Lake Avenue Altadena, CA 91001

Mariachi Band, Costume Design, Ceramics Studio,
Stop Motion Animation and Hollywood Makeup Design
are just a few of the course offerings at PUSD’s first-ever
Arts Conservatory for students at Eliot Arts Magnet middle school. Eliot’s conservatory program currently affords all students in grades 6-8 the opportunity to select
from over 20 courses in the four major arts categories:
Visual Art, Dance, Theatre, and Music.

Here are a few of the other projects I worked on with Benita:

Altadena Arts Magnet Elementary School Library
French Impressionist Murals

Altadena Arts Magnet Elementary School
Dance Room Murals

A message from Benita Scheckel:

Hi Roberto!!!
This is absolutely fabulous. Thank you, my friend.
You are a true artistic genius and I have loved working with you on all the projects.
I recently was promoted to Coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts in Hacienda La Puente USD. I love it so much but miss all my Pasadena friends and students. Here's a photo of me with part of the mural.
Please keep in touch and being your amazing self
xoxo Benita

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‘Duit-On-Luna-Primo-Mon-Dai’

1/8/2024

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A special announcement from
the World Famous Artist:

“As the new title implies, I will now be posting once a Month, on the first Monday... more or less.
I hope you will continue to find my posts interesting.
I know this will be disappointing to my throng of social media followers! But please, get a Grip!!
If you really need more than a monthly dose of ART TALK…Go and check out the Gurney Journey Art Blog.
Even though there is not very much there on murals per-se’
Mr. Gurney posts daily on (most) everything Art.
I guarantee you will not be disappointed!”
Peace and Love -Roberto Quintana, WFA

Roberto is spending more and more time in his studio these days, working on all those silly little easel paintings.
Still, feel free to leave a friendly comment.
Dialogue and praise is encouraged.
Creativity, passion and wonder
should continue to be expected.
‘Bookmark’ this Website/Blog and check back
every now and then,
and don't be shy about sharing your responses.
Politics and personal grievances should be kept to emails.
And please… no Whining!
...and no sales pitches either!
(you can make your own damn blog for that!).
Oh Yes, and... Don’t be too persnickety over my whimsical spelling and creative punctuations either,
my 'Editorial Department' is still not what it used to be…
We are still seriously understaffed these days.
For some time now ‘Research and Development’ here at
Art and Soul Productions have been enjoying showing off all the great work out there we keep finding.
‘Sales’ is still totally against the whole idea!
(“We still fail to see any significant improvement
to the bottom-line!").
‘Marketing’ remains split ("We still need more data").
‘HR’ says it has turned out to be a good way of keeping (what’s left) of ‘The Crew' distracted.
'The Crew' says: ’'We've still got very little else going on…
but will we still get to share more stuff about technique, materials, and equipment?”
'Legal' continues to protest!
(You MUST put a stop to this!!
We strongly advise you to cease and desist from continuing to reveal where you steal all of your great ideas from!)
Although Roberto really does value their legal advice,
he continues to not be moved by their hysterics.
Enjoy!

p.s. -Here is a fun mural project from our archives:

Parrots and Roses Mural
-at-
‘Community Kitchen’
CAFE, BAKERY & FULL ESPRESSO BAR
(Now Closed!)
1399 East Washington
Pasadena 91104

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Chicano Park Museum, San Diego. Part One

1/1/2024

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Chicano Park: EL Parque Chicano
The largest collection of outdoor murals in the world!

Murals adorn the sides of the columns supporting the portion of the San Diego Coronado Bridge in Chicano Park, that is under the bridge, in Barrio Logan. Photographed July 25, 2019, in San Diego, California. The bridge turned 50-years-old on August 3. (Howard Lipin/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

A Park for The People
On April 22, 1970, residents of Logan Heights, in collaboration with student and community activists, interrupted and suspended the construction of a highway patrol station happening on the piece of land the community had previously allocated for a park.
With pressure and commitment the community physically inhabited the land, driving out the construction workers
in a historical phenomena known today as
the Chicano Park Takeover!
This manifestation marked a major victory for a community already carrying the weight of gentrification, militarization, and environmental racism,
yet it also catalyzed what would become an ongoing battle for space inspired by cultural resistance and pride.

Pylons as Canvases
Uniquely, most of the Chicano Park murals have been painted on the pylons that sustain the Coronado Bridge, the very same bridge that displaced many people in Logan Heights with its construction in the late 1960s.
By utilizing the pylons as canvases, artists have reimagined the landscape, branding the space as a site
for cultivation of knowledge and identity.

The Continuous Battle
Although over forty-five years have passed since the historical takeover, the Logan Heights community
—specifically the courageous curators of the park--
keep battling for the space. The city’s continuous brazen efforts to intervene are always met with strong opposition, rooted in paradigms of radical love, emotional connections to the land, la tierra, and self-determination!

Here’s a link where you can flip through the 2015 edition of the Chicano Park Mural Documentation Project.

Dr. Alberto Pulido and his students and co-workers
at the University of San Diego, in consultation with
the Chicano Park Steering Committee,
worked to update documentation of Chicano Park,
including this 2023 update of the Chicano Park Murals map.
A huge thank you to all!

(FOR PERSONAL NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY)

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“The Slim Princess” by Robert Thomas, John Knowlton, and Richard Perkins

12/25/2023

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Fifteen of Bishop’s Murals and Their Stories

“The Slim Princess”
by Robert Thomas, John Knowlton and Richard Perkins. 2000
Fendon’s Furniture store, north wall. 13' x 68'

This mural depicts Laws, a thriving railroad depot and community, just outside of Bishop circa 1909.
The railroad line, called the "Slim Princess" by the local population, was a major transportation resource until Highway 395 was paved and improved.
The depot was built in 1883, and served the Owens Valley until April 30, 1959, when the line from Laws to Keeler was abandoned. Laws is now home to:

"Laws Railroad Museum"
175 East Pine Street, Bishop, Ca

Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior, and designated by the State of California as Historical Landmark # 953, the Laws Railroad Museum and Historical Site is not just another train museum.
Located on the site of the Laws Railroad station and rail yard, the land, 1883 depot and other buildings, and the last train, were donated to Inyo County and the City of Bishop by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1960.
At the time that the railroad shut down its operations, the village of Laws which had grown up around the rail yard had disappeared. That village has been recreated by moving in historic buildings from around the Owens Valley.

And… "The Mule Museum"

The original railroad town of Laws had a depot of course, and the Station Agent’s House at Laws has been there since 1883. It did not have a mule barn. The Carson and Colorado Railroad in fact largely took the place of the mule freighters who hauled ore from the Owens Valley mines for more than a decade before steam locomotives appeared on the horizon. But before trains, mules ruled. And a very good job they did indeed.
The Mule Museum at Laws is the culmination of work by the Death Valley Conservancy and others dedicated to the history of the role of mules in the colorful and complex story of Owens Valley history. Bishop, “Mule Capitol of the World,” has hosted the Mule Parade each Memorial Day weekend since 1970, but even many locals are unaware of the astonishing and extensive role mules have played in our local history and culture.
In Owens Valley’s 20 th Century, Mules have hauled equipment and supplies to build the aqueduct to divert water to the City of the Angels, brought materials for the South Lake and Lake Sabrina dams, and hauled construction components for wagon and automobile roads, electrical, telegraphic, and telephone lines. Surrounded by public lands, we have employed mules to build trails for the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service, and to promote pack trips for tourists visiting these lands. We would not be who we are without the help of these four-footed beasts...

AND…
the “Bottle House”
Whisky, Tea, and Snake Oil... and Fine Dining Too!

The newly opened Bottle House at LAWS is a must-see addition to Inyo County’s Western History. The exhibit in its present form is much more than a collection of colorful glass bottles. The current presentation displays shape, color, and form in the evolution of glass bottles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Changes in the techniques of bottle- making: blown, molded, or combined approaches, are also evident if one knows what to look for.

If you thought this was a dead-end for FASCINATING ART,
Let me assure you, this is actually a perfect segue
to my latest series of paintings!
Check out my ‘Vessels’Vessel Series series HERE!

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Michelangelo, Underground Graffiti Artist!

12/18/2023

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A Secret Room in a 16th-Century Italian Chapel, Where Michelangelo Hid—and Drew—for Months, Opens to the Public!

by Sarah Cascone, October 31, 2023

Michelangelo is believed to have made the rarely seen drawings while in hiding after the pope sentenced him to death.
Guidebooks to the Italian city of Florence have long noted that the Basilica of San Lorenzo is home to a secret room believed to have been decorated by Michelangelo while the famed Renaissance master was in hiding from the pope for two months in 1530. Now, the chamber, which is part of the the Museum of the Medici Chapels (itself one of the fives sites of the city’s Bargello Museums), will be open to the public for the first time.

“The completion of the works on the new exit and the adaptations to align… with safety regulations, will allow the opening of Michelangelo’s Secret Room—an extraordinarily fascinating place, but extremely delicate due to… the narrow space… and… the need to protect the charcoal drawings found on the walls,” Massimo Osanna, director general of museums in Italy, said in a statement.
The stunning drawings of the Stanza Segreta, or Secret Room, were rediscovered in 1975. That’s when Paolo Dal Poggetto, then director of the Museum of the Medici Chapels, tasked restorer Sabino Giovannoni with trying to clean part of the walls of a narrow chamber beneath the church’s mausoleum, which had been designed by Michelangelo in 1520.
The corridor, measuring about 32 feet long, 10 feet wide, and eight feet tall, had been used it to store coal, until it had been sealed shut some 20 years prior. It was accessible only by narrow stairway beneath a trap door that had been concealed beneath a wardrobe amid a pile of unused furniture and decor.

The initial plan was to potentially create a new tourist entry and exit point from the museum. But what Giovannoni found changed everything. Hidden under two layers of plaster, he soon realized, the walls were covered in large-scale charcoal and red chalk sanguine drawings executed with the confidence and ease of a master draftsman.
“The moment you enter that room you simply are speechless,” Paola D’Agostino, director of the Bargello Museums, told the New York Times, adding that as your eyes adjust to the low light “you start seeing all the different drawings and all the different layers.”
But why would Michelangelo have been sequestered in this subterranean space, with just a single window letting in light from the street above?
At the time, the artist’s main patrons, the Medici family, had just returned from exile, having been overthrown by a populist revolt in 1527. Because Michelangelo had worked on behalf of the republican government, supervising the city’s fortifications, Pope Clement VII—a member of the family—had sentenced him to death.

Hiding beneath the basilica was a way for Michelangelo to lay low until he was back in the pope’s good graces. Fortunately, the Medicis ended up forgiving Michelangelo about two months later, lifting the death sentence and allowing him to leave his (freshly decorated) hiding place to resume work on the family’s tombs at the basilica.
Most scholars are in agreement that the chamber’s sketches appear to be the work of Michelangelo.
If you want to judge for yourself, be forewarned that there will still only be limited access to the Secret Room. The museum is making just 100 tickets—priced at €32 ($34), including access to the Medici Chapels—available for each week, with 15 minute slots for groups of four. There is a 45-minute gap between each visit, to limit the works’ exposure to light.

Sarah Cascone
Senior Writer
Sarah Cascone is a senior writer for artnet News, where she has worked since its 2014 launch. She is the co-founder of Young Women in the Arts, and was previously on staff at Art in America. A native of Northport, New York, she went to Fordham University in the Bronx, graduating magna cum laude from the honors program with a double major in visual art and history.

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Faux Finishes, Part 4c: Natural Surfaces

12/11/2023

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Here's another great book from the 'Surfaces' series...

Natural Surfaces
Visual Research for Artists,
Architects, and Designers
by Judy A. Juracek

The photographs catalog images of nature used in art and design, with detailed views of natural elements, plant portraits, and pictures of landscape installations, gardens, and scenic vistas.
Horticultural pictures are captioned as to botanical and common names. Images are coded and cross-referenced in the index and on the CD-ROM, making the book a compact picture file for illustrators, landscape architects, designers, and graphic artists.
With an illustrated glossary, resource sections, and interviews with professionals in landscape design and botanical illustration, this is a great book for students.

Over 1,200 high-quality color photos of the natural world,
in print and on CD-ROM with printable TIFF files.

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Tool-Hack / Trompe L’Oeil Brick

12/4/2023

2 Comments

Here’s a cool Painting-Hack-Tool
and what I did with it!

I was out cleaning and re-organizing my Studio-On-Wheels the other day, and I came across this great tool I made for a trompe l’oeil project a few years back, buried under my yard-sticks, metal rulers and spirit levels, beneath my wooden planks, next to my light stands and tripods.

I needed to paint a four-story high facade of ‘bricks’ on the stucco surface of an elevator tower, to match the existing facade of a Gothic-style building.

So I cannibalized a plastic handle from somewhere and duct-taped it onto a long plastic spirit-level that had a ruler on it and “Voe-Wall-ahh!!” I had the perfect tool for the job! Light-weight, easy to handle, and easy to adjust on the wall, and versatile as wHell!!

So I took a load of pictures of the existing architecture…

…and re-created architectural elements for the newly finished (stuccoed) elevator tower on the new building.

In order to enhance the illusion of height of the tower I wanted to make the ‘bricks’ get smaller and smaller as they went higher and higher. But I didn’t want to take the time, nor was I enthusiastic about measuring-out all those brick-rows or snapping all those lines to keep them all parallel and straight!

Since I was working off of a awing-stage, secured from the top of the building, I needed to work my way down adjusting the height of each row of ‘bricks’ as I moved down the building and I needed each layer to be parallel with the last, as I made my way to the bottom of the tower.

I had already ‘pounced' the cartoon patterns I made in the studio...

…and I painted the architectural elements and the textured color-fields of the aged-facade.

All I had left to do was to paint the mortar between the ‘bricks’ and their shadows and high-lights, and the faded darks and lights of the old brick-pattern as I made my final pass down
the wall.

Here’s a link to a slideshow of the ‘Making-of’ the project.

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‘Duit-On-Mon
-Dai-Luna-Prime’

  Roberto has been pestering the ‘Marketing’ staff here at Art and Soul for some time now to get together with ‘Research and Development’ to come up with a fun way for him to share all the great work out there of all the many other talented muralists and artists he's been "influenced by" over the years. ‘Sales’ was totally against the idea! ("How could that possibly improve the bottom-line?!"). ‘Marketing’ remains split, as usual ("We need more data"). ‘R&D’ thought it might be a fun way to "show off a little", and to showcase all those great ideas they keep finding out there on the internet. ‘HR’ said it might be a good way to keep 'The Crew' distracted ("Since they are all so bored since Covid hit, and Roberto is spending more and more time in his studio working on all those silly little easel paintings").
'The Crew' said: ’'Sure, We've got nothing else going on …but only if we get to share stuff about technique, materials, and equipment." ‘Receivables’ said: "It obviously won’t make more work for us, so why not!". 'Legal' said: "No Way! You are NOT going to reveal where you steal all your ideas from!" (Although Roberto values their legal advice, He rarely listen’s to their hysterics anyway). So... here we are! Welcome!

‘Duit-On-Mon-Dai-Luna-Prime’
     "As the title implies, I will post once a Month (on the first Monday, more or less). Feel free to leave a family friendly comment. Dialogue and praise is encouraged. Creativity, passion and wonder should be expected. Politics and personal grievances hopefully kept to private emails. And please… no Whining! and no sales pitches either (you can make your own damn blog for that).
   I expect to start becoming a little more savvy with all this social media stuff, but for now ‘Bookmark’ my website and check back every once in a while. I hope you will find it interesting. Don’t be too persnickety over my whimsical spelling and creative punctuations either, my Editorial Department is not what it used to be… I am seriously understaffed these days."
Peace and Love...
-Roberto Quintana, WFA

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