October 20, 2022

New EL MAC prints: 'Totlazonantzin'


New print release this Friday, October 21st. Purchase at http://elmac.art

Sale opens Friday @10am PST
Print details:
"Totlazonantzin"
Signed, titled, and numbered by the artist.
Hand-pulled screenprints made with Andres Zavala in Boyle Heights, California. Serigraphs printed using five colors, with a few thin layers of clear ink over some of the linework.
Editions I-V printed on soft, acid-free, 100% cotton, 300 gsm, German-made Hahnemühle paper.
(Editions VI + VII printed on colored Italian-made Magnani paper)
21in x 27in paper size
(18.5in x 23.5in printed area)

There are seven different color editions of this print:

"Totlazonantzin":
edition of 40
orange and turquoise
$450

"Totlazonantzin II":
edition of 34
grayscale
$500

"Totlazonantzin III":
edition of 23
purple and blue
$550

"Totlazonantzin IV":
edition of 19
grayscale (inverted)
$600

"Totlazonantzin V":
edition of 12
dark blue and peach (inverted)
$750

"Totlazonantzin VI":
edition of 12
orange, light turquoise and indigo
printed on cream paper
$750

"Totlazonantzin VII":
edition of 12
all blue tones
printed on light blue paper
$750

Artist's statement about the work:

Totlazonantzin translates to "our beloved mother" in Nahuatl, and can be seen in the Nican Mopohua ("Here It Is Told"), the first recorded account of the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, written in the mid-1500s and first published in 1649.
In my own experience growing up in the southwestern US, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was very familiar and seemingly ever-present. She could be seen at home and in the homes of friends, inside churches and on the outside of liquor stores, sometimes accompanied by tough-looking Old English letters or flowery script on clothing, blankets, lowriders, etc. One of my favorite t-shirts I wore in the late '90s had an image of Our Lady carrying an injured or dying cholo underneath the phrase "mi vida está en tus manos(my life is in your hands)". Almost a century earlier she'd adorned the banners of Zapata's revolutionary peasant armies, and a century before that was on Hidalgo's banners fighting for independence from Spain. In the words of Octavio Paz, she is "the consolation of the poor, the shield of the weak, the help of the oppressed". The icon of La Guadalupana can represent, among other things, the idea of a celestial and loving maternal figure, a comforting presence both human and cosmic, natural and supernatural. As a feminine counterbalance to the patriarchal emphasis of much of Western religion, she is our heavenly Mother, la Madre del Cielo.
I think of the depth of the love between myself and my own mom, and the love between my son and his mama, and I see the imagery of Nuestra Madre/Our Mother as carrying some sense of that kind of love. As an artist I do believe that 'beauty will save the world', and there's great beauty and poetry in this enduring, popular celebration of divine motherhood. I painted this humble interpretation of the iconic image with reverence and sincerity, and a desire for it to transmit some of the love that went into it and the motherly love it symbolizes.

February 21, 2022

New EL MAC prints: 'All Shall Be Well'


New print release this Wednesday, February 23rd. Purchase at http://elmac.net
Sale opens Wednesday @10am PST

Print details:
"All Shall Be Well"
Signed, titled, and numbered by the artist.
Hand-pulled screenprints made with Andres Zavala in Boyle Heights, California. Serigraphs printed using four colors, with four thin layers of clear ink over the darkest linework.
Printed on acid-free, 100% cotton, 320 gsm, USA-made Coventry Rag paper.
27in x 22in paper size 
(24in x 19in printed area)

There are four different color editions of this print:

"All Shall Be Well"
edition of 27
red over cream
$450

"All Shall Be Well II"
edition of 26
dark red over light red
$500

"All Shall Be Well III"
edition of 26
dark grey over light grey
$500

"All Shall Be Well IV"
edition of 25
dark blue over light blue
$600

Artist's statement about the work:

"The title of these prints, All Shall Be Well, comes from English mystic and theologian Julian of Norwich, who at the age of thirty in May of 1373 had a series of visions while seriously ill and seemingly close to death that she took to be revelations from God. After recovering she wrote about the experience, while devoting the rest of her life to spiritual contemplation as an anchoress willingly confined to a small room adjoined to a church, and providing spiritual counsel to the public from that room through a small window. Her text, Revelations of Divine Love, is the earliest known writing in English by a woman.

This book includes a number of celestial reassurances that 'all shall be well' through an all-encompassing and everlasting universal love. Some of these parts could sound like cheerful platitudes if taken out of context, but it's important to consider that Julian lived through a violent time of wars and suffering, when over a third of Europe's population died from the plague. So things were far from being well back then, but this remarkable theologian and mystic sought to share her profound conviction that there is a force of love surrounding us greater than any suffering and despair, that love is the meaning of life, and through this love, all shall be well. 

I hope that in some small way my art, and recollection of this message, might also carry a little bit of that love.


'And thus our good Lord answered all the questions and doubts I could put forward, saying most comfortingly, ‘I may make all things well, I can make all things well and I will make all things well and I shall make all things well; and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.’

-Julian of Norwich(1343-1416)

Revelations of Divine Love, chapter 31(long text)"