New EL MAC prints: 'Mystical Rose'

New print release this Friday, August 18th. Purchase at http://elmac.art

Sale opens Friday @10am PST
Print details:
"Mystical Rose"
Signed, titled, and numbered by the artist.
Hand-pulled screenprints made with Andres Zavala in Boyle Heights, California. Serigraphs printed using seven colors, with a few thin layers of clear ink over some of the linework.

Editions I, II, and V printed on archival + acid-free, 100% cotton, 300 gsm, Saunders Waterford paper made by St. Cuthbert's Mill in England.

Editions III + IV printed on colored, archival + acid-free, 100% cotton, 300 gsm, Pescia paper made by Magnani in Italy
21in x 27in paper size
(18.5in x 23.5in printed area)

There are five completely different color editions of this print:

"Mystical Rose":
edition of 40
reds and blues
$475

"Mystical Rose II":
edition of 34
oranges and greens
$525

"Mystical Rose III":
edition of 25
grays on cream paper
$575

"Mystical Rose IV":
edition of 25
blues on light blue paper
$575

"Mystical Rose V":
edition of 17
gold (oranges and yellows)
$650

Artist's statement about the work:

The rose, symbolic of love and beauty, as well as the transience of life and the material world, has long been considered the 'queen of flowers'. 'Mystical Rose' is also a poetic title for the Blessed Mother. Painting this image earlier this year was an expression of love and gratitude, and a way of processing the passing of my own beloved mother, who helped shape my approach to life, love and beauty.

In a 1964 interview the legendary jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams said "I am praying through my fingers when I play…I get that good 'soul sound', and I try to touch people's spirits." 

I was instilled with a similar understanding, because art-making can sometimes be a form of prayer—a meditative, devotional practice of creation and connection, where if the work is soulful at all it might touch some spirits. I hope that this simple image might also touch some spirits.

New EL MAC prints: 'El Obrero'

New print release this Saturday, February 25th. Purchase at http://elmac.art

Sale opens Saturday @10am PST
Print details:
"El Obrero"
Signed, titled, and numbered by the artist.
Hand-pulled screenprints made with Tony Clough at Serio Press in
Pasadena, California. Serigraphs printed using 11 colors.
Printed on acid-free, 100% cotton, 330 gsm, Italian-made Revere paper.
33in x 26in paper size
(30in x 22.5in printed area)

There are three different color editions of this print:

"El Obrero":
edition of 62
warm colors over black base
$500

"El Obrero II":
edition of 26
warm colors over dark blue base
$600

"El Obrero III":
edition of 6
warm colors over light blue base
$750

Artist's statement about the work:

These prints are adapted from an acrylic painting that I worked on over the last two years. The image was inspired by a protestor I saw at an immigrant and worker rights march many years ago. It follows a long tradition of Via Crucis/Path of Sorrows imagery in devotional western art, but I also saw it as a meditation on labor and mutuality.
I was raised with a sort of philosophy of work, where art making and creative labor can be a kind of prayer, where there can be beauty in striving to become better at whatever we do and in the giving of oneself in service to others. Love, beauty, and work—all can be connected.
We are, nearly all of us, workers in some form or another, but that commonality gets overshadowed so often by cultural, racial, or various identity issues. Despite all our increasing digital connectedness we seem to be further separated and isolated in many ways. When we look at the world today and see that despite all the advancements much of our global family still suffers to some degree or another from poverty, exploitation, marginalization. Power and wealth continue to concentrate among a tiny few, while working people as a group steadily fall further into precarity. This is a trend that does not help build a world where it is easier for people to live or to love each other.
Just before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated he was helping striking sanitation workers, and in his last speeches he spoke of the dignity of labor and the importance of solidarity with other working people, of a kind of "dangerous unselfishness" described in the parable of the Good Samaritan. And what is dangerous unselfishness if not self-sacrificing love?
"To work to increase our love for God and for our fellow man (and the two must go hand in hand), this is a lifetime job. We are never going to be finished. Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear each other's faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others.”
-Dorothy Day