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

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.

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)"