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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Visual Art, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 9 of 9
1. Adventures in Multicultural Kid & Teen Lit

starry.jpg

This weekend an “earth-shaking” literature event is taking place: Reading the World X, a conference dedicated to multicultural literature education, held in San Francisco, CA at USF. I say earth-shaking because my lovely neighboring city of San Francisco, is rumbling with the footsteps of attendees from all over CA and other states, who have gathered together to celebrate, educate and share with one another—a wealth of voices in multicultural literature. Guest speakers include: Ashley Bryan, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alma Flor Ada, Leslie Tryon, Laurence Yep, Sarah Ellis, Peter Sís, Rita Williams Garcia, Jack Zipes and Doris Orgel.

I’m honored to participate as a presenter my first year at this event. Today, I’m putting on a workshop titled From Hawaiian Talk Story to Printed Page. I’ll be leaving shortly and will update this post with stories, updates and hopefully, pictures. Stay tuned…

The above image is from the picture book, Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei by Peter Sís, which graced this year’s Reading the World X posters and promotional materials.

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2. The Writing (and Drawing) On The Wall

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Peter Sís tells an evoctive, multi-layered tale of growing up behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia in his picture book, The Wall. I couldn’t put this book down even after it turned dark and I had to read with just the inside car lights on. (I brought the picture book along on an errand, hoping to squeeze it into my day–which I did!)

In the car’s dim lighting, I learned how the seemingly innocuous, yet twisted schooling of the boy, mounted up to a lifestyle of paranoia and fear. He hears of a relative being thrown into prison for planning to defect to the West. His parents no longer speak freely in front of him and his sister for fear of being ratted on by them. However, the boy’s internal walls, erected and reinforced by Soviet society, begin to crumble long before the Berlin wall does, thanks to his love of drawing and hunger for artistic expression.

Sís captures the flavor of youth’s innocence amid sordid world views through stunning pen and ink illustrations, graced with sensitive, carefully-placed color washes. Read this book and relish the visuals, but take time to read the timelines at the beginning and end of the book. Much more than a memoir, it summons a fresh take on Communism and the Cold War. Other reviews on The Wall can be found here (must sign into the NY Times) and here.

I look forward to hearing Mr. Sís speak, along with other children’s literature luminaries, at Reading The World X, a multicultural literature conference held next month at USF–it promises to be an enriching event. I’ll be an attendee, as well as, presenting insights on Hawaiian storytelling. Stay tuned!

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3. Illustration Friday: Soar

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When my son was a toddler, he’d get super excited when we included peas in his meal. He called them “balls” and he’d throw them around the kitchen. He would also shake, rattle and roll–practically blast off–in his high chair whenever he played with…I mean ate…his food. This illo (a mix of ink and colored pencil) was a drawn a while ago when he was 1.5 years old. He is now 15. You do the math.

Cheers! May you soar with your dreams (and soar in your dreams) in 2008!

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4. Create a Virtual Snowflake

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Hey, I made a virtual snowflake! I went to one of the best online artsy crafty sites around–it’s fun and relaxing, sophisticated yet simple to use. It allows redo’s, previews, downloading and saving as a photoshop or .eps file. My snowflake was modified in photoshop using the gradient tool (in the background layer) which I tweaked with the sponge filter.

Create your own snowflake here.

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5. Bright, Shiny, Festive Things

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Love things that sparkle? I know I’m not the only one who does. The holidays bring out the sparkle bug in all of us. Think of all the people who flock to view those overly-decorated blinking homes on display during the holidays. On a recent trip to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, we (my family and I) saw a gigantic whirligig sculpture from a distance–a landmark for The American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM).

Trekking toward the whirligig, we came upon a mirrored tree marvel (top photo). It was comprised of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mosaic mirrors with colored plastic and glass embellishments along its trunk, base and “branches.” Hanging delicately off the tree branches were dangly mirrors of assorted shapes and sizes which caught the afternoon sun at the perfect angle, setting off a mini light show that bounced and danced off the sidewalk, the street and us!

We entered the museum, turbo-charged for more delightful discoveries. (AVAM is incredible. A must-see next time you’re in the Baltimore-Washington DC area.)

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Check out the cool up-close, lovely details. The name of the sculptor TBA (as soon as I find out).

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Here’s to home-grown shiny and festive. Promise not to send PETA after my father-in-law? Paul grew up hunting the wilds of Chesapeake Bay (pre-suburbia) and this deer head, a gift from his brother, hangs in the family room. Paul’s decorating-diva spirit definitely got the best of the deer–the lights, beer cans and a blinking doodad on its nose–so not Martha Stewart!

Paul strung up even more colored lights along with his hand-crafted contraption of pine cones and beer cans placed on a retro beer-tab chain hung along the walls and ceilings of the room. Can you imagine him on reality TV: Straight Former Hunter-Chemist with a “Queer Eye?Not! Well, at least, he can express bright, shiny and festive!

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6. DeLaTorre and a Chicago Feast for the Eyes



Artist Luis DeLaTorre and Francisco Toledo in Oaxaca


Luis DeLaTorre is an artist in constant motion translating through the language of colors, shapes and shadows his experience of being Mexican-American in the 21st century and the dualities of living between these two worlds. Luis DeLaTorre was born in McAllen, TX 1969 and raised in the states of Jalisco and Nayarít, Mexico. His mother migrated with Luis and his two older brothers to the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago.

DeLaTorre began using art as a coping mechanism to understand his new surroundings and fill the void of having been transplanted from the place that he had always known as home. The art work will later took on a life of it’s own incorporating elements of time, history, geography creating universal themes affecting us all such as war, spiraling economies and the commercialization of humanity.


While in high school DeLaTorre was inspired by the paintings of artists such as Salvador Dali, David Alfaro Siqueiros and comic book illustrators Alan Lee and Bill Sienkiewicz. It was then that he decided to pursue an education in art. After developing his art skills he enrolled at the American Academy of Art where he had the opportunity to study under Master Watercolorist Irving Shapiro and earn his degree in Fine Art.


DeLaTorre’s art is exhibited frequently in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. He recently received a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. This fall he has been commissioned to do two murals one at Spry Elementary School and one at Columbia Explorers Elementary School. He will also be participating in two group shows one at Neleh Gallery in Chicago and the Owings -Dewey Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His artwork is currently in museum and private collections.


A huge part of his creative process is experimentation and constantly learning new things. DeLaTorre enjoys collaborating with artists of all genres. In the fall of 2006 DeLaTorre created visual elements for a Teatro Vista production and in 2005 included an enormous backdrop mural commissioned by Luna Negra Dance Theatre for a performance at the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance. His work has also been displayed at the Día De Los Muertos exhibit at The National Museum of Mexican Art. DeLaTorre has been involved in gilding restoration work at the historic Auditorium Theatre, the Illinois and Iowa State Capital Buildings and participated in the Frank Lloyd Wright House “Wing Spread” restoration project in Racine, WI.

DeLaTorre is committed to art in schools engaging kids to focus their energy on their own creativity. He is an advocate of artistic projects that enrich them and keep their creativity focused. He frequently participates as a guest speaker in Chicago Public Schools to encourage the exploration of the arts. In 2005 he also did a mosaic mural created for the Columbia Explorer Elementary School. The mural was done with children from the Yollocalli Youth Museum (a initiative of the MFACM).

DeLaTorre has also implemented an artist apprentice program in conjunction with the Big Picture H.S. in Chicago that includes the participation of two students a year. In the future he plans to create a scholarship program for young artists, and help implement more arts programs into inner-city schools.
Check out DeLaTorre's new blog you can keep up with whats happing at the studio and read about the process the artist goes through in creating the paintings.

SAVE THE DATES!
Come Celebrate Chicago Artist Month!

October 5, 2007
Opening Reception
6pm to 10pm

Looking for a way to CELEBRATE Chicago Artist Month? Celebrate with us! You can come and mingle with art lovers, meet the artists and learn about the INCREDIBLE work being produced in the Bridgeport neighborhood. There will be a variety of incredible work hanging on walls and easels. EXCITING NEW works featured by DeLaTorre, Cleeland, Gama, Noyes, Brasch, Ingold and Wyzensagel. DeLaTorre’s Oil paintings on richly prepared wood panels and watercolor portraits will have you spell bound. Runs thru Oct. 31 by appointment.

Eastbank Artist Group Exhibit
DeLaTorre Fine Art Studio
1200 W 35th Street – 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60609
773-927-7030
http://www.DeLaTorreArts.blogspot.com


Saturday, October 6, 2007
Opening Reception
Time: 6 to 9pm

Abstract Global Communities brings together four artists from differing backgrounds whose creative talents collectively represent our world community. The collective creativity of these artists represents the global concept of art without borders or boundaries. Come to this delightful gallery housed in a Frank Lloyd Wright gem in the Bronzeville neighborhood and Indulge your art craving with the rich layers and succulent colors of DeLaTorre’s newest work. You can be one of the first to see the unveiling of his painting “An Ode To Hillary” oil on canvas.

Abstract Global Communities/Neleh Galleries International
Chicago Artist Month Group Show
Opening Reception
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Time: 6 to 9pm
3219 S. Calumet Avenue
Chicago, IL 60616
http://www.nelehgalleries.com

Friday, October, 26 2007

Día de los Muertos Group Exhibit
DeLaTorre’s art is on the move! If you happen to be in Santa Fe stop in and check out this fabulous exhibit at the Owings-Dewey Fine Art gallery. This exhibit will feature DeLaTorre’s take on this traditional Día de los Muertos holiday. Over the past twenty years the gallery has exhibited thousands of accomplished works by many of America's finest painters and exploring a variety of historical and contemporary themes.

Día de los Muertos Group Exhibit Owings-Dewey Fine Art / North 120 East Marcy Street Friday, October, 26 2007 Santa Fe, NM 87501 http://owingsdewey.com

Thursday, November 1, 2007
Opening Reception
This year, DeLaTorre dedicates his ofrenda to the U.S. Constitution raising questions on the contemporary and historical role of this country. The work emerges from subconscious inspired images painted on panels drenched in thick hand-made gesso resulting in glazes and paint integral to the artwork.


Thursday, November 1,
Opening Reception Dia de Los Muertos Group Exhibit Latino Arts, UCC 1028 S. 9th Street Milwaukee, WI 53204 latinoartsinc.org New Mural Commission! Columbia Explorer Elementary

DeLaTorre will be creating a mural that will be 168” X 288” and will have three layers and images relating to hope and the ability to rise above faceless crowds and imagine the endless possibilities through the arts and education. Unveiling TBA.

DeLaTorre Arts Studio

1200 West 35th Street - 3rd Floor
Chicago, IL 60608

Tel: 773-927-7030

or e-mail us at:
[email protected]
or
[email protected]

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More about our friends

The El Paso Times ran a profile of Gustavo Arellano written by EPT's book editor:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/living/ci_7105135

Also, Rigoberto Gonzalez reviewed Javier O. Huerta's new book, "Some Clarifications y Otros Poemas" (Arte Público Press, $10.95 paperback):

http://www.elpasotimes.com/living/ci_7105139

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More Raúl Niño news:

After a long hiatus, it looks like Bloga friend, poet Raúl Niño will be very busy promoting Book of Mornings. Here's what's on tap in October here in Chicago. Raúl sent me a couple of quotes in his press release, and they are too good not to list.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
W. H. Auden

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Joseph Brodsky

October 17, Wednesday, at the Book Cellar, 4736-38 North Lincoln Avenue, at 7PM
On this evening of a "Local Author Night" -- it's reading with recently published writers Josh P. McClary, Lawrence Santoro, Renee Rosen and Mary Kinzie. This is a wonderful independent book shop, located in Lincoln Square, one well worth supporting. After all they serve wine by the glass, how many book stores can claim to do that?

October 23, Tuesday, at the Lincoln Park Branch Library, 1150 West Fullerton Avenue, at 7PM

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More News

First Macho feature at PROYECTO LATINA

Monday, Oct. 15 @ Tianguis Bookstore, 2003 S. Damen
(across from the Blue line stop),
7:00 p.m. Free admission.

In honor of Teatro Luna's new Machos production, Proyecto Latina will present their first ever male feature, the wonderful Paul Martinez Pompa. The fabulous Diana Pando steps up as mistress of ceremonies for the evening. As always there will be Chisme box and open-mic.

Paul Martinez Pompa studied at the University of Chicago and at Indiana University, where he served as a poetry editor for Indiana Review. His chapbook, Pepper Spray, was published by Momotombo Press in 2006. His work has also appeared in the journals Borderlands and Barrow Street and the anthologies The Wind Shifts and Telling Tongues. Currently, he teaches at Triton College in River Grove, Illinois.

(Paul was the great poet who read at the inaugural Palabra Pura in 2006).

AND

The 17th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Conference on Black Literature and Creative Writing

Fine Fury: Celebrating Gwendolyn Brooks at 90

October 17-20 2007 Chicago State University

As for that other kind of kindness,
if there is milk it must be mindful.
The milkofhumankindness must be mindful
as wily wines.
Must be fine fury.
Must be mega, must be main.

-- from Young Afrikans (of the furious) by Gwendolyn Brook
s


Featuring:
Sonia Sanchez
Martin Espada
Ed Roberson
Tayari Jones
Donda West
Cheryl Clarke
Julius E. Thompson
Haki R. Madhubuti
Sterling Plumpp
Angela Jackson
Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Margo Crawford
Camille Dungy
Jacqueline Jones LaMon
Evie Shockley
Adrian Matejka
Gregory Pardlo
Randall HortonM
Kelly Norman Ellis
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Bayo Ojikutu
Kalisha Buchanon

Workshops by Martin Espada and others. For registration information visit www.csu.edu/gwendolynbrooks or call 773-995-3750.

AND

PALABRA PURA: PETER RAMOS and BERNARDO NAVIA

Wednesday, October 17
California Clipper, 1002 N. California
(corner of California and Augusta), Chicago

Doors open 8:00 p.m. Reading begins 8:30 p.m
Free admission. 21 and over show. (Don't forget your i.d.)

PETER RAMOS's poems appear in Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse, and Poet Lore. In 2000, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The author of several chapbooks, including Short Waves (White Eagle Coffee Store Press 2003), Ramos is an assistant professor of English at Buffalo State College where he teaches courses in American literature.

BERNARDO NAVIA was born in Chile. As the oldest of four brothers in a Protestant missionary family, he had the opportunity to live and travel in many cities in Chile, as well as throughout diverse countries in Latin America. He has published essays, poems and stories in numerous journals and periodicals in Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Columbia, and Chicago, especially in the periodical, contratiempo. In 2000, a book of his poetry was published, Doce muertes para una resaca (Madrid: Betania 2000), and he is presently in negotiations for the publication of a novel. Bernardo Navia is an assistant professor at DePaul University.

Palabra Pura is supported by The Joyce Foundation, Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and the Rafael Cintron Ortiz Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Lisa Alvarado

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7. Where Is Ana Mendieta?



Ana Mendieta was a Cuban performance artist who lived in New York in the 1970’s. The title Where Is Ana Mendieta, not only refers to the suspicious circumstances of her death, but to the nonexistent presence of the work of women artists in mainstream exhibitions, to the absence of work that portrays the aesthetic rooted in Latino cultural identity.

Mendieta boldly explored women’s identity, sexuality, and spirituality in pieces that were deceptively simple. Her work was constructed from the elements themselves, dirt, water, and light in their most basic forms; her themes revolved around the ideas of burial, rebirth, submersion in the natural world. From a perspective beyond the dominant culture's construct of nation, a construct of governments, the hegemony of conquerors, Mendieta's work reverberates with a older, indigenous idea of nation. It challenges the viewer to envision an idea of nation and identity based on a direct relation to the Earth itself.

In a series entitled Tree of Life, Mendieta flattened herself against a large oak tree. She is naked, covered with gesso and paint to simulate tree bark. Where does the tree stop and Medieta begin? Where do we stop and our connection with nature begin? Simply done and deeply resonant. I immediately saw a connection between this piece and a Mexican/Chicano idea of rootedness to place that is not hemmed by borders, but by history and ancestral links to land, to nature itself.

In another, untitled series, Mendieta is shown in a series of photos. Again, she is naked, this time in an isolated field. Next to her is a skeleton. The photos show her climbing onto the skeleton, embracing it. She creates a powerful image of the life/death cycle, as well as a quintessential Latino commentary on mortality. At the heart of existence, life and death are united in an eternal embrace. In the midst of life, its fullness, its lushness, its sensuality, Death is constant companion. While modern, European-based culture constantly seeks to avoid aging and mortality, there are traditions that accept its centrality. Mendieta brilliantly illustrates that death is both the beginning and endpoint of all things.

Mendieta worked closely with a variety of feminist artists, but did not label herself as feminist, and I understand the reticence in using the label. The women's artistic community did not offer a truly supportive relationship, and while she had meaningful connections with individual artists, her work was not be adequately appreciated by feminist and post-feminist critics. In a nutshell, Mendieta did not invent a new relationship to body and Earth, she reclaimed an ancient one, but was never embraced by the 'larger' artistic community.

I was profoundly moved by her work. The work is poetry, visual poetry, poetry made flesh. These are clear, visceral, and direct images that I hope to use as a touchstone in my writing and performing, particularly in performing. I want to tell a personal and universal story with my body, and Mendieta has created a standard for me, as well as strengthening and deepening a physical lexicon.

Blocker’s writing is dry and extremely formal, making this difficult going as a reader, but don't be dissuaded by that. I wonder if some of the density of language was more an expression of Blocker's own inability to grasp and express the power and simplicity of Mendieta. However, the book sings when Blocker allows the work to speak for itself.

ISBN-10: 0822323249
ISBN-13: 978-0822323242

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Jane Blocker is a specialist in contemporary art and critical theory. She offers courses such as Art Since 1945, Contemporary Art, Alternative Media: Video, Performance, and Digital Art, as well as courses on gender and sexuality, and 20th century theory and criticism.

Her research has focused primarily on performance art as it developed concurrently with postmodern, feminist, and constructionist theories. Her first book, Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, Performativity and Exile (Duke University Press, 1999), considers the artist's work in relation to the performative production of identity. What the Body Cost: Desire, History, and Performance. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), her second book, critically examines the historiography of mid-twentieth century performance. Her current book, called Seeing Witness: Essays on Contemporary Art and Testimony, examines the witness as a privileged subject position by analyzing installations, performances, photographs, and films by such artists as Alfredo Jaar, James Luna, Eduardo Kac, Christine Borland, Felix Gonzales-Torres, and Ann Hamilton.

In addition, she has published the following essays: "This Being You Must Create: Transgenic Art and Seeing the Invisible," Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 192-209; "A Cemetery of Images: Meditations on the Burial of Photographs," Visual Resources XX, no. 2 (May 2004) ; "Binding to Another s Wound: Of Weddings and Witness," in After Criticism: New Responses to Contemporary Art, edited by Gavin Butt. (London: Blackwell, 2005); "Failures of Self-Seeing: James Luna Remembers Dino," Performing Arts Journal XXIII, #1 (January 2001):18-32; "The Art of Renters," in From Your House to Our House, exhibition catalogue (Atlanta: Nexus Contemporary Art Center, 1999); "Woman-House: Architecture, Gender and Hybridity in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?," in Camera Obscura 39 (November 1998):126-150; "Ana Mendieta and the Politics of the Venus Negra," in Farquhar, et al, eds. (Un)fixing Representation, special issue of Cultural Studies 12, #1 (January 1998):31-50; "The Bed Took Up Most of the Room," in Peggy Phelan and Jill Lane, eds., The End(s) of Performance (New York: N.Y.U. Press, 1997); and Nancy Spero/Leon Golub: Contemporaries, exhibition catalogue (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, 1997).

Lisa Alvarado

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8. Alias Olympia

Mind you, gente, there can be no substitute for a Daniel Olivas post, but he's getting a little well-dererved R & R, so consider this a humble placeholder. -- LA




Alias Olympia
by Eunice Lipton

In French Seduction, art historian Eunice Lipton explores her sensual obsession with the icon of France, the pool of memory and the way that obsession is fused to a contradictory history of her childhood and her connection to the Holocaust. But before that, Lipton authored a biography on Degas and in Alias Olympia, she attempts to cast light on a pivotal, but now obscure figure in the Impressionist movement.

Victorine Meurent was the model for Manet’s notorious painting, Olympia. In it, Manet re-stages that ancient pose of the odalisque, however, Victorine appears in the painting as bold, sexually aware and powerful. This caused an outrage in Paris at the time, and sadly, is still the reaction a sexually self-aware woman receives in present time. I stumbled upon this book, looking for more role-models, fodder, inspiration, other lifelines.

I was glad this book found me. The story is so much more than the telling of the painting controversy. Meurent was an artist, a brilliant one in her own right. She and her work were buried in a barrage of lies as result of her posing for Manet. The popular story about Meurent was that she had descended into prostitution, drunkenness and despair. Not so different than the double-standard of scrutiny and criticism that women who push the barriers, especially, barriers of the body and sexuality continue to face. There still is a threat, albeit more sub-rosa perhaps, that in claiming one’s full physical and sexual power, a woman leaves herself open to the psychic version of public stoning for her ‘lewd’ behavior.

While Meurent did know despair, it was one born out of a career thwarted, and a reputation slandered. She lived a ‘comfortable’ life as bourgeois wife, but not one in which she could move freely, express her ideas or create within the confines of women’s roles at the time. Lipton wrote the book in a narrative style, so that it reads and moves like a novel. No stuff of fiction here, but the complex and brilliant story of a women who dared conventions, and was meted out the punishment of a gilded, dulled existence and obscurity as a result.

I was struck with how women are still offered the choice of ‘comfort’ vs. authenticity, with the implied message that an authentic will surely be the more painful one, the one with the greatest social and emotional costs. To the extent that this blackmail is still being played out, Lipton’s book is a sadly cautionary tale.

ISBN-10: 0801486092 ISBN-13: 978-0801486098


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Mas y Mas

Raúl Niño , author of Book of Mornings will be appearing at:


Rudy Lozano Branch Library, 22 August at 7:00PM
1805 South Loomis Street
Chicago, Il 60608
312-746-4329

Please come and enjoy the readings, and diversity of Chicago neighborhoods.

And also.....

In preparation for City of Austin's Mexican American
Cultural Center's grand opening September 15, 2007,
The Public is invited to a MEET AND GREET Sneak
Preview featuring--

AMORINDIO:
Tributo y Celebracion for

raulrsalinas/Fundraiser for Red Salmon Arts:

Join usto honor and celebrate the life of Austin's elder
Xicanindio poet/human rights activist. A veterano of
Chicano literature/letters, raulrsalinas' writing and
activism have earned him international recognition as
a spokesperson for a diversity of political causes,
ranging from prisoner rights and national liberation
struggles to gang intervention and youth arts
advocacy.

raulrsalinas is the author of three collections of
poetry: Un Trip Thru the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions
(Editorial Pocho-Che, 1980; Arte Publico Press, 1999),
East of the Freeway: Reflections de mi pueblo (Red
Salmon Press, 1995), and Indio Trails: A Xicano
Odyssey thru Indian Country (Wings Press, 2006).
Recently, UT Press published a selected collection of
his prison wirtings, raulrsalinas and the Jail
Machine: My Weapon Is My Pen (edited by Louis Mendoza,
2006).

The tribute will feature performances and
presentations by renowned Chicana/o and Latina/o
writers and scholars: Miguel Algarin (NYC), Sandra
Cisneros (San Antonio), Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio),
Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio), Alejandro Murguia (San
Francisco), Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio), sharon
bridgforth (Austin), Roberto Vargas (San Antonio),
Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth), Celeste Guzman Mendoza
(Austin), Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM), Tony Spiller
(NYC), Jessica Torres (San Antonio).

Presenters on raulrsalinas' life include: Antonia
Castaneda (San Antonio), Roberto Maestas (Seattle,
WA), and Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY). There will
be an opening ceremony by Danzantes Concheros y musica
movimiento Chicano by Conjunto Aztlan.

The celebracion will also include a Silent Art
Auction, curated by Chicana artist Jane Madrigal, with
over 30 pieces by artists throughout the Southwest,
and food and refreshments provided by Alma de Mujer
Catering Dept.

All proceeds will support Red Salmon Arts, a Native
American/Chicana/o based cultural arts organization
with a history of working within the indigenous
communities of Austin since 1983. This event is
sponsored by Red Salmon Arts, Alma de Mujer, PODER,
and UT Press. $10 dollar suggested donation.

Saturday, August 25, 2pm - 7pm.
Mexican American Cultural
Center, 600 River Street.
For more info:
512-416-8885/ [email protected].

Donation: Please send to Red Salmon Arts, 1801-A South
First St., Austin, TX 78704 Austin, TX.
For tax-deductible contributions, please contact Rene
Valdez first at
[email protected]


Bios for Performers:

Miguel Algarin (NYC) is the "poet laureate" of the
Lower East Side - and founder of the Nuyorican Poets
Cafe in New York City, where he has nurtured the
spoken and written word for nearly three decades.

Sandra Cisneros (San Antonio) is an American novelist,
short-story writer, essayist, and poet, whose works
helped bring the perspective of Chicana women into the
literary mainstream. Author of House on Mango Street,
Loose Woman, and Caramelo, among other works.
President and Founder of the Macondo Foundation.

Carmen Tafolla (San Antonio) is an internationally
acclaimed writer and regarded as one of the masters of
poetic code-switching. She often employs the
bilingual idiom of her native San Antonio’s Westside
in her poems. Author of various works, including
Sonnets to Human Beings, Sonnets and Salsa, and
Curandera.

Rosemary Catacalos (San Antonio) is the author of
Again for the First Time (Tooth of Time Books, Santa
Fe, 1984). A past Dobie Paisano Fellow, Stegner
Creative Writing Fellow, and the recipient of an NEA
grant, she has been the Executive Director of Gemini
Ink since 2003.

Norma E. Cantu (San Antonio) currently serves as
professor of English at the University of Texas at San
Antonio. She is the author of the award-winning
Canicula Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera, and
co-editor of Chicana Traditions: Continuity and
Change.

Alejandro Murguia (San Francisco) is is a two-time
winner of the American Book Award, most recently for
This War Called Love: Nine Stories, City Lights Books.
His memoir The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in
California, University of Texas Press, has been
nominated for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic
Writing.

sharon bridgforth (Austin) is the Lambda Award winning
author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and
love conjure/blues a performance/novel (RedBone
Press). Bridgforth has broken ground in the creation
and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing
so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic
as it lives in theatre.

Roberto Vargas (San Antonio) is a community/labor
organizer and author of two poetry collections:
Primeros Cantos and Nicaragua, yo te canto besos,
balas y sueños libertad. He was a founding member of
The Pocho Che Collective, a loose coalition of writers
who published some of the first books of the
contemporary Latino literary renaissance taking place
in San Franisco.

Tammy Gomez (Fort Worth) is a native Texas writer and
performance poet, is featured in the PBS documentary
"Voices from Texas." She has published the work of
Yoniverse, a women's poetry group she founded, in the
anthology In a Loud Kitchen (Tejana Tongue Press,
1998); a second anthology, North Texas Neruda Love,
published by Tejana Tongue Press, was released in
January 2006.

Levi Romero (Albuquerque, NM) is an Embudo Valley poet
& author of In the Gathering of Silence (West End
Press).

Celeste Guzman Mendoza (Austin) is a San Antonio
native. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as
Salamander, Poet Lore, and 5 a.m., and in various
anthologies, including Telling Tongues, Red Boots and
Attitude, and Floricanto Si. She won the Poesia Tejana
Prize in 1999 from Wings Press for her chapbook of
poems, Cande te estoy llamando.

Jessica Torres (San Antonio) is a youth filmmaker,
activist, visual artist, and singer/musician. Her
short film, Los Punkeros, Chicano punk rock movement
with a twist of Conjunto, appeared on San Anto TV, a
TV Magazine produced by local youth through the San
Anto Cultural Arts Multi Media Institute (SAMMI).

Bios for presenters:

Antonia Castaneda (San Antonio) is a Chicana feminist
historian, teaches in the Department of History at St.
Mary's University. Her research and teaching interests
focus on gender, sexuality, and women of color in
California and the Borderlands from the 16th century
to the present.

Roberto Maestas (Seattle, WA) is the co-founder and
Executive Director of El Centro de la Raza, a center
for Seattle’s Latino Community. He has long been
involved in the ongoing struggle for civil rights in
the city.

Alan Eladio Gomez (Ithaca, NY) earned a Ph.D. in
History and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the
University of Texas at Austin. A community organizer,
scholar, and radio journalist, Gómez studies post WWII
social movements involving multiracial and
transnational alliances of U.S. Third World peoples,
prison rebellions, political theater, and Latin
American revolutionary movements.


Bio for Conjunto Aztlan:

Conjunto Aztlan (Austin) represents a spiritual and
musical journey expressed through poetry and song.
The Conjunto was born of the Xicano Movement in
Austin, Texas, in 1977. Their purpose is to
celebrate, defend, and expand the musical, cultural,
and spiritual legacy of the Chicano people.

Lisa Alvarado

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9. Carlos Cortez, Presente!

Greetings from the northern outpost of Aztlán, or as it's otherwise known, Chicago. For the month of May, I'll be profiling Chicano arts and letters here, starting with a look at a rock of progressive politics, a people's artist in the truest sense, Carlos Cortez.

Other columns will give you a bird's eye view of a major force in Latino literature in the Midwest, MARCH/Abrazo Press--a review of it's newest chapbook, A Book of Mornings, and a profile of its author, Raúl Niño. Next week, however, I'm posting a special Mother's Day column.

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CARLOS CORTEZ
(1923 - 2005)

“When you do a painting that’s it, it’s one of a kind. But when you do a graphic the amount of prints you can make from it is infinite. I made a provision in my estate, for whoever will take care of my blocks, that if any of my graphic works are selling for high prices immediate copies should be made to keep the price down.” -- Carlos Cortez




Carlos Cortez was an extraordinary artist, poet, printmaker, photographer, songwriter and lifelong political activist. His mother was a German socialist pacifist, and his father was a Mexican Indian organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), also known as the Wobblies. Carlos was a Wobblie until he died. He spent two years in prison for refusing to “shoot at fellow draftees” during World War II.

After his release, Carlos took a series of jobs: in construction, in a small imported foods shop, in a chemical factory. He also started drawing cartoons in 1948 for the Industrial Worker, the IWW newspaper, but soon learned to do linoleum block prints. “Many radical papers—not having advertising, grants or angels who are rich radicals—operate on the brink of bankruptcy. So Industrial Worker couldn’t afford to make electric plates out of line drawings. I saw that one of the old-timers was doing linoleum blocks and sending them in because the paper was being printed on a flatbed press. I started doing the same thing, and each issue would have one of my linocuts.”

When the price of linoleum became too steep, Carlos started using wood. Used furniture was easy enough to find in any alley. “There’s a work of art waiting to be liberated inside every chunk of wood. I’m paying homage to the tree that was chopped down by making this piece of wood communicate something.” Carlos later became an accomplished oil and acrylic painter, though he always preferred the woodcuts because they were reproducible and affordable.

When the Industrial Worker switched to offset in the 1960s, Carlos began drawing pen-and-ink cartoons. He has also served as editor of the newspaper and on the union’s General Executive Board, and was one of the IWW’s most popular public speakers. In 1985, to commemorate the union’s 80th anniversary, he organized an important exhibition, “Wobbly: 80 Years of Rebel Art,” featuring original works by many IWW cartoonists. Carlos was probably the only IWW artist whose work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His art is exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Mexico.

In the 1960s, Carlos married Marianna Drogitis, and in 1965 they moved to Chicago where he became involved with the local Mexican and Chicano mural movement. “I’ve always identified myself as a Mexican,” he says. “ I guess this was a result of my early years in grammar school. Even though I resembled my German mother more than my Mexican father, being the only Mexican in a school full of whites made me mighty soon realize who I was. But it was my German mother who started my Mexican consciousness. She said, “Son, don’t let the children at school call you a foreigner. Through your father you are Indian, and that makes you more American than any of them.”

Inspired above all by the work of José Guadalupe Posada, printmaker of the Mexican Revolution, and the German expressionist Käthe Kollwitz, Carlos blends the techniques and styles of the German expressionists with themes from the ancient Aztecs and modern Chicanos. He made countless images support striking workers, from miners in Bolivia to farm workers in California, though he is best known for large linocut poster-portraits of activists and labor organizers such as Joe Hill, Ricardo Flóres Magón, Lucy Parsons and Ben Fletcher.

“After some 40 years of construction labor, record salesman, bookseller, factory stiff and janitor, I no longer punch a clock for some employer and have entered the most productive phase of my life where I do what I want to do and not what some employer wants me to do for him…As I keep working out ideas, I keep getting more ideas. So I’m going to go out kicking and screaming.”


In 1998, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics honored Carlos Cortez with the “Art as a Hammer” Award for his inspired and inspiring use of art to create a more just world. He died in January 2005, in Chicago. He will be missed. Carlos Cortez was also an integral part of MARCH/Abrazo Press, who published his book, de KANSAS a CALIFAS & back to Chicago.

His work is also part of the permanent collection at The National Museum of Mexican Art here in Chicago.

Carlos Cortez, Presente!




Many thanks for help with this piece to:

The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is an educational and research archive that collects, preserves, documents, and circulates domestic and international political posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for peace and social justice. CSPG demonstrates the power and significance of these artistic expressions of social change through traveling exhibitions, lectures, publications, and workshops. Through our diverse programs, CSPG is reclaiming the power of art to inspire people to action.

The archive currently contains approximately 60,000 posters from 1900 to the present, including the largest collection of post World War II social justice posters in the U.S. CSPG depends upon the donation of posters to make this resource as representative as possible of the many historical and ongoing struggles. The Center only collects posters with an overt political content, done in multiples. They do not accept one-of-a-kind items. All donations are tax-deductible.

Their website, http://politicalgraphics.org for additional information about CSPG.

Lisa Alvarado

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