Day: February 18, 2009

Sekai Wa Subarashii

yanez

Life is good. My first solo-curated exhibit is a success, my Andy Warhol programming launches at the de Young Museum this Friday, and the reception to this year’s Valentine’s Day cards has been amazing. Sitting here at my computer tonight I feel like a lot of toil and hard work is really starting to pay off. The icing on the cake has been the warm welcome my Valentine’s cards received. I got them out a little later than usual amidst my crazy schedule but was really happy to see everyone get into them. Many thanks to everyone who posted them around and shared them with their special someones. I really want to send a special thanks to Sacred Yoli and Cindylu who have been great advocates of my work and have both put in extra effort to get the cards out there.

Speaking of Cindylu, the last post I wrote detailing our colloborative project was actually started months ago but I left it unfinished in hopes that I would create some additional artwork out of the images. I’ve been carrying those intentions with me for some time and I finally caught a break to get some work done after Hybridity finally opened. I sat down and created the piece below. I worked with a slightly different color aesthetic that de-emphasizes solid blacks and I’m really happy with the results. It gives this portrait of Cindylu a look like that of a silkscreen print. The final layout is styled in the flavor of 90’s era indie comics. I hope ya can dig it.

Peace,

Rio

Loterialu and the Loteria Scavenger Hunt

yanez

Recently my homegirl and esteemed peer  Cindylu came into town. Cindylu has been a subject of a good number of portraits I’ve created in the last couple of years. I credit the autobiographical narrations on her blog and flickr page for inspiring me to becoming active with my work online. I’ve always wanted to do something collaborative with Cindylu and her afternoon in the city was the perfect opportunity.

Our original concept was to photograph Cindylu with a deck of Loteria Cards amidst the backdrop of the Mission District. We spent a lot of our time dodging the rain. After ducking into the Revolution Cafe to hide from the weather we quaffed some ale and brainstormed on what to do next. We came up with an idea to do a Loteria scavenger hunt in the Mission. We hit the streets and shops looking for analogs to what each card represented.

The results can be seen in our Loteria Scavenger Hunt series: Part 1 and Part 2

Our other series Loterialu features Cindylu and symbolic combinations of Loteria cards: Check it out here

Peace,

Rio

Best of all worlds

yanez

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I should be working on some artwork right now but I came across this amazing photo of Verbal and Kid Cudi. These are two of my favorite artists working in music right now and I was both shocked and amazed to see them in the same photo. Taken from Verbal’s blog: http://ameblo.jp/m-flo-verbal/

For the record, Kid Cudi’s mixtape Plain Pat & Emile Presents a KiD named CuDi was my favorite album of 2008. Download it for free at http://sharebee.com/3194c039

As always, Verbal and m-flo continue to amaze and inspire me after ten years.

Peace,

Rio