Favorite Artists – Page 3 – Graphic Art, Tortillas, Comics, and Troublemaking

Super Hero

March 4, 2009 yanez

When I began blogging through my myspace page all the way back in 2005 my blog was essentially a personal journal that talked about living life between art school in Southern California and San Francisco. Once I graduated from Calarts and returned to the Bay Area it transformed into a soapbox to talk a lot of shit and chronicle all the changes that had taken place in the Mission District in my absence. Once I found my footing as a professional in San Francisco and began to launch my art career it turned into a forum to present my latest artworks. The shifts in my blogging haven’t been planned or consciously thought out and I sometimes question if I’m on the right track. I seldom write about anything too personal anymore and I wonder if it’s for the better or worse now that my life is now a little more public as an artist.

Tonight I’m going to drop all pretenses get into some chismosa subject matter.

This past weekend Mariela and I met up at Good Vibrations for a night that changed our lives. We were attending a party to celebrate the recent releases and collaborations from artists and sex-positive super heroes April Flores and Carlos Batts. I’ve been following April Flores work and writings for about a year now and her public persona is fascinating to me, she’s a sex-positive, politically active Latina that approaches her work as art. Latinas can have such a strong cultural stigma of shame when it comes to sexual pleasure and I think the work and activism of April Flores is revolutionary. In order to show my appreciation for April Flores’ work as an artist I created the portrait above to portray her as the prolific hero she is. I started and finished it during the hours of 3:00AM and 6:30AM after getting home late from a long day at work. Despite those short crazy hours, I’m really happy with the end results.

When April approached Mariela and I at Good Vibrations and chatted with us, I presented her with a framed print of it. To my dorking-out fanboy delight she loved it. She even showed it to the crowd that gathered for her Q&A session later on in the party. Hearing April and Carlos talk about working together and the story of how they met and fell in love was inspiring. Apparently they met over ten years ago while Carlos was shooting images for his book Wild Skin. The book’s editor selected April for the cover without knowing that she had just started dating Carlos. Hearing them relate their story, and seeing some parallels in my own relationship, I couldn’t resist plunking down the $75.00 it took to buy the book.

Click here to see our photos from the party

The rest of the night was filled with great music, hanging out with Carlos & April, and people coming up to me and talking about the print. It was a night of inspiration and accomplishment for me that I won’t ever forget.

Peace,

Rio

Radio Chola

February 27, 2009 yanez

I spent the other night listening to my favorite performance artist Ask a Chola on her brand new radio show. Between the gully banter and crazy music I loved every second of it. I wanted to do what I could to support Chola’s new endeavor so I thought I’d create a new portrait to help get the word out.

My first portrait of Ask a Chola, circa March 2007, is a good marker for how far my technical skills in illustration have evolved. I wonder sometimes if I’ve gotten too far away from my original style but I’m really happy with the direction the tablet has taken me in. There’s even a noticeable difference from my first couple of piece with it. Things are looking up!

Alas, I’m triste because I’ll be in LA next Wednesday and will be away from a computer to listen to the show with. Someone will need to fill me in on the jams Chola throws and if there are any more breathless phone calls from the mysterious Anonima. Radio Chola airs Wednesdays from 7:30pm to 10:00pm at Kill Radio.

Peace,

Rio

Sekai Wa Subarashii

February 18, 2009February 18, 2009 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

February 18, 2009 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

“You’d make a good poker player, kid”

December 12, 2008 yanez

When I was eighteen years old and in my first year of college I was mad crushin’ on Sarah Polley. One day, after my Acting for the Camera class my friend Melissa B. and I went to the Kabuki and caught a matinee screening of Go. For us, it was the cream of the crop of the teen films of the era. Seeing Sarah Polley in that movie made me fall for her, no two ways about it.

Two days later I was talking about GO to Toshi and Kit, two of my co-workers at Viz Media, and I asked them what other movies Sarah Polley has been in. They both brought up The Sweet Hereafter as her best film, I knew I had to see it. Kit’s parting words to me “It’s an amazing film but be careful, if you watch it, it’ll fuck you up.”

That weekend I rented The Sweet Hereafter at Lost Weekend on Valencia Street and rushed home to watch it. I watched the entire film in awe and with tears streaming down my face. True to Kit’s word, my emotions were gore danced, curb stomped, sucka punched, and otherwise tore the fuck up. I sat in front of my TV sobbing like a mark. I realized that my true calling was not as a Sarah Polley fan but as a Atom Egoyan aficionado.

From that moment on I delved into the filmography of Atom Egoyan and became supreme master of knowledge of his 90’s oeuvre from The Adjuster to Felicia’s Journey. Still, The Sweet Hereafter was always my favorite. Once I got my DVD player in ’98 I would sit and watch it endlessly. It was one of my favorite films to have running in the background while I drew. Occasionally I would end up taking inspiration from the film itself and the drawings below are some that I did of the two main characters of the movie.

That’s Ian Holm (Mitchell Stephens in the movie) to the right and a drawing & sketch of Sarah Polley (Nicole Burnell). It’s hard to believe these drawings are already 10 years old. Time does fly!

If you have never experienced this amazing movie I humbly suggest you give it a try. It does put you through an emotional ringer but I can’t speak highly enough of it. The book by Russell Banks that the movie is based on is quite different but equally incredible too.

Peace,

Rio

Pop Crucifixes Vol. 3

November 26, 2008 yanez

Almost every night for the last month I’ve been watching every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in chronological order. While I’ve viewing season 2 this past week I’ve kept my hands busy by working on some new crucifixes. More to come!

Peace,

Rio

Like a Dinosaur on the Ark

November 21, 2008 yanez

Polaroids! Polaroids! Polaroids! That’s what I have on the mind these days.

I’m staring at my old Spectra SE Polaroid Camera right now (a gift from my Uncle Mike to my Mom and passed onto me). It’s fast approaching the one year anniversary of the death of Polaroid film. Each taken frame brings the medium closer to extinction so I’ve been hesitant to shoot what little film I have left.

Back during my days at Calarts I was inseparable from my Spectra camera. I spent what little money I had on film, eating ramen twice a day for weeks on end while treasuring my Polaroids. Below are two of two of my favorite photos from those days of glory.

Allan Sekula and I at the Port of Los Angeles

I was rescued from my instant-camera blues by this recent post by Cindylu. Her Poladroid images sent me scurrying over to http://www.poladroid.net/download.html to download the Poladroid application (Mac only as of this writing but the site says a PC version is in the works). Poladroid is a simple drag and drop application that allows you to create facsimile polaroids using your own image files. Amazingly you can change the image’s density and color temperature by “shaking it”. Some of the other features are a little ambiguous because there’s no English language instructions yet. I’ve been experimenting with it lately and I’ve been, if nothing else, very entertained seeing how I some of my favorite photos look as Poladroids. Below are some of the results.

The format of all the images created by Poladroid is based on Polaroid 600 film. The program’s official site says a Poladroid Pro application is in the works and I’m hoping that the Spectra format will be an option. If anyone else has experimented with Poladroid please send me a link to your images, I’m curious to see what people are doing with it!

Peace n’ Polaroids,

Rio

La Chicana Feliz

November 19, 2008November 19, 2008 yanez

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Zulma Aguiar at this years College Art Association conference in Dallas, Texas. I had been following her work for quite some time and became determined to create a portrait of homegirl when we finally met face to face. After photographing her at the conference center this portrait is one of the results.

Zulma is a multimedia artist and activist; her writings can be found on her blogs Chicana Feliz and Chicana Feminist. What I admire most about Zulma is that she has taken on the monumental role of chronicling the work of artists, activists, and performers throughout the United States. Her scope is international but Zulma has really focused and captured so much of what Chicanos are working towards these last few years. Zulma’s documentation, reviews, and reports on contemporary Chicano artists and their work will provide for our historical canon in years to come. Every time I see a status update from her she’s travelling to another art opening or performance event like an unwavering Chicana energizer bunny. Homegirl’s path is in the footsteps of my friend and neighbor Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez whose 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History and 500 Years of Chicano History have filled such a gap.

Zulma is an amazing artist in her own right. Her work has taken on identity, the culture of our borders, and femicide in Mexico. I have taken a lot of inspiration from her video What is a Chicana Feliz? In defining my own self-image as an artist. I actually completed this artwork about a month ago but agonized over the background for quite some time. Initially I wanted to create some sort of border wall but the results were all too grim. The background I ended up creating is a hybrid of two current aesthetic influences: Communist propaganda posters and El Chapulin Colorado.

I want to create another portrait of Zulma soon because she is a woman of many looks. Since I shot the photo this image is based on, homegirl has switched up her style a good number of times. More to come soon.

Peace,

Rio

Pop Crucifixes Vol. 2

November 16, 2008 yanez

Here’s my second round of pop crucifixes. About the creation process: The crucifixes and stickers were both gathered from Mission street stores. The stickers are genuine 3rd world bootlegs and fascinating to me. Because of their bootleg status the stickers have all sorts of wonderful quirks and flaws. The Batman stickers mix are psychedelically discolored and mix elements from different Batman shows and comics. The High School Musical stickers (used in the Ashley Tisdale cross) have stickers of Miley Cyrus and Hilary Duff mixed in with them. Enjoy!