Ofrenda by Isaac Pelayo, mixed media, 2019 A TRIBUTE IN HONOR OF THE 10TH ANNUAL EL VELORIO DAY OF THE DEAD FIESTA By L.N. Amoratto It’s all about the ofrenda , you know, the trunk-load of plywood cut into uniform shapes. Pelayo has it down. You give an army of artists what passes for a universal canvas that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and obligates everyone to work with the same piece of wood shaped into a cross or lucha libre mask or something else he’ll dream up soon and which will allow him to include pretty damn near 100 artists in an exhibition which will grace the walls of the Plaza de la Raza Boathouse Gallery at Lincoln Park. And all 100 of them, well, most of them, will be asked to try and sell ten tickets. Few will succeed.  They will, instead, give the tickets away and pay for them out of pocket. A substantial portion of the money goes to keeping the lights on at Plaza de la Raza, and the look of worry off of director María Jimenez’ face, because you wouldn’...

Gushan, a self-taught painter and sculptor who is, ironically, a highly sought after ecclesiastical artist, in City Terrace. By Abel Salas   Gushan is something of an enigma. To begin with, his name is not really “Gushsan.”  The word is a hybrid compound of sorts.  Think Gustavo. Think “h” something and think Sánchez. But since 1997, when the interdisciplinary artist arrived in Los Angeles and located himself in the middle of one of the most notorious barrios on the Greater East Side, he has worked very hard to grow as an artist and become a more conscious human being in the process. And, as a consequence, he just might be the most famous and important L.A. artist you’ve never heard of. That is, unless you watch Spanish-language TV, listen to Spanish-language radio or read Spanish-language newspapers or magazines, because he’s been on or in almost all of them. Born in Guadalajara but raised in Tijuana, he began teaching himself to be an artist in many diffe...

Freeway Man and His Sack s, Mixed Media, 6' x 6,' collection of Cheech Marin. by Abel M. Salas David Flury is a Chicano artist. He will say so himself. He won’t say much about the early years he spent attached to a life on the streets of South Central. He will only acknowledge that it was based on loyalty to others. And it was what he did to survive during a time when he and his contemporaries felt compelled to prove they were beyond hope, beyond fear and capable of conducting themselves with no remorse. It is not something he cares to uphold as virtuous or worthwhile. He could have, like many of those he grew up with, been a less than memorable casualty or a permanent resident in one of the state’s penal institutions. His father, he says, was from the deep South and white. “But my mother was from Guatemala,” he shares in a comfortable office at the Goodwill Industries complex in Lincoln Heights where he has worked part-time for some 14 years. The trajectory of his ...

Roberto Gutiérrez, Rooftops of New York , 2017, Sumi Ink, gouache. by Abel M. Salas Roberto Gutiérrez is one of only four artists whose work has graced our print edition front page more than once in nine years of modest yet big-hearted micro-publishing experiment. Although criteria for cover art selection are largely undefined, they have never been scattershot. Occasionally tied thematically to a general thread running through an issue, covers have just as often been seasonal or inspired by hallmark calendar holidays. Some were, I readily admit, heartfelt efforts to express my gratitude to particular artists, including one whose friendship I cherished, another who had not taken sides during a break up between me and a significant other, and one who had never once mentioned the cover in the sixteen years we had known each other. At one point, I even offered the cover  to a universally admired—and deservedly so—artist who had come to cat sit for me when a death in my family...

Con Safos co-founder and original Editor-in-Chief Arturo Flores in front of a 1970 Ruben Salazar portrait by Sergio Hernández. Photo by Oscar Castillo. by Alci Rengifo The passage of nearly 50 years has not dimmed the radical glint in their eyes. On July 9, the founders of the legendary Chicano publication Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio , reunited for an evening of war stories, snacks and a playfully nostalgic revival of the once annual Tortilla de Oro Awards presentation at the Museum of Social Justice in downtown Los Angeles' historic Placita Olvera. From February through August of this year, the museum housed memorabilia, art and artifacts as a survey of some of the issues and satirical artwork that made Con Safos an incendiary publication during the turbulent tail end of the1960s. Satirical cartoons, anti-war spreads and photos by renowned photographer Oscar Castillo, among others, graced the museum’s walls. Also included was a spread covering the deat...

by Abel M. Salas For 20 years, a loose-knit, all-woman collective of artists, activists and exponents of “urban indigenism” have gathered in March and April to celebrate the transformative power of the sacred feminine. From students and family caseworkers to former Pete Wilson protestors; from immigrant rights advocates to youthful staffers at barrio non-profits; from neighborhood stakeholders to LGBT warrior womyn, they assembled each spring on LA’s Eastside to share the unique Mujeres de Maiz expression of modern day syncretism. For you milenios, let me simply say that syncretism occurs when two or more disparate belief systems, often spiritual, are combined to create a blended one that works, a prominent example of this being contemporary danza azteca, which often venerates Catholic icons such as the Virgen de Guadalupe. Many in the early Mujeres de Maiz class of cohorts had come of age under the Bush presidency and equated it with the worst aspects of warmongering patriarch...

Clement Hanami, Goonsquad Garage , 2016 By Pancho Lipschitz What happens when a Japanese American kid grows up in East L.A. in the ’70s? It sounds like the set-up for sit com on the El Rey network but it’s really the story of Clement Hanami’s life. We sat down for beers in Little Tokyo to talk about his journey from East L.A. to UCLA, coming home again to design the art for the East L.A. Civic Center Metro station and how he learned about the true meaning of art by being a roadie for Los Illegals. PL: Did you always think of yourself as an artist? CH: My father was a photographer and my mother was a seamstress but they both dabbled in artistic things. My dad was a poet on the weekends. He would do this thing called senryu. It’s like a haiku but haiku deals with nature and senryu deals with ironies in life. Like a Seinfeld episode. My mother used to paint. So I grew up in a house that was very creative. Do you remember when you started to take art seriously? Growing up Asia...