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’...

  A scene from The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo . Photo by Michael Sedano     by Abel M. Salas Filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez still can’t take his eyes off the metropolis he calls home. If anything, his gaze has intensified, zeroing in on the untold paradigms of racial divide and the dynamics of difference that have long beleaguered Los Angeles, a city not yet completely comfortable with its Mexican soul. In the 14 years since the broadcast of Los Angeles Now —one of his earliest documentaries for PBS—an examination of the demographic shifts that signaled the “browning of America,” the now grey-bearded Angeleno has mined contemporary issues of race, identity and cultural diversity with increasing depth and intuitive foresight. This even as his lens, calibrated by an acute, erudite and humanist Latino perspective, has been artfully rotated toward the past. His recent focus on subjects culled from the period of social turmoil and political unrest that erupte...