The New Inspirational Movement

from my ‘Car/tunes’ series

‘Light is action at a distance!’ -Merleau-Ponty,

from Philosophy and Painting

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Car/tunes’
I have always wanted to reflect this city from an ‘auto-motive’ perspective.
Auto as in the self circulating in the flow of the city.
I recall what John Lennon said of LA:
‘Everything is happening and nothing is going on.’
Movement, energy, mobility of thought is what I’m seeking in these digital drawings. Everything is more or less fleeting you might say.
The flux and flow of existence. The word existence in German is dasein which is similar to the word dancing and very well so since there is a performance element to the work. LA with its long octopustic extensions of freeways and neon signs especially at night give off unprecedented hues of color and energy. Trying to reflect this is what drives these pieces in the end.
All the titles which are in Spanish end with ‘car’. For instance: Atracar, Notificar, Masticar and so on . . .
The ‘tunes’ part is related to words, quotes, observations hovering
over this vehicle which transport one from A to B. I think it’s that space between A and B, the journey you might say which I find interesting and which where I see the logos (words, thoughts) having an impact in the scheme of things. It’s not easy to combine words with form. One tends to supercede the other.
I think Rene Magritte and Ed Ruscha resolved this well in their work.
And now I have attempted to do the same.

by Rene Angulo Trujillo ‘OtrO’ Angulo

Note: Backword writing underneath line saids: ‘Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet!  -Paul  Klee

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A statement from my internet art presentation, “Naked Dave”.
Dave Stevens died March 11, 2008.

My Naked Dave series has been a way for me to work out the anger, grief, and loss that my unfortunate relationship with Dave Stevens brought me. I was only 18 when I met him. I was not too much older than that when he fathered my child in 1978. The way he tried to bully me into getting an abortion during my pregnancy was nearly unforgivable. When I lost my baby through a miscarriage, the emotional pain I went through was so intense that I tried to block it out for several years afterward. But the psychic injury would not heal. I have been dealing with the effects this loss has had on me all my adult life. The whole situation made me despondent and depressed for many years. Dave helped me through none of this. Just knowing this person almost killed me.

In 1990, Dave began seeking me out again. He held out the possibility to me that we could reconcile and "carry on in a more positive light", as he put it. Seems we were at cross purposes. He attempted to apologize for trying to avoid his responsibilities in making me pregnant, but I wanted him to apologize for telling lies about me after it happened, the greater transgression in my eyes. Neither apology was accomplished. Instead of acknowledging the past and putting things right, he withdrew once the damage was done. Cast off the opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation because I did not perceive that a brief embrace between us was supposed to serve for the entire apology and I was not supposed to press him for more than this. It wasn’t what happened in 1978 that inspired the series. We were young and stupid and that can be forgiven. No, it was the failed "reconciliation" of 1991 that lit the fire. I had been betrayed for the second time and I had to do something to save myself. I couldn’t walk the earth with murderous rage in my bosom and let it destroy everything around me. Naked Dave originally began as a way I could cathartically extract the poison this man brought into my life with his cowardice. Projecting his own unbearable guilt onto me and dismissing my existence by perpetrating a calumnious myth he invented that I am some kind of dangerous psychopath (like his dear friend, Bettie Page). These paintings became an entire genre of my life’s work, one that has brought me recognition. (Though, not the only recognized thing I’ve ever done with my creativity, that’s for sure…) The publication of my project brought a healing flow of empathy from others, but also vilification from comic book geeks and others too emotionally shallow to understand why I had the need to make this art and disseminate it on the web. Many missed the irony and took "The Angriest Woman in the World" dead literal as a personal vendetta as if there wasn’t enough to be angry about, just having to live as a woman in this screwed-up world. One woman’s revenge is another’s individual justice.

For many years I assumed that Dave was merely annoyed by my paintings of him but I was wrong. In recent years I discovered that he was deeply affected by what I had done. The only friend we still had in common beseeched me in an email to forgive him, but I found it impossible to do so without face to face reconciliation. In 2005, when I offered an olive branch to Dave through a go-between, he refused. True to his real nature, he claimed himself as the sole victim of this tragedy. As if my justified resentment sprang unmitigated by anything he had done, and that he bore no blame. Now that he is dead, face to face reconciliation and forgiveness between is not possible. I have to live with this reality and find the way to forgiveness without the reconciliation that I knew long ago I would never see.

My motives for this project have been the same since I started. To heal from the injury inflicted and diffuse my anger by having fun with my past pain. The issues this unfortunate relationship brought to my life, and my ability to process them through my art, still inspires me. When that changes, I will be done with this series. To aspire to make great art one must know truth, beauty, and love. My muse, as unwilling a subject as he may have been, was a muse nonetheless. The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a muse, Elizabeth Siddal. A recent book about her life has the following quotation from John Ruskin which took my breath away with it’s truth: "And yet Elizabeth had been loved tenderly, loved by the man and by the artist, which is to be loved twice, because painters have a tenderness for the creature that suddenly realizes for them, in an exquisite and living form, a long cherished dream, and lavish upon her a gaze that is more thoughtful, more intuitive and, to put it plainly, more charged with love than is possible for other men."

Below is a study for the last painting of the Naked Dave series. I have known since February of 2005 that Dave was ill with cancer. I was sworn to secrecy and struggled with thoughts of continuing the series altogether for this reason, but the heart sees what the conscious mind can’t bear to know. The monarchs are in the painting because the Aztecs believed they carried the souls of the dead. I started this latest painting in July 2005. I will continue to paint Dave until I am done and I can bring peace to myself.

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The roots of this strip began a couple of years ago. It was around the time of San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride events and Mariela and I were looking through the SFWeekly for a schedule of who would be performing on Pride’s Latino stage. While looking through the Weekly we came across an ad for sex toys in the shape of different religious icons. I laughed but Mariela freaked out and couldn’t even bring herself to look at the ad again. Even though she didn’t exactly consider herself Catholic her opinion was clear: You don’t sexualize your personal icons

As Chuck D once rapped “My wanderings got my ass wondering” and as a Chicano I’ve wondered about our iconography and the taboo of eroticizing it. In terms of Chicanoness, I can imagine that it would be very bad to have a fantasy about bustin’ out Alberto Gonzalez; so would the opposite be good? Or maybe I just have the hots for Dolores Huerta?

As far as the whole Peanuts thing goes, I’ve always identified with Charlie Brown. His philosophical ponderings and neurosis always seemed to click with me. With this strip, Charlie Brown is a stand-in for my parents both of whom have taken risks with their artwork and both of whom have told me in some form or another that I’m goin’ to Hell for doing this comic strip. Wimps!

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Most of these hip-hop fools out there make claims about being hustlers when in reality they’re just taking a fashionable pose. Priscilla Ceballos is the real deal Holyfield. If you don’t know who she is, Priscilla Ceballos cold got ill so her daughter could score some free Hannah Montana concert tickets. She entered her daughter into an essay contest to win a free pair of tickets to see Hannah Montana and won by writing that her father was a soldier who had been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The trouble was that none of it was true, her father was alive and well-living in the next town over. When Priscilla was finally busted she and her daughter lost the tickets and she became the most hated woman in the western world. Homegirl defended herself by saying that no one ever specified that the essay for the contest had to be true.

Priscilla Ceballos may be a dumbass but her ass ain’t dumb, of course she knew what was going on all along. What makes her a true hustler is that she will stick to her story of “not knowing the essay had to be true” until the bitter end. Some people will no doubt call her delusional but in the hood that’s called some fuckin’ hustling. To the rest of the world she may be a villain but I’m canonizing her as a saint of the ghetto: Our Lady of Hustlers.

Since being busted for the fake essay Priscilla Ceballos has made numerous media appearances to clear her name. With these interviews she’s done a lot more harm than good and exposed herself to even more ridicule. Many blogs outside of Latino culture are both confounded and fascinated by Priscilla Ceballos’ bad chola style. “Doesn’t she know how fucked up those sharpie eyebrows look?” they all seem to wonder. The motivations of chola fashion still elude the mainstream but with her appearance on the Today Show she has become America’s most recognizable chola.

I don’t really take issue with people challenging the basic humanity of Priscilla Ceballos or at least her qualifications as a mother. What I have found deeply disturbing is the amount of racist bile that has been thrown her way. One look at her Bebo Profile and you can get a good sampling of some of the racist rants that she’s no doubt confronting on a daily basis. Most of them shits call her out for being Mexican, even though her profile picture is clearly all about her being Salvadoran (Holla at my Central Americans). The truth is, whenever one of us fucks up publicly it becomes baggage for all of us not just for Salvadorans, Mexicans, or Chicanos (except for maybe Brazilians…Tudo Bem!). Despite my anger at Priscilla Ceballos I am even more offended at the racist responses to her choices and that is why I chose to include a tear forming on her eye as well as text from the aforementioned Bebo profile behind her.

Orale!

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My work is inspired by the psychological impact that mass media- and mass production have on our society. I am especially interested to re-make those mass produced objects that seem no longer relevant to our society and transform them into new realities, changing our memories and our perceptions of them.
Because my work is interactive it gives the viewer an active role on the decision whether to be removed or not from a reality to which they have become accustomed. My work engages them to reflect on our relationship with material and culture.

For the Chicana/0 Biennial I am showing Osiloscopiando from the Recycling Junk series.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Daniela

www.danielast.com

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Reconstructed Landscapes

In a near future when human civilization is destroy by a natural disaster or by our self’s. Nature will proclaim the lost land destroy by humanity and will reconstruct their landscapes in the concrete cities, destroying what was a civilization of chaos and destruction, giving back the balance of the species. The only essence of us will be the artifacts and ruins that will tell who we were and how we lived.

http://alexoliva.4t.com/
http://gto08.blogspot.com/
http://educaralostopos.blogspot.com

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These images represent my first foray into my Raza Zombies series. They were inspired by the single best mainstream comic book of the 21st century: Marvel Zombies. Marvel Zombies re-imagines classic superheroes as flesh eating zombies. After reading it I felt compelled to do some zombie transformations on a few of my own personal and iconic heroes. I think we’ve exhausted just about every other form of representation of these figures. More to come fo’ sure.

I don’t actually own a Microsoft X-Box but I’m pretty sure Che would kick ass at Halo 2…That is if he was willing to sully his hands with the most oppressively capitalistic video game system out there. But hey! Even my most hardcore communist friends enjoy a little X-Box behind closed doors.

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Our First Date 2007

Digital Comic Strip

Rio Yanez  San Francisco, CA

My head has been swirling with thoughts on identity lately. I just read a New York Times article about  "Blipsters" and unfortunate term coined for Black Hipsters. You can check out the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/fashion/28Blipsters.html. A lot of blogs have been responding to the article and the things it puts forth. I wrote my own blog about it at http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=11241110&blogID=223800398 .

The comic strip is a musing on issues of race and (especially for young urban Chicanos) the idea of having a "scene".   

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