This month I looked back, and summarized all the BLOGS I maintained of our big art projects in the last decade ("the teens").
The BLOGS
- Fresco or Bust (2009)
- Fresco or Bust -- Part 2 (2011 -- 2015)
- Tucson Sculpture Festival 2012
- Tucson Sculpture Festival 2013
- YayBig Southwest (2013 -- 2016)
- YayBig Print Exchange (2014 -- 2017)
- Desert Triangle Print Carpeta (2015 -- 2020)
- Ambos Lados International Print Exchange (2018 -- 2020)
- Flickr History (2007 -- 2010 not a blog)
*****
2009 - 2012
We learned to paint buon fresco from scratch. Gonzalo Espinosa, originally from Mexico, painted several frescoes with me, culminating with the big wall fresco at the Sculpture Resource Center in Tucson in 2011.
2012 - 2015
I was the "Gallery Tyrant" for these first two Tucson Sculpture Festivals, and helped produce the latter two as an "Art Agitator." (Disclaimer: The Tucson Sculpture Festival started in 2010, two years before I got involved).
2009 - 2019
I have documented various Day of the Dead events in Tucson, El Paso, Albuquerque and Oaxaca during the last decade.
In 2012 we recreated the poster image by Michael Contreras of the previous Tucson "All Souls Procession" from 2011, down to the little girl pulling a buggy with a calavera. The yellow flag (the color of the New Mexico flag) spells out "SRC" in Mayan, for the "Sculpture Resource Center." Martin Quintanilla anchored and inspired the crew from the "Sculpture Resource Center" to parade in this colorful line.
PRINTMAKING
2013 -2020
I have been involved with a lot of printmaking projects in the last decade.
TALK AND SHORT VIDEO
Pavel Acevedo invited me to talk this month during his Instagram live stream (sponsored by Speedball). I encouraged artists -- to continue passing their prints back and forth across the Mexican border -- as we did in the Ambos Lados International Print Exchange.
I made a short YouTube video for Pavel's live stream, of some of the highlights of our print adventures of the last 5 years.
2015 - 2020
the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta catalog
From 2015 - 2020 we have been exhibiting the "Desert Triangle Print Carpeta" -- including in the El Paso Museum of Art -- right up until the Covid 19 pandemic. The Desert Triangle is a portfolio of 30 large prints from El Paso, Tucson and Albuquerque. Besides exhibiting in those aforementioned cities, we showed in -- Portland, Riverside (California), Silver City (New Mexico), Las Cruces, Austin, Houston, Chicago, Palm Beach area (Florida), Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca.
EL PASO
TUCSON
The Desert Triangle Print Carpeta spun off a lot of other great print exhibitions, such as -- Prints by Southwest -- in 2017 at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque.
ALBUQUERQUE
Perhaps the most beautiful and elaborate experience is what happened in Austin in 2018. The day after the Desert Triangle opening, the two participating Desert Triangle art collectives painted an impromptu mural on the side of the Mexic-Arte Museum. Later that mural was enhanced with augmented reality by David Fig, in time for SXSW. Then we had a serigraph edition made of this mural at Taller 75 Grados in Mexico City -- this print of course, also works with the Augment El Paso app!
We exhibited my Mexican print collection at the El Paso Museum of Art during "Chalk the Block" 2017.
2018 - 2020
the Ambos Lados catalog
We put together the Ambos Lados International Print Exchange, with 158 participating artists split pretty evenly from both sides of the border, namely from the US and Mexico (plus contributions from Canada, Cuba, Ireland and Australia).
2014 -2017
the YayBig Print Exchange catalog
I also worked with Joe Marshall and his gallery in Tucson for the YayBig Print Exchange, a follow up from the YayBig Southwest touring exhibition.
2013 -2016
the YayBig Southwest Print Collection
I started by working with Joe Marshall in order to show the prints in his YayBig Gallery across the Southwest -- Tucson, Phoenix, Las Cruces, Las Vegas (New Mexico), Albuquerque, El Paso, San Antonio and Brownsville (Texas). We toured as one night pop-up exhibitions under the title of YayBig Southwest.
FLICKR FOTOS
2007 - 2010
Before blogging I posted my art progress on Flickr.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Looking towards the Future
Art may be very different after Covid in that AI (artificial intelligence) could change everything. I have been experimenting with AI programs online, and recently participated in AIKPHRASIS, the AI project of Holly Grimm.
Update (Nov 3): The Aikphrasis Project was accepted for the NeurIPS Creativity Workshop, December 11 and 12, 2020 (schedule website). Holly Grimm summarized all 18 submissions into a one minute video on Vimeo:
I am always altering and coloring my figure drawings with the online free AI program by Google -- Deep Dream Generator.
Mexico City 1989
My old friend Fausto Igor Galvez Buenfil sent me this picture from our old days at the Academia de San Carlos, located in the center of Mexico City (the only royal academy in the New World, and also the oldest art school in this hemisphere). This was taken about 1989, in the studio of of our instructor, Maestro Luis Perez Flores. In the background is my large canvas painted from the roof of that art school (though the figure is from a model reference book).
While I have been working well with Mexican artists for over 3 decades, I was distressed to learn that the Canadians don't consider me an artist.
I discovered the above Canadian TV show at an art lecture at SOMA in Mexico City, given by a Spanish artist in 2015, Jorge Luis Marzo.
Maybe I can aspire to be a driftwood sculptor, like Len Tukwilla (played on SNL by John Malkovich). Or art in the style of Portlandia.
October blog posts:
- aiK*RЯR*Lsis
- October 6, 2020
- October Exhibitions
- AI Abstract
- October 13, 2020
- Live Streaming with Pavel Acevedo on Instagram
- More Random AI
- The Fresco Years (2009 - 2012)
- Tucson Sculpture Festivals (2012 - 2015)
- October 27, 2020
- Day of the Dead (past)
2008
My first book of drawings for sale on Lulu
2018
and fuzzy blue booties
