viewfromaloft

"Art of Miguel Covarrubias" opens at the California African Museum

 


 Another thing to like about J. Michael Walker's "City of Mind," now on display at the UCLA Hammer Museum, is that continues a vibrant illustrative map legacy from the Latin American avant garde movement. Miguel Covarrubias, a contemporary of Los Tres Grandes' Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, managed to deftly straddle fine and commercial art, including a series of mural size maps that defined people and place. Covarrubias is the subject of a new exhibition at the California African American Museum. Maria Lopez files a preview of the exhibition.

New Mural in Lincoln Heights

Haramoknga – Place Where People Gather being installed at Highland Park's GlenMary Archway. Photo by waltarrr.

OUTSIDE OF DOWNTOWN L.A: Cyclists and skateboarders bookend “Haramoknga – Place Where People Gather," a new mural at Highland Park's Historic Glen-Mary Archway created by Pola Lopez, Heriberto Luna and a team of 15 youth artists. The piece was painted on canvas, off-site, before being affixed on the 1903 archway, a former waiting station for the Pacific Electric Trolley red car Glenmary Sycamore Grove stop.The site itself was once a gathering spot for L.A.’s indigenous tribes ("Haramokngna" is Tongva for “The Place Where People Gather.")

People will gather for its unveiling Sunday, Nov. 21, at 2:30 pm.

 

“Haramoknga – Place Where People Gather" / Pola Lopez, Heriberto Luna / The GlenMary Archway (4671 Figueroa Blvd)

 

 

Saturday Night Gronk

Gronk Previews Sunday Studio from MOCA on Vimeo.

 

HE IS AHEAD OF TWO CULTURAL CURVES  by helping to establish Los Angeles's place on a national fine art platform, and daring to live in Downtown Los Angeles. Often introduced as an East L.A. artist, he is one of 140 artists being featured at MOCA's "The Artist's Museum." Also, this founding member of ASCO has also been a Downtown fixture since the 70s, roaming early galleries and punk clubs while holding court in a loft.

Not only that, Facebook posts are also an experiment in urban pop-abstracttion. Currently unfolding are his "THE COVETED NO-MOVIE AWARD."

Above, Gronk previews a day of leading museum goers in painting for a November 7th Sunday Studio event at MOCA Grand Avenue.

From 2008, Daniel Hernandez profiles ASCO.  [The Art Outlaws of East L.A.]

Garfield Auditorium To Be Named After "Stand and Deliver" Math Teacher

Hopefully by the time Garfield High School's Auditorium is rebuilt, someone will pen a new stage version of "Stand And Deliver" as a way to introduce Jaime Escalante Auditorium at Garfield High School.

Los Angeles Times reports on the LAUSD announcement that the "auditorium at the high school where famed math teacher Jaime Escalante taught for 15 years will be named in his honor."

Escalante began working at the East Los Angeles campus in 1974 and gained fame for his success in  teaching math to scores of inner city, largely minority students and helping them pass Advanced Placement calculus classes. He was portrayed by Edward James Olmos in the 1988 movie "Stand and Deliver" and was widely called the best teacher in America.

While there is a stage adaptation of "Stand And Deliver"  written by Robert Bella, Ramón Menéndez (who directed and co-wrote the 1988 film), and Tom Musca, this 1980s period piece is ready to be a musical. 

Work with me here.

An opening number with flute driven Bolivian folk music driving into post-pop-punk-Chicano rock; "Ganas" as a heavy-metal screech of empowerment,  "Absence of Value" as a ballad of identity of zero in a culture (A negative times a negative equals a positive); Jalisco maraiachis that play in the background of the family restaurant and swells to a declaration how tradition keeps a female student from learning calculus. How about comic relief with "Being Brown is a Science" or "This is East LA."

Think of how a pressure driven score can have us listen in to numbers and emotions in the minds of students during Advanced Placement exams.

It could work, and Gronk can design the set.

Jamie Escalante Obit:  Google.

Politics and Art Link

 

It was with a surprise, and some trepidation, to discover this blog is now assigned reading for a few University syallbi concentrating on Latino arts. I may have to backtrack and make sure every post about Chicano art is properly tagged (so to speak).

As it happens, I took some time over the weekend to shoot a few murals in Boyle Heights and see how the restored 1991 mural "Resurrection of the Green Planet" is holding up.

There was another reason to take fresh shots of the Ernesto de la Loza piece, located on César E. Chávez Avenue and Breed Street. For a long time, I wondered about the use of the main image of the healer that clearly is taken from photographer Graciela Iturbide's 1988 "Curacíon, Juchitán, Oaxaca."

Of course, it's Shepard Fairey's current ongoing battle with AP that has me wondering if any one defended the use of Iturbide's work as source material.