This essay concerns Revisiting Slash: The Five Best OC Punk Articles From One of LA’s Original Punk Zines, written by reporter Frank John Tristan and published in the OC Weekly on October 3, 2017. The alleged subject of the article was how SLASH Magazine covered the early punk bands of the beachside Southern California community of Orange County. I happened…
CAUTION: This essay contains violent imagery not suitable for the faint-hearted or for children. Since writing this in 2017, I have come to the understanding that spiritual evil permeates some contemporary art and culture. As a matter of historic record, I have not edited this essay to reflect my changing view. A facet of the outlandish chronicles having to do…
Starting March 12, 2016 and running through April 2, 2016, I will show two of my social realist drawings at Mi Ciudad of Los Angeles, a group exhibition at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park, LA California. Created in 1980, my drawings Hollywood Blvd., We’re Doomed and Hollywood Blvd., Punk Rules, portray the decaying urban landscape of Tinseltown in the…
I published an article on Oct. 5, 2007 titled Diego Rivera: Glorious Victory! It was about the Diego Rivera retrospective then on view at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City, Mexico. The real treasure in that show was the artist’s 1954 mural, Gloriosa Victoria (Glorious Victory). Gloriosa Victoria is a large oil on…
In 1627 the French Baroque artist Simon Vouet created the remarkable oil painting, Time defeated by Hope and Beauty. The masterpiece depicts Father Time dragged to the ground along with his scythe and hourglass; he has been vanquished by the paragons of Hope and Beauty. Father Time is menaced by a grappling iron brandished by Hope, while the fierce grip…
To mark the devasting drought of California (my home state), and to observe Día de los Muertos 2015, I have created an extremely limited edition suite of six monoprints. The prints recall the Tlaloque, underlings of Tlaloc, the ancient Aztec god of rain and celestial waters. You may consider my print a supplication for divine rain and an end to…
This is an Open Letter to the Students and Faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute. In September 2011, it was a real pleasure to travel to San Francisco for the express purpose of photographing the Great Depression era murals that exist in the city. I visited the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), where I made photographic studies of Diego…
Four minutes of dazzling footage comprises the eye-popping, jaw dropping opening sequence of Spectre, the latest James Bond film. In the first scene, James Bond (played by actor Daniel Craig), is seen walking through a Día de los Muertos procession in Mexico City wearing a skull mask. He sports a Top Hat as befitting a bourgeois Mexican gentleman of the…
