I guess this summer my travel is limited to local day rides & rides to the past & rides in my mind. I've been working with J-Town Arts since last fall and it's been an inspiration to hang out with Rich Tokeshi, Leland Wong, Pete Yamamoto, Sabrena Taylor and Leon Sun.
My first silkscreen was done in '71 or '72 at Serramonte High School ~ a poster for a school play... I have no idea where that poster is... The first time we cleaned the workshop Rich gave me some of the second poster, pictured above from 1979, "Mother and Child" (below). I had completely forgotten it, but it was done at the old Japantown and Media (JAM) Workshop space before it was torn down... It's me and my eldest, Sandino, unless it's really Mary & Jesus, but anyways I guess most artists do the Mother/Child thing. Sandino is currently 33 years old. The other silkscreen (top) was done for a calendar at JAM in 1985. What's cool about it is that I did this before I actually began really painting. I didn't start painting until the mid-90s, so the kulintang sticks were to predict my love of painting in the future. Another note on this ~ the kid in the print is Darío, younger son, who is now 27 years old...time flies...
J-Town Arts is geering up for a new show, so digging up these prints have been bring back new memories... speaking of memories, last night's performance by Joe Bataan was off the hook!!! That brought back some pretty cool high school memories - - more on that later...
