People often ask us where we create our posters and how are able to create as much work as we do. In 2003 Jesus and our compañera Favianna Rodriguez decided to start their own studio and collectivized their resources in order to do so. They received a couple of grants that helped seed the studio needs and the Taller Tupac Amaru was born. In addition to some of the financial resources they combined to buy inks and paper they also received alot of love from artists who were "retiring" out printmaking who passed on their equipment for almost nothing.

I joined the Taller in 2007 and also began to contribute to the collective resources used to keep the studio going. We own our own printing table, drying racks, a homemade exposure unit and regularly use the resources from poster sales to buy supplies like ink and paper. From time to time we receive material donations like paper or smaller printing racks that help us keep the work going.

The Taller Tupac Amaru allows the three of us to share a studio to meet our printing needs. Last month we won Best of the Bay Art Collective by the East Bay Express.

About a year or so ago our comrades and fellow artists Josh MacPhee and Alec "icky" Dunn interviewed Jesus, Favianna and I about the history of the Taller and about how we approach doing our work. Josh, Alec, Jesus, Favianna and I are all part of Justseeds.org aartist-worker owned cooperative. So when Josh and Alec were visiting the Bay we sat down for over three hours to talk about our our personal histories as artists, the history of the Taller and our thoughts on how twe approach creating political art.

They conducted this interview for the inaugural issue of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. Signal is a full color, 140 page book about international political art, graphics, and culture and will be an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing political graphics, creative projects and the cultural production of international resistance and liberation struggles. 

In their blog entry, they describe the reasons for wanting to produce Signal: (read full entry)

We wanted to highlight current artists who we thought were doing compelling work, and also to draw connections to the rich history of art and culture associated with resistance and social movements. We especially wanted to share some of the incredible graphics and cultural documents we've seen from other struggles around the world, as most North Americans suffer from a myopia about events taking place beyond our borders.

Jesus and I, as Dignidad Rebelde, enjoy sharing a studio with Favianna since we all are creating political graphics and have some shared and some unique approaches to doing our work as artists. Together we are all contributing toward keeping the traidtion of Xicana printmaking alive.

Mission Icons in a Time of Change

August 21st-29th, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday August 21st, 8:00pm-10:00pm

The Levi's Workshop
580 Valencia Street (at 17th)
San Francisco, CA 94110

This exhibition opening culminates a furious week of printmaking at
the Workshop by local artists Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Art
Hazelwood, Txutxo Perez, Ivan Lopez, Rachel Anne Palacios, Ana Teresa
Fernandez and Jos Sances.  Curators Rene and Rio Yanez have partnered
with Plaza Adelante, the 19th street community center, to ask local
printmakers for their take on the ever-changing nature of the Mission
district.  Come to enjoy great art and our special tequila drinks, but
stay for The Great Tortilla Conspiracy.

To attend the opening reception please RSVP at:
http://workshops.levi.com/calendar/event/plaza-adelante-tortilla-conspiracy

I was very happy to be asked by Eva Martinez to design and print a poster for El Tecolote's 40th Anniversary, a neighborhood newspaper that has been very important to the community. I have worked with them in the past on projects with Juan Fuentes, one of the first collaborations I did with him was a poster for their Encuentro de Canto Popular. There a re bunch of old screen printed posters Juan Made in their office it is always great to check them out when ever I stop by the office. There is an anniversary poster made by Rene Castro that hangs in their office that I have always liked and have hoped that one day I would have the opportunity to work with them on a similar project. Working on this project was a lot of fun, Eva from El Tecolote wanted to use photos from the archive which gave us the opportunity to go through the photo archive that Linda Wilson has been organizing. There were so many photos to go through, in so many category's, i had a stack of photos and Linda scanned them for me. I hope to be able to go back and take some more time to look through the photo archive and work on more projects with El Tecolote.

This summer we had the opportunity to work with Ester Hernandez to print her Virgen de Guadalupe Wanted poster, and we had a lot of fun having her in the studio with us. Lezlie Lopes helped mixing ink for the print working with Ester, who wanted the mugshots to look like it was an old hand painted photo. I really loved Ester's concept, her prints always have great concepts making her one of the best graphic artists out there. 

 In this interview Ester talks about the inspiration for the concept of the poster and the May 1st rally in San Francisco. If any one is interested in purchasing a print contact her here.

These are a few posters we want to share, please feel free to download and print your own copy.

Download We Will Not Comply

Color | Black and White

Color | Black and White 

Download We Will Not Be Intimidated

Color

July 19, 2010

As the battle against Arizona's SB 1070 and similar egregious enforcement policies  rages on people all across the country (and beyond) are taking a stand on the side of justice. Artists have been inspired to use their talent to support the movement for human rights and have self organized wonderful actions to express their solidarity.

After the May 29 mass mobilization in Phoenix that acted as a kick off for Alto Arizona's Human Right Summer I reached out to my compañero Ernesto Yerena who was a key leader in developing the Artists for Arizona viral art campaign. I wanted to continue to plan collaborative art sessions that could bring multiple artists into one space to produced hand made prints to send to Arizona. Joel "Rage.One" Garcia had also been doing alot of solidarity art work and had been doing skill shares and training with young folks in Tucson who were fighting the legislative removal of Ethnic Studies for Arizona schools. We decided to put our heads together and collaborate in the production of another run of prints and stickers. 

Joel reached out to Dewey Tafoya who was able to arrange for space at Self Help Graphics to print posters in the gallery in performance space upstairs. We loaded up the car with screens, squeegees, about 1000 sheets of paper, gallons of ink and our designs and drove down to L.A. We were ready to go!

Our 12 hour Print-A-Thon answered the call from the Alto Arizona! to plan an event as a part of their 30 Actions in 30 Days of Human Rights Campaign. The primary artists and community members who helped out through out the day were:

Dignidad Rebelde (Melanie Cervantes & Jesus Barraza), Dewey Tafoya, Vyal, Felicia Montes, Nico of Los Poets del Norte, Ernesto Yerena, Ernesto Vazquez of Solidarity Ink, John Carlos de Luna of Corazon del Pueblo, Erick Huerta,  Wenceslao Quiroz, Stephanie Zendejas, Janie and of course, Leo Cervantes- my dad!

Unlike our Northern California sessions the Los Angeles session was dominated by men. I kept thinking about how great it would be to have all Xicana from te Northern Califas session and the Xicanos from the Southern Califas session have one big, gender balanced print-a-thon!

The day was great we devoted the first hours for artists and in the evening invited the community to come participate as well.  We cracked jokes, people screen printed for the first time in life, we had hand made poster challenges, we ate vegan tacos, we printed shirts, we burned screens in the sun and we made friends. The day started at about 10:30 am and we got out of there close to 1 am, I think. We were able to pint approximately 1200 posters that were driven to Arizona that very night.

 You shoud also check out the amazing photography from the day by Rafael Cardenas  and this awesome blog by Erick Huerta.

A few weeks back at the La Peña block party celebration I had the chance to run into Dolores Huerta. We were tabling  that day and we had one of the prints I had made of her, Dolores was flipping through the stack of prints and found her image.  I was super shy but Melanie convinced me to go up to her and give her the print. I was happy she liked the image and wanted to take a picture with me, it took me four years but I finally gave her a copy.

As the city of Oakland waits with anxiety about the decision the jury will come to and the final outcome of the Johannes Mehserle trail verdict artists are busy at work paying tribute honoring Oscar's memory.

My friend Paul Barron has created an amazing installation of his posters of Oscar Grant using blow ups of the details and figures in his prints. I am a huge fan of his work and recommend checking out his website: http://mediadissent.com

Paul Barron is an Artist and an Activist. Those two things often overlap.

To sustain his projects he does freelance Web and Graphic Design. Barron did a video installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York with Roberto Miguel in July of 2009.

Barron does a lot of Anti-Authoritarian themed print making, most often Woodcuts and Serigraphs. He also does custom screen printing if you need work done. He has a six color t-shirt press and is set up to print with Plastisols.

Barron loves doing mural work when he gets a little creative freedom. The largest one he has done was 60 feet by 15 feet. Barron is always looking for walls and paint if you would like to commission him.

I have recently returned from a week long visit to Detroit. I was there to participate in the US Social Forum. The US Social Forum (USSF) is a movement building process. It is not a
 conference but it is a space to come up with the peoples’ solutions to the 
economic and ecological crisis. The USSF is the next most important step in our
 struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational,
 diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and
 changes history.

Leading up to the USSF Jesus and I had the pleasure of working with a few organizations to create promotion and recruitment  materials. One of the organizations that I was able work with was Grassroots Global Justice.

"Grassroots Global Justice is an alliance of U.S.-based grassroots groups who are organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people. We understand that there are important connections between the local issues we work on and the global context, and we see ourselves as part of an international movement for global justice.

GGJ is a national alliance of grassroots organizations building a popular movement for peace, democracy and a sustainable world. We support each other's local struggles and collaborate with international allies who share our vision and commitment to building a transformative social justice movement beyond borders.
 
We connect as grassroots leaders by creating spaces for dialogue and strategic thinking, and by sharpening our understanding of global political and economic forces that cause poverty, conflict and environmental destruction in our communities.  We work across issues and regions to develop agendas by and for working-class people, poor people, indigenous people and communities of color that can help lead to a good life for all.  And in doing so, GGJ is helping to support a renaissance of U.S. social movements, led by mass-based, economically independent organizations with a global perspective and key international relationships.

Through convergence, education, leadership development and coordinated action, GGJ will continue to connect real people and their local struggles to promote systems change for a peaceful, democratic and sustainable world.  Over the next 20 years, GGJ will work to achieve critical shifts in global issues including climate justice, trade, migration and militarization, because the time is now to make another world possible – a world where everyone matters and everyone can have enough."

You can support this amazing organization by donating here.

This Sunday Jesus and I will be presenting at the Socialism Conference in Oakland. It will be at the Oakland Marriot.Sunday, July 4th at 11:30 am. "Art and Resistance".

The conference describes itself as follows:

With the economy in shambles and with wars and occupations continuing, the challenge to change these conditions confronts us all. More than a year ago, millions placed their hopes in Barack Obama and the Democrats to solve these problems. But after months of broken promises and concessions to conservatives, jobs are scarce, health care reform is on life support, and full equality for LGBT people remains elusive.

Socialism 2010—to be held in both Chicago and Oakland—will provide an unparalleled opportunity for new and veteran activists and scholars to explore questions about how we got into this mess and how we can get out of it.

Last year, more than 1,800 people turned out to explore the history of struggles of ordinary people, to learn about radical figures who led social movements and to debate theoretical questions that can help us change the world.

Don’t miss the chance to meet, talk and socialize with hundreds of others like you who want to build an alternative to a system of greed, racism, war and oppression.

Our Oakland conference is being hosted at the unionized Oakland Marriott in solidarity with Unite-HERE Local 2’s call to boycott major San Francisco hotels until they agree to give their workers a fair contract.