I was going through our flat files the other day and came across the first poster I printed back in March of 2001. I printed this poster when I first started working at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in the San Francisco Mission District. I was hired as the graphic designer and one of my duties was to design posters for the exhibitions. This was my real introduction to screen printing, working with Juan R. Fuentes I started designing posters that he would print in Mission Grafica. Juan along with Calixto Robles (who teaches the screen printing classes at Mission Grafica) encouraged me to print my first poster after having completed my first poster design for the Solo Mujeres exhibit. They told me to design something simple, of course I did not listen and put together a four color poster and got to work. For my first try I think it was pretty good, the registration was pretty off and the black printed kinda off, but hey this was just the beginning. Over the next two years I spent all my free time working on posters and prints. Some posters went up in the streets of the Mission others went up in galleries.
In putting together this poster I was inspired by “Transgresores de la ley” a song by Tijuana No about the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. This has been one of my favorite bands since high school and their politics were always right on with my beliefs about immigration and land rights. Especially with their support for the Zapatistas who have been a major influence in my life and whose movement has continued to be a major theme in my artwork.
The quote in the poster is:
…Mientras que no, no
se han solucionado las cosas,
mientras que existe, existe:
el hambre, la miseria, las
enfermedades y toda clase
de injusticia, no vamos a
compremeter a dejar la armas…
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