In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with teacher and Pacifica based artist, painter Oscar Lopez.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this week's episode, Emily interviews painter and muralist Oscar Lopez. Oscar shares his journey from growing up in Mexico City, where graffiti first introduced him to art, to becoming an established artist in California. He talks about his murals honoring farm workers, his shift from computer science to art, and the challenges he faced as a minority artist. Oscar also discusses the importance of believing in oneself and the struggle with self-identity as an artist. His works are currently displayed at the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose and Fort Mason in San Francisco.
About Artist Oscar Lopez in His Own Words:
I am visual artist born and raised in Mexico City, where I first came into contact of the art world in the Graffiti urban art scene. After immigrating to the USA to San Francisco, Bay area (Silicon Valley), focusing on trying to understand our complex society through a Mexican immigrant’s lens in the USA. As a Mexican native who has being affected by the influence and the interruption of my culture by international immigrants and trends of imperialistic organizations. I use a critical eye to engage with the globalization, imperialism, and capitalism that affect every corner of the two nations that share my soul. My concerns are reflected in a dialogue of the Stockholm syndrome symptoms created by the oppression and discrimination of imperialistic orders. In both sides of the border this is having a bigger impact in minorities, people of color and the workers that hold entire nations that also suffer of social and cultural amnesia. In order to survive in these societies built on the foundations of white supremacy and colonialism our ancestors have been forced for generations to either hide, directly confront, or sympathize with our oppressors, resulting in a mass forgetting of cultural and social practices. As our cultural identity and practices have been suppressed we have become hostages in our own homeland. Our collective social and culture amnesia continues to affect people of color on both sides of the border.
The globalization of multicultural problems such as classism, racism, and inequality affect the social and psychological side of humanity. Since we so easily forget where we come from as individuals, as an artist I choose to remember, honor, and reclaim those roots and rights. Multicultural problems affect how we see ourselves in comparison to others, in a disengagement with our history, and in a loss of our customs. Even the color of our skin is a source of contention. These problems are intangible, invisible for many. As an artist, I want to create tangible images that reflect our psychological symptoms and demand us to confront our submission to the powers that hold us.
Visit Oscar's Website: ArtByOscarLopez.com
Follow on Instagram: @OscarLopezArt
For more on his mural at Fort Mason, CLICK HERE.
For more on his mural at the ICA San Jose, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 1 0 2 0.5 FM every Friday at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. I. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them. In our show notes,
Artist Oscar Lopez: I said, I prefer to be poor and happy than rich and miserable. It's because taking a risk on doing what you love sometimes, and especially artists, is a huge risk. And I think I'm more connected. I feel like a little bit more sometimes empathetic to humanity.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Oscar Lopez. The guest on this week's episode of Art is Awesome.
I am your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work
Painter Oscar Lopez has a studio at Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica. He teaches at San Jose City College and he currently has murals at the ICA San Jose and Fort Mason in San Francisco. I met him when he had a solo show recently at the M Stark Gallery in Half Moon Bay, Admired and Erased.
Oscar grew up in Mexico City.He did graffiti as a kid and in school he studied computer science. After moving to California, he switched to art, getting an MFA from San Jose State University and the San Francisco Art Institute. We met at Oscar's studio in Pacifica and he talked about his murals honoring farm workers, his ESL teacher, [00:02:00] encouraging him to study art.
And how as a kid, graffiti made art accessible for him.
Artist Oscar Lopez: What it was important is that that gives me the opportunity to have connection to creating, right? Because I couldn't have the chance to go to museums. Or galleries, neither for economical reasons or accessibility. That was something close, you know, like a art center or like a gallery close by where I live.
It was nothing, but graffiti did that for me. A lot of people did lettering, other people did, you know, characters and the realism in Mexico and the graffiti scene was really big. And that's what it really hooked me on it.
Host Emily Wilson: A cousin of a friend influenced him.
Artist Oscar Lopez: He brought me for the first time that I saw Graffiti magazine, it was because he had one and it was from the us So seeing all this stuff, colors, letters for me was like, oh, that's really attractive.
I want to start to doing [00:03:00] this, and that's how pretty much everything started.
Host Emily Wilson: Oscar started to be fascinated with drawing faces.
Artist Oscar Lopez: I start to do portraiture. I had, the cover of a magazine. They gimme the cover of a magazine. I did the half woman half tiger And the difficulty of that back then is that in Mexico we didn't have all the color palette.
You know, you don't have these three different greens or like five different greens. Now there are like 20 different greens, but back then we have to make them can to can. So to create a skin tones, that was a, a skill, like a mixing colors, a color theory that I was learning as, as I go, um, and, and I start to focus more on that and, and the portraiture and the faces and, and a little bit later on in, what can I say with that images I.
Host Emily Wilson: Oscar had been drawing since he was nine years old, but he studied computer science in Mexico and at Foothill College when he came to California to live with an [00:04:00] uncle when he was 20 years old.
Artist Oscar Lopez: When I was in the community college, my ESL teacher told me, you need to stop drawing everywhere and you need to pay attention in the English class because if you wanna be successful in this country, you really need to learn the language.
However, I don't want to stop. So he introduced me. So by this point, my ESL teacher, who is from San Francisco, and Jose Ena, who right now is working in diabetes, they talk before and they arranged the idea that because it was in the middle of the quarter that I have to go and draw in Jose Rena's class with a condition that I have to stop drawing in my English class and pay attention to the class.
And that's exactly what happened. I started going to Jose's class and uh, he told me like, don't worry, don't pay just in the middle of the semester. Just stay here. And that's the start, that changed [00:05:00]My entire career. So I stopped computer engineering and, and I start to work in my AA in Arts build into the BFA to the masters, and that's how it starts.
Host Emily Wilson: Oscar is glad he made the switch
Artist Oscar Lopez: in the graffiti world, you have your unique name, your tag name, and it's kinda like living this two. Lives, right? Like think like superhero, you know? And I was living these two lives. My school thing was one thing, and my graffiti thing was another thing. They always been so close that when I decide to formalize this, it was kind of like, okay.
I said, I prefer to be poor and happy than rich and miserable. It's because taking a risk on doing what you love sometimes, and especially art is, is a, is a huge risk. And I think I'm more connected. I feel like a little bit more sometimes empathetic to humanity.
Host Emily Wilson: Getting started as an artist was difficult
Artist Oscar Lopez: as a person of color, as a minority, as a person who has an accent, sometimes the doors are not all open for you.
I understand early on in this [00:06:00] stuff that if I want to put myself out there, no one is going to do it for me. I have to do it on myself, and it's a lot of rejection out there. So before I share this with my students, when I teach them, it's like you have to believe in yourself and you have to treat yourself as a professional even though you are studying.
Because if you wait until you get out of the school, it gets even harder because you don't know how to start. You don't know how to deal with rejection. You don't know how to deal with okay, you know? I have to try again. Since I was in Foothill College, I start to apply to local contests, national contests, state contests.I show in coffee shops, and it's just basically knocking the doors.
Host Emily Wilson: Oscar kept going.
Artist Oscar Lopez: What Harper says that we do paintings because we cannot say it with words. And Philip Gaston say like, we make paintings in order to see them. So for me, it's a way to, now, since I'm in America, knowing in Mexico to liberate all these thought that I have.
But if I just keep it, for [00:07:00] me, this is like a empty statement, you know, put in a notebook with a, with a pages closed.
Host Emily Wilson: To bring attention to farm workers. Oscar started with a poster, but he wanted to do something bigger and he got a grant to paint a mural at Fort Mason, which is up through May 31st. Your food, my work, our land.
Artist Oscar Lopez: The idea is to bring awareness of farm workers. Not just that, but food in general and, and the importance of not just the people who is actually working the land, but. Me as a consumer, what is my responsibility of me as a consumer taking care of the land that someone else is working for me to have food every time.
Host Emily Wilson: Oscar's show in Half Moon Bay, admired and erased included birds symbolizing migration, as well as pre-Colombian figures.
Artist Oscar Lopez: I'm not just talking about just Mexico, you know, I'm talking about El Salvador, um, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia. Every place have a little view of that reminiscence through the terracotta figurines that tell [00:08:00] about the culture.
And one of the things that that. Why I choose this subject matter is because when the Spaniards came, they really interrupt cultures. They really tried to eradicate it. At the same time, they stole, you know, these artifacts to, to bring it to museums all over the world where they are admired. They are well seen.
People pay money to go inside to see this. At the same time, what is happening with the people who is descend of these figurines or artifacts? And it is that relationship that I don't understand that I try to figure it out through the visual pictures that I make, uh, or the images.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show three questions where I ask the guests the same three things they are. When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that's had an impact on you, and what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?[00:09:00]
Artist Oscar Lopez: I don't consider myself an artist. I think I'm still researching for that the day that I can bring more to the conversation pictorially. Uh, maybe with techniques, but with messages. I think I will consider myself an artist when people decide, call me artist.
It was when I was doing graffiti in one of the streets of, of Mexico with some of my friends, and I remember I have this face of a girl crying and I used to. Put a phrase, and I don't remember if I took it from a book or the Bible, I don't remember what I took that phrase for it, but it has to do with the, the feeling of, of this girl and this lady passed by, we were close to a mecado, so a lot of older women and, and people passed by to go and buy the groceries and the lady passed by and stopped for a while seeing it. She went to buy her groceries and come back and she told [00:10:00] me, why are the crews crying? And I said, that's isai over there. And she told me I don't know how to read. So I discovered that when I start to put language, like literally words, I limitated myself. To say something. And now me being in a country that a lot of people don't speak English, my images should say and feel different or say more to, to be more like rich, more people.
And I think that moment, that piece, that changed again for me. 'cause it, it is like an image can say a lot.
I think it's every moment. I think it's the people. I think it's in the way I, a lot of my artwork has to do with society and people. I'm reflecting about my culture, my people from figurines, that if you go to any, any site where there are pyramids in, in Mexico, you see these figurines or you go to a museum and, and always in the [00:11:00] history aspect of, of the museums, you have this.
Artifacts from, from Americas, from seeing that I eat, I'm eating every day, and the people who is making this possible is being ignored from seeing that the things that we have in common are our feelings, nor our skin color. All of that, I think is the most inspired place for me.
Host Emily Wilson: Thanks for listening to Art is Awesome and thank you so much to our guest, Oscar Lopez. You can see his mural without them is not us on the front of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose and through May 31st. His mural will be at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Your food, my work, our land. Please follow the show and join us next time when the guest will be Beau McCall, known as the [00:12:00] button man, his West Coast Premier Buttons on is at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco.
Art Is Awesome is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 1 0 2 0.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod.
With incompetent music. Be sure and follow us on Instagram at Artis Awesome podcast. Or visit our website till next [00:13:00] time.