Colmillos y dientes

Luz fría, corazón hirviente
Un amanecer más, un peso menos
El alma sale del pozo
El infierno es lo de menos
La luz cepilla el polvo
De quienes alguna vez fueron
Y nos quedamos solos
En medio de un día hermoso
Con ganas de gritar...

¿Estás seguro?

Algunos silencios muerden

Al final del día

Estoy un poco cansada,
emocionalmente abusada,
mentalmente hastiada,
Asombrada.

No puedo hacer una llamada
Sin ser sometida a la tortura del fracaso.

A veces pienso que tu y kafka
se conocieron
Y me Inscribieron juntos
Ante la ley.

No quiero que te acabes
Tampoco que me alabes
Pero te pido
Te pido
Que dejes de agujerearme
Con tus palabras de hierro

Por favor.
Con amor.

(Ytaelena Lopez, 2010)




Imagen: Indian Beauty, 2010, Acuatinta en papel.

Incendios

dissecting the creative process: Chocolate's visa

How I do a painting?
I will show you the process, step by step.
Usually I work with live models or I gain the confidence of a interesting people (with food or alcohol or good conversation) and then I do a portrait.
But this painting was created as a product of meditative process that took several weeks.
It is why I will use this painting as example.

"Visa con chocolate"
By Ytaelena López
Mixed media in Fabriano paper
2009

I STEP

do a simple draw with pencil in Fabriano paper.
I set the color and technique that I will use for the skin: blue and pink watercolor. This is as a reference, only.
Then, I work in the visual focus of the painting: the eyes. I work with watercolor Ink and I use a masque for protect the white parts.




II STEP

Then I worked with the watercolor:
I did the loose lines in blue, then pink.
The lines follow the patch of the muscle... well maybe no. Maybe I did because I fell in that way, jejeje.
The same with water... I paint mostly with water.
Then the tenths with ink and then the lips with red pen ink. Before applied red I used a acrylic transparent glossy mask. ;)
And the eye again! Acrylic brown (? I don't remember the mix) is perfect for Dans eyes.



STEP III

Now it is the turn to play with blue, sorry, shadows.
Up do down: the watercolor dripped for the forehead to the down, in the shirt.
The blue color is color river that expanded and mixed, though the water's magic.
Then, the hair... an expresso coffe is mixed with sepia, then brushed, and then... mmm!
I like it!

But It's not ready yet



FINAL STEP (I jump some :S)

At least! the final version of "Visa with chocolate"

After correct the "Marilyn Monroe"'s dyed that I did in the hair with Prussian washes and finish the arm with the same technique that I used in the face, there is a lot of work remain.

1- The background:
If we are portraying a baker, the background should be a kitchen. I do the sketch of the kitchen in hard pencil.
But I don't want to steal attention to the main figure. I do the shadow with washes, using coffee infusion and the dirty water that I used for clean the brushes.
Then, when the paper is dried, I do all the background with lines, using fluorescent metallic and sparking Sakura ink gel pens.

2- The focal point: the cake (+the knife)
I always keep the space for the knife clean since the beginning, using masque liquid. Now I retired the masque and I do the lines with black ink.
The cake was already settle, too. I put a copy of a H1B Visa (American work permit for non immigrants aliens) in the cake, using medium acrylic gel. Then I cover with modeling paste (already tinted with brown acrylic), that looks like chocolate glazed. I put that "chocolate" in the knife, too. Then, some black and golden ink washes in the cake and... VOILA!

The chocolate visa's cake is ready to eat!

La chica de los rizos anónimos

La chica de los rizos anónimos
Originally uploaded by alrevez

Ytaelena Lopez

2009
Acrylic on paper
By Ytaelena López

Retrato realizado en menos de 1 hora,
con la modelos posando frente a mí,
luego de un par de cervezas
bajo una luz pobre
en el block de acuarela que uso para bosquejos.

No voy a decir que es mi mejore retrato, pero es bastante bueno, tomando en cuenta las circunstancias. Me gusta.
De paso, los colores me recuerdan a mi infancia en los ochenta.
¡Espero que lo disfruten!

INDIGESTO

No confunde el hambre con las balas
No sale a marchar por el pan
No deja de llorar al recuerdo del calor.

La verdad,
Le hacía más feliz la mesa bien servida porque no es agradable sentir el humo del estómago achicharrándose con el ácido del plomo recién digerido.

La verdad,
Le gusta escuchar la radio para no oír la sirena persiguiendo a los herederos de la miseria que corren por las calles de cartón mientras gritan por su vida drogados de odio.

¿De quiénes son los alaridos?
Luces rojas brillan desde la montaña cañón mientras hago papel maché con los restos de mi esperanza. ¿Quién la necesita cuando el ácido del hambre no te deja digerir tu último trozo de dignidad?

No le interesa
Si pudiese vivir encerrado en la vistosidad del araguaney ya se hubiese cortado como un gesto de patriotismo.

(Poema y dibujo de ytaelena lópez)

YTAELENA LOPEZ: My resume, as an artist

Education


2007 - Present Figure Drawing - Michael Markowitz Study.
San Francisco (CA)
2006 M. S. in Mass Communication - Spanish Language Journalism
Florida International University, Miami, FL
2006 Graduate Certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACC)
Florida International University, Miami, FL
(2004 Bachelor in Arts - School of Literature [completed coursework]
Universidad Central de Venezuela/ Universidad Católica Andrés Bello)
2003 Bachelor in Mass Communications – School of Journalism
Universidad Central de Venezuela
1997 - 1998 Narrative Workshop - National annual contest - Caracas -
LATINOAMERICAN STUDIES CENTER “ROMULO GALLEGOS” (CELARG).
1995 - 1996 Comics Drawing course - School of comics Lopez and Acosta
1995 - 1996 Painting and sculpture - Cristobal Rojas Art School
Caracas, Venezuela


Honors and Awards/Grants

"Best Contemporary Installation" Award during the Dia de Muertos 2008 at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2008, San Francisco (CA)

CELARG Annual Fellowship for study literature with a prestigious Venezuelan writer, 1997 - 1998, Caracas

Monte Avila Editores. Book: “Voces Nuevas”, 1997 – 1998, CELARG


Bibliography


KPFA Radio San Francisco - The host Darren D' Leon interviewed Ytaelena Lopez (artist), Río Yanez (curator) and Candi Farlice (artist). (Radio 2050) Saturday, October 4th, 2008.

Crosscurrents (KALW) Radio, 10/27/2008, broadcasted also in KPFA Radio San Francisco at 6:30 pm.

El Tecolote - "Día de los Muertos en tiempos de cambio" Sally Douglas Arce, SomArt, Oct 02, 2008.
El Reportero (Local newspaper of San Francisco) - "Bitch, Welcome to America" Edition #46, January 11, 2008
SFWeekly.com - "How To Keep Your Bitch Down" — A New Mission Play Dec. 14, 2008



Professional Affiliations


Volunteer, Artists Television Access

Volunteer coordinator, Mission Arts & Performing Project

Member, National Association of Hispanic Journalists


Exhibitions


- Miscelaneous Flesh (paintings), City Art Gallery, San Francisco April 2009

- The Living Map (Interactive installation with photography of Valentina Vitols), Maison Bleu during the MAPP (Mission Art Performance Project). February 7, 2009

- HOT! HOT!! HOT!!!, Erotic Art. City Art Gallery, San Francisco (CA) February 2009. (Collective)

- Mujeres (Action painting and art work) Maison Bleu during the MAPP (Mission Art Performance Project). December 6, 2008

- 85@85, 3rd annual International Juried exhibition. MiArte Gallery, Coral Gables (FL) December 2008 - February 2009. (Collective)

-Muerte sin fronteras, Dia de muertos exhibiton, MCCLA (Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts). November 2008. (Collective), San Francisco (CA). Her installation "Virgen de la Diversidad" was awarded as a "Best Contemporanean Art Installation".

- Day of the Dead in a Time of Change (Collective), SOMARTS Cultural Center, October - November 2008, San Francisco (CA).

- FEMINAS (first international breast cancer exhibition), Galería Locarno, Talca, Chile October 2008.

- Illussion 7 Dreams/ Sueños (Collective), MCCLA (Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts). September 2008, San Francisco (CA)

- Bitch, welcome to America (window installation), Artist Television Access, January 6 -31, 2008, San Francisco (CA)

- BITCH: pavlovian solutions for the modern home, (video performance), Artists’ Television Access, December 2007

- 2008 ATA (Artists' Television Access) Silent Art Auction (Collective), Receiver Gallery, January 26, 2008

- Actos Criminales (Collective poetry performance with Poetas en Tránsito) - Biblioteca Nacional, Caracas, September 27, 2003

- ANI-MALES (Multimedia installation / Performance), Salon de Jóvenes Artistas, Galería Universitaria, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas July 4 and 8, 2002


Related experience


I am journalist and writer at the same time. I have a poetry book published and I live to incorporate poems in my work. My experience as a online journalist is reflected in the extensive investigation that I use to do as a preparation for some installations, as you can see in the online multimedia map of "Mission, the virtual afterlife" in SomArts.


My concerns about immigration and minorities comes when I moved to Miami, where I studied Journalism Research specializing in Latino minorities. It was there when when I was touched in very intimate way by the drama of immigrants. The sensation of No-Place and their agony under the Ulysses syndrome, besides the poverty, it is a constant in my work.


Webpages:
http://ytaelena.com
http://arteyta.wordpress.com/


(Picture of Adrian Arias during ILUSSION SHOW VII)

Art vs. Crime: How the Mission's artists are helping neighbors feel safe after episodes of lethal violence

This history was filmed by Cassidy and appeared at SANFRANCISCO I AM

Discussions of the dichotomous nature of the Mission approach tedium, with shootings in front of valet stands, or the whole delicate flower thing creating enough dramatic tension to launch a thousand newspaper columns.The organizers of the Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP) aren't content to just wring their hands: they're doing what they can to boost the Mission's thriving arts community while acknowledging its more challenging sides with their bi-monthly, multidisciplinary, intercultural event night.Connecting visual artists, musicians, poets, dancers and poets, MAPP weaves together storefronts, warehouses, studios and homes to form an art walk that seems to turn into a huge multi-block party. Homeowners lay down stages in their living rooms, scraggly artists gussy up and serve hors d'oeuvres.The night of Saturday April 4, MAPP held its bi-monthly multidisciplinary, intercultural event night. Connecting visual artists, musicians, poets, dancers and poets,

Thank you, Cassidy!

Miscelaneous flesh@ City Art Gallery

Ytaelena Lopez´show

March 2009
Café Chan Chan

April 2009
City Art Gallery

About Miscellaneous flesh


"Where are you from? In this time, you have the option to choose where you want to belong. It is a huge privilege that allow us to go more far away that a physical place or a racial identity. We can build an identity based in our vision of a better world, a new trans-cultural "American Dream". But for to do that, we have to accept that we are, we was, as a point of begin.


In my case I am woman, I am Latina, I am immigrant, I am a Yta.


I have to deal with the haunting of all the thing that I left behind me: the violence, the absence of hope, the death, the minority tag.

But I have the option to move forward to the person that I wanted to be: Yta.

Home lives in myself, come where I am come, it is my flesh.

If I want freedom, I have to take the responsibility in that change.

It is not a miscellaneous issue. "

La huida

No tengo las mismas montañas
Donde la selva esconde el aroma
De mi amado trópico cruel que araña
Ni la pegajosa humedad me entrampa
En su piel de gotas de seda

Que me ata con transpiración de cadenas

Con sueños de concreto,
Con balas de pena
Con candelas de desencanto
Con una renuncia que quema

Y ME FUI

Quería ver otras estrellas

Pero el azul no es el mismo
Y a veces lloro de pena.


(Ytaelena López, 2009)

Hot! Hot!! Hot!!!

El viernes 6 de febrero del 2008 se inaugura la colectiva Hot!Hot!!Hot!!! en City Art Gallery de San Francisco.
Como el nombre sugiere, se trata de una muestra de arte erotico.
Las piezas con las cuales participo son las siguientes:


$350


$200

Esta ultima, a la que titule "Dirty Blond" por error, esta a muy, pero muy buen precio para la maravilla de pastel, a la cual la foto no le hace justicia).

Si te interesa alguna de las piezas, no dudes en escribir

Dreams

About me, as an artist

(Picture of the installation "Virgen de la Diversidad")



Yta is a Venezuelan artist who has been doing poetic performances since 1998. Her first projects were with GrupoGrama, a multimedia art collective in Caracas that promotes new artistic talent and cultural events in alternative public spaces. The most popular was the video-installation ANI-MALES, which was presented at the Salon for Young Artists in the Universidad Central de Venezuela (among other places) and the video performance GREEN-PE, THE INFECTIOUS. Both are available in her website BITES (http://ytapoems.wordpress.com/). She is the author of two books: Voces Nuevas of Celarg-Monteavila (1998) and Pliegues (2007).


Yta studied a year of drawings with the School of comics Lopez and Acosta at the same time as painting and sculpture at the Cristobal Rojas. After that, she dedicated to finish a career in Social Communication in parallel with another in Literature. During that period, among other things she worked as a reporter for culture and making a couple of curatorship.


Then Yta came to Miami in the United States, where I studied Journalism Research specializing in Latino minorities. It was there when when she was touched in very intimate way by the drama of immigrants. The sensation of No-Place and their agony under the Ulysses syndrome, besides the poverty, it is a constant in her job.


San Francisco (CA) was the next stop and the return to my first vocation. Immediately upon arrival (2007) went to study art by Michael Markowitz. It also does other video-performace with my husband called ‘BITCH: pavlovian solutions for the modern home’ on the application of scientific methods for the social conditioning of women immigrants in Artists’ Television Access. In the same gallery, in January 2008, Yta did a pictorial multimedia installation called “Bitch, welcome to America.”


Yta participated in the Illussion 7 Dreams/ Sueños in Mission Cultural Center with a painting performance last September.

Now she is working on the “Mission: The Virtual Afterlife” project, a interactive map installation exhibited during the show Day of the Dead in a Time of Change at SOMARTS Cultural Center in San Francisco, between October 10 and November 4, 2008. At the same time she is doing another installation in the Dia de Muertos exhibition at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco that was awarded as "Best Contemporanean Installation" of the exhibition.


She also participated in FEMINAS: Primer salon internacional de mujeres pequeño formato, acerca del cancer de mamas (First international salon about breast cancer) at Galería Locarno in Talca, Chile.


Yta combines poetry, painting and performance in work focused toward tolerance and self acceptance. She shows common worries -identity, violence y femininity- though her own person, to write a fiction in images where there is no clear the border between public and private issues, between she and you.

¿Ethnic dilemmas, sadomasochism, moral voyeurism, pleasure and guilty? You have to decide whatever is in here or here.

"I LIVE HERE!" / Yo vivo aquí

A veces siento que álguien camina a mi lado
que me espía, me sigue, me vigila
esperando que cruce la esquina de la 16th St.
o que responda al llamado de los murales
de la Outer Mission en la 24th St.

Es el miedo,

Miedo cabrón, miedo asesino
que me dejen sangrando en el suelo
como a los siete,
que serán ocho,
que espero no sean nueve,
que rezo no sea yo
la próxima en la línea de fuego.


Yo no quiero vivir en un cementerio
yo no quiero enterrar mis esperanzas
yo no quiero llorar a mis hijos muertos.

Por eso les pido,
que hagamos un alto a la violencia,
que el río del odio no separe al Norte del Sur
que nos reconozcamos como una familia
y podamos vivir en paz.

(Poema de Ytaelena López pintado como mural para la instalación Mission: The Virtual Afterlife en el SOMARTS Gallery, San Francisco durante octubre-noviembre 2008)

Acerca de mi, como artista

Hola, mi nombre es Ytaelena López y comparto con buena parte del mundo mi pasión por el arte, mi condición de inmigrante y ser parte del género femenino, en el cual se sufre y goza al mismo tiempo.

Mientras otros se criaban haciendo deportes, yo pasé por todos los cursos de arte que se podían encontrar en Venezuela. Incluso estudié un año de dibujos con la Escuela de comics Lopez y Acosta al mismo tiempo que pintura y escultura en la Cristobal Rojas.

El arte quedó en punto suspensivo mientras terminaba mi carrera de Comunicación Social en forma simultánea con la de Literatura y Filosofía. Durante ese periodo trabajé -entre otras cosas- como reportera de cultura y haciendo un par de curadurías.

Fue en esos años (2000- 2003) cuando nació el GrupoGrama, un colectivo de arte multimedia con el cual realizé varios performances poéticos (¿no les había dicho que soy poeta?). El más popular fue la video-instalación ANI-MALES, que se presentó en el Salón Universitarios de Jóvenes Artistas de la Biblioteca Central de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (además de otros sitios más) y el video-performance GREEN-PE, MEGAINFECCION POETICA, que se encuentra disponible en la red (http://almainsolada.blogspot.com/).

Luego llegué a Miami en los Estados Unidos, donde estudié Periodismo de Investigación con especialización en minorías latinas. Allí me tocó en forma muy íntima el drama de los inmigrantes, con su disyuntiva de No-Lugar y su agonía bajo el Síndrome de Ulises, como si no fuera poco con la pobreza.

San Francisco (CA) fue la siguiente parada y un retorno a mi primera vocación. Inmediatamente al llegar (2007) entré al estudio de arte de Michael Markowitz. También realizé otro video-performace junto con mi esposo llamado 'BITCH: pavlovian solutions for the modern home' sobre la aplicación de los métodos ciéntificos para el condicionamiento social de las mujeres inmigrantes en Artists' Television Access. En esa misma galería independiente expuse durante todo enero del 2008 ese y otros videos en una instalación pictórica multimedia llamada "Bitch, welcome to América".

Ahora estoy con ustedes, compartiendo mi trabajo desde la red en:

http://ytaelena.com/
http://tinyurl.com/artyta

Estrellita de mar/ Little starfish

Estrellita de mar
Originally uploaded by alrevez

Porque a veces no estoy aquí
y me quedo sin aire
esperando el retorno del azul
azuzando la huida.

----------..--------

Because sometimes I am not here
without air
waiting the return of the big blue
instigating the flight

(Ytaelena López)

Tenazas

Un cangrejo vive en mi garganta,
Bueno... vivía
Al desaparecer el miedo,
Ya no hay palabras para comer
Tampoco oxígeno,
El corazón se robó el grito,
También el aliento,
El pobre no cabe en el torax,
digo, el cagrejo,
y asoma sus tenazas por un ojo.

¿Nunca has sentido el mordisco
que te despierta llorando luto?

Un silencio vive en tu casa,
se acaba de mudar
conmigo.




A crab lives in my throat,
Well ... Lived.
When the fear disappears,
There were no more words to eat
Nor oxygen,
The heart stole the cry,
The breath also,
Poor! Too small is my chest,
For the crab
And their pincers scape for an eye.

Have you ever felt the bite
that wakes you up crying, mourning?

A silence lives in your house,
It has just moved
With me.

(Art and poems of Ytaelena López)

Tides / Marea

Y me miré al espejo,
Y el mar salió de mis ojos
Y fui libre
De ser tu despojo.



And I looked me in the mirror,
And the sea came out of my eyes
And I was free
Of your remnant to be.






P.D.: Dibujo y poema de Ytaelena López. Video también.

Zuas!

I like the nobility
Of those who lose their lives in battle
Especially if they do it in front of me
On the grill



Me gusta la nobleza
De quién pierde su vida en batalla
Principalmente si se encuentra frente a mí
A la parrilla




(Dibujo y poema de Ytaelena López)

Morbido

En serio
No quise hundir mis dedos
Sobre tu piel esponjosa
Quizás sólo cavar




Seriously
I didn't want to sink my fingers
Into your spongy skin
Maybe only to dig





Dibujo y poema de Ytaelena López