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The North American Adventurer’s Guide to Burritos

There are plenty of guides that show tourists the local hot spots in a community, but this could be a first of its kind—The North American Adventurer’s Guide to Burritos. It’s a website that has a rating system scoring burritos and is accompanied by renderings of the Mexican food by the tasting aficionado Random Cushing. His travels have taken him from the Midwest to the West Coast and back to El Paso rating the tortilla wrapped meals.

The Art Avenue: Some people rate burger joints, steak houses and wines, when did you decide the burrito was a food worthy of rating ?

Cushing: So 2013 was the first year that I started scoring burritos. I wasn’t drawing them at that point. 2011 was the year I got super into the burrito. I spent the summer living with a friend of mine and we would just cook breakfast burritos for two or three meals.

I flew to Los Angeles and I was going out there to stay for nine days and I was going to be by myself and I didn’t know anyone so I needed something to do…I found this [food] truck on Santa Monica and Westwood. It was Tacos el Gallito and it was incredible. At, like, seven in the morning I had my first burrito in L.A. and it was amazing. It ended up being the second best burrito that I had on the entire trip, but after that it was like this mission. I went back to L.A. last year and that’s when I started drawing burritos—after two I said, like, I was on to something, and I think the third one I started drawing the tortillas to get the texture and the brown spots and that was a landmark drawing discovery.

Steak Burrito, L& J Cafe, El Paso, TX
Fig 1. L& J Cafe, El Paso, TX
Steak Burrito
Score: 3

AA: You have a very interesting scoring process called RIDS. Tell me about the scale.

RC: It’s four categories and each one is scored out of four points total, and then there is the average of the four categories. The first category is Roll, which is the integrity of your burrito, because it’s the most important thing. I mean the whole idea is to have the meal contained inside your plate—no mess, which is one of the greatest qualities of burritos to me.  Number two is Ingredients, that is the quality of the ingredients that are involved and how well they taste and seasoned and that one is really subjective and then D is for Dispersal, which includes the way the ingredients are dispersed through the burrito as well as the variety of the ingredients. So sometimes, especially in El Paso you really get a good burrito that is like two ingredients so it will score a little lower in dispersal because of that lack of variety…I am looking to get like a food pyramid inside my burrito, that my burrito can keep me filled for like seven hours. And then finally ‘S’ is for Sauce and that one, that’s critical—you have to have good sauce. So that’s the North American Adventurer’s Guide to Burritos RIDS scoring scale.

AA: How many burritos do you think you have scored, and why The North American Adventurer’s Guide to Burritos?

RC: Probably about 40, officially. I’ll go somewhere new and not know anyone and just spend like the entire day and sometimes it’s like 12-14 hours just walking around the place. A burrito is like, you can get like I said an entire food pyramid, all the nutrients you need equally distributed through one mess-less meal that’s handheld.   It’s the perfect adventure food as far as I am concerned.

Barbacoa Burrito, Crisostomo, El Paso, TX
Fig 2. Crisostomo, El Paso, TX
Barbacoa Burrito
Score: 3.25

AA: You say you like to eat them all the time, even now that you are in El Paso.

RC: I mainly cook them but there are a few times that I go out to get them. In El Paso I still cannot not eat them, but the thing is, is the lack of ingredient diversity.  You don’t get a lot of burritos with vegetables in them, besides like meat in them and two ingredients with like cheese or beans. It’s not as much diversity as they do really well in ingredient scores. They taste great. But they usually score low in the roll because they are not closed on both ends.

AA: How does a roll earn a 4 on your scale?

RC: A well rolled burrito that is closed on both ends ensures that there is no mess and I’ve totally had burritos in El Paso that have been mess-less, but a lot of times because they are open on the end you get like grease or something will drip out of the bottom. It’s no good.

AA: Is there a process you follow when eating and scoring?

RC: I have to get the exact amount of hungry…it takes me about 20 -25 minutes to draw a burrito, 20 flat, I have a pretty solid system for it. It takes me a minute and half to score a burrito, a really short amount of time. So I spend a whole lot of time considering the categories, every bite I am analyzing it. So when I am done it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour. I consider the scores to see if something tastes amazing as you eat and you feel terrible 40 minutes later—that’s bad so you can’t be too hasty to appropriate a score.

Carne Asada Burrito, Café Delicias, Las Cruces, NM
Fig 3. Café Delicias, Las Cruces, NM
Carne Asada Burrito
Score: 3.125

AA: I would assume with so many places that offer burritos in this city, you might find a few that score high enough to warrant that.

RC: I’ve scored Rafa’s, Lucy’s, Delicias, L&J’s, Crisostomo, Aquimichu. In El Paso I really like Crisostomo. I go to the one on North Mesa and their barbacoa is good, their chili relleno is really good and their rajas con queso, I think it is, it’s like peppers and onions and cheese, that one is good. It’s a little greasy but it tastes great. Their barbacoa scored a 3.25.

I actually got Rafa’s on Montana Street on my way back from the Guadalupe Mountains where I was backpacking and I came back and I saw a sign that said “Burritos” and I turned around. [editor’s note: It ended up scoring a 2.975 because the sauce scored low. It came in a bag.]

Another good burrito that I super appreciate is this guy named Hector, I don’t know. Hector goes to the bar and sells burritos for like three dollars each. Those are amazing. Fantastic. That should be a thing in like every city—a guy that goes around with an ice chest full of burritos and just sells them to people at the bars. It’s incredible.

AA: Did you score that one?

RC: No, no I didn’t but I do also score a category of drunk burritos. So if I get drunk and eat a burrito and have my drawing supplies and then the burrito is scored out of five, because of drunkenness. Drunkeness is the fifth factor. The thing about that is that you get a little drunk and eat a burrito and go ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever had and I end up giving it like a 3.75 which is very high score…I am really unforgiving on my scoring.

If I am scoring my favorite burritos really high, then I have to be really hard on everything. If I ate something and I thought this was a 4, this is amazing and then I go and eat something better—like how do I score that, to me there is no such thing as a perfect score. Because if I ever find one then there can never be anything better.

Al Pastor, Leo’s, Los Angeles, CA
Fig 3. Leo’s, Los Angeles, CA
Al Pastos
Score: 3.375

AA:What’s the highest you’ve scored a burrito and which restaurant earned that rating?

RC: A 3.625. That was actually a chorizo burrito at Tacos El Gallito in West Los Angeles. The best, my favorite of all on this list is a spot at 1515 S. La Brea in Los Angeles in a spot called Leo’s and it’s just like a truck outside of a gas station. It’s amazing. [According to Cushing’s website, theburritobook.com, he scored this one a 3.5. and highly suggests adding the salasa verde.]

AA:You scored a sweet potato burrito?

RC: Yeah, that was really a good one. It was like sweet potatoes and it had some cheese in it that was really nice. It had like a little salty cheese that went perfectly with the consistency of it. It was really well melted and went perfectly with this mashed up sweet potato in there. So it just had some peppers and onions.

To check out more of Cushing’s burritos and other works of art go to:

theburritobook.tumblr.com

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Art for the Cure

On Thursday,September 24, The Art Avenue Gallery hosted Art for the Cure. An art auctin in benefit of breast cancer awareness in conjunction with the Susan G. Komen El Paso Affiliate. The evening was filled with great work by artists such asTom Lea, Rachelle Thiewes, Margarita Cabrera, Hal Marcus, Rhonda Doré, Tino Ortega, Brian Wancho, Mata Oritz, Erin Galvez, Jason Lucero, Michael Garcia, Julio Sanchez De Alba, Diego Martinez, Sammy O, Juan Ornelas, Jorge Calleja, Daniella Pablos, Mike Ojinaga, Reggie Watterson, Pancho Saenz, Lula Squid, Jim Turrentine and Ginny Fisher.

The event was accompanied by live music by The Golden Groove, catering from Joe Vinny & Bronson’s Bohemian Café, Skinny Girl Wine and desserts from Bake Me Happy. Miss El Paso’s Outstanding Teen Haley Olivares and Miss El Paso Texas Latina Ana Avila attended as ambassadors to the arts, and Mattress Firm presented the charity with a $15,000 check.  The Art Avenue Gallery also presented the Eastlake High School Art Club with a check from a fundraiser held at the gallery earlier this year.

Video courtesy of Valentin Sandoval.

Click on the image below to view the photo gallery of this event. Photos by Victoria Molinar

 

Jorge Calleja and Farz Farrokhnia
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Found in Translation

For each issue of Art Avenue, we’ll highlight a speaker from the 2015 TEDxElPaso conference, which was held at the El Paso Community Foundation Room in May. An independently organized event, TEDxElPaso continues the national non-profit TED’s mission to share “ideas worth spreading.”

“Made of memory” Performance by Xochitl Rodriguez Photos by Federico Villalba
“Made of memory” Performance by
Xochitl Rodriguez
Photo by Federico Villalba

The first minute of transdisciplinary artist Xochitl Rodriguez’ time on stage during her speech “Speak Without Speaking” at the 2015 TEDxElPaso conference consisted of no words, yet a message of tranquil exploration was implied through her clothes and body movement.

Making her way towards the platform at the El Paso Community Foundation Room, Rodriguez embodied a boat as she swayed the large sail she wore from side to side. Standing in front of a video projection of the desert, she lingered on stage before speaking, her voice as calm as the sound of the gentle wind that played in the background.

“I turned myself into a boat after spending 14 months in the Kingdom of Bhutan,” Rodriguez said. “I had sailed around the planet from the desert to the Himalayas and back again.”

In 2009, after earning her BFA at the University of Texas at El Paso, Rodriguez became the first international artist in residence invited to stay in Bhutan. There, she was asked to teach children about contemporary sculpture and public art.

Of course I realized fairly quickly that my understanding of what that would entail was so far from what it actually means to teach contemporary art in the remote Himalayas,” Rodriguez said with a smile.

While one might imagine that bringing contemporary art to a country unfamiliar with the form had the biggest impact on Rodriguez, what she said she ultimately learned from the experience was a new, universal way to communicate.

“The [TedxElPaso] talk evolved from those ideas because I didn’t like to speak and I knew I could communicate in other ways that were way more effective than speaking,” Rodriguez later said at her home in central El Paso. “And now my whole artistic practice is founded on these ideas of action versus words and living examples instead of stuff you see on a wall. Everything I make is about interaction and engagement without words so that nobody is excluded.”

Bhutan is where Rodriguez’ artistic revelation came to be, she said. She learned that art, as a universal language, has the power to help people transcend physical and cultural barriers and connect with one another.

Xochitl Rodriguez during her 2015 TEDx Presentation
Xochitl Rodriguez during her 2015 TEDx Presentation

“All the world has a right to be fluent in art,” Rodriguez said during her speech. “It is in fact a language and if a community can’t access it, can’t understand it, can’t create it or generate it and most importantly can’t relate to it, then that community will not thrive, will not participate in or contribute to the very evolution of humanity in the twenty first century.”

Rodriguez’ transformative experiences emerged through every project she led with her group of Bhutanese youth. One public exhibition she led was to explore the waste generated in Bhutan.

“It took me about two weeks to realize that my students had no concept of what waste actually meant in relation to their way of life,” Rodriguez said in front of a projected image of one of Bhutan’s landfills. “And so we hopped on a bus and we hitched a ride on some dump trucks and we rode for miles and miles to the top of the mountain to the country’s largest landfill.”

Most of the children saw the garbage for what it was, but one student compared the trash to an ocean wave, sparking the idea for the group to create a boat for their exhibition.  Rodriguez said a fellow artist asked if she considered that no one in Bhutan had a concept of a boat. Later, the children discovered that the neighbors filled the boat they created with trash.

“They said, ‘Certainly now madam, this boat will sink in a sea of garbage,’” Rodriguez said. “That was the moment, the unmistakable moment, when the fundamental exchange of ideas occurred. They had become translators.”

They also projected images of rice paddy fields onto Changjiji, the government housing complex in the capital city of Thimphu, as a symbol of their culture being replaced by urbanization, Rodriguez said.

Exhibiting work that everyone can connect to was another important message Rodriguez wanted to convey during her speech, she said.

“Made of memory” Performance by Xochitl Rodriguez Photo by Federico Villalba
“Made of memory” Performance by
Xochitl Rodriguez
Photo by Federico Villalba

“It is a national problem where artwork isn’t made for people, but it’s made for some other audience that probably likes it, but their lives wouldn’t be changed by it,” Rodriguez later said. “You take art onto the streets and you take art to people who don’t have it and their lives would change. The whole city would change if we used art that way.”

As prayer flags danced in the wind outside her window, it was clear that a piece of the Kingdom of Bhutan would always be with Rodriguez. Talking about her experience at the small country was like ending a chapter, she said.

Her latest chapter has been a community artist collaborative she co-founded called the Caldo Collective. Every few months, a member of the collective hosts a “Frijol Feast” in which the community is invited to a dinner where several artists propose their project ideas.

From the collaborative came the Transient Triangle Project, which transformed an alleyway in Manhattan Heights into a two-hour multimedia pop-up exhibit this past July. As attendees traveled down the alley viewing video projections, interpretive performances and paintings, the exhibit echoed Rodriguez’ message at TEDxElPaso.

It’s about creating a moment in somebody’s life instead of a thing for someone,” Rodriguez said.

Sir Ken Robinson

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The New Discipline of Creativity

Creativity is the key to changing our public school system, says Sir Ken Robinson. The TED Talks powerhouse (he has the most-watched TED Talk, 2006’s “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”) will share his groundbreaking work on why we should totally transform public school curricula at the Plaza Theatre on Sept. 11.

Fundamental renovation of public schools is Robinson’s goal. With staggering facts, a tremendous sense of irony, and countless stories of public school failures, the British-born author argues that the optimal development of school children has been impeded, among other things, by an over-reliance on standardized testing. He will challenge El Pasoans to recognize that in the vast majority of public schools, the tremendous creative potential we are all born with has been all but ignored.

Sir Ken Robinson
Sir Ken Robinson

“He’s remarkable. He has the wit, the humor. He speaks with charm,” said Sally Gilbert, co-founder and director of the local non-profit Impact Programs of Excellence. “It’s hard to find somebody like that.” IPE has been working for over four years to get Robinson to El Paso. Gilbert says it was the El Paso Community Foundation that saw an opportunity for him to speak and pulled the event together. The two organizations are co-presenting Robinson’s speech, which also serves as the keynote for first annual Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers El Paso, a convention model from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that celebrates and promotes excellence in teaching.

“I hope that enough people understand that Sir Robinson is one of the foremost education authorities in the world,” says Eric Pearson, president and CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation. “It is so huge to have him come here.”

Robinson argues that since industrial scales and methods of production have become less central to world economies, a diploma no longer translates to getting a good job. An international advisor on education, Robinson warns that our primary and high schools are currently not designed to equip children with the knowledge and skills they need to become integral parts of thriving communities. Times have changed, and with the advent of cyberspace and other dizzying technological innovations, the creative capacity of individuals has come to be the great prize.

According to Gilbert, Impact’s rationale for bringing Robinson and many other globally-recognized speakers to El Paso is grounded in the belief that face-to-face contact with global leaders and innovators gives El Pasoans a great opportunity to learn from “people who lead, challenge, break new ground, and above all else, question.”

“He’s done so much research in different communities and all around the world, and he has so much insight,” said Gilbert.

[themify_box style=”light-green info” ]Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster or at The Plaza Theatre $30
September 11, 2015 7:00 pm[/themify_box]

Sir Ken Robinson

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Printed Memories

The borderland has proved a worthy muse for many artists seeking inspiration from its peaks and valleys. “The mountains have taught me about line and depth. The desert landscape and its connection with the sky have taught me about space and relationships with color,” says Jason Lucero, a borderland printmaker showcasing at the Art Avenue Gallery this month. Printmaking, more than just paint on a canvas, allows for the artist to make a piece of art through the use of different structured, shaped, and textured objects flowing through a printing press layer after layer. Due to this process, the finished product cannot be duplicated—A literal one-of-a-kind creation.

Lucero’s exhibit, Various Interpretations of Human Interaction, contains 13 monotype prints. Working intuitively, drawing from within and letting the creativity flow outward rather than using rendered objects or visual guides, is important in Lucero’s artistic process. Using his passion as a therapeutic outlet, printmaking has allowed him to bring light and understanding to some dark times in his life. “Even though I am now content, I tend to channel the sad and painful memories when I work, because, as cliché as it may sound, it is therapy,” shares Lucero. “I become a few grams lighter when I go to these dark places and transform them into color. From different work experiences, the loss of dear loved ones, and the birth of his son, Lucero says, “I have a large memory inventory, both shallow and deep, in order to keep my art interesting.”

“Red Weather”
“Red Weather” 30 x 64 in, ink on paper, 2015

For Lucero, a great satisfaction comes from knowing he started with just a couple of friends in a grassroots artistic movement in downtown El Paso. “You have to remember this was before there were any galleries downtown; we would just walk into small places and ask ‘hey can we show some art here?’ All we wanted was to share our artwork with the city.”

While he has always had a passion for the creative arts, Lucero shared that it did not come naturally for him, which, he says, is a common misconception about artists. “Most artists aren’t born with any artistic talent, you have to practice the same strokes and lines over and over and dedicate yourself.” Lucero’s passion is art by monotype printmaking, although he is also an experienced abstract painter and sketch artist specializing in the human form. To all who will view his pieces, Lucero stresses that in order to truly appreciate them, one must realize there is a reason why they put the word ‘work’ at the end of art, “I’ve always been a businessman by day and an artist by night.” Odd jobs all over the map from janitorial services and washing dishes to working as a broker and in the transportation industry have all given Lucero opportunities to create relationships that he finds valuable to his artwork. “If you don’t take pride in your work, whatever it might be, sweeping, dishwashing, cooking, painting, or driving a rig, you will never be happy at your job and the other parts of your life will suffer,” says Lucero. He also explains that unlike in other genres of art, “More than 70% of the time my print is a failure, but I always remember these mistakes create a foundation for my success,” says Lucero.

Lucero credits his family, his friends and fellow members of  Maintain (a creative coalition) the many mentors he encountered while earning his BFA in Studio Art from UTEP, and the city of El Paso for helping him realize his strengths to become a well rounded artist. “Everything about this city and its location has had an effect on me. The people of El Paso, are kind, courteous, and giving, which has taught me how to do the same.” Of his exhibition Lucero says, “My vision for this exhibition is to share a series of prints, which made me very excited about the process of printmaking, with an audience that may not be too familiar with the process. I hope that, even if people do not entirely understand what is going on in a piece, they examine it long enough to find something about it that relates to their own experience.”

viohi_currentVarious Interpretations of Human Interaction
Jason Lucero
On Display
August 20–September 20
The Art Avenue Gallery
1618 Texas Ave, Suite E

“Caring Is Trapping”
“Caring Is Trapping” 30 x 32 in, ink on paper, 2015
“I Thought I Heard Accordions”
“I Thought I Heard Accordions” 30 x 32 in, ink on paper, 2015
"Blue Route"
“Blue Route” 30 x 62 in, ink on paper, 2015
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Art for the Cure

The season of giving kicks off with an evening of regional art to benefit local breast cancer charity 

Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015 at 6 p.m.

El Paso, TX—Borderland artists are coming together this fall to donate their work for a night of fun and fundraising for the local Susan G. Komen El Paso affiliate. Art for the Cure, held on Sept. 24 at The Art Avenue Gallery, features a range of artwork from paintings and pottery to jewelry and bronze sculptures.

The event, which features innovative works from some of the region’s most buzzworthy artists, kicks off with a silent auction at 6 p.m., accompanied by live music, catering from Joe Vinny & Bronson’s Bohemian Café, Skinny Girl Wine and desserts from Bake Me Happy. Miss El Paso’s Outstanding Teen Haley Olivares and Miss El Paso Texas Latina Ana Avila will be in attendance as ambassadors to the arts, and Mattress Firm owner Dan Longoria will present the charity with a $15,000 check.

Organizers hope to spin the event into an annual affair, with proceeds benefiting the Susan G. Komen El Paso affiliate. According to SGKEP, the organization has allotted $4.4 million to the local community over the last decade.

Some of the artists featured include Rachelle Thiewes, Margarita Cabrera, Hal Marcus, Tino Ortega, Brian Wancho, Erin Galvez, Michael Garcia, Julio Sanchez de Alba, Diego Martinez, Sammy Lopez, Mark Paulda, Juan Ornelas, Laura Pablos, Jorge Calleja, Mike Ojinaga, Reggie Waterson, Lula Squid and Jim Turrentine. The event is sponsored by Skinny Girl Wine, Joe Vinny & Bronson’s Bohemian Café, Mom’s Fresh Juice, The Art Avenue Magazine and The Art Avenue Gallery.

“I decided to create the event to do something different in terms of fundraising and to help keep things local,” said Komen board member, Kimberly Rene’ Vanecek, who also owns The Art Avenue Gallery. “So often we see national organizations benefit instead of the local chapters, so this is an important organization that gives back locally.”

“Our local and surrounding communities are fortunate to have such talented artists in ourarea and to Ms. Vanecek for providing this forum. We could not be more proud to have such an array of artists come together to support an event of this caliber,” – Raquel Markland, Susan G. Komen El Paso board president.

 

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2015
Time: 6 p.m.
Where: The Art Avenue Gallery 1618 Texas Ave. Suite E
Cost: $25

Tickets can be purchased at theartave.com, by calling 915.213.4318, or at the door.

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Art for the Cure

Call for borderland artists to submit work to the 1st Annual Art for the Cure Silent Auction presented by The Art Avenue Gallery, as part of the Breast Cancer Awareness month held on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015. The call for submissions is a juried event that is open to regional artists who work in 2D and 3D mediums. The entry fee is $10 for up to three (3) images.

Entry Deadline: Friday, September 11, 2015

Requirements:

•  Submission of three (3) pieces for consideration

•  Only work created within the last twelve months will be considered

•  Images should be .jpg at 300dpi and max size of 1200px on the longest side

•  Images should be emailed to info@theartave.com with the following information:

Name of artist
Name of the images
Size of the work
Description of the work
Artist contact information

For any questions please email us at info@theartave.com with subject “Call for inquires.”

Benefits:  Donating artists will receive two admissions to the events at half price.  Your work has the potential to be viewed by curators, buyers and other prominent philanthropist and corporate sponsors.  Your name and contact information will appear in a program along with a photograph to accompany social media and other marketing avenues of the event.

How to Donate:  Artists can donate their work to be auctioned in the silent auction or Artists can option to receive a portion of the profits from the sale of their work.  Artists involved in the event will have their name and contact information present in a program along with a biographical photograph.

Fee must be paid in full online or in person in order for applications to be accepted. We accept cash, credit card and checks at The Art Avenue Gallery located at 1618 Texas Ave. Suite E.

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Rules and Guidelines

Entries will be accepted until September 11, 2015 at 6:00 MST.

Files must be submitted electronically and include name of artist, name of image(s), description of work, size of work and contact information.

Entry fee of $10 must be received to be eligible for this juried event.  This can be paid through online or in person at The Art Avenue Gallery at 1618 Texas Ave. Suite E.

By submitting to the call you agree to, The Art Avenue Gallery, dba The Art Avenue, non-exclusive license that shall include the right to display and promote your work, edited or unedited in any medium (social and print media), in connection with The Art Avenue Gallery.  Artist retains all right, title, and interest in and to the original work of art and ownership of copyright.

Once your artwork has been chosen through our jury process, the accepted piece(s) must be delivered to the gallery no later than Friday September 18, 2015.

The silent auction is to be held on Thursday September 24, 2015 and any pieces that were not purchased through the silent auction must be picked up no later than Monday September 28, 2015.  Any pieces not picked-up at that time are subject to a $10 a week storage fee, unless other previous arrangements have been made.

Submission notice: The Art Avenue Gallery will notify all artists chosen for this event by Sunday September 13, 2015 by means of electronic media (email) and via text messaging.

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Rubin Center Links to the World of International Art

One of the Rubin Center’s core missions is to bring international artists and arts professionals to our geographically isolated border region.  We are often lucky enough to get artists on an upward trajectory as they build careers that take them towards the top of their field.  Such was the case with artist Tania Candiani who was featured in the 2009 Rubin Center exhibition Battleground with Guatemalan artist Regina Jose Galindo and Karla Jass, who co-curated the 2010 exhibition Contra Flujo: Independence and Revolution featuring eight artists from Mexico working in new media. This year Jasso and Candiani, along with artist Luis Felipe Ortega, represented the country of Mexico in the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale, the oldest and arguably the most prestigious international art fair in the world.

2015_BV_PadMessico_06This world-wide cultural event attracts a varied international public throughout a 150-day exhibition period, with an average of more than 2,000 visitors a day, giving the participating artists and cultural institutions unique exposure and prestige. Founded in 1895 Venice Biennale features artists and artwork selected by countries around the globe and has remained one of the central events of the art world for more than a century. In this 56th edition there are a total of 89 countries formally represented—30 exhibitions housed in the permanent national pavilions in the Giardini (central gardens), and an additional 59 countries in the adjacent Arsenale or in locations throughout Venice.  All of this is complemented by scores of additional exhibitions, performances, installations and events.   

Jasso’s curatorial proposal for the Mexican Pavilion in Venice was titled Possessing Nature and Featured a collaborative installation by Candiani and Ortega. Jasso’s core concept was based in the idea of the two cities of Venice and Mexico City having the shared history of being built on and around canals. In her curatorial proposal she writes, “While one embraces the sea (“si sposa con il mare”), the other is dried out and its lakes are exhausted under the imprint of colonial sovereignty. Drawing a path that would enable a journey through the places that have hosted the Mexican Pavilion in Venice during the 21st century, the result is a trace that refers to the history of architecture and infrastructure, as well as its relation to political, economic, religious and military powers that have supported the Western Empire from its origins.”

MEXICO DF,26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2014, Entrevista con la curadora Karla Jasso, y los artistas Tania Candiani y Luis Felipe Ortega sobre su participaciÛn en la Bienal de Arte de Venecia .FOTO DANIEL BETANZOS
MEXICO DF,26 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2014, Entrevista con la curadora Karla Jasso, y los artistas Tania Candiani y Luis Felipe Ortega sobre su participaciÛn en la Bienal de Arte de Venecia .FOTO DANIEL BETANZOS

This trace takes the form of a single, site-specific installation by the two invited artists. In the center of the installation is a large metal sculpture, approximately 9 feet in height and 30 feet in length that snakes its way through the span of the gallery following a very specific cartographic route that traces the historic path of the various sites of the Mexican Pavilion throughout the city of Venice in the 20th century.  The inside of the sculpture is a hollow vessel which can only be seen fully after climbing a narrow staircase at the back of the gallery which leads the viewer to a small platform few feet above the highest point of the piece. From there one can experience a sound installation by Candiani, created by a hydraulic pump bringing water from the canal that circulates through the piece creating a creating the loud, constant noise of rushing water. The water is then pumped outward into an adjacent reflection pool on the gallery floor, the surface of which displays a video projection by Ortega that compares the drainage structures of Venice and Mexico City.

Installation view 3 Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Orgeta at the Mexican Pavilion_Photo Credit Courtesy the artists. Photo by Andrea Martinez
Installation view 3 Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Orgeta at the Mexican Pavilion_Photo Credit Courtesy the artists. Photo by Andrea Martinez

Inclusion in the Venice Biennale is an opportunity for artists and curators to present their ideas to a world-wide audience, and creates new opportunities for networking and building professional relationships that can often fundamentally change the course of an artists career.  When arts professionals like Candiani and Jasso have positive experience with contemporary art in El Paso, they carry those experiences with them, connecting our region with artists and venues around the globe.  We celebrate their success at the Biennale and will be watching their careers closely in the years to come.  The exhibition of Possessing Nature will continue at the Venice Biennial through November 22nd, 2015.

For more information about the Venice Biennal please visit

www.labiennale.org

2015_BV_PadMessico_302015_BV_PadMessico_05Installation view 2 Tania Candiani and Luis Felipe Ortega at the Mexican Pavilion_Credit Courtesy the artists. Photo by Andrea Martinez

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Transformative Performance

For each issue of Art Avenue, we’ll highlight a speaker from the 2015 TEDxElPaso conference, which was held at the El Paso Community Foundation Room in May. An independently organized event, TEDxElPaso continues the national non-profit TED’s mission to share “ideas worth spreading.”

 

Sandra Paola Lopez
Sandra Paola López

At May’s TEDxElPaso conference, guest speaker Sandra Paola López prompted an audience of over 100 to introduce themselves to one another. The task was simple enough, or so it seemed.

“But before we start, I’m going to give you a performance direction,” López continued. “We’re going to do this in gibberish.”

Audience members shifted uncomfortably in their seats inside the El Paso Community Foundation Room, but what started off as shy mumbles evolved into a crescendo of made-up languages and, eventually, laughter.

“So what just happened?” López asked. “We took a very ordinary activity, something we do on a regular basis, but we changed how we did it. You transformed the energy of the room.”

This exercise, she later said, is an example of the message in her speech “Performance Activism: How You Can Change the World Without Changing What You Are Doing.”

By agreeing to participate in López’ task to introduce themselves to one another in gibberish, López said the audience members left their comfort zones and therefore opened up new possibilities.

“We cannot create change unless we are ready to do things we do not know how to do,” she explained. “The power of doing things like that is that it really breaks those hierarchical positions and it puts us all in an even playing field to create different kinds of relationships.”

This is a lesson López said she learned in her career as a multidisciplinary dancer. While at first she questioned her impact as a performer, she instead decided to focus on the process of her art and learned that in order for social change to be possible, people must leave their comfort zones.

A native of Colombia, López has been dancing since she was 4 years old, perfecting her techniques in ballet, jazz, tap, modern and traditional Columbian dance. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Dance Performance at Missouri State University and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she learned about dance improvisation through a New York collective called Lower Left in 2009.

“Getting into improvisation in dance started opening my eyes to different ways of relating to my body, different ways of relating to movement, different ways of relating to other bodies in space when I was dancing,” López said. “I’m finding the kind of power that it has for me.”

Improvisation also helped López open up to new methods of performing and teaching, she said. The next year, she learned about performance activism while obtaining a certificate in social therapeutics at the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy in New York.

The specific concept of performance activism López learned about was developed by the institute’s co-founder Fred Newman in the 1970s as a grassroots movement led by him and his colleagues. It suggests that the world is a collection of “stages” and that we, the “performers,” both improvise and write countless “scenes” in our lives.

As an instructor at the University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University, López said she encourages new forms of interaction by allowing her students to help decide what will be discussed in classes. Through her organization in2improv, López promotes performance activism by challenging people of all ages to try collaborative improvisation.

“But when I talk about performance activism, I’m not talking about my dance career,” López said. “I’m referring to the quality of the activity that you’re doing. You could be a performance activist and be an engineer, an economist or a lawyer or a doctor and that’s where I think the power of performance activism lies.”

Performance activism takes place when we shake things up and decide to do things differently, challenging our everyday behavior and thought processes, López said.

“When my partner and I are having a disagreement, we can both step back and say, okay, let’s perform this argument in a different way so that we don’t fall into the usual patterns of becoming a victim and pointing the finger at the other person,” López said.

Lopez said such activism can be applied not only to social settings or professional relationships, but to relationships between loved ones as well.

“Another example is a mother and a child,” López said. “The child comes to the mom and says, ‘Mom, there are monsters in my closet.’ Maybe our go-to place would be to say, ‘Oh, don’t be silly. There’s no such thing.’

“But another performance would be saying, ‘Oh my gosh, let’s go find him!’ and then you create this this whole thing with the child to have a different relationship with the fear of having monsters in the closet.”

López’ approach to education and activism seemed so unique to community outreach organization Philosophic Systems Institute founder Juan Ferret that he introduced her to El Paso Community Foundation president Eric Pearson after she moved to the Sun City in August of last year. Along with Chris Cummings, executive vice president of real estate company CIC Limited, the foundation organizes TEDxElPaso to contribute to TED’s mission and share “ideas worth spreading.”

When Pearson asked if she would be interested speaking at the conference—she knew it would be her chance to expand her outreach in a new way.

“I felt very connected and transformed through a lot of TED Talks that I’ve seen, so I really think that you can have a big impact to talk with that platform,” López said. “It’s a great opportunity to not only reach people locally through the conference itself, but also to reach a broader community internationally.”

Aside from the fact that López has listened to countless talks covering technology, entertainment and design (hence the abbreviation TED), her other connection to the organization also lies in the fact that her brother Carloz López previously gave a talk called “Asombremos con sonrisas,” which explored the power of making people smile, for TEDxLasAguas.

It didn’t take long for López to decide that she wanted to share her profound passion for performance activism with her audience.

“Everyday, take a step to get out of your comfort zone,” López said in her last remarks at the conference. “After five years of doing this work, I have realized that I still don’t know what I’m doing and that if I’m lucky, I never will.”

[themify_col grid=”2-1 first”][themify_box style=”red” ]Learn more about TEDxElPaso at TEDxElPaso.com. To learn more about Sandra Paola López, visit SandraPaolaLopez.com.[/themify_box][/themify_col]

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