Oregon Art Beat; #1015; Gene Flores

was that the advanced class yeah okay so my question was what makes you decide to go ahead and hand we call this hand tinting yeah hand coloring what makes you decide to do this on any particular print some is just the need for me to just paint again and without it's tricky it's one of those where I don't want to make it look like a coloring book but there's also some that just need to be colored and some of the black and whites that's what I'm trained with is black and white and I've only started to hand coloring within the last couple of years is I've tried hand coloring so my older work and it's just it doesn't work it just it doesn't need it and some of these could go either way so when I start working I never think this one has to be hand colored I just I just do them black and white and then I'll look at them and sometimes I'll just put them away for three or four weeks and I'll look at them again and say okay let me try color if it doesn't work

oh well but it looks very time consuming it is doing an addition of 15 I only do hand color I don't do additions of them I only do two or three and each one will look completely different than the other because in it it becomes a coloring book if I don't so I have some prints that if you put the two prints next to each other they look nothing alike so that that's sort of the fun part the challenge is really knowing what colors to use and I stay with a really limited palette because I can manipulate colors easier instead of having 500 you know choices I just stay with a really limited palette which is basically all water colors and I just discovered these which are Dr. pH Martin inks now so he also makes really concentrated watercolors but the inks are just really vibrant beautiful colors and what's interesting is when I put them just opposed to the water color the inks sort of almost flatten out and the water colors come alive it's really beautiful I mean

you know like that red one back there that you saw earlier if the red is actually ink and then the stuff behind so if you look at it really closely it looks like the reds receding and then the prints actually coming out it's really sort of this beautiful technique that I've been playing with and I'm starting the thing with this one is knowing a lot of the Mayan and Aztec imagery has this vibrant color is trying to keep that without making it too garish yeah so so I'm gonna paint the background of this teal color then I'll go back in and I'll draw on top I'll add more imagery behind it and that's what I'll use China markers and graphite and Indian ink and all that's a fun top of it the final print is never the final no they never look I don't want them to like I said I just don't want it a black and white print that's been color I always redraw on top of it because it just makes it unique and it makes it more interesting for me and I can push it beyond what the original print was supposed to say I can say a totally different message by just hand color and manipulating it that way and it's fun

great thank you that was perfect okay all right so on this that'd be oh that one's in San Diego right now is it I hope that's a good idea across there's not an example of the frog

in there that's there's two different ones larana there should be another one that's one of my favorite ones gets a human dressed up as a frog so this should be an okay we don't say old we say early early it's an on my blue face vintage making out of you

if you want to ask them you're both type of questions one two three four five here's this one okay is that the one that you did in the at school yes all right okay oh okay I'll make sure you edit this then I see holding a bunny or she she cycle of the moon same thing but it's a she's actually the Aztec goddess of the moon and in the actual drawing or the relief of it she's holding a chinchilla I think heart doctors should have that in their office I think you need to start marketing yourself to the heart surgeons at all the hospitals I was really

I just love the way it came out I was really surprised it came out as good as it did this is the one you did when we were there and it's something I hadn't done 20 years so I just so was it old plate no brand you I'd done it like two days before I just figured it out and started doing it and it just thankfully it just worked out perfect the colors everything is that the word for heart mm -hmm thank you so tell me about this piece so this is actually the first idea for I started coming out with trying to come up with a Lotaria and this is probably from 2001 and it's an old print based off Proverbs but I started to hang color in it I said well what if I made it into the Lotaria and called it the Vulture so instead of doing it like the

traditional way I started playing around with doing Aztec and Mayan symbols for each card instead of riding down in the Vulture I decided to well what's the Mayan symbol for the Vulture and that's what that came out to be wow so then I said it aside and of course you know four years later is when I said okay let me sit down I actually start doing the Lotaria and it all changed but it was sort of nice because this is sort of the jumping point of actually I can actually start doing something like this and make it look really beautiful and playful this is a little more serious yeah the others are a little more playful and it's one of those since so much of my work is is so serious it's sort of nice to have that relief of not thinking too much about it other than how do I make the imagery interesting instead of what am I trying to say so it was sort of for me it's a relief gets I can play and relax a little even though the technique that I did the Lotaria are totally different than Echines their engravings so actually it's like doing a wake up at your physically cutting the copper out so it's a lot

more labor intensive and harder but I think just to offset the whole thinking so much and being so into it is it's sort of nice going with engraving who has got to train more of the technique instead of the idea of what I'm trying to get across okay all right so this is an image that you repeat a lot the screaming face the screaming man why is that I really don't know other than then I think what it comes down to is when my father passed away I was then I was working I used to work at UPS and UPS has a winning hundred number so when he went into the hospital and my family was trying to get a hold of me they couldn't because they had to go to 100 number they didn't have an El Paso number so another for them to track me down had to go from the 1 -800 to Albuquerque to El Paso and by the time they found me and I got to the hospital he had already been in a coma and I couldn't speak to him anymore so it was one of those

frustration of not being able to speak to him and say goodbye so I have an actual print that I did later that's called no last words because we didn't exchange any last words so I think that's where a lot of that screaming is sort of that frustration you know speaking but nobody's hearing you kind of thing so which one is what is this one called this one is in a closed mouth flies don't enter in Boca Serrada no entran moscas we like this way this way this way is hard exactly it's exactly right it is white screen all right tell me about this one this is part of the American folktale series so of course I have you know Paul Bunyan and Anita Oakley and this is Juan Henry so it's John Henry but it's a dual role so it's you know El Coyote is the guys who smuggle people in from Mexico to the United States so it's sort of him sort of giving lean on them to freedom but at the same time his

shadows being cast as this wolf and this menacing figures keeping them letting them know that you know I'm going to set you free but there's a price you have to pay for it so it's dealing with a lot of the immigration issues that we're dealing with now that's a recurring theme for you yeah yeah it's a lot of ties to being Hispanic and you know growing up on the border can't get away from it especially now it's become such a forefront and everything yeah and it's a lot a lot of a lot of my imagery I mean especially the black and white deals a lot with Goya Francisco Goya who's a huge influencer you can see it in the studio here everywhere and a lot of those figures that I use are actually pulled out of some of his prints because he just had this beautiful imagery of this the people being suffering you know that one woman on the bottom right is actually one of his figures that I pulled out and used her so I'll make sure we get a shot of the poster over there and what is this called Juan

Henry El Coyote I title a lot of my work English and Spanish so it's Spanish because I don't speak really proper Spanish and of course I probably don't speak really proper English okay that's another part of the folktale Alfredo Thorotop Stormer Long it's I did a whole but every time I start doing some series I start looking into research and I find some of these proverbs and I had never heard of this guy you know Alfred Bulltop Stormer Long with his name and he had this giant ship that would clip the moon that was the whole idea of the thing so I decided to make it into the reverse of what of the Aztecs and Mayans discovered Europe so it's this giant Aztec warrior but he still has some of the the out fittings of a conquistador and it's George Washington on his stern eating the the moon and then the bottom is the Spanish

regatta getting blown over by this giant Aztec ship so you can see the imagery in the background you can see Aztec Hyroglyphs in the background yeah very very tiny back there how long does it take to do a plate of something like this some of them will take me a day some will take me two weeks a month it just depends on how intense I get into it and how quickly they just happen some just I'll do a print etch it print it and then I'm just like it's done some I'll etch print rework print rework and then it's weeks passed by and I'm like okay finally it's done so you can reground it you can reground you can reground it re etch it redraw scrape burnish re erase redraw it's just like drawings up a little more time consuming right looks like it has a lot of Japanese influence yeah that's

a Hokusai the wave um this one just doodling in the classroom waiting for my class to come in and working on the plate and it's just that wave is always something one of my students actually did one and I said well what if I did it who would it look like so I did that and I just started adding the boat and sort of that boat's repeated in the giant print of the the war series and then the bunny guy I have no idea he just it just you know a bunny needed to be on the boat so that's what he is and he's just this giant bunny suit guy and makes no sense but it just worked well and sometimes do you you don't even think about doing a series you're just like maybe do how many prints do you have of that is that the only one I have an edition of those I think it's an edition of ten um but I always started off with doing prints that are not series and then just within the last five or six years I've been doing a lot of series so now I'm pulling back again and saying okay everything doesn't have to be part of the series I think it's it gets time consuming and it wears me out trying to think

of a series instead of just doing a print just just like doing a print so it's nice it's relieving and then the one the other one is my little my little papal pope dude that I keep using over over again that's an influence from um suko he uses she's actually puts um shark heads on top and that's I stole that from her as well and that's the same thing it's just it's just a doodle that just happened and worked out fine this little insect guy why do you like the papal image race catholic race catholic a lot of issues I'm not anti religion I'm more more anti establishment and how it's used and misused and I think that's what a lot of my work deals with is how people can manipulate each other by words imagery so I sort of go back my thing is I try and capture people by the beauty of the drawing that way they're enticed by it and say oh this is really beautifully drawn but then when they start looking at it like oh well this guy has six arms by that time it's too late because I've already captured them and then I bring them in then I reel them in and it's it's also making them question everything

so that's what I do I mean I like people who question what they're looking at next one of my favorite okay so what do we have here this is a circus series okay another series this is a smaller one tom thum so it's sort of the whole manipulating plane around with this sort of innocent character but he has this the sort of damacly hanging over the little bunny shaking and then his hat is actually his railroad ties my dad grew up on the railroad you know he he didn't work for the railroad stations he worked unloading rail cars so that's a lot of these railroad ties come into a lot of my imagery so it's sort of that tribute to him kind of thing and the whole circus series is sort of it's it's almost frightening and engaging at same time the whole imagery of the circus yeah you really go for the disturbing images that you know I don't I don't know if I would say disturbing I think more thought provoking than disturbing I mean I think this

derbyn has this it sets people off it makes them defensive but even if you say well they're more thought provoking than it makes them think well why and that's what my work is about it's making you think tiny ring yeah he's he can't escape the ring he's a tiny guy he's tom thum yeah I like his little tom thum patch there like it's school uniform how many of you done in the war series now okay think I'm up to a tribute to lorissi menis who's a sculptor from El Paso he's nationally known he did these fiberglass sculptures I think one of them is in the Denver Airport of this um bronchobuster and he passed away a couple of years ago he was setting up a sculpture in his studio and it fell in

it killed him it fell on him oh my god so I had some friends from El Paso call me up and say well we're doing a tribute to lorissi menis and we're asking three print makers to be part of it and I'd be interested as it sure oh wow and the print was called the sodbuster he actually did a sculpture call that was a sodbuster that's what this print is based off of so it's the whole the papal imagery again the bull which is direct from a goya image and then the railroad ties dealing back with my dad and it's one of those where he's breaking the ties as he's plowing along it's one of those is he holding the bull back or is he pushing it forward and it's on the top of the hill is a pull going to pull him down so he goes who he's going to stay back and that's why he's screaming from holding or the screaming from pushing it's all these never going back to your home you can never go back where you came from kind of thing that's what that whole idea is based on fabulous okay

okay why did you decide to do a series on more because we are obviously obviously involved in one and it's also that's a thing that's recurrent in a lot of art history there's a lot of artists who deal with war and especially goya did a whole series of disasters of war kethy kolovitz did her series of war and then posada did his revolution Mexican revolution so what I decided to do is use and incorporate all three artists and their composition and imagery and start making my own by combining all three so a lot of them have the posada skulls and skeletons in it just placed in kolovitz um settings or goya settings and it's just plain it's plain around with how deeply entrenched humans are with war and how much we really love it I mean that's the the scary part is how much we really love the visions or even movies are all violent and dealing with war you know what can be destroyed and what can be

capped kind of thing is it hard to come up with something new on a theme that's been done a lot no I think it's if you're passionate enough it's easy I think the hard part is making it interesting I think you can come up with new stuff all the times this is it going to be interesting or not how are our just more war this is more of the war the war um actually went small with them instead of going fairly large these are I think the largest one is four inches by four inches um and it's because it's more intimate it makes people come up to the print and look at it and really examine it and then that way at the same time they're examining why why are we doing this I mean it's the whole the skeletons I think it's it's sort of interesting because it's also playful if you look at out of the posada skulls his are sort of really playful funny looking at almost comical but then when they're placed in these settings where they're really more in depth and

actually being the executioners instead of the ones who have been executed it's it sort of makes them start thinking about everything so like the one the pity one the smaller one with the the goya references actually they're actually wearing their little headscarge like pentanimal bay so it's dealing with current themes at the same time and again you don't do these with the fuckish people you don't you don't do these with the thought of you know cells but no no I don't think I ever do any of my work for cells I mean I if my whole thing is when I stalk two students and talk about selling work I said if I wanted to make money I'd be a doctor or I'd be a lawyer I wouldn't be an artist I love doing my work and what I find interesting is people who just do work and once they make it big they stop I've always done it and I'm always will do it and it's something that's I mean I love doing this stuff I hope it shows oh yeah

definitely it's the butt crack that's creepy but in a good way these were actually my masters thesis in undergraduate school and they dealt with Mexican -American Proverbs Chicano Proverbs of course with the goya caprichos and dichos so this is my sort of updated version same thing using some of his imagery but using Chicano Proverbs so this one is so sometimes the imagery works beautifully with the title sometimes they have nothing to do with each other and it's the same thing it's making people think and when I first displayed these

the gallery wanted me to write them in English and in Spanish and I said no it was one of those where if it forces you to break out an English Spanish dictionary then you're going to learn something so it was one of those where I said no you know I think people have to learn how to speak and understand two different languages so I just refused to start doing anything in English and in Spanish it was German I'd be right in there yeah Spanish a little bit weaker and they were sort of worried about it as far as sales because they're saying well some people won't buy it and I'm like but so I mean sometimes they're not going to buy it if they like the imagery they're going to buy it and the other one is the children are the riches of the poor and it's the whole the tree the tree of knowledge your ancestry that you know ancestral tree talking about the future and you know the hope of light coming down on the next child I think there was something like 27 of these done in a I didn't many year wow

has third edition so does that mean you've altered it a little bit no that means I've been in my young youthful crazy days I used to do editions of 50 and the first edition one through 50 all sold the second edition of one through 50 all sold so this is my third edition of that plate and most of the whole series actually that one was just made into an album cover last year friend of mine from Iowa City title is those who love you the most will make you cry which is you know true my chicken men so do the goya aspect again the one on the right is raised crows and they will poke your eyes out just

happy thoughts what it is it's like I said sometimes they have nothing to do with the imagery they just work well with each other so what I do is I actually do the image first the print first and then I'll just look on my list of Proverbs and say okay this one looks like it'll work with it so I never work with the proverb make an image to fit it I do it the other way around that way I'm not tied to illustrating a proverb it's it's it's relaxing so this bizarre image just comes up it just comes up and I never do sketches before a print I just work straight on the plate is that unusual I don't know I've always done it and the one reason is if I do sketches or I do drawings the drawings become so elaborate I figure if I do a print because I push the print the drawing so far it's finished and for me it's just I'm just copying the drawing which is isn't fun for me so I just work straight on the

plate and whatever happens happens and I love the edging around the one on the left how do you do that how is that is that just because a little something gets on the is that because or is that the plate that's the plate that's actual plate I actually blocked it out to make it look like it was framed I see so some have it some don't yeah that's really cool I like I see sort of the long so this is that's the very first print of the proverb series that one is when there are new saints the old saints no longer make miracles and it's time back to religion and then the little winged creatures which comes a lot up a lot I do have a lot of winged creatures sort of the gnats of religion bugging me all the time my mother is always very religious and she keeps preaching why I don't go to church and so it's like you can't get away from it like little bugs can yeah and then the railroad ties again

and it's a coincidence that it kind of looks like Jesus yes yeah it's a coincidence it does it looks like a buff Jesus but I've yeah I've done some which you could say he's kind of up on a crucifix what's it has a symbolism yeah symbolism's there I'm heavy into symbolism oh big deal big big big big part of your stuff yeah that we figured out pretty early yeah and it's it's really interesting because a lot of my images I have a friend that has his book on like a dictionary of imagery and she asked me says well let's go look up and see what this means and I said no I don't want to know because then it asked it would for me it would totally change the meaning if I knew it meant something else and I'd rather I'd rather be on the dumpside and not know well it would inhibit you yeah it goes into that with a lot of my work

I mean as far as doing prints doing drawings hand coloring a lot of my prints I've never taken water color class before I did get a minor in painting so I know how to paint by I never worked with watercolor and when I see classes in watercolor and I'm looking at I'm like oh well I'm not supposed to be doing that but for me I don't worry about that because it's not about how I should think it does it work and if it works why change it I don't want to over learn and that's what I tell a lot of my students don't think don't overthink thing because sometimes you overthink it and then you ruin it and you lose that momentum okay got it okay so here we see how color changes completely and how do you decide if it this if you really want to do this or not if you want to color it it just happens all my prints are intended to be black and white but the more I study some of them some of them just call out to be in color and sometimes when I color them I'm like you know what you can never be black and

white again I have to color them this one sort of in between I'm not sure if it's done or not both black and white and color for I know for sure it's not done there's still a lot more stuff that needs to happen to it um I will see I like I said I'll just start doodling on it and it'll take off or I'll completely ruin it and start all over again and this this is the message about language yeah so the print is um war of words and it's the whole is English the official language or when I get asked you know people I'm I'm an artist from Canada I'm from Michigan and he was telling me this whole story of how English should be the official language in the United States and of course being from Al Paso I said well what's the unofficial language and he says well I get letters from Canada asking me to be in shows in Canada that are written in French they should have it the decency to write in English for me I said okay let's say you're an artist that lives in Mexico

and you get a letter from the Guggenheim that wants you to have a show in the Guggenheim but it's written in English are you gonna throw it away because they should have a decency to write to you in Spanish and he says you know what I never thought of that I said but that's the problem you didn't think about it you're thinking one way instead looking at both sides okay this is just part of the circus series first one oh the very first one the very first one of the circus series and I have no idea where he came from I know the cigarette plays a lot of part also in a lot of my prints and of course my dad passed away from cancer from smoking all the time so that's where it comes into but then the rest just sort of took off the big eyes and then it just worked and playing with I love hands so I'll draw hands constantly really yeah that's one thing that I love hands and ears do you have a lottery of the hand yes I do

oh we didn't shoot that one no it's pretty boring it's actually one of my favorite I barely even noticed the cigarette at first I had to look for it I was looking for it in his hand and it's in his mouth but that's the whole thing I talked about is there's so many little hidden things the more you look at it the more you start noticing things but the same time it's like it is sort of disturbing a guy with four arms it's like the horse trainer print I had one person in the gallery when they're taking down the show she came up to me and says Gene I never noticed that the horse had six legs until I was taking it down I said well yeah I mean how else is it going to work because you don't do the ordinary thing no it's it's interesting what I love to do is make things look ordinary but they're not and when I did the circus series it's the people are the ones that are really deformed except for a couple of them you know it's the horse and maybe the bearer a little deranged but other than that it's if you look in the background in the shadows you see these really weird people and so people who are the

strange ones sort of the animals but they get horse actually looks kind of cool think of the work you could get done with the six -legged horse the hardest part was how would it work is thinking and doing sketches and trying to figure out does it work this way or not and then it came back down to don't think so hard just do it and that's what he came up with yeah you're blazing entirely new ground and we're the fifth leg but if you look at the rider she has spiked legs so she's actually into the flesh of the horse yeah I thought that was a bird quad first and then I realized no because the other one is just a spike so he's piercing the hearth that's lovely but it is true it's if you look at the way animals are treated especially in the sarcasm yeah they're meant to do things that they're not naturally to do yeah I'm pretty normal

guy so Jean Flores would like you to believe but to make a look at his weird art I think I just have the opening of my story right there I'm gonna open up with Jean saying I'm a pretty normal guy yeah right look at this look at this yeah he's really at that show at print arts Northwest yeah when you really start looking at that one let me see some real we all went to church and prayed for Jean right after oh wait I love this one on the top yeah again we got the screaming man and the post hat there's another Pope guy yeah I'm really into that whole the whole thing myself 22 apple seed

oh he's planting entire trees yeah got it no oh sorry no that's cool we got a system going here did you get this one casing or not oh no we didn't get that one I'm gonna take Paul Bunyan yeah well I'm gonna have some dreams good ones be hard to beat the weird dream I had last night I was consulting with the John McCain campaign and and I was actually showing him that that YouTube video I told you about and saying so you've got to refute all that or you'll never win and did he well no he was just we were just I was just telling him that and I woke up and it's like where the hell did that all come from I

love how the brain mixes things up all right so this is also part of the which series the the folk tale the folk tale series Paul Bunyan looking not like the Paul Bunyan I remember yeah it's it's dealing a lot with the migrant workers and my chicken people coming back in again it's sort of the whole society how actually we are like a bunch of you know featherless chicken we sort of follow without questioning we're weak and then Paul Bunyan is just it's actually one of the models from my life drawing class that I did a quick sketch of and it turned into that while he was posing in class I stood around and draw some times and I did this quick pose and I said you know what this has to be a print so I took it home start working on a plate and it turned into into Pablo Bunyan and then the trees trees those dead trees is my memory of Iowa when I went to school at the University of Iowa and seen the seasons change growing up in El Paso it was basically

warm all the time and then going to Iowa and seeing the four seasons and that's my biggest memory seeing all of these trees that look dead but they were just dormant because they lost all their leaves it was it was and it was sort of beautiful at same time because it made me start coming up with this imagery that I would otherwise never would come up with if I didn't never then remove down there and of course the the pal of a bullet is sort of the whole traditional what you would think of a Mexican fighter to be Zapatista. I like the trees around his hat around his furrow. My favorite part is what achi work boots. His sandal work boots. Yes. In the salt and pepper skies really nice. I like that a lot. With the little winged creatures in the back too. There is the more you look the more you say. Because animal. No but the weird thing is that's actually

a circus performer that I saw online. This one guy who only had a head and no limbs and that's what he was presented as in the sideshow freak and I just thought it was so weird that it had you know so of course I added likes to him and I put on the little fuzzy balls to make him look like an insect and then I created his little cart in the back so he can crawl you know push himself around and then show scale I did the popcorn in front of him. That's a creepiest one of all of them because it's a true person so. Yeah but the bear is delightful. I mean at first glance anyway probably if I keep looking I'm gonna get grossed out or destroyed. It is one of those that it's it's really this cute little bear but then if you look at it his umbrella is actually nailed to his paw. His eyes are so in shot and then his his head

gear is actually like sewn on to his head and then of course he's chained to his skates and there's a guy in the background but then if you look the guy in the guy in the guy background he has this Mexican wrestling mask with a cattle prod. So that's how we get something to do is tricks. But we're not making a statement here and now we're doing oh geez so those aren't sweet little eyelashes those are his eyes. No those are his eyes being sewn shut. Can I get to laugh about him? We're getting the hell out of here. Let's try to start the car. That's why we live way out here. Don't give me that. Chainsaw. Now you've got the chipper. We have the chipper. We're all set. I am from Texas you know. I'm gonna have to make a fly -out dub of this and give it to

Glenn to see. So he can really learn the truth behind this. Then they're grabbing the child covering the eyes and taking them away. The funniest ones are the older ladies. They'll come up and they're like ah and they'll take like one foot into my booth and then turn around and walk back out. Do you do a lot of shows? I only do two usually two of summer. Depends if I get in or not. Oh which ones do you do? Bellevue and Art and the Pearl. So I'm doing Art and the Pearl again this year. Bellevue no. Well I think I saw you last year. We talked. Bellevue I got in. I didn't get in. I was on the way.