Here a beautiful collaboration between El Mac, Augustine Kofie and Joseph ‘Nuke’ Montalvo in Los Angeles
The portrait was painted entirely with aerosol and fatcaps, and is based on photos El Mac shot a few years ago of an artist named Martha Gorman Schultz, a Navajo blanket weaver from northern Arizona, and part of a respected family of weavers. The new mural is both feminine, elderly, indigenous, loving and powerful and could according to El Mac, work as an empowering representation of beauty.
La abuelita, the grandmother, weaver of blankets,
You gaze upon a new day as the moon sets in the west,
its incandescent glow and light guides the spirits that once resided in this city of the Angels.
At the turn of the century when this building was built, when this city was abustle with Victorian homes and model A’s and model T’s.
There has always been an abuelita looking up and to the sky, praying for the souls that keep the night suspended above us. Its black cloak filled with stars, its green ghosts swirling in the early dawn air.
Abuelita, grandmother of the arts, guide our souls to rejoice in the days we create.
For we are the dawn
a dream becoming reality
weaving our stories of the past.
Weaving them into place, from order out of chaos, from plurality to singularity.
A blanket carries so much weight. It holds our dreams. But do we often wonder who weaves the blanket, or what they were thinking? La abuelita, she thinks of us when she weaves. It is not so hard to imagine that God is a grandmother. -Joseph ‘Nuke’ Montalvo
In addition the main wall, painted on one of the walls of a building dating from 1901, the whole project was, according to El Mac a collaborative effort in which many people were involved. Among these was Skill One who painted the wall to the left, integrating an already existing piece by DASH 2000 and SWAN who provided ground support, along with CHEE, AISE, BLK, OFIER, SELEK, CALVYRUS and some other younger members of UTI crew, which has been painting these walls for the last few decades.
More info here.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
Dopeness