BORDER ART WENT BEYOND BORDER
The 1960s and 1970s were the Golden Age of black velvet painting: bucolic Mexican landscapes, bullfighting scenes, Aztec warriors and rock ‘n’ roll legends.
Black velvet paintings put me through film school, along with cowboy jackets and hand tooled leather bags — all hot sellers at my father’s Curio Shop on Avenida Revolución. I loved art, and was always the kid whose drawings were pinned to the classroom wall in elementary school. This made me very proud, and helped me realize what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I helped out at my father’s store selling to American tourists (and learning English in the process). The 1960s and 1970s were the Golden Age of black velvet painting: bucolic Mexican landscapes, bullfighting scenes, Aztec warriors carrying Aztec maidens to sacrifice, and rock ‘n’ roll legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin — and the biggest seller of them all, Elvis Presley, with a tear rolling down his cheek.
As the oldest child, I always felt I was expected to take over the store, but my father surprised me one day by getting me art classes with Tarasco, Tijuana’s premier black velvet painter. I showed up at his studio, fully expecting to start working off of Playboy centerfolds, as Tarasco was known for his photo-realist renditions of Playmates, such as the classic Gwen Wong.
I was not to get anywhere near those Playboys. Tarasco — whose real name was the historically significant Fidel Cortez — sat me on a stool, and with pencil in hand, he had me draw from a white plaster of Paris bust, dramatically lit from one side. I was to first learn about line and shadow and how to render three-dimensional forms before I was to pick up the brush.
This was the method of the Academia de San Carlos, where Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and my beloved maestro studied. He’d reminisce about his years as an art student in Mexico City as he showed me his collection of old leather-bound volumes, illustrated with engravings from the old masters, from Albrecht Dürer to José Guadalupe Posada, acquired at flea markets in the city’s old downtown.
When I started making films, Tarasco magically appeared at the corner of Calle Cuarta and Avenida Revolución, where my superochero brother, Gustavo Vazquez, and I were about to shoot a nighttime scene with flood lamps on homemade stands made at Gustavo’s dad’s metal shop. Tarasco squinted his eyes, made a few adjustments, and give us an impromptu lesson on the use of key, fill and back lights to create mood and three dimensionality on celluloid.
We were in high school at the time, and there were two Tijuana artists who would gain international recognition back then: painter and installation artist Marta Palau, and Benjamin Serrano, postsurrealist painter and provocateur. Juan Angel Castillo, Baja California’s most important landscape artist, and Miguel Najera, the recognized muralist, were still working on black velvet at the time.
After I graduated from the California Institute of the Arts, my wife Jude and I settled in San Diego to create documentaries and indie features inspired by the cultural dynamics of the border region. We also became involved with the Border Arts Workshop/ Taller de Arte Fronterizo with friends like David Ávalos, Víctor Ochoa, Emily Hicks, Michael Schnorr, Robert Sánchez and Guillermo Gómez Peña. Our stated goal was to launch collaborations with artists and writers across the border, including Felipe Almada, Hugo Sánchez, María Eraña and Marco Vinicio, and take border art … well, beyond its borders.
The workshop embraced border kitsch — from plaster of Paris E.T.s and Bart Simpsons to, yes, you guessed it, black velvet paintings. The quintessential crying Elvis became part of the set for our filming of Gomez Peña’s landmark performance “Border Brujo.” Afterwards, he became so obsessed with the black velvet medium that he started commissioning original works in black velvet from Tijuana artists (maquiladora art, we called it) and exhibiting them widely as “The Black Velvet Hall of Fame.”
Since the days of Border Arts Workshop/Taller de Arte Fronterizo, art has exploded in the Tijuana-San Diego region with many of its visual artists gaining international recognition and seeing their work exhibited and acquired by museums and institutions worldwide. Significantly the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City recently announced the participation of two Tijuanense artists, Alida Cervantes and Andrew Roberts, for its 2022 Biennale.
Over the years, this border region has provided me with a magnificent canvas (or black velvet roll) for artistic expression. My most recent documentary, “The Journeys of Harry Crosby,” about the legendary photographer and historian of the Baja California peninsula, will premiere at the Centro Cultural Tijuana on July 20 and at the San Diego History Center on July 28 before it airs on PBS this fall.