Press Release
April 26, 2004
contact: Reyes Rodriguez / Marialice Jacob
213.481.8112 - nopalarte@earthlink.net
SPINE OF CALIFAS V
Onramps, Offramps, Poetry & Music
Saturday - May 8, 2004 8pm
$7 donation - all ages
Tropico de Nopal Gallery-Art Space is proud to host another poetic road trip of "The Spine of Califas." Veteran driver/host, journalist and poet Adolfo Guzman Lopez (San Diego-Los Angeles) brings fresh for this ride poets Miguel-Angel Soria (San Diego), Ariel Robello (Los Angeles), Jime Salcedo-Malo (Los Angeles-San Francisco), with punk-rock musicians Willie Herron and Xiuy Velo ("Los Illegals" - Los Angeles) keeping it at the speed of verse, with the stops true to the beauty and pain of the California neighborhoods along the way.
Miguel-Angel Soria- born into a Tijuana family of activists, artists and musicians, he explores the beauty of the border experience. He is also a founding member of The Taco Shop Poets, Izcalli, a Saturday school for young Chicano/as, and the theater group Teatro Izcalli.
Ariel Robello- her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Urban Latino Magazine, el Aviso Magazine, in Poetry Is Not A Luxury an Anthology of Poems by Women of Color in Los Angeles, the postcard series produced by Writers at Work and on the Luna Xol Anthology CD and Never Ending Battle CD (produced by 5th Battalion). Her current joy is teaching poetry in local high schools with Pen in the Classroom and the HeART project. Robello's first book of poems, My Sweet Unconditional, is forthcoming from Tia Chucha Press.
Jime Salcedo-Malo- Chicano writer, performance poet, teacher and cultural worker born in Los Angeles and currently living in San Francisco’s Excelsior District. For the past nine years, he has worked with many civic, youth, and non-profit community organizations, and has a strong commitment to the arts, education and self-empowerment. He combines hip hop and spoken word to teach writing, expression and self-determination with youth. He received a bachelor’s degree in social psychology from San Francisco State University in 1999, and is currently pursuing his Masters in psychology at CIIS.
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Adolfo Guzman Lopez- continues to dream of the volcanic rock of his native Mexico City, the one used to build pyramids and Spanish colonial palaces. He grew up in a hilltop colonia (suburb) in Tijuana with views of the nightly helicopter raids by the border patrol. By day, Adolfo puts on the luchador (wrestler) mask of a public radio reporter on KPCC 89.3 FM, and by night he wanders the streets of L.A. trying to find the right words for the sounds he hears.
Willie Herron and Xiuy Velo provide the car horns, the screeching halts, the bassline heartbeat and the cadence for the road trip. Herron and Velo founded Los Illegals more than 25 years ago. “Legendary East L.A. Punk Band” is one of many labels that’s been tagged onto them. Both continue to collaborate in theater and music, always staying true to the raw energy of East L.A.
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Tropico de Nopal Gallery-Art Space is a venue dedicated to exhibiting and promoting contemporary emerging and mid-career artists through cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary art forms.
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