Latino artists showcase culture at Festival de la Familia

From kitschy tortilla art to abstract religious paintings, the 17th annual Festival de la Familia featured dozens of visual artists showcasing their work Sunday at Cal Expo.

The one-day event, sponsored in part by The Bee, is meant to enhance awareness of Latino cultures and traditions.

Thousands of area residents attended – enjoying hours of music, dance, food and children's activities – despite the summerlike heat.

One cool spot was Building A, a cavernous space filled with artists' displays that ranged from the silly to the sublime.

The work of Lalo Garcia, a painter from the San Fernando Valley, focused on religious themes of hope and redemption.

Garcia, who wore a cowboy hat and colorfully embroidered shirt, said he had designed vestments for Pope John Paul II and a prominent shrine at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles.

His contemporary version of "The Last Supper," called "This is my body, this is my blood," was a 12-foot-wide canvas of sepia tones and geometric lines. Jesus, breaking bread, was illuminated at its center.

Christ's disciples were purposely left faceless, Garcia said, so observers could add their own identities.

"Our faith is very private, very intimate," he said.

From inception to finished artwork, the painting took nearly five years to complete, Garcia said.

The artist's 12-year-old son, Diego Garcia, watched over his father's work and greeted visitors

In his paintings, Orangevale artist Raphael Delgado, 27, dealt with weighty themes of family, sexuality and unsettling emotions.

"Stranded" was a modern take on the classical Madonna. In a moonlit landscape of dark hills and trees, a woman clutches her child to her breast.

Abstract lines represent the "disintegration of the father figure – a person breaking down," Delgado explained.

The theme was drawn from his own family's experiences, he said.

At the other end of the artistic spectrum, Rio Yanez was pressing his original designs and images of pop-culture icons onto tortillas.

"Surprisingly, the tortilla is very conducive to plastic," he explained to one curious man.

Hello Kitty and Batman were popular designs, Yanez said. Paris Hilton and James Dean also were available.

The cost: $20 a tortilla.

Yanez said he uses only corn tortillas, "to honor our indigenous ancestors."

Tortilla art originated in Sacramento, he said, and differs from many other artworks because it is round.

Esteban Villa's artwork was decidedly more upscale, but the artist said he puts a jalapeño pepper into every painting, even a portrait of Cesar Chavez.

Villa said he was inspired as a student by renowned Sacramento artist Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cupcakes.

Villa, 77, is an emeritus professor at California State University, Sacramento, and a founding member of the Royal Chicano Air Force, a Sacramento-based collective of artists and activists who were influential in the Chicano rights movement.

Growing up in Bakersfield, Villa said all he saw were Norman Rockwell paintings. Things are different today, he said, sweeping an arm across the room.

"I'm so pleased," he said, "with the result of 30 years of Chicano art."

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