San Francisco-based artist Steven Vasquez Lopez, born to a seamstress and a mechanic, continues on a tradition of labor-intensive work through his own ink drawings. Meticulously detailed drawings that explore line, pattern, and color that in a way pay tribute to his mother and the sewing work she did.
The Some Strings Attached and Patches series are hyper-controlled explorations done with hand-drawn ink on paper that “construct and unravel” his first generation, middle-class American upbringing in the 80s and 90s with all things MTV, Nickelodeon, plastic toys, and bold fashion choices.
From the artist:
Pushing the cannon of Chicano art beyond graffiti or large-scale murals, these works also investigate identity through the lens of such a richly traditional infrastructure. My paintings and work on paper create a new kind of iconography, symbolically operating on the micro level of the personal, able to be inserted into a larger historical and cultural dialogue.