Shizu Saldamando: Drawing up the playful heart of hybrid L.A.

Shizu Saldamando, still 29, is a California artist who I believe embodies the leading edge of the state's long and energetic traditions of cultural and creative hybridity. A Japanese-Mexican American woman raised in the Mission District in San Francisco, Shizu's drawings and paintings combine, as the L.A. Times says in this recent article, "elements of traditional Chicano portraiture, lowrider art and pinta (jailhouse) art." Her media is just as mixed-up. She uses "glitter, origami paper, ballpoint pen, bed sheets, handkerchiefs, ruled notebook paper and plywood" to depict friends and people she knows living life in L.A.'s Eastside and Southeast. She works mainly off her own photography.

Saldamando's style is really unmistakable. You know a Shizu piece -- like a Diane Gamboa work -- from across the room. And you get a sense after just looking at a few of her pieces that her work is a real window into the lives of the familiar young rockabillies, rockeros and post-cholos/as of authentic Los Angeles. She renders their sense of romance, fashion, playfulness, and genuinely affected melancholy in a way that makes you feel close to the subjects, as if you've met them before. (Sometimes, you realize you have.)

* A show of new work by Saldamando is up this month at Tropico de Nopal gallery in that old Belmont-Westlake-Temple/Beaudry region of central L.A. Here is the press release. See L.A. Times article for more. (Love the image above but I'm having trouble correctly naming and dating it.)

** ADD: Adrian Arancibia posts a lyrical reaction to the show at LatinoLA.com.

Comments

[Gustavo Arellano]

She once dated a guy from my Zacatecan rancho--CRAZY. Great artist, great person from the one time I met her.

[EL CHAVO!]

I got to see that show last week, she definitely captures something about her subjects that just resonates with familiarity. I loved the works done with a pen.

[Daniel H.]

Cool cool. Still have to go check it out..

[Shizu]

The piece above is actually two pieces, Cindy and a self portrait, both ball point pen on cotton, photoshopped together from 2005. Thanks for the article.
-shizu

[sandy]

Great article on a very important show.
Shizu is one of the great artists of our generation!

[Eileen]

I saw her work at the lacma today and i totally loved the one with siouxsie sioux tatted on a chicks arm...lovely work

[Daniel H.]

Shizu = dope.