Loteria Original Art: Help Disaster Victims

Posted on September 14, 2017 by John Picacio

Our fellow humans in Houston, Florida, Mexico, and the Caribbean Islands have been walloped by natural disaster in recent days — and they need our help. Earlier this month, I made available one of my much-coveted shadowbox assemblages and it sold within minutes of being posted. A portion of that sale will be going to benefit Mexican earthquake relief efforts in Oaxaca, where they were devastated by an 8.1 earthquake on September 7th.

Now, I’m parting with five of my cherished Loteria drawings to generate more donation money toward recovery endeavors. A portion of these purchases will be donated to the food bank or relief effort of the buyer’s choice. I’m partial to the Mexican relief efforts because they delivered personnel and supplies to the US when Hurricane Harvey roared through Houston, and the honorable thing to do as Americans is reciprocate. Mexico City is recovering from a horrific 7.1 disaster on September 19th and I want to do all I can to help them. That said, I have friends and family in Houston, and while I’ve already donated to the Harvey effort, I would be thrilled to see more relief funds sent directly to Houston’s food banks. And of course, Florida and the Caribbean Islanders deserve our continuing attention as well, in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Many of you are aware of my ongoing Loteria art series. I feel that these Loteria drawings are some of the most resonant I’ve done in my career to date. I’m 100% Mexican American, so every time I work on one of these — it’s PERSONAL. These visions are not just about me. They’re about my culture, our identity, and our dreams. There will be only be fifty-four of these final drawings when the series is completed, and several have previously sold immediately.

Here’s a guided tour of the five original works that are now available for the first time ever. Congratulations in advance to the lucky collectors that score one or more of these. I know many of you have been waiting for the chance to own one. Enjoy.

(above) EL CORAZON (The Heart) / Original Final Drawing
I almost talked myself out of posting this one for sale because it’s a favorite. Considering so many lives are struggling right now though, maybe it’s time for it to light the way for families living through a darkest hour. Many of you have been acquiring my limited-run Loteria Grande cards, and while ‘La Sirena’ and ‘La Calavera’ sold out the fastest, this card sold out soon after. It’s probably one of the most popular icons of my Loteria series so far.

Graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol • 11″ x 18″ (drawing dimension) • 14″ x 21″ (full sheet dimension)

$5000 • Ships flat and unframed • Includes free shipping within the continental USA • Please add $75 for shipping outside the USA • 10% of purchase price will be donated to relief effort of buyer’s choice

To purchase, email john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com with the subject line, “El Corazon”. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the transaction via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

(above) LA ROSA (The Rose) / Original Final Drawing / SOLD
This is the first final drawing I ever did for my Loteria series — the one that started it all. It was inspired by a promotional artwork I did for San Francisco’s Borderlands Books, and I then redid the concept as the drawing you see here for ‘La Rosa’. This was the first artwork I completed after winning the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, and it set the course for my career ever since.

Graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol • 11″ x 18″ (drawing dimension) • 14″ x 21″ (full sheet dimension)

$5000 • Ships flat and unframed • Includes free shipping within the continental USA • Please add $75 for shipping outside the USA • 10% of purchase price will be donated to relief effort of buyer’s choice

To purchase, email john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com with the subject line, “La Rosa”. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the transaction via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

(above) EL PESCADO (The Fish) / Original Final Drawing
This was the second final drawing completed for the Loteria series, and it’s a favorite of Pisces lovers everywhere. This one was a turning point for me because it represented a standard for not just sheer physical execution, but a pursuit of concept that needed to be pushed with every icon. Like ‘El Corazon’ above, I almost didn’t post this one for sale because I dearly love it, but seeing so many trying to keep their daily existences afloat — it just seems like the right moment.

Graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol • 11″ x 18″ (drawing dimension) • 14″ x 21″ (full sheet dimension)

$5000 • Ships flat and unframed • Includes free shipping within the continental USA • Please add $75 for shipping outside the USA • 10% of purchase price will be donated to relief effort of buyer’s choice

To purchase, email john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com with the subject line, “El Pescado”. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the transaction via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

(above) EL PARAGUAS (The Umbrella) / Original Final Drawing / SOLD
This guy has lived in my dreams for as long as I can remember. He finally found shelter in our reality when I finished this drawing a few years ago. I feel like these images are messages from an ancestral past. They’re not all memories of what came before and where we’ve been, but glimpses of where we’re headed and what might lie ahead.

Graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol • 11″ x 18″ (drawing dimension) • 14″ x 21″ (full sheet dimension)

$5000 • Ships flat and unframed • Includes free shipping within the continental USA • Please add $75 for shipping outside the USA • 10% of purchase price will be donated to relief effort of buyer’s choice

To purchase, email john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com with the subject line, “El Paraguas”. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the transaction via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

(above) EL NOPAL (The Cactus) / Original Final Drawing
This kid feels like a kindred spirit. I think we all feel like him at some point in our lives. I think some of us do on a daily basis. There’s a lot of angst and pain in this world of ours right now. So many have had their hard-earned worlds ripped away in a blink. What would we want if that was us? If this drawing finds a new home, then hopefully it can help someone else along the path to finding a new one for themselves.

Graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol • 11″ x 18″ (drawing dimension) • 14″ x 21″ (full sheet dimension)

$5000 • Ships flat and unframed • Includes free shipping within the continental USA • Please add $75 for shipping outside the USA • 10% of purchase price will be donated to relief effort of buyer’s choice

To purchase, email john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com with the subject line, “El Nopal”. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the transaction via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

LIES AND UGLINESS: THE ORIGINAL ART

Posted on September 13, 2017 by John Picacio

(UPDATE: This original artwork was for sale today — and it sold in less than an hour. WOW. Thank you and congratulations to author Mark Van Name for scoring this for his collection. Most importantly, we’ve chosen to donate a portion of the proceeds to Mexican earthquake relief, and are now deciding which charitable conduit is best. NEXT: I’ll have FIVE previously not-for-sale Loteria original artworks available for purchase, with portions of proceeds going to further help victims of recent natural disaster in Houston, Florida, the Islands and Mexico.)

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Like many of you, I’ve been trying to do my part to help Houstonians devastated by Hurricane Harvey, as well as Floridians and Islanders impacted by Hurricane Irma. The Mexican Earthquake victims have not left my daily attention, since that massive 8.1 earthquake struck on September 7th. They need our help there, even as they’ve been heroically offering their own relief assistance to the United States.

Sixteen years ago this week, Americans felt compelled to rally around our own. Whenever I look at this piece of original art, I think of 9/11. I had become a fulltime professional illustrator in April of that year, resigning my job in the residential architecture field. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be a professional sf/f book cover artist. It was a heady time. I was slowly building a pro art career, as publishing clients were beginning to take notice of my early cover and magazine work. That morning, I was sketching ideas for the cover of Brian Hodge’s collection Lies and Ugliness. The phone rang, and I heard my mother’s voice, “Are you watching?”

“TV’s not on.”

“A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. It’s on fire.”

“Oh my god. What channel?”

“All of them,” she said.

“OK. Love you. Bye.”

I watched a towering grey cloud billow across a field of blue, as my drawing hand went buzzy and tingly — and then the second plane hit. I don’t remember any work after that. What I do know is this cover idea was born on that terrible day because one of the morning’s thumbnails eventually evolved into the final artwork you see here. I’ve always called this artwork “Lies and Ugliness” because that’s the name of the book it illustrated, but those words and their synchronicity resonate more profoundly as years unfold.

In those fledgling days, I was experimenting across a wide range of media. I still have people ask me, “When are you going to do another shadowbox assemblage cover?” This cover was one of those, and the answer is “not anytime soon” because these were so time-consuming. I did my assemblage covers by hand, with traditional media. The drawing and painting wasn’t the time-consuming part. It was the search for found objects, the construction, and then the careful installation of the pieces. It added an uncertainty and vitality that was incredibly fun, but not the most efficient process either. I was learning lessons and working through my influences at that time — Cornell, McKean, Bantock, Rauschenberg, and so on.

In my 2006 art book Cover Story: The Art of John Picacio, I shared what I thought about the manuscript, and what I was thinking when I did this artwork, “Upon closer study, there was a common denominator: the exploration of faith and sexuality and their effects on the mundane and epic — especially their effects on the perception of the ‘truth’. In many of the stories, Hodge almost seemed to relish in the violent ideological collisions between the pagan and the Christian. There’s a mad love of ritual….”

I also described how the original was created. “I drew and painted the Christ figure in mixed media on masonite, and then positioned it into a homemade wooden box that was built and painted proportionally to the cover dimension. The gargoyle is a a found object that I carved, textured and painted to make it more fearsome. After carefully melding the painting and the gargoyle, the two were surrounded with silk roses, which I painted and touched up individually by hand to make them look just right.”

So here we are — sixteen years later — and I’d like to use this original artwork to help people in need, as best I can. I’m donating 10% of the proceeds from this one to the food bank or relief charity of the buyer’s choice. I’m also pricing this original lower so that it gives the best chance for a donation to occur. For example, my Loteria original graphite drawings (11″ x 18″) currently sell in the $5000 range, so the price listed below for this early shadowbox original is a rare bargain for my stuff — and these shadowbox originals almost never become available. 🙂

Dimensions: 12.5″ wide x 19″ high x 2.5″ deep

Weight: 7 lbs. (before shipping)

Price: Only $1500 (includes free shipping within the continental United States / please add $100 for shipping outside of the United States)

Contact: john (at) johnpicacio (dot) com — Email me with the subject line “Lies and Ugliness”. First come, first serve. We’ll exchange emails and I’ll give the payment contact info so that we can finalize the sale via Paypal. I’ll then donate to your favorite food bank or relief charity — and ship your artwork to you.

Good luck, all!