Printing for The Movement, a Love Story - Kqed arts
The Love Story Behind the Graphics Arts Collaboration Dignidad Rebelde. How do you make a poster that inspires, organizes and illustrates a social movement? For printmakers Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza, the duo behind the Oakland-based graphic arts collaboration Dignidad Rebelde, the secret ingredient might be their own love story. Hit that SUBSCRIBE button! ****** Like us on Facebook: ****** Follow us on Twitter: ******
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- A lot of color, a lot of layers.
I wish I could be the artist that only drew rainbows
and unicorns, right?
Maybe that would be, and that would be okay
because we would be in a different set of conditions,
and a different society,
but that's not the material reality,
the spiritual reality that we live in.
- [Jesus] We had met through work,
and I remember seeing the band that she liked from Myspace,
and thinking wow she's really cool.
- [Melanie] A lot of it had to do with the arts,
whether it was music, or this exhibit,
and that passion.
So once we started going out,
we were really teaching each other what we knew.
And did that for many years where we scaled each other up.
When we first started collaborating,
it would be like here's my apple, and here's your orange,
and we'll put them next to each other,
and then they make something else, they make a fruit salad.
It was very distinct still and over the course of the years,
I think we've become much more seamless.
- [Jessica] Dignidad Rebelde has given visibility
and validation to an infinite amount of people around them.
Knowing Chewy and Melanie and knowing their work
and being at home in their work,
almost gave me permission to be who I was,
and then explore who I was.
- One of the most powerful abilities that I have,
is to create.
To create in a time when there's so much
destructive energy out there.
- And then so you have an image.
- Ta-da!
- It's super simple.
But it's like one of those things that if you don't know,
it's like really-
I think for us it's really in the politics,
and I think that for us the way that we
push the work forward it's not about criticizing each other,
to put each other down, or to try to dominate.
It comes out of-
For us, how do we make things better,
and how do we push the politics and how do we make sure
that in the end what we're producing is really
in service to movement.
- [Jessica] Imagine all the thousands of posters hanging in
some college student's dorm,
that's helping them get through finals,
because they're having a really tough time
at school because their school is white.
Or imagine someone, one of their posters hanging in an
undocumented son's room,
and he's negotiating his parents being deported or not.
So it's almost like infinite, the amount of impact.
- [Melanie] What it means to be a fully realized human being
that contributes to other human beings in their community
is to living a meaningful life,
while we're here.
