Pacifica Artist Ties Indigenous Themes to Lives of Immigrants and Farmworkers

Oscar Lopez has a reputation for building community and using his art to tie contemporary experiences to Indigenous history.

At the opening of Lopez’s show, “Admirados y Borrados” (“Admired and Erased”), at M Stark Gallery in Half Moon Bay, a low-rider was parked out front, and a bottle of tequila and glasses were on a table by the door. The gallery was full of friends, supporters, former students, and strollers on Half Moon Bay’s Main Street who wanted to check out the party and Lopez’s art. 

People waited to be photographed with Lopez and congratulated him in English and Spanish. An artist who had bought a painting from Lopez a couple years ago brought him a plant and sparkling wine, and waited to speak with him while he encouraged a former student from Ohlone College to keep going with her art.

Nineteen-year-old Joshua Suvatne, a theater student at Ohlone, was part of the crowd, examining the brightly colored paintings of hummingbirds and pre-Columbian figurines. Suvatne’s girlfriend was a student of Lopez, but Suvatne hadn’t seen Lopez’s wor­k before.

“I think it’s amazing,” he said. “I like the backgrounds that give life to the image. They’re not taking too much away from the foreground. I like the bright colors against the browns.”

Filmmaker and professor Kavena Hambira has known Lopez since they were students at the San Francisco Art Institute, and he drove down from Oakland for the opening. Like Suvatne, he loves Lopez’s bold colors. But it’s what the art is about that most moves him.

“It’s the themes that Oscar represents in this work around Indigeneity,” he said. “These notions around colonial conquest, but also what happened before that conquest, the lives that these ancestors had lived on this land prior to any colonial conquest. I think representing those lives in his work is what sticks out.”

Lopez talked about how this had inspired the title of the show.

“The motifs of the pre-Hispanic clay figurines are crucial,” he said.  “I started to reflect that museums are holding these artifacts that are admired or, in a way, worshiped, like, ‘Oh, my God, this ancient, famous figurine that reflects the Aztec empire, or Incan empire, or Mayan empire,’ and you adore that inside of the museum.

“But what happens with the people who come after the people who built or made that?” Lopez asked. “We have been discriminated against, we have been stigmatized, and it’s the same people who are working the fields.”

Lopez grew up in Mexico City. He didn’t have access to galleries or museums but liked the art he saw on the street. He said he started making graffiti when he was young and did it for years.

At 20, Lopez came to Mountain View, where his uncle lived, and enrolled in Foothill College. He planned to get a degree in computer science, which he’d studied in Mexico.

Lopez’s English as a Second Language teacher changed the trajectory of his life when he noticed that Lopez’s papers and tests were covered with drawings. He told Lopez to pay attention in class to learn English but also steered him to the art department. Lopez switched his focus and after a while started to submit his work for art shows and apply for grants and awards.

Now, Lopez has a studio at the Sanchez Art Center in Pacifica, where he lives. He painted a mural on the façade of the Institute of Contemporary Art San José, “Without Them Is Not Us,” and another series of murals, “Your Food, My Work, Our Land,” which are on display through May 31 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Both projects honor the labor of farmworkers, and in seeking inspiration, he interviewed agricultural workers in Half Moon Bay about their lives.

Marianna Stark, the gallery’s founder, read an article about the Fort Mason project in the “Half Moon Bay Review.” She looked up Lopez and his work impressed her. 

“I was blown away by his draftsmanship and his skill level,” she said. “I immediately contacted him and invited him to the gallery and offered him a show whenever he wanted.”

Stark called the colors in “Admirados y Borrados” astounding and the pre-Columbian figurines dreamlike. She was interrupted in the middle of talking about Lopez’s work to go sell some of it. Before leaving to do that, she added that the paintings in the show offered a narrative about immigration, with the birds representing migrants.

Art is essential for building a society, Lopez said, adding that he was pleased with the community turnout at the opening. 

“It’s very, very important for me to make sure that people like me, or that look like me, feel represented. I’m opening doors for the little me that didn’t have access to galleries, right?” Lopez said.

“I’m grateful to the gallery. I’m grateful for Fort Mason Center and for the ICA San José for opening that door,” he said. “And I hope another young artist gets motivated to see themselves and their culture represented by a museum or inside of a gallery.”

Admirados y Borrados/Admired and Erased is at M Stark Gallery, 727 Main St., Half Moon Bay, through March 30. The gallery is donating 20% of retail sales from this exhibition to local nonprofit ALAS (Ayudando Latinos a Soñar).