On June 14th, “No Kings Day”, fellow Justseeds colleague, William Estrada stop through Albuquerque, New Mexico to give a workshop at Risolana. Risolana is Albuquerque’s (if not New Mexico’s) one and only Risograph studio specializing in collaborating with artists to create posters, zines and artist books. Run by Michael Lopez and tech specialist Carlos Gabaldon, the two are constantly inviting artists to create, teach, and learn.
During this workshop, Maestro Estrada paired up all the attendees to collaborate on a two color poster project. I teamed up with my four year old son. I asked him “What do we want to draw?” and he immediately said “T-Rex”. So thats how our project started. I drew him a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the king of the dinosaurs. In a flash I thought lets write the words “The Only King” at the top, since I had just come from the “No Kings Day” rally. Our simple dino drawing had instantly turned into a political poster.
Me and my kid worked fast and were the first ones ready to print. When the class saw our poster someone asked if the scribbles that my son had drawn were a meteor. Another person added “what if the meteor was falling down on Trump?”. So thats when we went back to the drawing board to add the meteor flying down on Trump running for his life. Our two person collaboration had turned into a bigger collaboration with the class.
The two colors that we were given to work with were a blue and a light orange. Using a range of different drawing tools from crayons to markers, we were able to get different tonalities of color. We used a very opaque sharpie that enabled us to get a strong Cheeto orange that was perfect for Trump’s face.
My kid had a blast pushing the print button and watching the prints fly out.
At the end of the workshop all the different collaborations shared their prints and each of us got to take a stack of new artworks home.
Thank you Maestro Estrada for a wonderful experience and thank you to Risolana for opening up your space and making this happen.
