Con/ Safos by Rafa Esparza

C/S or Con/Safos by Rafa Esparza in collaboration with Self Help Graphics & Art and California State Parks is a site-specific sculpture and year long revolving installation at the Bowtie Project. Over the summer of 2014 Esparza and his father handmade 1500 adobe bricks on site as part of Esparza’s Bowtie Project performance ‘building. a simulacrum of power’. In a continued exploration of this site, Esparza used these bricks to build 2 intersecting adobe walls. Throughout the course of a year graffiti artists, painters and sculptors have been invited to design, paint, and build onto the surface of Con/Safos. This work provides an open sanctioned space for painters and graffiti artists to create temporal artworks.

Esparza is partnering with Self Help Graphics & Art, a popular and vital community resource for the creation and presentation of Chicano/Mexicano art and culture in East LA to create this work. They will invite each participating artists to partake in their Atelier Program where they will print a limited edition serigraphic print inspired by their work at C/S. SHGA will also be conducting onsite experiments creating dyes from native plants to use in printing, thus producing their first ever site-specific edition and infusing each print with the feeling and life of the LA river.