Selected AIDS Artist Bios

Yolanda González – Los Angeles, California
Yolanda Gonzalez is a self-taught painter who studied with Patssi Valdez and John Valdez. She has earned guest artist residencies in Russia, Japan, and Spain. She is published in numerous catalogs and art journals and has exhibited nationally and internationally. She is currently the owner of the MA Gallery in East Los Angeles.

Frank Romero – Los Angeles, California
During the past twenty-five years, Frank Romero has become one of the most recognized Chicano artists. He is the founder of the art movement known as LOS FOUR artist collective. In the early 1970s Romero organized his first exhibition at Self-Help Graphics. He has since completed a number of serigraphs and prints at Self-Help Graphics and continues to publish new editions yearly.

Poli Marichal – Los Angeles, California
Poli Marichal received her M.F.A from the Massachusetts College of Art and studied in Barcelona, London, and Puerto Rico. Her impressive list of exhibits include the National Juried Exhibition (Women’s Caucus in Art) at the Federal Reserve of Boston Gallery, La Voz de la Mujer in Rochester, New York, and New Works at the Galería Coabey in Puerto Rico. In addition to painting and printing, she is a film artist and a former Rockefeller Fellow. Marichal has received numerous awards throughout her career.

Miguel Angel Reyes – Los Angeles, California
Drawing and painting came naturally to Miguel who painted his first work at age seven. Determined to pursue painting as a career, the Mexican born artist immigrated to the United States to attend Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. His major works are a conjunction of collages, abstracts, and pastel drawings, and while attending Parsons School he developed a particular interest in photography. Lately, he pursued his interest in photography both in his formal works and as a freelance magazine photographer. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and for the last twelve years he has worked for various AIDS causes.

Augustín Barón – Los Angeles, California
Augustín Barón is a freelance photographer and muralist and utilizes the alternate photography process in his experimental printmaking work. As an emerging artist, Barón exhibited his work at Self-Help Graphics as well as several local colleges. He recently published an art “zine” titled “Sketchbook.”

Salomón Huerta – Los Angeles, California
Salomón Huerta received his M.F.A from UCLA and studied at the Art Center College of Design. His work is exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Mexico as well as in Germany and Italy. Huerta was recently featured in “The Next Wave: New Painting in Southern California” at the California Center for the Arts and “Revealing and Concealing” at the Skirball Center. He was selected for the Whitney Biennial 2000 and recently exhibited in London with fellow artist, Gogasian. He will be exhibiting in Verona later this year. Ixrael Rodríguez Los Angeles, CA.

Ixrael Rodríguez– Los Angeles, CA.
Ixrael Rodríguez was born in Mexico City. He studied at the Academy of San Carlos. His work was featured in the Salon Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City, in Tijuana for his “Zona Norte” Proyecto de Pintura Fronteriza solo show, and most recently at the Casa de la Cultura for his Ando Grabando Grafica de Tijuana exhibit. Rodríguez currently lives and works in the Los Angeles area where he has presented several solo as well as group shows.

Efraín Novelo – Los Angeles, California
Born in Merida, Yucatan, Efrain Novelo began his art career with painting and printmaking. He is exhibited locally and internationally throughout Southern California and Mexico, including LACMA, the Downey Museum, American Consulate in Merida, Yucatan, and as a part of the artists in the 1996-97 Biannual from the Instituto de Cultura de México. He has been awarded the Fortis Korkis Scholarship for printmaking by El Camino College where he studied to master traditional lithography. Presently he works as a printmaker with Self-Help Graphics in East LA while expanding his art to the third dimension using clay and mixed media.

Fernando Salicrup – New York, New York
Fernando has participated in more than sixty-five exhibitions, including nine solo shows, mainly in New York City and Puerto Rico but also throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He has received awards for his work—in many different media—and also for his community service. These include the XII San Juan Biennial of Latin American and Caribbean Printmaking award at the Transition to the 21st Century, a prize for experimental work with computer, the Latino Press NYC Contribution in Plastic Arts award, and the Police Department Community Council of New York City award for outstanding service and contributions to the cultural enrichment of El Barrio, East Harlem.

Margaret Alarcon – East Los Angeles, California
Margarita is a Chicana artist from East Los Angeles, California. She received a BFA at the Art Center of Design in Pasadena, California, in 1997. Her most recent exhibitions include: 3 Generations of Chicana Art-30 Years of Contemporary Chicano and American Art Traditions in the Rike Gallery at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and Just Another Poster? Chicano Graphic Arts in California National Art Tour, Universtiy of Texas, Austin, and University of California, Santa Barbara.

Maceo Montoya – Elmira, California
Raised in the small town of Elmira, California, Maceo Montoya recently graduated from Yale University, where he majored in history and ethnicity, race, and migration studies and served as graphics editor for Yale Latin American Review. He has participated in various mural projects and won travel/study fellowships to produce artwork as documentation of his research in Central and South America and Mexico. His “Portrait of Guanajuato” went on exhibit at Yale in 2000; “Dos Primos en Guanajuato: Maceo and Tomás Montoya”was shown at the Asian Resource Gallery in Oakland, CA, the following year; and, also in 2001, he had a solo exhibit at La Raza Galería Posada in Sacramento, CA. He is the son of long-term political activist/artist Malaquias Montoya who, says Maceo “has taught me just about everything I know about art.”

Scherezade – New York, New York
Scherezade graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, cum laude, from the Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1988 and went on, during the years following, to participate in more than twenty-five group shows at Yale University and various locations in New York and the Dominican Republic. Her solo shows include “Paraíso/Paradise” at the IV Caribbean Biennial, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2001, and the Havana Biennial, Cuba, 2000; “Stories of Salvation,” Último Arte Gallery, Santo Domingo, 1998; “Tales of Freedom,” Mary Anthony Galleries, New York City, 1997; Hispanic Heritage Month in New York, 1996 and 1994; “Stories of Fallen Angels,” Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, 1995; and “History of a Long Conversation,” the Art Nouveau Gallery, Santo Domingo, 1994. Her work has featured in various catalogues and a film documentary and is on display in the Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, Connecticut, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Barcelo Public Collection, Santo Domingo, and the National Palace of the Dominican Republic.