Rafael López (illustrator and artist)

Education

In Mexico City, López attended the Manuel Bartolome Cossio, an experimental Freinet school where he began drawing and painting at an early age. He attended after school workshops there in photography, painting, puppet making, carpentry, ceramics, tablas huicholas and theatre. In school he was able to study classical music and also learned to play a variety of folkloric instruments including the quena, guitar and drums taught by members of Los Folkloristas. Music is a prominent theme found in his illustrations and books. Both his parents were architects and teachers at UNAM. As a child, he often visited the flea market with his father looking for used books and the family had a large collection that lined the walls of their living room from floor to ceiling. López regularly traveled by metro over an hour to visit the library, immersed himself in books, especially art books and grew up with a fascination for images from a variety of cultures. The illustrator describes Mexico as a place where there are hundreds of myths and legends as well as 67 native languages. This early exposure to diversity and storytelling shaped his thinking. When he was 10 years old, his parents sent him to Exeter, England to live for a short time with Mexican-born conceptual and performance artist Felipe Ehrenberg. There he explored drawing and learned to make books and use a printing press. His first book was an illustrated journal where he recorded his experiences to share with his family. In 1982, he left Mexico to study illustration at the Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles where he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration.

Career

After college he worked as an illustrator in Los Angeles, and then converted an old car garage in an industrial loft building in the East Village of downtown San Diego into his home and studio. He became involved in social design projects, founding the Urban Art Trail and painting large-scale murals to improve blighted areas and reclaim neighborhoods. A lifelong passion for books eventually led him to pursue children’s book illustration with a focus on diversity. He has taught illustration for Art Center College of Design and San Diego City College.

Works

Growing up in Mexico City, Rafael López was immersed in the rich cultural heritage and native color of street life. Influenced by Mexican surrealism and myths he developed a style with roots in this tradition. Using bold colors, his textured work is a fusion of graphic style and magical symbolism. López likes to find objects and symbols to communicate concepts. He paints with acrylic paints that come in large recycled salsa jars from Mexico and uses a variety of objects to scratch textures onto hand-cut and sanded wooden boards. Color and texture is important to Lopez's paintings and he uses a camera to catalogue the colors, textural history of walls and peeling paint to fuel his work. López believes color is an expression of his identity, heritage and a direct route to the emotions of his audience. He cites Mexico as a land of contrasts, surrealism, intense color, texture and imagery . Strongly influenced by indigenous cultures and naïve art, his illustrations for children's books have been cited for their warm, ethereal folk art quality. His international clients include Amnesty International, Apple, Charlesbridge Publishing, Chicago Tribune, Grammy Awards, Harper Collins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, IBM, Intel, Lee & Low books, Library of Congress, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, United States Forest Service, United States Postal Service, the Washington Post and the World Wildlife Fund and his work has been selected into multiple juried shows. Illustrations have been featured in publications like Communication Arts, the American Illustration Annual, and Graphic Design USA.

Books

His illustrations for Drum Dream Girl were the recipient of the 2016 Pura Belpré medal for illustration given by the American Library Association to honor work that best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in children's books.López's illustrations were animated by producer Ryan Swenar of Dreamscape Media to create Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, the recipient of the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's video. Written by Newbery Honor author Margarita Engle the book tells the story of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, a mixed race Cuban girl in the 1930s music scene, who defied gender roles. His illustrations encourage readers to explore the story from different perspectives by changing the page orientation from horizontal to vertical to magnify Engle's compelling text. The use of perspective in Drum Dream Girl has a surreal quality and the illustrator believes that children are more visually sophisticated than we think so he uses shapes, instead of realistic representations of objects. Drum Dream Girl was selected as part of a special initiative by We Need Diverse Books as part of Indies First celebrations on small business Saturday. His illustrations for Book Fiesta! written by Pat Mora were the recipient of the 2010 Pura Belpré Illustration Award. The book is a celebration of El Día de los niños/ El Día de los libros, Day of the Child/Day of the Book. The illustrations in Book Fiesta! have been cited for their strong concept, dynamic design, skillful execution, and overwhelming charm.The book "Maybe Something Beautiful, How Art Transformed a Neighborhood" written by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell received the 2017 Tomás Rivera Book Award for Young Readers, and is based on López's work as a community muralist. Additional books, Tito Puente, Mambo King by Monica Brown,The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred by Samantha Vamos, My Name is Celia, Me Llamo Celia written by Monica Brown and Yum! Mmm! Que Rico! by Pat Mora have won 2 Américas Book Awards and 3 Pura Belpré Honors for illustration. To encourage summer reading for children, he developed a poster and other graphics for the Collaborative Summer Library Program, One World, Many Stories.

The illustrations created by López bring diverse characters to children’s books and he works to produce and promote books that reflect and honor the lives of all young people. The artist is drawn to picture books because he believes words and images have the power to make convincing change. When children see themselves in the pages of books it encourages them to reach their full potential. He cites the need to go beyond stereotypes and misrepresentations and deal with the complex issues of life in an increasingly interconnected world.

In 2012 he was selected by the Library of Congress to create the National Book Festival poster to celebrate reading and literacy. Honorary Co-Chairs for this event were President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and it featured more than 125 best-selling authors, illustrators and poets on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. López served as the honorary chair of California's Read Across America and speaks around the United States and abroad to promote reading and literacy. Children's books illustrated by Rafael López have been printed in Arabic, Chinese, English and Spanish.

López spends time out of the studio traveling, painting murals and reading with diverse kids. These experiences have taught him that children are wise and could teach us all about getting along. Using pictures and storytelling in both books and murals he strives to communicate hope and the knowledge that kids and families have the power to make change in their own communities. In economically challenging times, the illustrator is a big supporter of public libraries and librarians. He advocates for the vital role they play connecting children to books and awakening their curiosity for a wide variety of subjects. The artist speaks at libraries and schools around the nation, working to create appreciation and awareness of libraries as cultural institutions relevant to a diverse community.

Posters

As part of a grassroots effort he created a poster called Nuestra Voz that was printed with friends and distributed to key swing states in an effort to win the pivotal Latino vote for democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama. The poster was brought to the attention of the national campaign by field workers and his 2008 poster Voz Unida was selected by the Obama/Biden campaign as an official poster at Artists for Obama. This poster became part of a series of ten limited edition art prints created and donated by artists to support the presidential campaign of United States President Barack Obama and were sold to raise campaign funds through his official website. The success of the initial poster fueled the decision to choose López to create a new image for the re-election campaign. In 2012 a new poster "Estamos Unidos" was released and he was the only original Artist for Obama to make an official poster for the re-election effort. The poster sold out at Artists for Obama and an alternate version "Adelante" was printed in an effort to win the Latino vote in key swing states.

He was selected to create the National Book Festival poster for the Library of Congress in 2012. Birds are a frequent subject of his work and in 2012 he worked with Environment for the Americas as the International Migratory Bird Day artist. In that role, he created a poster encouraging diverse children to become involved in birdwatching and appreciation of birds. . López also created a series of four posters in 2014 as the Americas Latino Eco Festival artist.

He is a regular speaker at schools, conferences and associations like the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators where he shares techniques and ideas. During the 2013, 32nd Sharjah International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates he was asked to teach a poster design workshop to aspiring and established illustrators. He also visited Sharjah in 2011 to teach an art workshop to children.

Postal Stamps

He created a series of 5 stamps in 2010 for the United States Postal Service featuring Latin Music Legends Celia Cruz, Carlos Gardel, Carmen Miranda, Tito Puente and Selena.

His 2007 U.S.P.S. stamp celebrated an important legal case in equality of education called Mendez vs. Westminster.

Lopez's Let's Dance Merengue postal stamp was featured on the cover of the commemorative stamp yearbook in 2006 and at a special exhibition at the Smithsonian called Trendsetters and Trailblazers.

Exhibitions and Collections

In 2016, two original paintings were exhibited at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum at an exhibition called New York City: A Portrait through stamp art. Several of Lopez's works were exhibited in 2016 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico and in 2015 at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.Selected paintings on wood and original drawings were shown at a multimedia exhibition called Writing With Pictures at the California Center for the Arts. Original art by López can also be found in the Mazza Museum, International Art for children's books collection. Archival materials about the life and work of Rafael López are part of the University of California, Santa Barbara CEMA Library Collection. Works by Rafael López were exhibited at Manifest Hope in Washington D.C., Manifest Equality in Los Angeles and Re: Form Education in New York. In 2009, he was asked to create three paintings for Oprah Winfrey's school in South Africa and then presented them to her at the National Association for Independent Schools conference in Chicago, Illinois.

Murals

López envisioned and led the Urban Art Trail Project in 1997, that transformed San Diego's blighted East Village with colorful murals, sculptures and art installations and serves as a model of urban renewal that has been implemented in cities around the nation. This effort is the subject of the children's book Maybe Something Beautiful from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, illustrated by Rafael López. The book is the recipient of the 2017 Tomás Rivera Book Award for Young Readers and made the New York Public Library Best Books for Kids 2016 list. It was also honored by the International Latino Book Awards as best Latino focused children's picture book. School Library Journal praised the book for celebrating the power of community and reminding readers that a small group of committed individuals can impact meaningful change.

The artist is energized by the idea of bringing art out of galleries and into the streets so it is accessible to everyone. Through this work, López has discovered that community murals can be a powerful, compelling tool to bring diverse people together. To build community and encourage participation by young people and untrained artists López developed a mural style that works like a large-scale paint by numbers. He believes that murals can help neighbors work collaboratively to take ownership of their communities. Working with urban libraries, López uses art to bring communities together and sees diversity as a bridge that can build trust, enlightenment and innovation.

After an act of violence on a Chicago playground, he worked with community organizers to make a vibrant mural that empowered families to reclaim their neighborhood using art. He has designed and developed murals in collaboration with the National Museum of Mexican Fine Art in Chicago, American Federation of Teachers and other organizations. López's murals can be found throughout downtown San Diego and on Harbor Island, at the San Diego office of the American Federation of Teachers, numerous children's hospitals, under bridges and at public elementary schools including a series at the San Diego Cooperative Charter School. He has worked with hundreds of children, families and community members to create murals and often reclaim blighted neighborhoods in San Diego and Los Angeles, California, Fort Collins and Boulder, Colorado, Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington.

Rafael López lives in San Diego, California and the UNESCO World Heritage city of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico with his wife Candice, a Professor of Art and Design and a son Santiago.