Good Trouble

My pointillist series ‘GOOD TROUBLE | Portraits on the Right Side of History’ is on view at Snap! Downtown | OG1 Gallery.
Open Mon-Sat 11 AM-6PM. Inquiries : info@snaporlando.com.

“Malcolm X”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Martin Luther King Jr.”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Rosa Parks”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“James Baldwin”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Barack Obama”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Michelle Obama”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“John Lewis”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Ida B. Wells”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Angela Davis”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Huey P. Newton”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Harriet Tubman”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“W. E. B. Du Bois”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Frederick Douglass”
9″x12″ Pen on Paper

“Don Ramón”

don-ramon-12x9-pen-on-paper-small
“Don Ramón” 12″x9″ Pen On Paper

Growing up in Puerto Rico, it was easy to take El Chavo Del Ocho for granted: Created in 1971, the Mexican sitcom had reached its peak in popularity, was cancelled and had begun to thrive in reruns (averaging more viewers than the 2014 Superbowl) way before I got into it as a kid. It wasn’t until I started describing El Chavo Del Ocho to people that hadn’t grown up with it that I realized how special this show really was. From Wiki: “El Chavo del Ocho is a Mexican television sitcom that gained enormous popularity in Hispanic America as well as in Brazil, Spain, United States, and other countries. It centers on the adventures and tribulations of a poor orphan nicknamed ‘El Chavo’ and other inhabitants of a fictional low income housing complex, or, as called in Mexico, vecindad. The sitcom explores, in a comic manner, the problems that many homeless children face on a daily basis, such as hunger, sadness and not having someone responsible to watch over them.”

Even tho much of the humor was slapstick and was comprised of a handful of running gags, the premise had heart and despite the characters all being deeply flawed individuals, not a single one was a bad person. To me, no character better exemplifies that fact than Don Ramón, Chavo’s greatest ally.