​J Michael Walker

In 2004, as I was working on my "All the Saints of the City of the Angels" series, I was invited to have a solo show at the Mexican Cultural Center, located on Olvera Street, the historic early center of El Pueblo de Los Angeles.

I spent several months researching everything I could lay my hand on regarding Los Angeles' troubled first century and a quarter. Then, filled with rage and sorrow over what has occurred here, I painted day and night for weeks, creating a suite of ten large paintings in sumi ink on polyvinyl paper, trying to recover a bit of the plentiful spilled blood buried beneath Olvera Street's bricks....