Porterville printmaker Gabriela Santos Ramos grew up in Cd. Nezahualcoyotl, the metropolitan area of Mexico City, a city of 20 million people. 

“My art is about daily life,” she said in Spanish. “It’s my voice. When you grow up in a very urban area and are surrounded by what I’ve seen, it can be intense, beautiful and disturbing. It’s in your face. These are real conditions.”

But her art also reflects her family roots in Oaxaca (Wah-HA-kah), a southern Mexico state best known for its indigenous cultures and their native crafts, which was largely unaffected by the Spanish conquest of the country in the 16th century.

Her mother did traditional needlepoint and other crafts. Needlepoint is still something Gaby does to relax after a busy day at work.

“I do needlepoint because I’m Oaxacan, not because I’m an artist,” she said simply.

Gaby went to the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. College is free in Mexico, and Gaby wanted to study graphic design, but that major was full. She was lucky to get the last opening in visual arts.

The arts college is in a beautiful area of the city known as Xochimilco (sö-chee-MEEL-ko), surrounded by old canals that used to reach the center of Tenochtitlan (teh-nöch-tee-tlan), now Mexico City, which was built on a lake. There she realized she liked working with wood and was good with her hands. She focused on wood engraving (xylography).

EXHIBITS IN MEXICO AND U.S.

Gaby has participated in 34 collective exhibitions in Mexico and the U.S.

For five years she was part of the collective “Caldo de Cultivo Urbano” (Urban Culture Broth) that exhibited in different cultural centers, universities, squares and streets in Mexico City.

“We were three colleagues who also collaborated with other art collectives and participated in information fairs that the city government would organize. Besides exhibits, we provided instructional printmaking workshops where we showed them what the xylography technique is, and the participants got to take the prints they created.”

Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood— typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts.

In 2004 she was working in a government office in Mexico City. Her supervisor was an activist who had previously been invited to UC Santa Cruz to participate in an international conference, “Women as Social Warriors.” She offered to take some of Gaby’s work to show there.

The following year a group of women activists at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community traveled to Mexico, where they were introduced to Gaby and her colleagues from the “Caldo de Cultivo” collective. When the Student activists saw their portfolio, they invited them to show their work at UC and other community spaces in Santa Cruz.

That’s where Gaby met her future husband, Roberto de la Rosa, he was working at “Barrios Unidos,” a community organization and one of the places the collective showed their artwork.

“After that, I came to visit a few more times, and in 2006 I submitted my portfolio for consideration in the 19th annual “Solo Mujeres” (Only Women) show at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco, “Tactica y Estrategia,” in which two of my pieces were selected.” She returned to Mexico, but Roberto followed her. “I went after her,” said Roberto. “I made a promise that I would visit her as soon as I could, and I did. I went to meet her family and ask for her mom’s blessing to marry her. She said ‘yes’, and we made our plans to come back to California. “

MOVE TO THE U.S.

It wasn’t easy for Gaby to adapt to her new life and a new language. For most of the first year they lived in both Santa Cruz and Roberto’s native Porterville. In 2008 Gaby began working at OLA Raza, Inc, a non-profit which Roberto’s parents created to provide immigration and citizenship services to new immigrants.

Because of Gaby’s art background, Roberto’s father proposed starting an art academy for youth that would focus on art and culture. It began as a series of workshops designed for kids between 8 and 12 during the summer and later became the Academia Juvenil de Arte (AJAC) at the Porterville Community Center of the Comisión Honorífica Mexicana Americana (CHMA) an organization nearly 100 years old. This was the beginning of the three-way collaboration of AJAC, CHMA, and OLA Raza.

As creative director of AJAC, Gaby collaborates and helps to coordinate four major events with CHMA and OLA Raza every year.

“We create events that are critical to preserving our Mexican traditions—Cinco de Mayo (May, 5), Mexican Independence Day (Sept, 16), Day of the Dead (Nov, 2) and a posada (between Dec. 16 and 23),” Gaby explained.

Every year, she leads community members in the decoration of the community center with each theme, creating paper flowers, pinatas, altars and backdrop scenes as well as a Cinco de Mayo parade float.

Last year she began a collaboration with painter Mauro Carrera on a four-panel mural. Unfortunately Mauro has had to move away from the area, so she will be completing the panels.

PREFERS PRINTMAKING

“Time has allowed me to work with people from different creative environments and visual art disciplines. I like to collaborate with those that do community work via the arts, for which I open to and enjoy. I like to explore different formats where I can offer my knowledge and at the same time learn from others,” Gaby said.

“Despite all of the collaborations and community work, I look for ways to continue doing xylography, which I generally prefer to exhibit as my work.” Her growing body of work and printing presses occupy the garage at the home she shares with Roberto and their two children.

In December 2019, Gaby was one of 42 artists selected by the Institute of Mexicans Abroad to participate in the First Binational Conference for Artists of Mexican Origin based in the United States, which included a collective exhibition of the participants in the facilities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Mexico City. She was again selected for the Second Conference in 2021.

Her work is also part of “Corazon Migrante” (Migrant Heart), a traveling exhibition that is being shown at 19 Mexican consulates in the United States and the Tijuana Cultural Center. This traveling exhibit will conclude at Los Pinos Cultural Complex in Mexico City.

The two pieces she is exhibiting in the “Corazon Migrante” tour are full of symbols that have accompanied her all her life and that have been further reinforced now that she no longer lives in Mexico.

Her representation of a heart has corn in the center, which is a staple of Mexican food. Footprints represent the path that each person takes when they migrate. There are six falling seeds that symbolize the love of her culture that metaphorically sows her path.

At the base of the heart there are a couple of skulls, the sugar skull commonly found on the altar for Day of the Dead and the other, a more pre- Hispanic style skull, like those in codices (ancient pictorial manuscript.) Both skulls are placed upon flowers that are taken from a Mixtec codex.

Artist profile can be found in the 2023-2024 edition of the WATERMARK magazine