Best of 2003: Best Cultural Mural

Journey to Aztlan
Harbor Drive between First and Fifth, Downtown

Visible from the San Diego Convention Center, the images within this colorful mural re-create the laughing masks of South America's pre-Columbian Veracruz period. The public artwork is composed of 250 molded and mirrored glass faces. Artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre were born in Guadalajara, Mexico, where they were raised until coming to the United States in 1972. They learned glass-blowing techniques while attending Long Beach State University. "As Mexican-American bicultural artists, we are, on the one hand, influenced by the morbid humor of Mexican folk art, the absurd pageantry of Catholicism, and machismo -- and, on the other hand, we are equally fascinated by the American culture of excess: its pornographic materialism, its blow-up doll aesthetic, and most of all, its lingering puritanism."