The Borderlands Art of Ernie Lopez

About the artist

My name is Ernie Lopez and I was born in Tucson, Arizona. Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico have been the home of my paternal and maternal families for the last 150 years. Without realizing it, the Borderlands have been an integral part of my personal history and upbringing.

According to Professor Michael Dear, “The US—Mexico borderlands are among the most misunderstood places on earth.” New walls, fences, and checkpoints have filled our political landscape and have widened divisions between people of the US and Mexico.

The purpose of my art is to highlight issues concerning the wall, our immigration policy, and plight of asylum searchers looking for a better life. My father and his parents came to this country in 1913 in search of a life safe from the struggles and conflicts of Northern Mexico at the turn of the 20th century. My mother’s parents and grandparents were already here when Mexican land became a part of the United States.

the art

My art is an attempt to create a dialogue leading to a deeper understanding of the issues facing us in the Borderlands.

My focus centers on three issues: (1) the building of THE wall, (2) our broken immigration policy and its consequences, and (3) on what does it mean to be an American?

Carl Sagan captured my feelings of our enormous challenges in our addressing these issues. In a partial segment from “The Pale Blue Dot” he says:

“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturing’s, our imagined self-importance, the delusion we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come form elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

I believe we can do better than we are doing. We must start conversing with each other rather than talking at each other. Can we learn to listen to each other versus telling each other how they must think?

Message from the artist

I believe art is an invitation to the observer to enter the world of the artist and to provide his or her own interpretation of the piece.

Art has the power to touch emotions and feelings and give voice to that which words cannot describe.

The Mexican Artist, Diego Rivera relied on the theory and technique of dialectical materialism, which involved depicting an idea or thesis and a counter-idea or anti-thesis.

While I am not Diego Rivera, it is my sincere hope that my attempts to depict issues that are important to me will allow the observer to enter into a dialogue about these issues.