Rio Rene Yañez, the Andy Warhol of Tortillas, Photography, and more

Rio Yañez, aka "El Rio," is a San Francisco artist with a sharp eye, lurid range, and a clever sense of humor that sets his work apart. The last part of Tex[t]-Mex chronicles the workings of something I call Xicanosmosis, the seeping, sharing, breathing, bleeding exchange that typifies the cultural intercourse of Latin American and the United States. Yañez's work, like that of Gilbert Hernandez, (especially his tortilla-as-canvas initiative), is a provocative example of our next-wave post movimiento Chicana/o arts renaissance.

For a quick take on Gilbert Hernandez, click on the Amazon.com page here, and click on the second thumbnailed image under the Tex[t]-Mex book cover--Amazon now allows contributors to annotate images, an amazing tool for art historians and cultural studies geeks alike! After you click on the tiny image, roll your cursor over Hernandez's depiction of Frida Kahlo's head for an embedded cyber caption. Annotations of images of Rita Hayworth and Lupe Vélez appear there as well.