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Annie Lopez is a storyteller. Informed by family history, remedies and lived experiences as a Mexican-American and fourth-generation Phoenician, her stories are told with text and images through her signature cyanotype prints. "Origin Story" highlights two main bodies of the artist's work: her dress forms and the "Storybook" series.
Lopez's striking dresses are fashioned from tamale wrappers, printed on in cyanotype and woven together. The material holds a strong cultural connection, recalling tamale preparation with her family during Christmases past. While demonstrating her inherited skills as a seamstress, she highlights the financial demands of the art industry. Her use of ready-made materials focuses her craft on story and message, rather than the cost of creating.
"I use materials that people can find anywhere," she says.
Her "Storybook" series imprints memories onto cyanotype prints: the experience of being singled out because of her skin tone, a time when her father found a discarded couch in the alley and her time on the Romper Room School show in 1963, for example. Though personal, her stories are intended to be relatable and entertain as much as they teach.
