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Redwood City – Hands with forks reach forward, as if our own. Beyond them, three farmworkers bend low, their hands busy filling buckets with green beans, their bodies curved as if pressed by the weight of the painting’s frame.
In Quién Llena Tu Plato? / Who Fills Your Plate?, Pacifica artist Oscar Lopez, pictured above, wants viewers to see both at once — the meal, and the labor that makes it possible.
“The goal of this piece is to create a link, at least for one second, between the people who work to produce our everyday food and the fertile land,” Lopez said.
“The disfranchisement from our food sources and the people who work it is huge,” he added. “This artwork doesn’t have answers. But if we stop to think about our most essential priorities, maybe we can start to find them as a society.”
Lopez’s painting is among the works by Bay Area artists featured in an exhibition at 500 County Center in downtown Redwood City. He and other artists will share the stories behind their works at a free public reception in the building’s lobby sponsored by the Office of Arts and Culture on Thursday, Aug. 28, from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
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