A political artist merged the holy with the secular at her Tuesday lecture in the University Union Lobby Suite.

Yolanda Lopez, lauded by some as a sanctifier of working-class women, spoke to 49 lecture attendees about the creation of her controversial “Virgen de Guadalupe” art pieces, which fuse elements of the beloved Mexican Virgin Mary icon with images of working-class Xicanas engaged in their everyday activities.

“It empowered us to see what we do in our daily lives as sacred,” junior interdisciplinary dance major Edana Gentry said.

Lopez began her career as an artist resolved to fill the void of powerful female representation in Xicano art.

“I knew then my mission as an artist was to make images of and for ourselves,” she said.

Amid meager samples of women being used as “pin-ups” and background, Lopez found that the Virgen de Guadalupe was the lone female Mexican figure that commanded respect and unity from both sexes.

“Men see her compassion. Women identify with her suffering,” Lopez said.

In 1977, Lopez created a series of controversial art pieces by dissected the Virgen’s image to identify the peripheral elements – black crescent moon, starry cloak, aura of sun rays and all – and applied them to images of her grandmother, her seamstress mother and herself running.

The images provoked polar reactions between those who believed Lopez succeeded in filling the void for female representation and the Virgen fanatics who considered the pieces sacrilegious.

Lopez recalled meeting resistance when she brought them to a Mexican-owned printing house for reproduction.

Printing house employees refused to work on the project and the owner reluctantly oversaw it himself.

“He said ‘You can mess with my wife. You can mess up my car. But don’t mess with my Virgin,'” Lopez recalled the printing house owner telling her at one point.

However Lopez had no problem finding an accepting audience among the Sacramento State crowd that attended her lecture, titled “Our Lady of Guadalupe: A Changing Model in a Post-Feminist Era.”

Gentry found the merging of secular and holy thought-provoking.

“It’s amazing how she put herself in this holy and sacred image and identified (herself) as a participant in this holiness,” Gentry said.

Moved particularly by the piece which shows Lopez’s mother sewing the star-clad cloak, interim director of the Multi-Cultural Center Analia Mendez felt empowered by how Lopez manipulated a widely revered image to empower all women.

“How she integrated her mom with the Virgen was very touching. That (holiness) is present in everyone,” Mendez said.

Marilen Bugarin can be reached at [email protected]