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The Welfare Queen: One-woman show by Erika Lopez
September 21, 2011
Erika Lopez is a performance artist of Puerto Rican descent who has published six books.
Lopez attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and also studied at Moor College of Art and Design and the University of the Arts.
As a struggling artist, Lopez applied for and received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, each of which gave her $2500 to write. A cross-country motorcycle trip served as inspiration for her first illustrated novel, Flaming Iguanas (1997), which includes numerous images made with rubber stamps and was published by Simon & Schuster. That same year she published a book of cartoon stories called Lap Dancing for Mommy. Lopez went on to publish two additional illustrated novels with Simon & Schuster, They Call Me Mad Dog! (1998) and Hoochie Mama: The Other White Meat (2001).
After spending time on welfare, and while touring her show, Lopez decided to take her fate into her own hands and become a “mini-mogul”. Along with James Swanson, Kamala Lopez, and Jeffrey Hicken, they started a book publishing company, Monster Girl Media to go along with Monster Girl Movies, as a part of their coalition of Do-It-Yourself businesses in charge of their own development, production, merchandising, and promotion. Their first publication is “The Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir” (2010) along with the matching, “The Girl Must Die: 18 Postcards.”
They work with a rotating roster of other Monster Girls Mujers and Men like Alison Penton Harper, Bianca Laureano, Kate Gottli, Suzanne Rush, and Peter Maravelis.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Women and Art and the Institute for Research on Women.