He envisions beauty, not burritos

CORN, or flour?

Artist Joe Bravo, 56, uses tortillas as his canvas, and he chooses flour -- mainly because L.A.’s Tortilleria San Marcos, the company that fashions the specialorder, 2-foot-diameter tortillas on which he paints, has a bigger flour press than corn press. “But I also get more texture variations when I cook them over the stove top,” he says.

Bravo -- whose tortillas are on view through Jan. 13 at the Mexican Cultural Institute, 125 Paseo de La Plaza, across from Union Station -- started painting tortillas as a Cal State Northridge student for a practical reason: “I didn’t have the money to buy canvas,” he says. “I was staring at a tortilla one day and thought: Why not paint on it?”

Bravo’s first tortilla artwork, a hanging mobile, disintegrated because it was improperly preserved; these days, Bravo gives his tortillas several coats of acrylic varnish.

Now, Bravo enjoys the fact that his tortilla art makes a wry statement about his Mexican American heritage. “I try to do it tongue-in-cheek -- there’s one that’s a bull and his horns are made of chiles, I call it ‘Chili Con Carne.’ And of course I paint the Virgin of Guadalupe, because you always hear about people who see the virgin on a wall or in a tortilla or whatever. Now everyone can say: ‘I saw the virgin on a tortilla.’ ”

-- Diane Haithman