Tokens of their gratitude

Did you know there’s a saint of doorknobs? If you need to rescue a child accidentally locked in a bathroom, that might be useful information. ¶ As artist Frank Gutierrez writes in his painting “El Santo Hureo de los Doorknobs” -- inspired by a family drama that occurred 10 years ago -- his prayers to the saint in charge of such catastrophes miraculously opened a door with dysfunctional hardware and delivered his granddaughter from terror. On the upper panel of the two-part picture, Gutierrez depicts a worried man and a slew of knobs on top of a tall cylindrical structure with a closed door at its base. On the lower panel, containing the text, three smaller figures also appear to be in great distress. ¶ But the story has a happy ending, as do most of the messages in “Silent Testimonies: Contemporary Ex-Votos,” an exhibition opening Saturday at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park. The exhibition, which seems particularly apt for the holidays, features paintings, collages, assemblages and photographs that tell stories -- in images and words -- about cures, kindnesses and wonders. Working in a variety of styles, the artists speak with earnestness, joy and humor.

Pola Lopez gives thanks for her recovery from a car accident in a bold painting depicting a pair of crutches hanging on a cross above a loopy, ribbon-like road. Cindy Suriyani surrounds an image of her face with a swirl of thick pink pigment and expresses gratitude for “living in interesting times.” In a mixed-media assemblage, Joseph Sims hopes for a heavenly reunion with his family.

Amy Inouye and Stuart Rapeport take a tongue-in-cheek approach in the most offbeat piece. It’s an hommage to Chicken Boy, a statue of a chicken-headed boy that used to sit on the roof of a Chicken Boy restaurant in downtown L.A. and now crowns a building in Highland Park. In the artwork, a rough silhouette of the popular mascot stands above a message that begins: “Chicken Boy loves us. He wants us all to get along.”

The force behind all this creativity is Raoul De la Sota. A painter who teaches Mexican art history at Los Angeles City College, he’s also on the board of directors at Avenue 50 Studio, a nonprofit community gallery devoted to promoting the work of a diverse range of artists.

“It all began when I was in Spain last year and saw large murals painted on the walls of the cathedral in Salamanca,” De la Sota says. “The murals depict events, miracles that occurred. For example, when the cathedral was built in the 1400s, a large stone fell on a worker. Because everyone prayed to the Virgin of Solitude, he was saved. They had to paint that huge event.

“These milagros, or miracles, as they were called then, were depictions of a space-time continuum,” he says. “They presented the scene before, during and after. That to me was phenomenal. So I came back with the idea of putting together a show, either a series of my own or works from other people. It would be up to the artists to decide what to give thanks for.”

The Spanish artistic tradition eventually made its way to Mexico, “but it changed dramatically. It became the art of itinerant artists, mostly uneducated, who traveled from village to village asking if anybody had witnessed a miracle. A villager might come forward and say his son was hurt and he prayed to St. Joseph and he was saved.”

Antique paintings of such scenes can be found at flea markets in Mexico, and new versions are still produced, but the terminology has changed, De la Sota says. “Many people do call these milagros, simply because of what they depict. But they are really ex-votos because they are gifts. Just as a votive candle is a gift of devotion to the church, these ex-votos are given to the church as a form of thanks from the family that paid an artist to make the painting.”

De la Sota invited 30 people to make ex-votos for the exhibition. Although most were experienced artists, he also persuaded a few novices who sit on the gallery’s board of directors to participate. Some of the invitees protested that they didn’t know how to make religious art, but he encouraged a broad range of approaches.

“I told them not to work toward an aesthetic but toward a message,” he says. “It can be humorous or religious. You can give thanks to God, Mother Nature, your brother. I picked people who would produce something honest, whether crudely done or extremely sophisticated.”

Among the sophisticates, Poli Marichal writes “Thanks for curing my pain” on a scroll-like strip at the bottom of a meticulously painted, magical landscape where a face floats in a pond, an eyeball travels on the back of a snail, hands grow from the earth and a giant heart hovers.

De la Sota’s contribution is a tall, narrow painting that explores cosmological themes through the ages. “I decided to give thanks to the imagination of all those people who came before me and put creatures in the sky,” he says, pointing out images of animals and gods from various cultures floating on a slice of blue.

Kathy Gallegos, an artist who directs the gallery, says that the exhibition was conceived as a one-time event but that it might have a longer life. “It’s a way to end the year on a positive note,” she says. “It might be an annual show.”

Muchnic is a staff writer.

suzanne.muchnic@latimes .com