When José Ortega was approached by a design committee for the U.S. Postal Service last year to create one of four stamps celebrating dances with roots in Latin America and the Caribbean Islands, he agreed, with one caveat: “You can give anybody whatever they want but I want salsa. That was my only request.” And with Ortega’s credentials, it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else doing the job — a perfect marrying of his greatest passions: music, dance and illustration.
Ortega, 41, an award-winning, internationally recognized illustrator and artist, was born in Ecuador, grew up in New York City, and now lives in Toronto where he, along with his business partner and friend, realtor José Nieves, run the city’s premier Latin cum live world music venue, Lula Lounge.
Ortega’s diminutive frame is offset by his expansive smile, easy laugh and boyish good looks. In the U.S., where he is better known, his illustrations have appeared in such venerable publications as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Harper’s and The New York Times, while his major commercial clients have included Absolut Vodka, MTV, Sony and Apple. A prodigy of sorts, he was designing bags for Bloomingdale’s while still in art school and working as a bike messenger in the late 80s.
Ortega’s work is bold, colourful and earthy. He cites the textiles and patterns of Afro-Caribbean and pre-Columbian art as a major influence. Through the 90s and early aughts, he was commissioned to create tile murals for two New York subway stations and a stained glass window for the historic Buckingham Hotel. Other major public commissions followed, including a mural to be completed in his hometown of Guayaqil, Ecuador next year.
Despite his sudden, early success, in 2000 Ortega found himself disenchanted with the largely editorial work he was doing and reeling from the end of the three-year relationship that had brought him to Canada in the first place.
He moved into a loft owned by Nieves in an alleyway just west of what is now Lula. Nieves, himself freshly divorced, wanted to learn to salsa but was reluctant to attend formal lessons and, despite his Latino roots, Ortega himself was not a confident dancer. They hired a friend to teach them and thus began the tradition of Monday night salsa at the loft that quickly ballooned into full-scale social events of more than 70 people, replete with wine and food. Out of these gatherings was born Open City, a non-profit group that organized weekend-long community festivals featuring jazz, poetry, dance and art by local and visiting artists.
Ortega says the goal was to bring art consumption down to a community level: “You go to a gallery, which is a sales room really, or you go see a performance, or music and everything is so compartmentalized. The experience is greater if you’ve got everyone sharing in it, and the whole idea of putting it in people’s houses, with a kitchen and a bathroom and a dog running around and kids, was that it brought art back home.”
Two years later, the events had outgrown their digs. And yet it was on a whim that the two Josés bought Lula, a transaction they impulsively carried out while enjoying an afternoon pint at what was then a Portuguese sports bar called “Hollywood Nights.”
In May the club will celebrate its hard-won 5th anniversary. Its Latin Jazz roots now complement a wide variety of musical genres, much of it performed by local immigrants who easily hold their own against some of the major international acts that regularly appear. And there’s still food, although now it comes from the dining room’s well-trained chefs.
Ortega’s work is prominently displayed on the club’s vibrantly tropical façade, which he just re-designed, as well as the similarly themed murals at Lansdowne and Dundas, completed as part of Lula’s participation in the business improvement area it recently helped spearhead.
The success of last year’s salsa stamp has led to two more commissions, one of which, on the theme of love, is currently in circulation; the other will be printed next year. Ecuador has also jumped on the bandwagon and requested its own Ortega-designed stamps.
Despite his great love of music, Ortega himself is not a musician: “I think that’s why all of this has happened — because I’m frustrated. I wish I was a musician. Maybe if I’d played the saxophone when I was a kid none of this would have happened.”
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