Melvin Toledo had no idea that when a piece of wood fell and ripped through the mesh of his screen porch in Tucker, it would set in motion a trajectory that would last several years.
Elvi and Claudia, originally from El Salvador, showed up at his house to fix it.
“I was just talking to them, and usually you see men doing that type of work, like construction. And this lady was just working there with her husband, just going at it.” He was impressed, and let them know. Their response? “‘Hacemos de todo.’” We do everything.
Melvin asked them if it was okay if he took their photo, so he could paint a portrait of them. They both agreed.
That portrait, which he then titled Hacemos de Todo, became the first in a series that Melvin has been working on for almost four years. The portraits will eventually make up Stars of America, an exhibit featuring 50 paintings of people from all over the world who are now mostly living in the Atlanta area. Each person represents a star of the American flag, and each painting includes a flag, either discreetly or overtly, of their origin country.
The exhibit is set to open in September at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art.
So far, Melvin has painted people originally from Japan, India, Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, Eritrea, and Trinidad and Tobago. The idea, he said, is to paint the people who “come here that keep the country going.”
“I feel like that’s what happened in this country, the way that people speak about immigrants or about immigration, it kinda takes your humanity away,” he said.
“The paintings are about uplifting…and portray[ing] somebody in a good light, in a dignified way.”
Melvin works out of his studio on Chamblee Tucker Road, in a building that also houses a real estate company office.
Even though he said his work isn’t meant to be overtly political, it’s hard to take politics out of even just the words immigrant or immigration. “You say the word immigrant and immediately people start thinking a bunch of things.”
Melvin identifies with the experience of leaving your home out of necessity, or in the hope of something better, or both.
He grew up in Ciudad Antigua, a mountainous town in Nicaragua, close to the border with Honduras.
The backdrop of his early childhood was war. He was born a year after the Sandinistas, a left wing political group, came to power after 40 years of dictatorship. In the years that followed, the Contras – a right wing paramilitary group backed and funded by the U.S. – waged war against the government. By 1990, over 30,000 people had died in the fighting.
“Most of my family left for Honduras…my dad was the only one to stay.”
Melvin said he remembers his childhood as happy, despite the war. “Most of the time children are sort of, not aware of the situation. We just played in the street with marbles, with spinning tires.”
His family was mostly fine, he said, unless they heard the Contras were coming to town. When they did, they had a survival plan.“We slept under the bed those nights…[because] if something landed on the roof or [there were] bullets, the tiles could fall into the house.”
Unlike his dad, who was a farmer (“he’s one of those people that doesn’t leave the town”), Melvin eventually left Nicaragua. He had started drawing manga cartoons for fun in high school, and when an opportunity came up to work and train as an artist in Honduras, he took it.
He said his parents didn’t have the money to send him to college, so he thought working alongside his uncle, who had a business in commercial art in Honduras, was his best bet.
Melvin moved to the US in 2007, after meeting his American wife, a volunteer with the Peace Corps. It was during the heart of the presidential election season, and it was then that he first thought of painting portraits of immigrants. It wasn’t until 2020 though, that he started on the first portrait.
Being a portrait painter transported from Nicaragua to Atlanta, can be tough.
For one, it’s hard to find buyers of the portraits themselves, even though the work is well received. “Everybody [says] ‘oh my god, I love this, it’s so realistic.’ But they’re not paying.”
“I’m trying to do my best to make it beautiful. But it’s not about making it a wall decoration. It’s more about the person – what they are, who they are.”
What does sell are his still life paintings. He sells them through a handful of galleries in Atlanta, and was also selling to one in Tennessee until 2022.
And then there’s the built in support network, that comes from being native to a place, that can be crucial for artists starting out.
Melvin didn’t have that initially, which was challenging.
Things started to change though in 2020, when he connected Contrapunto – a collective of five other Latino artists in the Atlanta area. The artists shared some of his same concerns – that there wasn’t much of a Latin presence in the art scene in Atlanta and that it was hard to find opportunities to exhibit their work. They also shared a goal: “to boost awareness of these artists in the Southeast.” The group is exhibiting their work in February at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art.
Melvin said the response to the portraits that will be featured in the Stars exhibit, so far, have been ‘wonderful.’
“People feel a direct connection.”
One woman, he said, got especially emotional when she saw the portrait of Elvi and Claudia.
“She said, ‘you know, I don’t see art very often, [but] when I came here, I saw this portrait…it was just amazing, because this is what my dad used to do. And I feel like I’m seeing him’.”
Follow Melvin’s work on Instagram and on his website here, and Contrapunto here.
