July’s merciless sun held Laredo in submission as I drove through the St. Peter’s district to Laredo College. The historic homes of St. Peter’s looked like the subjects of a still oil painting, their edges made soft and fluid by the heat mirage. There wasn’t a soul in sight save for an occasional bird frantically finding a new tree for refuge.
I hadn’t crossed the Washington Street overpass since the days of Laredo Community College, and it took me some time to navigate through the new buildings to locate the Martha Fenstermaker Visual Arts Gallery. Walking into the College’sVisual Arts Center was literally a breath of fresh air as I was blasted by the air-conditioning of the new building and greeted by the welcoming presence of Eva Soliz, Chair of the Visual and Performing Arts Department. To my pleasant surprise, Ms. Soliz told me that I would have the exhibit to myself.
On the Edge, Al Borde, is the latest exhibit by the Daphne Arts Foundation, which was formed in 2019 by Alyssa Cigarroa and other like-minded innovators to connect and nurture emerging creatives. Daphne now holds six exhibits per year, and the current exhibit features eight different young artists, many self-taught, many exhibiting for the very first time.
Walking into the gallery, you are immediately struck by the quality of the work coming from such young artists as Homero Salazar, whose nine oil paintings of faces seemed so familiar that they could have been my friends or primos, all portrayed in candid or pensive demeanors. Salazar, along with Alexander Barron and Martha Viera, are the three artists in this exhibit who are also part of the Cultivarte C Studio Residency Program, Daphne’s artist incubator for emerging artists from Laredo and beyond.
Homero Salazar’s 9″ x 12″ oil paintings.
Maritza Bautista, Executive Director of Daphne, is an established artist and curator whose work often touches on deep border issues as reflected in her recurring project The Border is a Weapon. She said that when she first brainstormed On the Edge, she had leaned towards a border-focused angle. As she continued thinking about the theme, it grew broader in scope, and she used the concept of a border as a metaphor for emerging artists testing their edges with experimental work.
“When I was growing up here in my 20’s, there was a sense that to be a successful artist you had to conform, to choose your school of thought,” Bautista said. “With this exhibit, we wanted to push the artists to experiment and not be afraid of taking risks.”
According to Bautista, the border is a particularly good place to push limits. “These artists are not just on a physical border, which is so dynamic for so many reasons,” she said, adding, “They’re on this edge of exploration and experimentation, and they reflect their unique lives and backgrounds through their work.”
This spirit of youthful experimentation permeates the whole exhibit that bounces between notes of rebelliousness, playfulness, and angst. Passing Salazar’s paintings, you are observed by the feminine prints of Genesis V. Hernandez that are pura xicana xingona. These women are both her alter ego and a representation of strong women that have influenced her through her life. “I want my work to feel like how I saw my older sister, for young girls to see somebody who looks like them take center stage, stand their ground, and still be beautiful,” Hernandez said.
Xicanita by Genesis V. Hernandez. Digital Drawing.
That’s exactly the impression her unfazed women convey with looks that shake the male ego as they contemplate the viewer with a combination of confidence and indifference, completely in their element.
Kassandra Romero, a recent TAMIU graduate, got an early start following in Bautista’s footsteps by recently curating the exhibit Sue Coe: Look Through My Eyes, Animal and Human Rights, which was a sister exhibit to Dr. Eric Avery’s Art as Medicine at the Laredo Center for the Arts.
Slaughterhouse silkscreen print by Kassandra Romero.
Romero’s screen-printed works look like modern stained glass, and she told me that she learned her mosaic-style of printmaking under TAMIU professor Jesse Shaw and guidance by Dr. Avery. Though her work might seem lighthearted, it covers heavy subject matter to address the animal rights issues that drive her. It isn’t immediately apparent that what you’re seeing is animals at a slaughterhouse; but that’s the point, to disarm the viewer and invite them to confront difficult themes.
In walking through the exhibit and speaking with some of the artists, it is clear that Bautista has a knack for spotting promising artists who might have never imagined their work in a formal exhibit. These include Martha Viera, a self-taught photographer who began capturing people and places around Laredo with a Polaroid camera that she received as a gift. Her photography gives life to mundane aspects of Laredo life, which she initially displayed at small venues downtown like Los Olvidados cafe.
Series of the Shadows digital photograph by Martha Viera.
After Viera was accepted for a Cultivarte residency, Bautista helped her refine her Series of the Shadows, which are digitally altered real photographs that depict jet black silhouettes of a woman that Viera said is her dark half that is no less important to a person’s identity. Viera’s pieces like the The Dark Side of my Psyche show her dark half against a bright brick wall, which represents a barrier that she has had to break through to heal herself. Influenced by Carl Jung, Viera shared a quote with me that guides her in both her work and its use to help her deal with her own fears and hang-ups: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less that it is embodied in the individual’s life, the black and denser it becomes.”
Raul Seca Jr. has also used his work as a kind of medicine. More commonly known around town as his musician persona Diabetic Jesus, Seca was introduced to the arts around the same time he received a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes when he was 11. That year, he got a camcorder as a gift and began his filmmaking career making home movies.
“Later on as I grew up, this took me to many places and helped me navigate my life with this disease. I’ve made use of what is a very huge burden, in the hopes that I can find energy with it and create energy with it. I’ve been trying to turn this around from a weakness to a strength,” he said. Fast forward to On the Edge where he adopts his Diabetic Jesus persona in his surrealist and sometimes comical film called Light that looks like a Fellini dream sequence set in Coahuila. His digital photographs like World Diabetes Day highlight his daily struggle and will be the subject of a soon-to-be announced solo show at Casa Daphne.
Top to bottom: World Diabetes Day and You’re More Than Your Blood Glucose, by Raul Seca Jr. Digital photographs.
When I saw a section filled with bold installation pieces, I was surprised that these belonged to Alejandro Cortinas, the same humble and soft-spoken kid I remember meeting at the desk of Laredo Center for the Arts. His pieces were made from old found objects like doors and fences he salvaged from his neighborhood. He tells me he is influenced by the Italian movement Arte Povera, literally “poor art,” which his mentor Gil Rocha also employs and might refer to as its Chicano counterpart rasquache.
Cortinas’ work is a prime example of how the artists are working on a blank slate of experimentation and aren’t cleanly boxed into a strict philosophy or school of art. A man of deep faith, his rustic recycled installations employ Christian themes that would more commonly be found in classical paintings or frescoes. A salvaged picket fence has his reimagining of Mount Rushmore. Instead of dead old white men, the four planks feature fighters of historic oppression like Lakota leader Red Cloud and Martin Luther King Jr.
Alejandro Cortinas’ installation art.
The spirit of vulnerability and crossing personal boundaries was not always easy for the artists. Martha Viera, who had never been in a formal exhibit before, said that on opening night she initially avoided the area where her work was displayed and distracted herself with other artists’ work.
Gabriela Treviño had the same experience with her experimental film Emetofobia, an anxiety-riddled short that deviates from her normal work as a documentary filmmaker currently finishing her Masters at UNAM in Mexico City.
“It was so personal, and it was very hard to let loose,” she said about publicly showing her film, which had been gathering dust on a hard drive for years. “But if I’m going to be vulnerable, I’m going to do it all the way. I decided that art is supposed to be shared. It’s not supposed to go in a box after you create it.”
Treviño also praised the collaborative experience of learning from the other artists. “I’ve always felt inferior to other artists because I didn’t come from a fine arts background. But it was comforting learning how many of them felt the same way, and it felt like a supportive community of people all trying to be experimental to try new things and share their tools to grow as artists,” she continued.
When I asked what On the Edge meant to Treviño, she said, “We’re not just at the edge of the country, we’re at the edge of approaching adult life and starting to find our style and make these big decisions. Since many of us are doing this for the first time, we might not have a place at the Center for the Arts just yet.” But she and others with whom I spoke universally welcomed the various new artistic spaces and opportunities in town to help emerging artists grow and keep making moves.
One of the artists is already getting there. Alexander Barron’s exhibit Scatter Brain is currently on display on the mezzanine level of the Laredo Center for the Arts. His prolific portfolio includes oil paintings that range from playful to surreal, as well as his large murals around town like Dive into an Active Day at North Central Park.
According to his artist statement for On the Edge, “as a kid in a Mexican bordertown, it was all about family, a sense of love, labor, carne asadas, and Tejano music. When I got a little older, I was immersed in a subculture scene of punk rock bands and hip hop. The diversity of that is reflected in the different mediums I choose to work with. Oftentimes I’ll add textiles over paint to represent the different combinations of what make me, me. My intent is to bridge the gap between those traditional and non-traditional experiences for the viewer.”
I left the exhibit with the confidence that all of the artists would keep breaking past their personal barriers, and perhaps one day cross a bold new frontera that we older folks are too set in our ways to imagine.
(Ryan M. Cantu was born and raised in Laredo and currently practices law full-time in Austin. His writing has recently appeared in Texas Monthly, Glasstire, and his personal website https://tejanext.com. He can be reached at ryan@tejanext.com)
Notes
• On the Edge – Al Borde will close on August 8, 2023.
• Alexander Barron’s exhibit Scatter Brain is currently on display in the upper mezzanine level at the Laredo Center for the Arts. The closing reception will on August 4, 2023 during the CaminARTE.
• Raul Seca Jr.’s soon-to-be-announced solo exhibit opens at Casa Daphne on September 1, 2023.
