Introduction and Interviews
(Interviews condensed for brevity)
This is the first installment of a new LareDOS series called Laredo’s Lost Moments in Time. Every month, the series will feature different spaces that had an important impact on Laredoans for a specific moment in time. There are no strict criteria: these can include cafes, bars, art exhibits, restaurants…any unique place that defined a specific generation or era and had special meaning for its patrons.
This first installment features Sound Art Space, a warehouse on Ryan St. in the Las Cruces neighborhood that hosted artist studios, multimedia exhibits, and “happenings” from 2005-2008. I had the pleasure of experiencing Sound during its final days when I returned to Laredo after four years in Austin. Sound was memorable because it was one of the very few spaces for creatives trying to do something new or provocative in Laredo, still years away from the city’s current vibrant downtown that supports a monthly artwalk. In the course of my interviews for the piece, I did not find evidence of anything else like Sound that has existed in Laredo.
Feel free to share your own memories of Sound, ideas for other installments, and even if you would like to prepare your own installment about Laredo gems that meant something to you. You can shoot me a line at ryan@tejanext.com or comment on the social media postings of this piece.
The following are condensed interviews with some of the founders and key figures behind Sound, taken in August and September of 2023.
– The Origin of Sound, as told by Founders Eduardo “Paja” García and Marcela Moran –
Ryan: Can you tell me how Sound got started and what Laredo’s arts scene looked like in the early 2000’s?
Eduardo García: Like many artists from Laredo, back then the opportunities were limited. After graduating from high school in Laredo, I came to Austin in the mid-90’s. I remember me and members of Grupo Fantasma all moved there around the same time. Some of us were going to college, some of us were in art school, some of us in music, and the Laredoans connecting [in Austin] met other people from Laredo who were doing the same thing. I remember the Blue Noise Band, an early version of Grupo Fantasma, and we used to throw shows together, organize exhibitions.
Jorge Javier Lopez
I graduated from UT in ‘99 and moved back to Laredo to be closer to family. I had friends like Jorge López, Alex Rodriguez. Marcela [Moran] and I were very tight. I was looking for something to do. I thought what if what I was doing with my creative friends in Austin could be created in Laredo.
Jorge Javier Lopez
* * *
Marcela Moran: Eduardo and I met when we worked at the university. Eduardo wanted to do something big in Laredo. He had told me that when he was an art student in Austin, he and a couple of other students would have these events, these ‘happenings,’ and we wanted to do that in Laredo. At the time, we didn’t have anything like that in Laredo. We had the Center for the Arts, and I was on the Board, but back then it was a very traditional arts organization.
Eduardo’s idea was different. This would be beyond just an exhibit. We were going to have other things, installations, performance art, music. So we kind of joined forces. He found a warehouse behind Dr. Ike’s area, so he rented it out, cleaned it out, and painted it.
We knew that we wanted it to be different from anything that was being done in Laredo at the time.
Ryan: How did you find this space and what was it before it became this artist haven?
Eduardo: I just found this warehouse right by my house. So I contacted the owner, and he was like “$250 dollars for this humongous warehouse.”
I had heard from the owner that it had been an old cebollera, where they would plant cebollas and papas, I guess in the 20’s. They would collect it, clean it, process it. Later they would cut marble and glass, and there was a welding shop right next to it, so it had gone through many iterations before it became Sound.
The idea was to run a frame shop, make some money out of it, and then just have an experimental art space. So we went in there with a pressure washer and just cleaned the hell out of it. Little by little we turned it into what Sound became.
Alex Rodriguez was the first one, outside of Marcela and I, who was interested. He reached out to me about renting some space at the warehouse. He had a project called Horchata Design Syndicate, it was himself and Ramon, they were graphic designers who would get together to do t-shirt silk screening.
We had different things going on in there. One side of Sound was the gallery, I was doing custom framing and small furniture, people were doing silk screening, we had welding, all kinds of power tools, a lot of experimentation. Then Gil graduated from the Art Institute Chicago and moved back to Laredo. I told him “Dude we’re doing this, are you interested?”, and he said, “yes.” We had 14×15 individual studio spaces for each one of us, but in the end it was just a big collaborative space. We each had our areas but the tools were out there set up for anybody who needed anything.
* * *
Sound’s first exhibit and the formation of the A.K.A. Collective
Marcela: In June 2005, Jorge Javier López had our inaugural exhibit called Consequence, with his paintings. Because of my involvement with nonprofits, not just Laredo Center for the Arts but also Hecho en Encinal, we were able to get nonprofit status through Arts for Everyone out of Encinal, which also ran Hecho en Encinal.
We formed an art collective, we called ourselves the A.K.A. Collective, it doesn’t really stand for anything, it’s just like ‘aca,” collective. The collective became a branch of the nonprofit, so we were able to fundraise through this process. The way I understand it is that it’s similar to Cultivarte in that the parent is Daphne Arts Foundation.
* * *
Maritza Bautista: I used to work at the Laredo Center for the Arts as the gallery coordinator, working closely with the exhibitions review committee. I would receive all the proposals, prepare all the slides the artists would send, and give a presentation to the committee recommending who we should show. Adam Parker Smith was one of the artists who submitted his work. He was working with textiles and making these little miniature people…they were nude but they were plush like textiles. At that time, I knew Marcela who was on the committee. She votes yes for that show, but everybody votes no. And I’m like upset about it! This was the kind of art that we needed to expose our community to. Laredo Center for the Arts had always been very conservative and traditional.
Adam Parker Smith
I told Marcela, “This show needs to go to Sound.” That’s when she told me, “you need to start meeting with us. It will be great because I’m the only woman there. You need to join the conversation. Let’s make it happen.”
This show that we wanted to bring to Laredo was going to cost money. I believe that’s when the A.K.A. Collective started. I was officially a part of the A.K.A. Collective, del aca, and that was kind of like the nonprofit version of Sound. And it was kind of like an exhibition review committee. We were working with the nonprofit Arts for Everyone, based in Encinal, so we could fundraise and bring these things to Laredo.
* * *
Gil Rocha: When I came back from grad school around 2004, Sound was already on it’s feet. I knew Eduardo already, being teachers at Los Obispos Middle School. I got into todo rollo que tenía Sound. It was very refreshing to know something very contemporary was going on. That’s when I met Ramon and Alex. I felt like I fit into this amazing puzzle of people and ideas.
Ramon Villarreal: I moved back to Laredo in 2004 to work as an art director downtown. I met Paja [Eduardo] because he was working at TAMIU with my roommate. When I was working at the agency, Alex joined the company as a web designer and we immediately became friends. Alex had the idea of Horchata Design. We started doing screen printing shirts for sale. When we talked to Eduardo, he said he had a space over here, that’s when we went to do screen printing and furniture. That’s when we met Rocha, y los astros unieron para que nosotros pudiéramos vivir. Every night after work we were there, drinking, talking about art, music, film, politics, you name it, it was just an exchange of ideas. I do believe it was a magical time.
Gil: Part of the magic for me was that we complemented each other. We didn’t always agree on these things, but we had this respect. Everybody would throw in their 2 cents, all of these ideas were bouncing off each other. There were other people who were also part of the crew, Jorge López, Maritza Bautista, Cesar Casso, Bruno, Paja, Jorge, Alex.
Ryan: What are some memorable events or ‘happenings’ at Sound that really stand out?
Eduardo: The goal was to provide a platform for an alternative for those who could not get it elsewhere in Laredo. Back in the day [Laredo Center for the Arts] was very conservative, and Adam Parker Smith made naked dolls, and his portfolio was rejected. Marcela brought it to Sound and it was great work. That’s actually when we first painted the floors to protect these textile dolls.
There was Megan and Murray McMillan who did those large-scale installations from trash they found outside. It was very experimental, very alternative, we were looking for that type of artwork that was kind of critical of art and caused us to question society and what we were doing as artists and get us to think further than what we were used to.
Megan and Murray McMillan
Another thing that we did was the film festival. We opened it up to entries from anywhere in the world, and we got submissions from Europe, Australia, U.S., Mexico, and it really allowed us to bring in work from people from all over the world. That first iteration of the film festival brought this documentary from Australia by Dan Monceaux who had this production company called Danimations, and we voted it the best. The following year we were able to invite the directors to Laredo, and they gave a workshop on filmmaking. Because they were so close to Mexico they asked us for tips to travel to Mexico, and we sent them on their way.
* * *
Marcela: This artist from Philadelphia [Adam Parker Smith]. He might have submitted to LCA but it was inappropriate, so then we contacted him. He made these nude dolls, he would work with textile and he would do installation. He had ink drawings related to the dolls on the largest wall space. He sent us stencils when he was still in Philadelphia. We actually had instructions on how to install it. It was kind of crazy installing that and trying to get ready for the next show, painting over blank ink, 10 coats or something crazy.
Eduardo was also involved in Autmus Fest, which was a musical event put on by the TAMIU Alumni association. The first year he brought this band from Monterrey called Plastilina Mosh. We had the Autmus after party with Plastilina Mosh at Sound!
* * *
Ramon: Gil, do you remember the guy from New Zealand?
Gil: Era Australia no?
Ramon: Esos gueyes eran cabrones.
Gil: Behind Sound, the train route used to run there, there was this empty lot of weeds, vegetation, a bunch of trash. When these guys came in, this guy and his wife, they started collecting all these things, comenzaron a juntar todo lo que estaban atras, y empezaron armar, they made somewhat of an armature, somewhat of a volcano, they used all these things to make the form, then they used plastic and heat gun to shrink wrap it. On the inside, they made all these cubbyholes, there were four cubby holes, y te metias ahi. During opening night, this thing lit up, so you could see there were people inside this volcano looking thing, people did different things, they had me read from a book, somebody was playing music. Even to this day, because my work has to do with materials and recycling stuff, it still impacts me.
Umano
Some of these memories to me are very vivid, because there are very specific things that paved the way into how we do things today. So that time when we were going to have Grupo Umano play, I remember that we had already cleaned everything the night before. We were just sitting there but the walls were kind of scuffled, un poquito manchado. Y me acuerdo muy bien que me dijo Eduardo, como “algo no te cuadra?” Y le dije güey las paredes están manchadas, no hay mucho ambiente. Y no se si Ramon dijo “y si pintamos las paredes como ‘Umano’”? Y todos asi nos miramos, knowing that the show was going to be the next day…
Ramon: And this was like midnight.
Gil: It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was impactful enough to give a presence to the group.
Ramon: Son esos pequeños detalles que hacen la diferencia. Ninguno de nosotros tenia nocion del tiempo, era relativo, so sometimes we stayed there until 2 or 3 a.m. Just talking and drinking…because we drank every single day.
(risa)
Ryan: I wish my friends and I were that productive when we drink.
Gil: We were drinking, but we were working.
Ryan: What do you all remember about Sound’s final days and why it closed down?
Eduardo: The last exhibition was Ayy! My heart! and it was on February 14, 2008 on Valentines, and it was about heartbreak. It was more of an internal exhibition, it was the A.K.A. Collective that exhibited.
After that, I was getting ready to move back to Austin, I needed to kind of move on, and I remember Jorge López, Gil, and I think Poncho Santos were interested in keeping it going, and so I handed over the keys to them. We had a big farewell gathering…some dudes who were not part of our crew visited and there was a big fight that broke out, nombre desmadre. It broke my heart.
Ryan: So I guess that was appropriate for the name of the exhibit, Ayy! My Heart!
Eduardo: Yeah, it was heartbreaking. The cops came and handcuffed a bunch of people. We told the cops this is our space, we don’t know these guys and they came here with a different agenda. The cops understood. They had never been in there so they were like “wow, this is a very interesting space. We applaud you guys for what you’re doing here, this is very cool.” And they told those other guys to take a hike.
That was kind of the last memory of being at Sound Art Space.
* * *
Ramon: Eduardo moved to Austin, Alex moved, then I moved. For me it was the right time to say goodbye. We did a lot of good shit, but it was time to move forward with nuestros dias.
Gil: Maritza went to grad school. Todos se fueron unos tras otros entre 2 o 3 meses. Y me quedé, y estaba Jorge López. Cómo funcionaba Sound como estábamos rentando el espacio, y para mi estabamos pagando $800, y cada uno pagaba $200. Cuando ellos se van, ya no alcanzamos para la renta, y comenzamos hacer más fiestas. Para mi ya no se conocía por los eventos sino como el evento era la fiesta para juntar dinero, y no pos ya se hizo un desmadre. ¿Recuerdas cuando peleamos todos y hacía un Royal Rumble afuera, estabas ahí?
Ramon: Ah no.
Gil: Pues te salvaste de eso. Al principio era de todos nos conocíamos y era mucho como se dice one degree of separation, como “ah sí es mi camarada,” pero ya después ya no se miraba que venía con buenas intenciones miraba como venían para causar desmadre. Y me paso personalmente en una de estas fiestas donde una chavita viene y me dice que “Gil, estaba saliendo del baño y un chavo me dice que quiere bailar conmigo y yo le dije que no, y trae una pistola.” A la madre. Voy y le dijo al chavo que ya se que traes una pistola, porque no lo dejes en el carro, aquí nadie te va hacer nada, aquí nunca hay broncas, no pasa nada. Y el chavo me dice, “me lo vas a quitar o que?”
Esos gueyes se arrancaron y llegó la policía. Y son cositas como esas, que pues, ya no tenia el friendliness y el cool vibe como antes.
Ramon: Yo lo veo como, siempre dicho, las aguas que se quedan en el mismo lugar se estancan y se echan a perder. Tienes que moverte.
Ryan: What do you think of how far Laredo’s art scene has come and what do you think the Sound experience can teach newer artists?
Marcela: It’s really promising. I can say that at the University the faculty is more diverse. They hired a faculty member who does large scale installation, whereas before if they were going to hire somebody, it was somebody in the traditional fine arts. Now they’re in a position to look beyond that to more multidisciplinary and multimedia…When I grew up here, when was I exposed to that? Never! I think it’s important to show younger generations the possibilities so they don’t feel like ‘I have to go to San Antonio to see these things.’ Exposure is so important.
* * *
Maritza: I see it happening…When I was working on the On the Edge exhibit, and I really wanted the focus to be a young artists because I think it’s cool. Now, pop up shows are a thing. Those weren’t a thing when I was in my 20’s. Now there’s just this feeling of let’s just do it. They’ll just make something on the fly, sometimes it is very provocative and outside that realm of traditional art. I definitely think that there is space for that, and I think it is happening already in Laredo.
I also hear from artists all the time, ‘I don’t have a studio.’ And I tell them, why don’t you get a group of friends, that’s how we did it. There are so many empty spaces in Laredo. Even in downtown Laredo, you can rent one of those retail spaces. Convert it into whatever you want. I feel like that moment with Sound was very magical in that sense because it allowed us just to experiment, just to have conversations and talk about ideas. That’s what we need, that’s what’s missing in Laredo. These spaces where you just talk about art and ideas and share what you’re working on and piggyback off of each other. Like, “Oh, I’ve always wanted to do an experimental film festival.” “Me too, let’s do it!” That’s how the energy was with Sound. We would feed off of each other and make it happen because the space was there. Of course, we had to get organized eventually because we wanted all these things to happen. But that’s how it started at Sound.
