Con Cariño which translates to “with love” or “with care,” is an homage to my parents who abandoned their homeland in search of a brighter future for their family. The accompanying pieces weave together fragments of their journey and the various forms of labor they undertook to provide their children with the opportunities they were denied. 

Central to my practice, is the use of chisels and punches, which wield a dual significance in this body of work. The physicality of using the chisel mirrors the repetitive and labor-intensive endeavors of my parents. While the level of skill, precision, and care required to produce these delicate designs serve as a visual representation of my love and admiration for their sacrifices. 

Ultimately, Con Cariño is a tribute to my parents who have toiled tirelessly in search of “El Sueño Americano”.

The Studio is a multiuse, interactive space where visitors can relax, recharge, and engage with a variety of artwork and activities while learning about
the permanent collection. Each year, the Studio features two temporary installations with regional artists who create an engaging dialogue between
their artwork and objects from the McNay’s collection.

Guadalupe Hernandez’s work speaks to the richness of cultural identity and the fluid nature of traditions. Hernandez’s use of traditional methods and tools pay homage to the Mexican artisans who have created papel picado for generations.

The Artist Residency Program is designed to offer time and space for craft artists to focus on their creative work and interact with the public. The program supports emerging, mid-career, and established artists working in all craft media, including but not limited to clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media. Museum visitors have the unique opportunity to visit the artists’ studios and watch the artists at work. Interacting with the resident artists is a great way to learn about a range of craft processes and techniques. In turn, the artists receive a unique opportunity to gain exposure, make connections with the Houston community, and help educate the public about craft.

El Corazon, Scenes and Memories from Mexico features pieces that are autobiographical in its nature. “My parents were laborers who instilled a strong work ethic and deep religious faith in my four brothers and me. These lessons have significantly influenced my work and been integral to my artistic process,” commented Hernandez. “Working with meticulous care in my paintings while applying expressive marks, desaturated colors, and an array of paint applications to express reverence and pride for my subject.” Visitors will encounter Hernandez’s cut paper pieces feature precise technique requiring thousands of cuts using a combination of blades, woodworking chisels and leather punches producing Papel Picado-inspired works. His paintings depict detailed portraits and scenes celebrating Mexican culture, beauty, and customs.

Four Albuquerque art galleries, including El Chante: Casa de Cultura, Exhibit/208, Tortuga Gallery, and South Broadway Cultural Center, will host Son de Allá y Son de Acá / They are from there, and they are from here the second phase of a two-part artist exchange facilitated by local Albuquerque artist Vicente Telles.

The initial planning for the two-phase artist exhibition began in early 2021. In April 2022, the first exhibition opened at Presa House Gallery, a three-person exhibition featuring Ricardo Islas, Brandon Maldonado, and Vicente Telles, titled Crossing Borders: Tres de Oeste. The newest exhibit brings together sixty participating artists representing New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona, and Colorado cities distributed across the four host venues.

The opening receptions of the first three exhibitions will be held on First Friday, August 5, 2022, starting at 4 PM at Tortuga Gallery and 5 PM at El Chante: Casa de Cultura and the South Broadway Cultural Center. A live performance by multidisciplinary artist Jose Villalobos will take place at 7 PM at South Broadway Cultural Center. The fourth and final exhibition will open on Friday, August 12, at Exhibit/208, starting at 5 PM.

Son de Allá y Son de Acá is organized and co-curated by Albuquerque, New Mexico artist Vicente Telles, San Diego, California artist Ricardo Islas, and Rigoberto Luna, Director and Curator at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, Texas.

Guadalupe Hernandez (b.1993) is a Houston-based multidisciplinary artist who earned his MFA from Houston Baptist University in 2021. Hernandez was born in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, before relocating to Pleasanton, Texas, a small city south of San Antonio, in 1998. Despite moving to the United States, Hernandez maintained a deep connection to his Mexican heritage and customs through time-honored familial traditions. Hernandez’s practice examines his cultural identity by reinterpreting childhood memories and family stories connecting his past and offering greater meaning to his present. Through the use of photographic references accumulated over several years, retracing the markets, street scenes, and people of his homeland Hernandez creates elaborate Papel Picado portraits and figurative oil paintings with gestural brushwork.

Finding Your Voice is the culmination of a WFMA Community Project in collaboration with Café Con Leche founder Gonzalo Robles. Café Con Leche (link) is a local organization that champions parents seeking higher education for their children and creating a “Culture of High Expectations” at home.  

Artists were selected by a group of college-bound high school students of Café Con Leche, under the direction of WFMA curator Danny Bills. With themes that give voice to the students’ lived experiences, this exhibition reveals how art connects to and helps communicate who we are.  

Student co-curators met weekly with Bills for seven months developing themes, selecting artworks, and designing an exhibition to find and share our “Voice.”  Through the project, students gained exposure to art and culture, vocational awareness in the museum field, and experience to excel in higher education.  

Finding Your Voice invites you to celebrate and learn about Hispanic, Latino, and Chicano art alongside the young people of Café Con Leche. See how artists use visual language to share personal experiences of cultural identity that contribute to the human family. In the process, we invite you to embrace the unique elements of heritage that have shaped you. 

Recognized as one of the premier craft exhibitions in the country, Materials: Hard + Soft began in 1987 and was originally initiated by area artist Georgia Leach Gough. The exhibition celebrates the evolving field of contemporary craft and the remarkable creativity and innovation of artists who push the boundaries of their chosen media. The 35th anniversary exhibition is expanded to two galleries both the Meadows Gallery and the Gough Gallery. Since 2017, the exhibition has expanded to include works by international artists. Past jurors include: JoAnn Edwards of the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, CA, Perry Price, Executive Director of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Janet McCall retired director of Contemporary Craft in Pittsburg, PA, and Beth C. McLaughlin of the Fuller Craft in Brockton, MA, and Pablo Barrera of the Oklahoma Contemporary.

This exhibition brings together a group of six artists who work with paper in traditional and non traditional ways. In each work is a gesture of immediacy that finds kinship in paper as both substrate and inspiration. Paper is unbothered medium and allows for an endlessness that others can't contain.

“The Other Side” is a continuation of the Immigrant American Folk Project created by bilingual singer/songwriter Amanda Pascali in 2020. This project uses visual art to create a space where musical, literary, film, and lecture events are carried out by Pascali herself as well as other artists from Houston’s immigrant community. The walls of the Other Side will be adorned with art by first-gen and immigrant artists as well as old recipes, poems, and letters donated by project participants who would like to share their family’s stories. Stacked suitcases in the space will represent both the tangible and intangible things that Houston’s immigrants carried with them to America such as food, music, and ideas that became part of American culture through cultural diffusion.

This project uses music, poetry, film, writing, and visual art to foster a sense of belonging by encouraging immigrants and first-generation Americans to build their own definition of what it means to be “American” in their own unique way. Houston, America’s most diverse city, is home to over 1.7 million immigrants with stories that are seldom highlighted in mainstream media. This project aims to highlight the stories that fall outside the boundaries of conventional American storytelling.

Named for the compass bearing of Heights Boulevard, True North is a temporary outdoor public art installation on designated sites along the winding trails of that boulevard’s beautifully-forested esplanade. Working in cooperation with the City of Houston Parks and Recreation and Public Works Departments and the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, True North is organized by an all-volunteer team, along with the Houston Heights Association—its nonprofit sponsor and the long-time benefactor of that historic boulevard’s esplanade. The team chooses a range of eight sculptures for each project—based on media, theme, color and visibility—and sculptures remain in place for a nine-month permitted period from March to December.

In this presentation of Artists on Site at Asia Society Texas, the four featured artists — Bennie Flores Ansell, Guadalupe Hernandez, Preetika Rajgariah, and Stevie Spurgin — are working in media including painting, sculpture, design, performance, and installation. By using the galleries as public-facing studio spaces, each artist shares their unique process with visitors, who will be able to see the artists' ideas and research take shape as the residency unfolds.

The Artists on Site project was developed in 2020 as an initiative that transforms the galleries into studio and project spaces for Houston-based artists. The idea was born out of conversations starting in early 2020 with many artists, both in Houston and throughout the country, to develop ways that Asia Society Texas could support them and their practices. Through the gallery presentations and related programs, visitors will have the opportunity to connect with these artists and the critically important insights they contribute.

True to the Mexic-Arte Museum’s mission, the Changarrito and Changarreando are dedicated to the presentation and promotion of contemporary Latinx and Latin American art. Normally, artists have the opportunity to sell their art on the Changarrito cart in front of the Museum (or an offsite location, as representative for the Museum during various Austin festivals). Changarreando expands the reach of the artist by presenting their gallery online, while allowing the option to sell merch over Instagram and receive 100% of the sale. For each Changarrito/Changarreando artist, the Museum acquires a work of art for its permanent collection.

The juror for the 34th September Competition is Andrew James Wulf, Ph.D. who currently serves as the Executive Director of the AAM-accredited Albany Museum of Art in Albany, Georgia, a position he assumed in September 2019. He served as Executive Director at the New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors, a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 2015-2019. Prior to that, he was Supervisory Museum Curator for the U.S. National Archives, from 2010-15.

The Big Show is an ambitious open-call juried competition of artists practicing within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale that reflects our commitment to supporting local and regional artists at various stages in their career. The Big Show 2021 is juried by independent curator and art historian Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, who selected 212 artworks by 182 artists from over 500 submissions.

Support The Big Show through underwriting and The Big Show Preview Party on Friday, June 18 from 5 – 7 PM.

Join us in the Grand Opening Exhibition of Art Museum Tx in Sugarland Tx, on Thursday, May 27, 2021, from 6-9 pm.

Holocaust Museum Houston will open its first juried exhibition in its expanded building on April 30, 2021. Withstand: Latinx Art in Times of Conflict will explore themes of social justice and human rights through 100 artworks of Houston Latinx artists. The multi-media exhibition will be a platform that examines issues that impact the community, fosters dialogue on difficult questions, and ultimately empowers social change through art.

Come view the thesis exhibition of the Houston Baptist University’s 2021 Masters of Fine Arts candidates. The exhibition will run from 15th through May 17th, the exhibition will be on display in the University Academic Center. You can view the exhibition online here.