Jewel in the rough: the annual Contemporary Art Month reveals a city with a dynamic and increasingly progressive art scene - Report From San Antonio

Frances Colpitt

No longer the sleepy little village of Western-movie fame or the military town that once boasted five bases, San Antonio is now known as a tourist destination. It is also a hot spot of contemporary art, drawing more and more art-world visitors each year, especially during Contemporary Art Month (CAM) in July.

CAM was initiated in 1985 in conjunction with the opening of the Contemporary Art for San Antonio/Blue Star Art Space, the nonprofit that still coordinates the events calendar and anchors the annual festivities. An artist-run institution, Blue Star was established by a group of local artists who were dissatisfied with the indifference then shown to contemporary art by the only game in town, the San Antonio Museum of Art. "Contemporary" remains a significant modifier to distinguish CAM's focus not only from historical or premodern work, but from Western or cowboy art and the related, still pervasive, genre of landscape painting, which first took form in 19th-century South Texas as "bluebonnet painting."

Blue Star

Located in the King William neighborhood, south of downtown, what is familiarly referred to as the Blue Star arts complex is the hub of artistic activity in San Antonio. It includes the Blue Star Art Space, which occupies a 10,000-square-foot former warehouse; a number of nearby loosely affiliated commercial, nonprofit and experimental galleries; as well as studios, apartments and small businesses. Most gallery openings are held on the first Friday of each month and attract thousands of people, ranging from serious art collectors to artsy teenagers and rowdy revelers who transform the complex and the adjacent South Alamo Street--with its restaurants, bars and storefront galleries--into a sprawling street fair.

Under founding director Jeffrey Moore, Blue Star's programming included local and regional group shows and the occasional large-scale installation by artists such as Sandy Skoglund or Michael Tracy, or the Cincinnati-based collaborative TODT. In 1997, Moore was replaced by Carla Stellweg, the peripatetic former New York art dealer, who broadened the exhibition program to include more Chicano and Latin American artists and also gave greater attention to photography and conceptual art. Due to unresolvable differences with the board of directors over policy and the direction of the institution, Stellweg resigned last July--in the middle of Contemporary Art Month. Laurence Miller, former director of Austin's Laguna Gloria Museum and founding director of the local ArtPace foundation, was engaged as interim adviser to the board. Following an ongoing internal study and reconsideration of its mission, Blue Star hopes, Miller told A.i.A., that "the institution has arrived at a point where a good, serious young director will consider coming here."

In the midst of administrative upheaval, Blue Star mounted an ambitious CAM show. Organized by curatorial assistant Risa Puleo and San Antonio artist Ethel Shipton, "Here/There: An Exploration of Public Art" included projects by 16 San Antonio artists. The most impressive were storefront installations along South Alamo Street, where the artists were given free rein to produce conceptual works, performances and sculptural tableaux. Henry Rayburn's charming installation of found objects, including two rather moth-eaten, stuffed and dressed-up raccoonlike creatures, appeared in the window of a vintage clothing store. Sweet and pathetic, the work was a thoughtful response to the store's contents. In contrast, Riley Robinson utilized an abandoned space, previously occupied by a paint store, as a raw site for two abstract sculptures. Both are 5-foot spheres, one made from strips of bent plywood held together by wires, the other crafted of welded steel.

Each artist in "Here/There" was invited to present a two-part project, with work shown at the Blue Star exhibition space relating to a street-side installation. In the paint store's window, Karen Mahaffy, for example, presented racks of starched and pressed blue uniform shirts. The multitude of neatly aligned identical shirts symbolized the anonymity of working-class labor. Mahaffy's piece was supplemented by a video, which was projected in a small room at Blue Star, documenting scores of scurrying workers at a nearby cleaning and pressing plant. Many other artists, however, used the gallery space as a showcase for previously executed work. The most successful projects established intelligible connections between the outdoor and gallery-bound works. Cakky Brawley's welded aluminum throne, for example, glinted like a winking eye in the afternoon sun in front of a South Alamo Street law office. At Blue Star, a similar piece took on a more serious presence and was less notable, failing to evoke the frisson of incongruity.

Also opening on the first Friday of CAM was "Art in the 'Hood," a civic-minded celebration of the King William and adjacent Southtown neighborhoods as San Antonio's creative center. Fifty Southtown artists participated in this year's event, which was headquartered at the former Mexican Baptist Church on South Alamo Street. Nearly 100 works of art were installed in cubby-holes and classrooms on the church's second floor. Given the democratic parameters of the exhibition, the quality of works ranged from the conceptually and technically sophisticated to the more predictably untutored and folksy.

Two of the most intriguing installations responded to the Sunday-school classrooms still occupied by children's desks. Andrea Caillouet's Wishes (2001) consisted of a video of a little girl's hand clasping a pencil and writing on a tablet. The video was projected from overhead onto a desk, conforming perfectly to its surface. In another classroom, Alex Lopez wrote made-up lessons on the chalkboard. He also installed a tiny, difficult-to-see video monitor in the open drawer of one desk, placed hard-sided briefcases beside each desk and filled the space with garbled speech emanating from overhead speakers. Downstairs, Anne Wallace installed fresh-cut stargazer lilies in vases on shelves in a walk-in broom closet set up like a small chapel.

On opening night, the nave was given over to a spectacular performance by the Reverend Ethan Acres, a visiting artist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, with local artist Hills Snyder. This was the second San Antonio performance by Acres, an ordained minister who received his MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He typically delivers a sermon scripted for the occasion. The theme of this one was Dunk, referring to both baptism and basketball. While Snyder, in a yellow basketball uniform, hurled china coffee cups from his location in a balcony in the apse, Acres paced below, costumed in a combination of a preacher's vestments and athletic attire, pontificating to the good-humored crowd of spectators. At the event's conclusion, Acres made his way up to the balcony to baptize Snyder, who emerged from the "dunk" dripping wet.

ArtPace

A decade ago, the San Antonio art scene had a more regional flavor. Now, however, it has begun to garner international attention and has consequently developed an awareness of itself on that level. This is primarily due to the establishment of the ArtPace Foundation. Established in 1995 by Linda Pace, the daughter of the creator of Pace picante sauce, ArtPace sponsors a residency program that brings artists, along with curators and critics, to San Antonio, where they interact with the art community through lectures, panel discussions and studio visits. ArtPace also supports international travel by San Antonio artists, establishing further ties between the local scene and the larger art world, and has four exhibition spaces located in a renovated 1920s Hudson automobile dealership on the north edge of downtown. Three of these are devoted to the artist-in-residence program. Each installment of the program includes a regional artist, a national artist and an international artist. For the first four years, artists were selected by a six-member panel. Now a single curator is responsible for choosing the three artists in each group. Lisa Corrin, chief curator at the Serpentine Gallery in London, selected last summer's residents. Valerie Cassel, associate curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, is responsible for next summer's.

With a healthy stipend and materials budget, as well as a knowledgeable staff of fabricators, artists are in residence for two months, using their exhibition spaces as studios. Works remain on view for two months after the residency period. From the beginning, ArtPace has attracted an impressive roster of artists. The first show, organized by Robert Storr before the panel system was instituted, included Annette Messager, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Jesse Amado. Many residency projects, which remain the property of the artists, have traveled to other venues. Amado's White Floating (1994), an installation that includes a rubber suit, mirrors and a sink with soap, was exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Cornelia Parker's Mass (Colder Darker Matter), 1997, was seen in the 1997 Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery, as well as at SITE Santa Fe and at Deitch Projects in New York. Works in Arturo Herrera's recent exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Christian Marclay's The Sounds of Christmas (1999), performed at the New Museum in New York in 2000, were also created during residencies at ArtPace.

Showing work during CAM 2001 were Lordy Rodriguez of Houston, Brian Conley of New York and Christian Jankowski of Berlin. Rodriguez, who is known for his handmade road maps that decoratively combine a variety of maps, documented four trips. The collages were splayed out in front of monitors playing videos of unfurling highway surface. Conley created a sound-producing contraption with a huge balloon, wooden organ pipes and electronics, which simulated the mating call of a frog.

Jankowski's video, Holy Art Work, was the most complex and layered in meaning. In a sermon delivered to his congregation, local evangelical pastor Peter Spencer, asked by the artist to participate in the project, preached against a "one-dimensional view of painting" and praised the value of contemporary art as "a bridge between religion, art and television." All the while, Jankowski lay collapsed at the preacher's feet, apparently overcome by the spirit. Projected on the gallery wall, the video of the event convincingly resembled programs hosted by televangelists.

In the Hudson (Show)Room, ArtPace's fourth gallery devoted to exhibitions organized in-house, "Outline" included a trio of drawing installations made in response to one another by Houston artists Emily Joyce and Matthew Sontheimer, and Hills Snyder of Helotes, Tex. Snyder made forceful, rectangular router cuts into the wall, reproducing the geometric configurations of five different flags. On the floor below each graphic incision lay a newspaper from the country (or state, in the case of Texas, which was represented by the San Antonio Express-News) designated by the flag. Joyce's colorful, meandering patterns of cut-vinyl shapes beautifully complemented Sontheimer's attenuated, illegible scrawl etched into the sheetrock across the gallery. The exhibition was organized by Kathryn Kanjo, who was appointed executive director of ArtPace in early 2000.

San Antonio Museums

With the administration of ArtPace in Kanjo's hands, Linda Pace has been able to devote more time to her activities as an artist. During CAM, she was featured in a one-work exhibition at the San Antonio Museum of Art. Red Project (1999-2001) is an 8-foot-square relief of found objects mounted on wooden panels. Hundreds of red items, including Mexican candles, boxing gloves, Teletubby dolls and Christmas ornaments, created a personalized poetry from mass-produced detritus.

Also at the museum was Carmen Lomas Garza's retrospective, organized by the San Jose Museum of Art. Lomas Garza, who was born in Kingsville, Tex., and lives in San Francisco, paints endearing scenes based on memories of her childhood. Primarily in gouache on paper, these narratives depict various domestic rituals, especially those involving curanderas (healers). Only apparently childlike, Lomas Garza's use of modeling and perspective is sophisticated and subtle, her luscious color bright and clear.

In 1998, the museum inaugurated the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, named in acknowledgement of Ann Rockefeller Roberts's donation of some 2,500 pieces of Latin American folk art from her late father's collection. Housed in an $11-million expansion to the museum, the center's galleries display an extensive array of pre-Columbian, Colonial and modern art, with a special emphasis on folk art. According to Marion Oettinger, senior curator and curator of Latin American art, the collection is "the most comprehensive expression of Latin American art in the country," spanning 3,000 years and representing all of Latin America and the Caribbean. The museum's plans include the conversion of the third floor of the Latin American wing into a study center for visiting scholars.

The museum's concentration on Latin American art will soon be complemented by the Museo Americano, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, set to open in 2003. Designated as "the official Texas State Latino Museum," it will be housed in the Centro de Artes building, which was built in 1933 as a Mexican marketplace in downtown San Antonio. The building is being renovated by Jackson & Ryan Architects of Houston and will contain 14,000 square feet of exhibition space. Focusing on Latino art and culture in the Americas (including the U.S., Mexico, Central America and South America), the museum celebrated its 2001 groundbreaking with a temporary installation of Luis Jimenez's fiberglass sculpture, Sodbuster, San Isidro (1982). Curator Henry Estrada is organizing a major exhibition of Tejano art for the museum's official opening.

The McNay Museum

Concentrating on modern art of Europe and the United States, the McNay Art Museum is located in the quiet, upscale neighborhood of Alamo Heights on the city's north side, far from the bustling downtown art scene. Opened to the public in 1954, the McNay occupies the former home of Marion Koogler McNay, who established the museum with her outstanding collection of works by artists such as Picasso, Cezanne, Gauguin and O'Keeffe. Following a year-long renovation, the museum was reopened to the public on Nov. 4, 2001. MaLin Wilson-Powell, recently appointed curator of exhibitions and curator of art after 1945, has managed to update the museum's programs while preserving its understated charm and intimacy. Her first exhibition was a comprehensive retrospective of the work of influential, politically active San Antonio photographer Kathy Vargas. It was the fifth in a series of retrospectives of local artists funded by local philanthropist Harold Wood. The others have surveyed the work of Carl Embry, Reginald Rowe, Kent Rush and Cesar Martinez.

Wilson-Powell has also instituted a series of contemporary shows titled ART Matters. The first installment, "Madeline O'Connor: The Spaces in Between," coincided with this year's CAM. A well-known abstract painter who lives in Victoria (between San Antonio and Houston), O'Connor was originally influenced by Minimal art but expanded its industrial vocabulary to include intricacies of the natural world. Her exhibition featured just five pieces, but their presence nonetheless transformed the gallery into a meditative sanctum. Typical of her work inspired by the plumage of birds, the 23 black, white or silver monochrome canvases that comprise Woodstork (1999) are installed parallel to one another, perpendicular to the wall, like a set of shelves hung vertically. In contrast, Cross/Plus and Minus/Negative (both 1999) were less sculptural, held tight and somber against the wall. Each multipanel piece includes 30 stretched canvases in the shape of crosses or horizontal bars, painted identically, with dense black pigment. Born in 1931, O'Connor is an informed and original artist who applies her considerable painting skills to the production of profoundly inspirational works of art.

Meanwhile, in Academia ...

A working-class city with a population of more than one million, San Antonio is home to 11 colleges and universities, many of which feature reputable art departments. A common mission is to encourage students and recent graduates to participate in the local art community, where they are integral to maintaining its energy.

The University of Texas at San Antonio (where I teach art history) has two exhibition spaces, the UTSA Art Gallery on campus and the Satellite Space located in the Blue Star arts complex. While both galleries show contemporary art, the Satellite Space tends to be more experimental and features the work of nationally known professional artists as well as UTSA graduate students. During CAM, recent MFA graduates Virginia Balderas and Estevan Arredondo showed large, luminous works on paper. Balderas's bulbous, abstract, earth-toned shapes were printed with a technique that resulted in an elephant-hide texture. In metallic paint on drafting film, Arredondo's rococo abstractions include swirls, rosettes and squiggly lines produced with his fingers.

During CAM, at the University of the Incarnate Word, a Catholic university whose art department is headed by Kathy Vargas, the Semmes Gallery presented finely crafted figurative prints by San Antonian Miguel Cortinas and mystical abstract paintings by Peter Cuong Nguyen, a promising young artist who settled in San Antonio after receiving his MFA from Ohio University in Athens. On the grounds of the University of the Incarnate Word, and sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, is the Center for Spirituality and the Arts, a small upstairs gallery for exhibitions by local artists. In early July the gallery presented photographs by UTSA professor Kent Rush. Made with an antique Diana camera with a single shutter speed, his large black-and-white images depict blurry fragments of urban elements, such as concrete curbs and graffiti-marked walls. Marilyn Lanfear's "The Evolution of a Public Persona: The Paper Trace, 1970s-1990s" followed Rush's exhibition. In life-size tableaux made of paper, fabric and furniture, Lanfear explores turn-of-the-century life in South Texas through narratives based on her family's history in the region.

Although it is not degree-granting, the Southwest School of Art and Craft offers its 2,400 adult students a wide variety of courses in crafts such as book arts and papermaking as well as in the traditional studio arts. The school was recently expanded by the addition of the Navarro campus, across the street from the school's original location in a former convent. At its new Russell Hill Rogers Gallery, 17 works by San Antonio artist Alberto Mijangos were exhibited during CAM. Large abstract shapes, or in some cases silhouettes of a Buddha figure, occupy the centers of Mijangos's richly textured paintings, which were inspired by the Tao Te Ching. His palette is subdued, tending toward dense black, white, soft grays and ochers.

The Nonprofit Scene

Among San Antonio's many other nonprofit spaces is the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, a multifaceted Latino arts organization located on the west side of town. Artistic director Pablo Martinez invited young San Antonio artist Cruz Ortiz to exhibit during CAM this year. "Part of the reason for doing his show during Contemporary Art Month is to demonstrate--with Cruz's work in a very compelling way--that contemporary art is made and exhibited beyond the confines of Southtown," Martinez said. Ortiz's exhibition, "?American Dream?," included a selection of paintings and prints in the center's Visual Arts Annex Gallery. Two of his films, featuring his signature character Spaztek, were screened in the Guadalupe Theatre parking lot. Like many of his generation in San Antonio, Ortiz is dedicated to rethinking the Chicano movement, whose roots are in the 1970s. Dubbed "post-Chicano" art by these young artists, their work replaces classical Chicano icons with contemporary symbols of pop culture, such as taco trucks and canned refried beans.

The most dynamic alternative gallery in San Antonio is Sala Diaz, a two-room "house space" in Southtown, founded by artist and curator Alejandro Diaz and directed by Hills Snyder. Standout exhibitions in recent memory include solo shows by Yunhee Min and Carlos Mollura (from Los Angeles); Bill Davenport, Sharon Engelstein and the Art Guys (from Houston); and a two-person show by Los Angeles artist Charles LaBelle and San Antonian Chris Sauter. Approaching biomorphic and Rorschach-like forms from different perspectives, local artists Callida Borgnino and Constance Lowe were featured in an exquisite drawing show in December 2000. One of the best CAM shows of 2001 was Sala Diaz's "Stolen ~ properties," organized by young independent curator Jennifer Davy. With eight artists from San Antonio, Los Angeles and Baltimore, Davy identified herself in her press release as "an intellectual thief incorporating these specific artists' work as the structure, subject matter and content of the exhibition." Her rambunctious, sampling-style show featured sound, water, skateboards and installation tactics. Two videos were especially impressive: Juan Ramos's Ghost Stories (2001), based on his post-Chicano comic-strip drawings, and Guy Hundere's Impasse (2001), a video depicting the flat Texas countryside whooshing by as if seen through a car window. It was projected on Sala Diaz's exterior window and was visible only at night.

San Antonio also boasts thriving alternative-art spaces headquartered in the Blue Star complex. Ethel Shipton's Project Room, which closed in 2000, is much missed. But Cactus Bra and Three Walls continue to present challenging work by locals as well as artists from the entire Gulf region. Miami artist Gavin Perry presented a show at Three Walls during CAM that dealt with customized car culture. Rhonda Kuhlman and Chris Ake, who run a lucrative business fabricating decorative objects from old bottle caps and the like, recently opened RC Gallery & Recycled Works. Their CAM show was "Small Comforts," which included miniature chairs made by 30 artists. San Angel Folk Art, a shop brimming with quality Mexican artifacts, also has an exhibition space for contemporary art.

In nearby Southtown are Ellis Bean Art Space, Salon Mijangos, Oneninezerosix and numerous other small spaces. Artist Ana de Portela has taken a particularly intriguing approach to the alternative space by staging guerrilla events at a motel and, during CAM, at the landmark Tower of the Americas. Her Tower of Power, which included the display of photographs, a video, a publication and a live band, took place one evening in the cocktail lounge atop the 622-foot-tall "space needle" constructed for San Antonio's HemisFair '68.

In the Galleries

Outstanding among San Antonio's galleries is Finesilver, directed by Gabriela Trench, located in a renovated factory downtown. Finesilver exhibits international artists, along with artists from San Antonio such as Ken Little, Lloyd Walsh and Todd Brandt. During CAM, Meg Langhorne showed a series of delicate ink drawings depicting cats and frogs. She also installed a blue wading pool that entirely covered the floor of one gallery. White wax flowers floated on the surface.

Joan Grona Gallery has also been in business for several years, showing work by established San Antonio artists such as Robert Tiemann and Suzanne Paquette. The Parchman Stremmel Galleries round out the commercial gallery scene with imported blue-chip art and local talent. During CAM, Don Stinson from Colorado and Gary Sweeney from San Antonio exhibited, respectively, landscape paintings and constructed reliefs. Sweeney's likable and well-crafted works incorporate text, neon and found objects in the service of humorous conceptualism. His If You Don't Speak Spanish (Nuevo Laredo Project), 2001, is constructed of fragments of commercial signs arranged to phonetically spell out the Spanish translation of a recent USA Today headline: "If you don't speak Spanish, you might be left behind." Sweeney's mangled Spanish commentary is a wry take on the fragile biculturalism of the border region, which includes San Antonio. Here, cultures apparently mix with ease, especially from the point of view of a tourist. The art scene, however, is to an extent fueled by rivalries and tensions as well as enduring individual friendships and mutual support that characterize the relationship between the Latino and Anglo cultures of San Antonio.

Frances Colpitt is a critic based in San Antonio. Her book Abstract Art in the Late 20th Century is out this month from Cambridge University Press.

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