Essays

Crafting Sacred Spaces: The Sculptural World of Millicent Alvarado

by Seyde Garcia | @seydeg In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés explores the complex and cyclical nature of the creative process, describing how our past experiences, emotional wounds, and external environments shape our creative journey, portraying creativity as intensely personal and intricately tied to our relationship…

A Visual Corrido of Life on the Border.

By Alex Casso & Rigoberto Luna | @capitalsuspect & @8190luna Marco Sánchez’s exhibition, Miscelánea Fronteriza at Presa House Gallery, depicts the matrix of religion, history, and social status that shape and influence border cities’ unique position as gateways between countries and for cultural exchange. His artworks are the visual descendants of…

Unseen and Unspoken: Reflections on Remembering and Forgetting

By Mia Lopez | @miamia07 What do we try to remember, and what do we long to forget? Two recent exhibitions at Presa House explore the ability of art and art making to aid both artist and audience through the process of recollection. Lauri Garcia Jones: Strangely Familiar and Albert…

Tokens to Truths: Antonio Serna’s Archive of Indigenous Resistance.

By Joaquin Culbert | @joaquin.culbert A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, 1940 “Nothing that has ever happened should be…

Connecting the Dots: Sam Rawls’s ‘Latent Blatant’ and the Art of Healing Ourselves

By Bonnie Ilza Cisneros | @despeinadastyles There is no savormore sweet, more saltThan to be glad to bewhat, woman.and who, myselfI am. Denise Levertov Women’s bodies are calibrated, critiqued, confined, condemned, controlled, and when deemed conventionally beautiful, coveted and commodified. Smallness, sexiness, youth, traits of whiteness, and cosmetic enhancements are…

Reconstructing Memories: A Tribute to a Loved One in ‘Yours to Keep’

By Vincent Solis | @vincegsolis It is often too easy to forget the lives our loved ones have lived before us, especially when we tie them to roles such as mom, dad, grandpa, abuela, etc. The people in family photo albums can sometimes seem like strangers, and our personal memories…