2021 V-AiR Artists

Cultivarte Laredo is pleased to welcome our 2021 V-AiR Artists!

ALEXA HERNANDEZ

V-AiR Artist Alexa Hernandez
April 1 - June 30, 2021

Alexa Hernandez works in ceramics as her primary medium. She currently makes functional ware using self-taught techniques in her home studio in Laredo, Texas. She hopes to give ceramics the spotlight it deserves by highlighting the playfulness of clay and embracing imagination over perfection. 

During her residency, Alexa will be exploring Nerikomi, a Japanese technique. It involves the process of stacking and slicing colored clays to create surface designs on a ceramic piece. It’s one of the many pottery methods that allows beginners and clay experts to enjoy both the creating process as well as the final results. Nerikomi has a way of delivering really clean, bold, and unique looking pieces, even if the desired design isn’t achieved.

Alexa will use Nerikomi to create a collection of simple cups and mugs with designs inspired by  the patterns found in patchwork, tartans, cross-stitch and needlepoint. Her goal is to make functional ceramics that embrace simplicity and play using natural materials and self-taught techniques.

To learn more about Alexa please follow her on Instagram @heralexadez

Juan de Dios Mora

V-AiR Artist Juan de Dios Mora
May 1 - July 31, 2021

Juan de Dios Mora was born in Yahualica, Mexico. In 1998, his family immigrated to the United States. In 2009, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis in Painting and a Master of Fine Arts specializing in Printmaking in 2011. He acquired both degrees from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). To this day, he is working in the art department at UTSA as a Senior Lecturer.

Mora concentrates in the printmaking technique of relief to create narratives of Mexican-American experiences. His experiences living along the border (US and Mexico) provide an awaking of social and political concepts that heavily influence his artistic, aesthetic and conceptual ideas. 

Mora has been included in exhibitions across United States, Mexico, and Japan. Venues featuring his work are McNay Museum; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; and Kyoto Municipal Museum, Japan. Institutions that have acquired his work include, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, OR; McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX; University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hilo, HI; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; The Smithsonian America Art Museum, Washington, DC.

Growing in a Mexican-American community and living his adolescent life in Laredo helped Juan de Dios understand his passion for culture and community. In the past 8 years he has been working and volunteering with San Antonio Art Museum, Haven for Hope shelter, BCFS shelter, Posada Guadalupe, MOSAIC Student Artist Program at Blue Star, and San Antonio local and charter schools giving art demos and workshops. He believes that facilitating art projects for the community is essential for kid’s intellectual growth and introduces the arts. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. Juan has been isolated and his involvement with shelters and art organizations have been scarce to none.  During his residency, Juan wants to take advantage of leading virtual demos to continue educating. He will portray a Luchadores (wrestlers) series. The Luchadores imagery represents the struggles and adversities while striving to survive difficult times. 

To learn more about Juan please visit his website or follow him on Instagram @diosprints.

Krista Quintanilla

V-AiR Artist Krista Quintanilla
June 1 - August 31, 2021

Krista Quintanilla is an artist working in Laredo, Texas. Her work is concentrated in studies of drawing, painting, and printmaking. She graduated from Texas A&M International University with a Bachelor of Arts in Art (2018). Krista has taught painting and figure drawing workshops with the TAMIU Continuing Education department as well as at Boogaloo the Rooms. She enjoys organizing art functions and participating in events that promote art education for children and adults.

Krista is interested in environmental economics and human rights. Her studies have led her to paint portraits depicting activists, celebrities, scholars and political leaders. She has been able to document the history of our modern world into images and believes that the basic need for people to fight for what they believe in is a testament that echoes through all walks of life. For her, it is a process that shows that people are a lot closer than apart from each other. Her current exploration came from feeling isolated due to the pandemic, and led to her creating a new study every day. Her studies became her lifeline to the world. They made her feel alive and undefeated.

During her V-AiR residency Krista will continue exploring techniques in painting, drawing and printmaking. Her focus will explore scenes of young women who are making a change in their community.

To learn more about Krista, please follow her on Instagram @kilo_sierra96.

Victoria Marquez

V-AiR Artist Victoria “Tori” Marquez
July 1 - September 30, 2021

Victoria Marquez is an artist from Laredo, Texas and is currently based in Austin, Texas. Marquez graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018 with a BFA in Studio Art. She has worked in a wide range of mediums, such as acrylic painting, oil pastels, 3D printing, CNC routing, and ceramics. Victoria has recently worked as fabricator on numerous projects with Blue Genie Art industries including the new “Ocho” public sculpture in Mueller park. She is currently a painting instructor for Totally Cool Totally Art, an after school teen outreach program bringing art to the community. As a muralist Marquez has completed 12 public murals in locations such as Heights Elementary, Salinas Elementary, United South High School, North Central Park in Laredo, and The Butler School of Music at UT Austin in Austin. Her work has been shown at the Visual Arts Center and the East Austin Studio Tour in Austin.

Victoria uses art as a tool to redefine and investigate the ideology of an “undesirable” body, reimagining the spectrum of human bodies into a space of agency and empowerment — embracing the human form not as something that must fit into any standard, construct, or definition but as something that is simply allowed “to be”.

Over the last calendar year the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying social isolation has brought the importance of community, mental health, and presence of mind and body to the forefront to Victoria. A foundation of her practice is embracing the importance of the public and the fixtures of collective daily life in order to examine fluidity and the surreal, uncontrollable beauty of the human body and imagination. Identity, safe spaces, positive and negative self-talk, nature, and the importance of process are ideas that form a foundation of Victoria’s work.

During her residency, Victoria will be exploring collaborative guided painting resulting in the creation of psychedelic landscapes that are a part of a collective imagination. She will also delve into diverse practice drawing and explore new media.

To learn more about Tori, please follow her on Instagram @tori.majesta.