Revel in the arts this month in San Antonio with four distinct and dynamic shows. “L.A. to S.A.” brings together diverse artists to highlight similarities within the Latinx art community, while Jessica Harvey holds a mirror to natural sites in the Texas landscape in “soft earth hard sky” at Sala Diaz. Wherever your whimsy takes you this winter and throughout the holiday season, the arts will be a welcome addition.
Mercury Project
“L.A. to S.A. Presented by Motherling” — Now through December 23
“L.A. to S.A.” brings together a diverse group of artists that highlight the vast similarities within the Latinx art community. These similarities bring with them a feeling of home, familiarity, and comfort. The artists bring these feelings to the surface all while highlighting their own variances in themes and art practices. This exhibition is meant to explore the impact made within the communities, and how these impacts spread beyond each individual city, creating a larger network of ‘comunidad’ throughout the country.
Sala Diaz
“Jessica Harvey: soft earth hard sky” — Now through December 30
In this exhibit, Jessica Harvey holds a mirror to natural sites in the Texas landscape to search for self-reflected back in the sinkholes, waterways, and skies at daybreak. These in-between spaces offer an opportunity for the viewer to see collapse and sickness as a portal in addition to a void. Harvey is an artist and writer whose work explores the fractures of bodies, place, and history. Using photography, video, sound, and archival resources, the images and installations Harvey creates look to the psychology that one attaches to memory and place, putting a particular emphasis on the labor of care. Bone fragments, human hair, heartbeats, and the sounds of daybreak act as inspiration to illustrate the stories and rituals tied to death and living.
Artpace
“María José Crespo: Flaws in negotiation with non-cohesive sand” — Now through January 8
María José Crespo has created an environment that layers human presence, land, and water politics, and an ever-changing territory into a border poem. The voluminous sculptural works of steel, plaster, wood, and glass pay tribute to infrastructure and excess of materials visible along the border due to years of human construction and interaction. The video projection replicates informal communication through reflected light across a large landscape as a dancing flicker. The collage mural combines maps, treaties, photographs, documents, and artistic research strategies to create an alternative narrative of history. Likewise, bar codes, google maps, and even border security chats are among the poetic details in Crespo’s art.
Witte Museum
“Beasley’s Vaqueros of the Brush County” — Now through March 20, 2023
Ricardo Beasley was an artist with the heart of a vaquero and one of the few artists in history who depicted the vaqueros of South Texas. Using pencils, charcoal and ink, Beasley’s drawings depict the details and wild action of the vaquero life from the 1930s through the 1960s. Beasley sketched continuously, capturing images of the landscape, the animals around him and the wild experiences of men born of the hard ranch land in South Texas. Many drawings were done in small tally books used to count cattle, on old grocery sacks, and anything he had to draw on or with. Beasley’s poems are featured in the exhibition alongside his sketches and artifacts from his life and family.
