Akaimi Davis, born and raised in Austin, Texas, knew her life’s calling was to become an artist at the age of five. Fine art is her third career, following 12 years as a licensed hairstylist, as well as a graphic designer and art director for 11 years.
Following a very rare cancer diagnosis in 2012, Davis chose to resign from her position as art director for one of the nation’s top 25 retailers. She delved into painting as a full- time career to support herself and her three children. While undergoing two years of chemotherapy, she sought art as a therapeutic process, which is still utilized today as a form of meditation and prayer. As the cancer diagnosis propelled her creativity, people from all walks of life, fell in love with, and were inspired by her story, journey and creative artistry.
Davis’ influences come from a wide array of both classical and folk artists, as she is called to depict images that portray Black, African, Latino and Indigenous cultures. Through her paintings, she conveys love and respect for her cultures and ancestry.
Akaimi Davis is a graduate of Texas State University, in San Marcos, holding a BFA in Communication Design.
San Antonio based artist, Ana Hernandez, was born and raised on the US/Mexico border. She holds a BFA with a concentration in painting and a minor in art history from UTSA. Her practice, which includes murals and sculpture as well as works on canvas, blends elements from the border with motifs from American popular culture and art history.
Andrei Renteria is an artist working in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and assemblage. Born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, his work reflects his strong and longstanding interest in socio-political issues along the U.S./ Mexico border. Renteria realizes that there are parallels between division created by borders and those of discrimination, persecution, unlawful imprisonment, and human rights abuses that continue unabated. As we face the challenge today of worldwide recognition of human rights and freedom, his experimental approaches provide a powerful forum from which he investigates how to address and embody weighty subject matter (including torture and violence) beyond international borders.
Renteria received his BFA from Sul Ross State University and his MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He resides and works in San Antonio, Texas.
Angelica Raquel is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in San Antonio, Texas. She earned her MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio and a BFA from Texas State University. Angelica was born and raised in border city Laredo Texas, where much of her passion for Folklore and storytelling was kindled.
Ashleigh Valentine Garza is an artist /muralist born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her love for painting walls began as an adolescent where she spraypainted and tagged the name Treone. Since then, she has developed a recognizable style that speaks to femininity, motherhood, and expanding the creative mind.
After several years of apprenticing under muralist Scotch! She decided to pursue her own art and begin experimenting with several mediums, however painting on a large scale had remained a passion of Garza’s. In 2020 she started volunteering with San Anto Cultural Arts and soon after was contracted to work on a series of mini murals among other artists. While contracted through SACA she has been a part of the summer youth programs and The Corridor on Commerce project and is currently still under contract with the nonprofit organization.
Her first large scale solo mural “Axl and Zelda” was painted in October 2021 in the West side of San Antonio for the San Antonio Metropolitan Health Department, in part of the Healthy Food Choice stores program. In addition to her solo projects, she has also been a part of several large scale projects across downtown San Antonio; “Peacock Alley” with Scotch!, “The Last Parade“ with Rudy Herrera, and the Travis Park Church production.
Her objective as an artist is to ignite creativity in the young and old, to draw out compassion and new thoughts from observers, and to make a mark in history as a woman, artist, and mother.
Benjamin McVey (b. Houston, Texas) is a multidisciplinary artist focusing on the mediums of drawing, painting, and sculpture. He received his BFA from Texas State University in Communication Design and his MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio in Studio Art. Previously, he studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League and National Academy of Design. Since graduate school he has taught drawing, painting, and sculpture at multiple universities and colleges along with working with local art institutions. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas where he maintains a vigorous studio practice. He has exhibited extensively and has works in both private and public collections.
His past artist residencies include Casa Lü, Mexico City, Mexico, The Studios at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), North Adams, MA, the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, and at The League Residency at Vytlacil, Sparkill, New York.
Brittany Ham is an artist based in San Antonio, Texas. She graduated with a BFA in Painting and a BFA Communication Design from Texas State University in 2012, and graduated with her MFA in Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2016. She has exhibited internationally in South Korea, Germany, and the United States of America. Her work has been featured in publications such as New American Paintings, Friend of the Artist, BEMagazine, and VAST Magazine. In 2020 she was the spring Artist-in-Residence at the Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency Program/ Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Program. Her art practice explores conventions of historical painting, abstraction, feminine experience, and figuration.
Charlie Kitchen received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. Kitchen has held solo exhibitions in San Antonio, Houston and internationally in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has also been featured on Glasstire TV’s “4×4” YouTube series.
Crystal Rocha is a self-taught artist, born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Crystal is a multi-disciplinary artist that uses oil, acrylic, and screen printing to translate their feelings and experiences of life into pictures. Their main concentration is using art to vent deep emotions with relatable concepts and to preserve memories.
Ernesto Ibanez (b. 1985) originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, is a professional sculptor and painter based in San Antonio. After completing his B.F.A.in 2010, Ibanez move to the U.S. and settled in Texas to join his family. Ibanez’s practices includes a mixture of full-round sculptures and works on canvas The paintings shine brightly with intense color provided by his young daughter, Romina, in a father-daughter collaboration. He then overlays sharp imagery on top of Romina’s brush strokes to finish each piece. In his sculptures, Ibanez alters ordinary materials such as nails, and fiberglass to create intensely detailed sculptures of animal-like forms. What is striking about his animal forms is the presence of “fur” entirely created using carpentry nails. These forms are often paired with brightly colored appendages like ears and beaks. The colors he uses to tie his formations in with the cosmos and the spirit world.
Eva Marengo Sanchez was born in 1990 on the south east side of san antonio, tx where she has now returned and works as a painter. in 2006 she joined the teen program bee nation at southwest school of art where she first fell in love with classic oil painting. after earning her ba in human development and social relations from earlham college in richmond, in 2013, sanchez traveled to mexico city where she spent eight-months studying spanish, mesoamerican art and architecture, and art conservation. it was there that she began her obsession with food and in 2015 sanchez returned to san antonio and enrolled in drawing classes at san antonio college to develop her skills as a draftswoman. in 2017 sanchez first showed work using the idea of the still life and food as a way of talk about cultural identity and since then has continued to explore those ideas and develop her technic.she has now exhibit her work at galleries throughout san antonio including s.m.a.r.t gallery, choice goods, fl!ght gallery, presa house gallery, as well as casa de la cultural in del rio, tx. and has recently completed murals at the san antonio international airport, north st. mary’s strip (2332 n st. mary’s) and blue star arts complex.
Hilary Rochow is a multidisciplinary maker living and working in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a Bachelors of Industrial Design from Auburn University. Her formal training in both industrial and graphic design informs her illustrations of impactful figures on clean backgrounds as well as the simple detail of her sculptural works. Her lifelong adoration of the natural world weaves its way into her choice of animal and plant subjects. She has shown work at multiple galleries including Flax Gallery, Space C7, and FL!GHT. She also operates a gallery, Rojo, and studio in the Southtown Arts District in San Antonio.
Kristina Williams Berrier is a multidisciplinary artist and full-time public school educator who explores themes of symbiosis, life cycles, biodiversity, and sustainability. Growing up in the piney woods of East Texas, from which her art practice has evolved over and over in her international travels and moves around the state, her great love is preserving and intentionally loving the land and it’s delicate balances. Her art practice creates reverence for the peace and balance of layers in relationships of flora & fauna in various ecosystems. She ties together original collage, printmaking, painting, embroidery with sacred geometry and anthropomorphic renderings. An important tenet of her practice is creative re-use of materials, evidenced by her use of handmade paper, relief prints, and upcycled materials.
Kristina earned her Bachelor of Fine Art in Studio Art from the University of the Incarnate Word in 2014 and a Master of Art Education with a studio concentration in Printmaking from Texas Tech University in 2016. When Kristina isn’t creating, teaching, or participating in local art events with students, she can be found drinking sangria in her backyard with her dog and her husband, probably FaceTiming her sister and family.
Margaret Craig received a degree in Biology Secondary Education, a BS in Art and an MA in Painting from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She received an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Texas at San Antonio. An innovator in printmaking techniques, she invented Tar Gel Pressless Etching and has demonstrated that and other techniques at national conferences. She is often involved in trade portfolios and exhibits locally, nationally, and internationally. She has completed the Blue Star Berlin Residency program. She is Professor Emeritus of Printmaking and Paper at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, Texas. Her original Biology degree has been a major influence in the visual and ecological context of her work. She has one husband, one bird and four cats and one spastic puppy.
Mark Menjivar is a San Antonio based artist and educator. His work explores diverse subjects through photography, archives, oral history and participatory project structures.
As a contemporary artist, my work is focused on capturing the routine aspects of communication we all take part in on a daily basis. My subject matter is connectivity, ranging from intimacy between two people occupying a space, to how we interact within different realities including the internet.Using installations, printmaking, painting and sculpture allows my work to breath and interact with the audience within the space that surrounds them. The purpose of my art is to capture how we communicate as individuals and the different personas we project in the process. Using simple shapes and forms, blended with bright colors, my work displays different emotions and feelings we subtly reveal while occupying a space with someone. The medium I choose to work in depends greatly on found materials, objects and other accessible resources. As a result, my process is constantly adapting to my current environment.
Rafael Delagarza is a San Antonio based visual storyteller, tattoo artist, muralist, DJ, and Father. He is a self-taught creative whose proven his capacity to work in different sectors that highlight his Chicano Identity and heritage.
Sarah Fox’s multi-media narratives and characters are created from embodied female experience. Stories of life, loss, sex and love are told through corporeal hybrid creatures. The resulting collages, cyanotypes, and animations suggest a childlike fairytale but with an undercurrent of dark symbolism.
Her work has been shown throughout Texas, as well as in the Kinsey Institute (Bloomington, Indiana), Field Projects Gallery (New York, New York), Espacio Dörffi (Lanzarote, Canary Islands), Casa Lu (Mexico City), and Darmstädter Sezession, (Darmstadt, Germany). In 2019 she was a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant that allowed her to live and work at the Women’s Studio Workshop in NY with her son. She received an Individual Artist Grant from the City of San Antonio in 2021.
Fox lives and works in San Antonio, Texas with her 4-year old son and is a resident artist at Clamp Light Studios and Gallery. She teaches at Texas State University and runs the summer Nature of Art Camp for young artists at Confluence Park.
The Artpace Teen Council is a nine-month, paid program designed for San Antonio area high school students to become advocates for contemporary art and young leaders in their community. Teen Council members work with artists and administrators to develop teen programs, support Artpace events, and create community-based projects throughout the school year.
Xavier Gilmore is an interdisciplinary artist and producer who works in sound, traditional mediums and collaborative performance. In his work he explores ideas on dissent, abstraction and social topography. He has exhibited regionally and internationally at Artpace, Lawndale Art Center, Museo Soumaya and the McNay among others. Gilmore holds a BFA from UTSA and studied at School of the Art Institute Chicago, and Universidad de Las Américas Puebla, Cholula, México.
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Artpace is generously supported by: National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, Linda Pace Foundation, San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture, The Brown Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and more…