Patty Ortiz, executive director of the GCAC, discovers San Antonio’s arts community through informal chats with artists from all disciplines about their creative practice, significant inspirations, and upcoming challenges.

Raul Castellanos Read the conversation.

Born in 1982 in Mexico City, and raised in Miami, San Antonio and Buenos Aires. Raul Castellanos Villarreal III is an emerging artist with an extensive exhibition history.  Currently Raul lives in San Antonio, Texas with his family. Raul has exhibited at numerous venues in San Antonio to include Jump Start Performance Co. and other galleries at the Blue Star Contemporary Arts Center, the Carver Community Cultural Center, the South West School of Arts and Crafts, Bihl Haus Arts, San Antonio Visual Artists Gallery, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, High Wire Arts and Centro Cultural Aztlan.  He has also exhibited abroad in Argentina at the Centro Cultural Recoleta and is collected by a growing number of individuals. He has also performed live art painting, printing and sculpture extensively and is considered one of the best in live art creation in  San Antonio by  the public.  Raul has also given individual lessons and workshops to others as well as teaching art for one year at Meadow Village Elementary. He has worked as the gallery director for San Antonio Visual Artists organization and is now the curator and artist in residence of the Bent Easel Art Gallery. Raul works in all mediums but his strengths are Printmaking, especially lithography, Sculpture and Large Scale paintings and murals.

Richard Diaz Read the interview.

Richard Diaz co-founded with his wife, Belinda Diaz, Perpetual Puppets Production & Design. The troupe has been performing, teaching, and making visual arts contributions in the San Antonio area for over 7 years. Principal artist and master puppeteer of 38 years, Richard Diaz studied at the University of Connecticut in the early eighties and including some apprenticeship abroad and focuses on the more classical puppetry art disciplines (marionettes, rod puppets, giant effigy puppets).

Gloria Sanchez Read the conversation here.

Gloria Sanchez is a native to San Antonio, Texas. Her first professional acting job was at Six Flags Fiesta Texas where she worked as a costume character. It was then that she decided she would change her major in college and pursue a degree in theatre arts. While she was attending San Antonio College and the University of the Incarnate Word, she performed with Murder Mystery Players of San Antonio and was a cast member for 10 years. Although the core of her work is theatre-based, she has also appeared in short films such as “Gutterball,” directed by Jackie Earl Haley, and “Blood Cousin’s,” a Comedia A Go-Go’s first feature film. She was recently cast in Adam Rendon’s short film, “Quieres Que Me Muera.” In addition to her theatre and film credits, she performs stand-up comedy and recently helped form the sketch comedy group, Commonlawcatfish. Her television credits include San Antonio’s very own, “The Cleto Show.” She graduated magna cum laude from the University of the Incarnate Word with a bachelor of arts in theatre.

Enedina Cásarez Vásquez Read the full interview.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Enedina Cásarez Vásquez is a poet, playwright, and visual artist. She was a teacher at St. Peter Prince of the Apostles Catholic School for ten years, and she is recently retired. Vásquez also served as Poet-In-Residence for the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) from 1990-96. She is the author of Recuerdos de Una Niña (1979, Oblate Fathers Publishers), a collection of her memories of growing up in San Antonio along with accompanying artwork. Her poetry is included in the performance piece Woman's Work, which has received critical acclaim in San Antonio and New York. She is also the author of La Virgen de San Juan do los Lagos, a play recounting the events surrounding the apparition of the Virgin Mary. This play was performed at the Virgen de San Juan de los Lagos Church in San Antonio. Her play titled The History of the Catholic Church in Texas was performed at San Antonio's Municipal Auditorium during the Catholic Church's celebration of its sesquicentennial year in the State of Texas. Her short story, "The House of Quilts," has been published by Third Woman Press, Riverhead Book (Putnam Publishers), and Arte Publico Press. Recently her poem, "Bad Hair Day," was included in Flor y Canto Sí (Penguin, USA). Vásquez's art is also discussed in Speaking the Other Self, a work of scholarly criticism (University of Georgia Press). Her poetry has also been published in other publications including: Caracol, Mujeres Grande Anthology, Artist's Alliance, and Tonatzín.  From 1986 to 1991 Vásquez served on the Fine Arts Commission for the City of San Antonio. Her Dia de Los Muertos Altar exhibit is included in "Chicano Now: American Expressions." This traveling exhibit is sponsored by Cheech Marín, the Smithsonian Institution, and Target Stores. The exhibit started in 2001 and traveled to various cities for five years.

Ethel Shipton Read Patty's interview with this San Antonio artist.

Ethel Shipton, is a visual artist living and working in San Antonio. She is the second artist asked to curate for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in its Artist-Curating-Artist Series. Her exhibition, La Mezcla/The Mixture, opens Thursday, January 28, 2010, with a 6 PM opening reception. Shipton has shown her work nationally and locally, including Artpace, SalaDiaz, Unit B, Blue Star, and The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts in Long Branch, New Jersey.

Laurie Ann Guerrero Read Patty's interview with this San Antonio poet.

Laurie Ann Guerrero is a San Antonio poet and adjunct instructor in the English Department at Palo Alto College.  Guerrero's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Palo Alto Review; BorderSenses; Global City Review; Literary Mama; Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism; Feminist Studies; and others.  Guerrero holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Smith College in Northampton, MA, and is an MFA candidate at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.  Her first book, Babies Under the Skin, won the Panhandler Publishing Chapbook Award, chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye. Guerrero is also currently working as a writer-in-residence through Gemini Ink's Writer in the Communities Program in San Antonio. She divides her time between Texas and New Jersey.