While many of downtown’s windowed storefronts are shut in with plywood, there are three windows on Convent Avenue that feature the art of local creatives, Pedro Morales, Gil Rocha and Dr. Eric Avery, M.D.
Thanks to Sanjay Rupani, the owner of The Gold Coin jewelry store and the old Neisner’s five-and-dime building at Convent and Lincoln, three storefront windows dressed as a triptych of art contrast with the boarded-up decline of what had once been Laredo’s Central Business District.
May the beautiful and hopeful incongruity of those wIndows in the vault of downtown’s historic architectural treasures encourage other property and business owners to follow Rupani’s lead to brighten and educate with art the storied streets and sidewalks of the once vibrant hub that was downtown Laredo.
Rupani has divided the quarter block of the old Neisner’s building into three spaces. The Gold Coin occupies the corner space, and adjacent to it along Convent Avenue are two other spaces he offers for lease.
Behind the art windows adjacent to the Gold Coin is a long, open, high-ceilinged space of about 4,000 square feet that Rupani is amenable to lease as studio space to a collective of artists.
The idea for that possibility came about in a chance conversation between Rupani and Alan Holmgreen whose construction company was making repairs to a building across the avenue.
“Imagine this place filled with art and working artists as another stop on Caminarte night,” Holmgreen said enthusiastically, referring to the first Friday of the month art walk that begins on Zaragoza Street, and traverses art spaces in two historic districts, before ending on San Bernardo Avenue.
Rupani, a forward-thinking mainstay of the downtown business community for nearly four decades, said he would like to see a grocery store in one of the other spaces he has for lease. “It would be of much service to downtown residents, especially the elderly, and would be convenient for Nuevo Laredo shoppers,” he said.
A native of Mumbai, he moved to Laredo in 1976. He’s a 1983 graduate of Martin High School.
Rupani established The Gold Coin in 1989 at the corner of Convent and Salinas, renting at first a 300-square-foot storefront and then buying the entire two-story, 24,000-square-foot building in 2024.
Artist Emily Bayless, a ceramicist and an assistant professor of art at TAMIU, will soon begin work on a mural on the south wall (Lincoln Street) of The Gold Coin.
ARTIST PEDRO MORALES
The window featuring Morales’ work is an inviting, colorful enticement for the eyes. He considers the installation an altar to awareness and consciousness. Its three paintings are from a collection called Basic Space. “The four sculptures made with repurposed, assembled, and painted gas stove steel grates bring an architectural quality to the installation,” he said.
ARTIST GIL ROCHA
“Casa de Cambios is a socially engaged art installation that reimagines a familiar border institution as a place where stories, experiences, and ideas become the true form of exchange. Through three independent interconnected environments (a community library, a conceptual restaurant, and a laundromat bar), visitors are invited to trade narratives rather than money. Drawing from the everyday visual language of the U.S.–Mexico border, the project blends books, poetry, found objects, music, conversation, and participatory experiences to transform ordinary encounters into moments of reflection, reminding us that what we exchange as a community often carries greater value than currency,” Rocha said.
“In a city shaped by movement, commerce, and the constant crossing of cultures, Casa de Cambios offers Laredo a space to pause, connect, and see the border through a different lens. By inviting community participation and celebrating local voices, the project demonstrates how contemporary art can foster dialogue, strengthen cultural identity, and create meaningful connections across generations. In doing so, this art installation contributes to Laredo’s growing cultural landscape while affirming the arts as a vital part of civic life,” he concluded.
ARTIST ERIC N. AVERY, M.D.
Of the window filled with his art, Avery said, “I chose three anti-war related prints. Two were exhibited in my 2025 Laredo Center for Arts exhibition. The 1991 Our Father of War is a 3’x6’ linocut appropriation of this famous 1777 Chimera etching by Louis Deprez. I exhibited the linocut and a companion nineteen-color reduction silkscreen printed during a 1991 artist residency at the University of Texas in Austin. The window exhibit includes another 1991 Iraq War print, New World Odor. It is a molded glow in the dark paper print first exhibited as wall paper. It is an appropriation of a cover of a chap book I found in a Mexico City flea market.”
THE STOREFRONT ACTIVATION PROJECT
Morales, a board member of the Laredo Center for the Arts, referred to the art in downtown windows project as the Storefront Activation Project, portending its future as “an incredible opportunity for artists to showcase their art and to share it with those who have an appreciation for it.”
He continued, “You see this in larger cities. The owners of old buildings in Chicago offer their windows as spaces for art. I hope to see more of this in downtown Laredo.”
Morales believes that Rupani’s offer of an arts studio space for lease presents “a viable opportunity for the four local arts foundations supported with Mellon Foundation grant funds and one specific fund to meet the criteria for a collective arts project.”
He continued, “That collective project, if it undertook the lease and management of the space, could work as an artist-in- residence space, especially for artists who create large pieces.”
He concluded, “What would be truly amazing would be for other downtown property owners to see their shuttered and vacant buildings serve the dual purpose of supporting the arts while generating revenues from leased studio space.”
