For our usual biweekly Wednesday meeting at a North Laredo pizzeria, artist Jorge Javer López and I sit off in a corner — “so the God-fearing people don’t have to listen to us,” López joked. I told him to ignore the recorder, and we began.
López has painted on the border for nearly three decades. “I’m Mexican American … but my religion is art,” he said.
From his early Cyst series to his most recent show at Casa Daphne, The Price of Admission, he focuses on mutli-limbed, cyst-plagued figures frozen in static motion. His figures and their wens are inspired by a multitude of sources — Japanese color theory; the works of Yayoi Kusama; the indigenous works of the Mayans, Aztecs, Africans, Egyptians, and Indonesians; and the sun-weathered textures of South Texas. His works are haunting in unapologetic depictions of humanity’s fretful place in the world.
Despite his talent, he is confused why people buy his work. “I don’t see it hanging in someone’s living room,” he said, laughing.
For all of his self-criticisms, López has been a steady figure in the Laredo art scene.
He discovered art with a group of emerging local artists – Alex Chapa, Eduardo García, and Bruno Rendon. Rendon and López traveled to Nuevo Laredo daily to study under Julio Ortega, a furniture maker and relief artist. The entire group participated in an art exhibition in Nuevo Laredo’s Casa de la Cultura in 1999.
He recalled a pivotal moment with Ortega. López’s work at the time explored Jungian and Freudian imagery, but audiences focused so heavily on the sexuality in his works that López felt dejected. Ortega offered simple counsel with, “Is it coming from you? Is it real? Then it’s art, because it is you.”
López thereafter gained “blind confidence” in his work.
His influences weren’t just from el otro lado. His other mentor was Chapa’s father, Dionisio, a painter, sculptor, craftsman, and historian who instilled in López and his friends the importance of art education. He exposed them to Latin American music, lectured on history and politics, and emphasized the connection between world events and art.
“Art is a sacred thing,” Chapa told them. “Don’t treat it like it’s nothing.”
Both mentors advocated that the young artists recognize their integral part of society by striving for continued dedication and honesty in their work, advising that the medium didn’t matter as much as the artist’s tenacity. They reminded the young men that they were lucky to find friendship in each other, relationships that pushed their artistic abilities.
Eduardo García and his former partner would later open Sound, an experimental art space in Laredo. Graphic designer Alex Rodriguez was also an intricate part of Sound. While García ran the frame shop, Rodriguez and López often collaborated — López designing shirts and buttons and Rodriguez making them.
The first artists at Sound were García’s contacts from Austin, but eventually the exhibits featured Laredo artists. López’s friends García and Chapa moved to Austin and Rendon to study in San Francisco. López and artist Poncho Santos kept the gallery afloat for over a year.
Without the support of his friends, López found difficulties with his own art. Coupled with the death of Julio Ortega, he struggled.
Of the nine years he stopped painting, López said it felt like it was but a year. Without the collaboration and the support of his friends, he felt his work lacked motivation and direction.
Tragedy returned him to painting. A week before a beloved tia died, she called López during his “sabbatical from humanity” and asked why he stopped painting. As he tried to explain, she told him, “Mijo, it’s what you do.”
“I started again the next day,” he said, adding “Someone recently asked if returning to art was difficult, or was it like riding a bike. It was more like going to bat after a long time. It took a while to get my swing back.”
His return was met with criticism about similarities to previous works. He likened his return to “picking up a book where I left off.”
The focus of his latest works returned to his “cave-painting style,” beasts, dog-like figures with human teeth, many mouths, and many legs — all meant to have more universal impact.
López said his beasts are symbols of anxieties that follow people like dogs — “guilt and remorse and anything that follows us and weighs us down.”
Many of these works were on exhibit in the recent The Price of Admission. While his own projects remain a priority, López said he wants to foster the growth of the next generation of South Texas artists.
He said he worries about the art scene’s fractured nature. “There should be a coalition of artists by artists,” he said. “A place where representatives of all artistic mediums can meet to find common ground. This coalition should be built on the principles of accountability,” he said, adding that honesty and integrity expand artistic knowledge, no matter the medium.
“We must stop being accomplices to our own shortcomings,” he said, adding, “Artists are minorities and need to forge connections and networks among their artistic peers.”
According to López, there is no other way to become the foundations and springboards for emerging artists. He is careful to say he has no definitive answers, only ideas.
(Mario E. Martinez is a novelist and short story writer from Laredo, Texas. He is the author of Ashtree, NEO-Laredo, and The Chickens That Are Not Her Chickens. To find more of his work, go to marioemartinez.squarespace.com/)
