A City Promotion of Latino Art at the Central Library and the Centro de Artes: Views of the Environmental and Cultural Heritage of South Texas

Jesús Toro Martinez is part of a new exhibition at the San Antonio Central Library presented in partnership with February 2026 Contemporary Art Month (CAM) and Launch SA. A painter of expressive landscapes and mixed‑media works, Martinez blends Latino cultural heritage with organic and unconventional materials, such as tar, rose petals, and recycled plastics. His themes of nature, community, and human emotion are evident in paintings and digital video format.

Carmen Lomas Garza, La Sandía. Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

As a 1991 study-abroad student in Helsinki, Martinez learned new painting styles and enjoyed visiting museums, which expanded his appreciation and understanding of art. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Ravenhurst in Amsterdam in 1999.

Jesús Toro Martínez. San Antonio Central Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

As a conservationist, Martinez frequently devotes weekends to cleaning up Salado Creek in Northeast San Antonio. Tall oaks and green shrubs are a hallmark of the creek, which flows for more than 15 miles from west to east in a northern section of San Antonio. Heavy rainfall and Texas storms bring trash, such as paper goods and plastic bags, to the creek from the adjacent bedroom communities. Martinez helps to pick up the trash and has portions of it shredded into confetti-like material, which he colors and attaches to his canvases.

Jesús Toro Martínez. Digital art. San Antonio Central Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Martínez frames his Central Library art project as a “trash to art to digital art” continuum, emphasizing that his practice evolves with “what’s current with the world,” including environmental concerns, sustainability, and the idea of a near “zero footprint” by reusing and reformatting existing materials rather than generating new material waste.​ Martinez is fond of nature scenes, and many of his recent landscape works are from the Texas hill country. The forms that make up his body of work are, in his words, “individual visual statements” designed to show his “creative soul and impact the emotional souls of others.”

Jesús Toro Martínez. San Antonio Central Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

For the Central Library exhibition, Martínez collaborated with an international team to produce digital and video components of his art. A photographer based in Tel Aviv documented the physical works, while a video editor in Mexico City multiplied and sequenced tens of thousands of still images to create looping films. Martinez likens the video process to traditional animation or cartoon production in which thousands of images are woven together to create a continuous sense of motion. The video results in one or two looping pieces that “mesmerize” viewers who sit and watch them cycle.​

Jesús Toro Martínez. San Antonio Central Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

As I visited with Martínez at the Central Library, he often returned to the idea that his practice is both environmentally responsive and aesthetically ambitious. By turning discarded plastics, tires, political signs, and construction debris into complex landscapes and immersive digital environments, he challenges viewers to reconsider value, waste, and beauty in the contemporary world. Martinez described the digital works to my wife, Harriett, not as static “cut-and-paste” images but as animated environments in which elements seem to float, fly, and move like windblown forms; the images create an optical illusion of being immersed in constructed landscapes.​​ The exhibition is innovative and is scheduled to run through December 31, 2026, at the San Antonio Central Library, 1st floor.

Another current exhibition in San Antonio is at the Centro de Artes. The Madre_Land installation is composed of memories in the form of art, artifacts, and altar installations by 27 South Texas borderland artists and scholars, including those emerging in their careers and those already established. The first-floor gallery mirrors the layout of a South Texas house. The art installations also pay homage to historic family-owned businesses because sometimes a neighborhood café or panaderia is a home away from home for generations of families.

Julysa Sosa, Altar de la Recámara: Mujer, Ollin, Memoria (The Altar of the Bedroom: Woman, Movement, Memory). Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Artists of Madre_Land celebrate familial aesthetics and explore bicultural themes in traditional and experimental styles that capture elements of intergenerational Texas-Mexico border culture. An installation with cowboy boots at the foot of a small bed and a flower bouquet by a mirror captures the essence of a South Texas casita. Exhibition curator Bonnie Cisneros introduced the exhibit: “Enter through the portal of the front porch, step into the corazón of the kitchen, chill in the warmth of the dining room, sit a spell in la sala, reflect in the sanctuary of the bedroom and its adjoining night garden, step afuera into the collaborative artist altar, kids’ patio, backyard shrines, arbol de la vida, garage, and the crocheted chicken coop.”

Carmen Lomas Garza, one of the established artists in the exhibition, was born in 1948 in Kingsville, Texas, a bilingual Mexican American community. As a teen, she taught herself to draw by watching her mother paint. She earned a B.S. in art education from Texas A&M University–Kingsville and moved to Austin to attend graduate school. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she joined other Chicanos in the new Chicano Movement. Lomas Garza wrote, “The Chicano Movement of the late 1960s inspired the dedication of my creativity to the depiction of special and everyday events in the lives of Mexican Americans based on my memories and experiences in South Texas.”​

Carmen Lomas Garza, “Baile”.Courtesy Centro de Artes. Gift of Harriett and Ricardo Romo to the Central Library. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

In 1975, Lomas Garza moved to the Mission District of San Francisco and joined with La Raza Galeria artists in making Chicano art visible. In public presentations, Lomas Garza has spoken about goals of making “art that heals the wounds inflicted by racism, art that elicits recognition and pride among Mexican Americans, while at the same time serves as a source of education for others not familiar with our culture.”​

Suzy González, an emerging artist and art professor, has a large installation with several sections in the Madre-Land exhibition. Gonzalez wrote of her work: “My enthusiasm towards decolonizing consumption and art is intertwined with remembering the lessons that the earth has to teach us. I work with plant materials and manipulated art supplies to consider identity, solidarity, and resistance.” A multidisciplinary artist, educator, writer, curator, and organizer, Gonzalez’s art practice explores identity, decolonization, and social justice.

Suzy Gonzalez, Sacred Ancestral Maiz (diptych). Corn stalks, silks & tassels from the artist’s garden, acrylic, corn husks, deer corn, Monstera, Sago Palm, and resin. Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Working in what she calls “mestizx media,” González combines ancestral materials such as corn husks with contemporary supplies to reflect on mixed heritage and resistance to colonialism. Gonzalez commented, “I work with natural plant materials like corn husks in conjunction with manipulated art supplies to consider identity, mixedness, and resistance. The corn husks represent the skin of the figures, recalling Mesoamerican beliefs that our very beings are created from maíz.”

Beto De León, Tormentitas, 2025: Acrylic on cotton fabric. Sueños de Pasiflora, 2025, Chain link fence, crepe paper, floral wire, and tissue. Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Her themes often include environmentalism, Mesoamerican cosmology, political activism, and veganism. Her choice of materials evokes Mesoamerican beliefs that humanity was formed from maíz. At the same time, she is dismantling hierarchies between folk and fine art. Through her work, González seeks to open spaces for intercultural dialogue, compassion, and healing grounded in the wisdom of the earth. She wrote that her public “artwork has included themes of celebrating contemporary artists and activists, histories of the land, native plants and animals, and concepts of love and solidarity.” Intending to “open doors to compassion and healing,” she creates art through her “own intersections and to strive for intercultural conversations” in her community. Gonzalez teaches visual and new media arts at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Texas State University.

Destiny Mata, in collaboration with her abulo, Luis Mata b. 1988. Working For Mi Gente. Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Bonnie Cisneros’s exceptional curation of the exhibit required three years of planning and organizing. Her South Texas birth and San Antonio upbringing have given her a keen understanding of Mexican American traditions and culture. Cisneros is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and has been awarded artist grants by NALAC and the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture. Her poetry, essays, and interviews appear in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, El Retorno, Chicana/Latina Studies, Buckman Journal, La Voz de Esperanza, ¡Somos Tejanas!, and Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. Moonlighting as DJ Despeinada, Cisneros collects and spins Tex/Mex/Latin records from all eras.

Bonnie Cisneros con la exhibición de “La Música de la Casa” por Sylvia Mendoza Aviña, PhD, y su mamá, Juanita Mendoza. Courtesy Centro de Artes. Photo by Ricardo Romo.