FRONTEXTOS

FOREWORD

In the painting that graces the cover of this edition of Tapestry, “La Virgen en la Frontera” shines her beneficent light on the blank city below. From one of the buildings a word, “poema,” floats upward just where one would expect the smoke from a chimney to rise in dedication to La Virgen, to art’s inspiration. This simple but evocative painting reminds us that art, music, poetry, and story emerge from sources deep within the individual, from sources of inspiration. It reminds us that art links us together as a community, just as in the painting La Virgen’s light shines on the entire city, all of its buildings, not just a few.  And as the term the poet and artist Octavio Quintanilla has coined, “frontexto,” a mashup of the words “frontier” and “text,” to describe his mix of art and poetry, the works in this edition of Tapestry represent the meeting ground between inspiration and text.  By bringing together visual, aural, and the discursive texts, by bringing together established and emerging artists and thinkers, Tapestry creates a kind of frontier, a middle ground between borders where new and interesting things happen. Like the word “poema” that disrupts the boundary between La Virgen’s glow and the ordinariness of the city, many of the pieces in this volume cross borders between the everyday and the special moments of life to create new works of art.

Dr. Susan Roberson

Professor of English

Women and Gender Studies Director 

361-593-4707

I began my FRONTEXTO (Text / Image / Resistance) project, (the term frontexto is a blend of frontera and texto, border/text) on New Year’s Day of 2018 because teaching full-time left me without time to write during the long semesters. And so, I challenged myself to carve some time out of the day, or evening, to write. It was also a way for me to commit myself more fully to my art and to stop making excuses as to why I was not producing work, which often had to do with the lack of time.

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Since January 1, I have been writing a poem in Spanish every day and publishing it on social media. The text is usually accompanied by an image sketched (usually) on a Moleskin 3.5” x 5.5”. This paper lends itself nicely to the smearing of ink, which is part of my technique, and the size of the page creates limitations that lead me to consider issues of scope in terms of text and image. Sometimes the text covers most of the page; other times, it is the image that takes over. Almost always the text and image correspond in some way. Overall, lyricism and brevity are at the core of these visual poems. Recently, I have been using color, which opens more possibilities for the image and also for the text.

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I decided to write in Spanish so I could think and feel in a language I am fluent in, but that I needed to practice. I wanted to become intimate with it and add more layers and nuances to the frontera Spanish I grew up speaking. Also, in these tumultuous times in the United States, where people are being attacked and discriminated against for speaking Spanish, I consider that writing it, and speaking it, is a way to resist anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

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Mid-March, an exhibit is forthcoming at the Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos. I’ve also had exhibits at the Weslaco Museum and the All State Almaguer art space in Mission, Texas.