Category: Art of San Antonio

Concrete Artisans Leaving Lasting Imprint in San Antonio

postcardsfromsanantonio3 Comments

SAY Si, where art is spoken.

Z. Smith ’12

Conventions come and go. San Antonians barely notice their arrivals and departures. But professional artisans are getting a head start to ensure we remember the Concrete Decor Show, February 20-24.

This past week, they have been working with students to transform bare concrete around the entrance of SAY Si into a major display of the artistic side of the craft. A “river” will soon spill out of the building and over the entry ramp:

From the double-glass doors of the entrance, a micro-topping in vivid tones of blues and greens will progress down the sidewalk and descend a vertical wall to terminate in the landscaping. A team of national trainers from Miracote and Butterfield Color, aided by local concrete contractors, will install an earth-toned stampable overlay and add pattern and texture adjacent to the river mural. SAY Si students will add the finishing touches. They will illustrate native flora and fauna along the faux river bank, and permanent inscriptions of words the students find inspiring will punctuate the surrounding areas.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Concrete cosmetology – 5,000 square feet of it – will continue at SAY Si during the conference itself. According to the show coordinators:

Project teams, pairing industry experts with workshop participants, will create the ultimate makeovers of old, worn and unattractive concrete surfaces. Each area presents a building problem or unique challenge that the team will solve using products donated by leading architectural and decorative concrete manufacturers….

Inside SAY Si, workshop participants will apply a polyaspartic coating in the public gallery where the works of SAY Si students are exhibited. Old concrete floors in several studios where classes are held will be renovated. Two different techniques will be used: grinding and polishing an existing concrete slab and resurfacing another area with an innovative new polishable overlay technology. A special metallic epoxy coating will be applied on the floor in the Black Box theater….

Board member Susan Toomey Frost can barely contain her excitement over this major focus on a sometimes overlooked craft that is part of San Antonio’s heritage. Jon Hinojosa, artistic and executive director of SAY Si, is thrilled over the makeover because:

This project will not only showcase creative concrete master craftsmen, but allow our students to participate and learn a new art form.

And:

SAY Si is a family connected through art.

S. Ramos ’11

Update on February 22, 2012:

In addition to the ongoing workshops dramatically changing the look of SAY Si, Thom Hunt and Mark Whitten are leading a workshop sculpting a realistic-looking Acrocanthosaurus dinosaur at Booth 1309 at the Concrete Décor Show at the Convention Center.

Members of RAT, or Rock Carvers, Artists and Themebuilders, built the basic form in advance of the workshop, during which participants learn how to sculpt the details and add texture. 

After the conference, Mikey, the 10 ½ foot tall dino measuring 29 feet from nose to tail, will be a gift destined to become a landmark on the south side of the Witte Museum adjacent to an entrance to Brackenridge Park.

Update on February 23, 2012:

Click here to see a slideshow of SAY Si’s new waterfall fountain and flooring and the birthing of the dino, actually named Tally, destined for the Witte.

Kersey’s pieces like portable public art you can throw in the dishwasher

postcardsfromsanantonio1 Comment

To get an idea of the sculptural beauty of coffee mugs crafted by potter Diana Kersey, ride across the Mulberry Street Bridge or the Millrace Bridge leading to the Brackenridge Park Golf Course. Each of these bridges is graced with more than 200 square feet of the artist’s figurative tiles.

At first, I felt silly interviewing someone who recently completed these two major public art installations about coffee mugs, but Kersey put me at ease. Yes, she still loves taking a lump of clay and shaping it into a mug as her potter’s wheel turns.

“Small projects allow me to explore design ideas,” Kersey said. “These small works play into the design elements of larger ones.” Plus, she is never bored because: “No two mugs are exactly alike.”

Gayle Brennan Spencer in San Antonio Taste Magazine, December 2011

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Steve Bennett spotlighted the first bridge Diana Kersey completed on the San Antonio River in a June edition of the San Antonio Express-News:

“The city wanted me to do something on the health of waterways,” Kersey said. “I started thinking about amphibians — you know, if the amphibian life was healthy then the waterway was probably healthy. And in doing my research I learned that the most common toad in this region is the Gulf Coast toad. It’s the one that we all know, that we all run across in our backyards.”

In bas-relief sculptural panels embedded in the bridge’s concrete guardrails above 8-foot sidewalks, Kersey visually tells the story of the life cycle of the toad, from the courting days of Mr. and Mrs. T to strips of frog egg “tape” floating on water to developing tadpoles and “froglets” to the mature toad with the ridges over the eyes and the mouth that turns downward, sort of sadly. The overall effect is a “primordial narrative” like the well-known ape-to-man evolutionary image.

The Millrace Bridge installation was scattered around the tables and floor of her studio when I interviewed Kersey for the story on coffee mugs. The clay since has been glazed and fired to attain striking colors evoking the exuberance of majolica pottery.

Kersey described how she takes clay large-scale in an interview with Gene Elder for Voices of Art Magazine:

I don’t really create ’tiles’ in the traditional sense. I build the panel as one giant piece of clay, and then when it is complete I cut the work up into smaller shapes that can easily be fired, transported and installed. That way the grout lines becomes an important part of the overall design.

Now installed, the panels on the bridge relate to the history of the park and the golf course. Gutzon Borglum, who worked on designs for Mt. Rushmore in his nearby studio, and George Brackenridge, looking a bit dour as one would expect from the man who forbade the consumption of malt beverages on the parkland he donated, are among the relief portraits in clay.

But the story of Queenie the dog stumped me completely? Kersey enlightened me:

Queenie the dog was the beloved dog of Jack O’Brien. Mr. O’Brien was a sportswriter for an early San Antonio paper and a huge fan of golf at Brackenridge. He helped start the Texas Open in the early years. Anyhow, the dog was always by his side and became a bit of a mascot at Old Brack. A portrait of her has hung in the clubhouse for over 60 years and is still there.

Kersey’s mugs are like small slivers of portable public art that you can take home with you – art that can be thrown in the dishwasher. Find Kersey at work in her new studio and showroom downtown in the Atlee Ayers Building at 112 Broadway.

Shiny legacy from HemisFair hints at wealth of SAMA’s Asian Wing

postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

A shiny hint heralding the wealth of Asian art housed in the Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing recently was installed across the river from the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Leiwen, the interwoven thunder pattern on the nine pewter panels, was popular on bronze vessels during the Shang Dynasty, 1800-1200 BCE. These particular panels were crafted for and installed in the Taiwanese Pavilion during HemisFair 1968.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

May Lam donated 14 pairs of the rescued 3 x 1-foot panels to the San Antonio River Foundation during ceremonies at the Asian New Year Celebration more than five years ago. She wanted them to serve as a tribute to the rich cultural contributions of early Chinese immigrants to San Antonio, particularly the hundreds General John Pershing brought from Mexico as the United States entered World War I (I would include a photo of the adjacent panel explaining this and spare myself from typing, but I stubbornly refuse to reproduce materials failing to recognize “River Walk” as two words.).

While General Pershing was pursuing Pancho Villa in Mexico, Chinese businessmen had gathered around his encampments, operating stores and  cafés for his troops. When he returned to San Antonio in 1917, many of the Chinese retreated under his protection and were encamped at For Sam Houston until President Harding granted them legal resident status in 1921.

According to author Mel Brown in Chinese Heart of Texas, some of these new San Antonians, known as “Pershing Chinese,” were able to qualify as “merchants,” an exception to the 1882 Exclusion Act that deprived Chinese of many rights accorded other immigrants and banned additional Chinese immigration. 

Brown wrote: 

Following release from Fort Sam, a somewhat communal lifestyle was assumed at first as the Chinese Camp men stuck together for practical reasons and mutual assistance. If one of them had skills as a cook, the group contributed economically to help establish his café. As the business grew, that man hired his cronies or pitched in monetarily to set up another’s store or café…. This communal response to problems or needs was typical of the Chinese immigrant experience in America. It was a rich cultural resource which strengthened all the Cantonese communities during many years of prejudice, discrimination and exclusion. 

The Exclusion Act was not repealed until 1943.