Born in Laredo TX, I remember that the street where I began growing up was a gravel road.  I was moved to San Antonio at the age of 5, but not with a car of our own.  I remember having to walk to school and feeling ashamed because I had done so, when everyone else arrived in their cars.  Eventually, we got a car. a house, a lifestyle, and things that I never showed appreciation to my mother for how hard she worked to acquire them.  These details are important because they shaped the kind of artist that I would become. I knew that I wanted to be an artist from a very young age, but the shame of my poverty, my skin color, the sound of my family name that people couldn’t pronounce, told me that I had to prove the worth of my presence within the community, including the art community. Perhaps, it should not be surprising, then, that I would become a conceptual artist, an adherent to ideas and ideals more than to surface appearances. While the majority of my time as a professional artist has been spent here in Texas, I am constantly hopeful for outside opportunities that broaden my learning and understanding of art’s role in the world to bring back to my community. We are living in contentious times, as we always do, and art has a function in understanding how we navigate an unpredictable world. Ultimately, I try to make hopeful art, even if barbed, that address questions about what it means to be a human and the role of art in our humanity.