Pepe Coronado

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Pepe, we met through Art in Odd Places when I was curating SENSE (2017) with Rocío Aranda Alvarado and Jodi Waynberg. You also participated in Back in Five Minutes, the art residency that I launched at El Museo del Barrio in 2014, and which I have practically implore this institution to continue. The thing is that we actually didn’t meet in person until I moved to Austin, Texas, to work with The University of Texas. Austin is the city where you are based. How in the world did you get to there? In my mind all Dominicans are on the East Coast and I know that this is no longer true.

Pepe Coronado: There are not many Dominicans around here. I have lived in Austin twice, and I first came here in 1991, then moved to Washington, D.C. in 1997. My daughter was born in Austin in 1996. After being in Washington, D.C. for 7 years, and later in New York for 13 years, now I’m back in Austin since December 2019, that is, a few months before the pandemic.

I was in the US for 2 years and after my wife graduated from the University of Illinois we moved down to Austin for the first time. We were starting out and at that time Austin was a very affordable place with good music; a young city.

NDEREOM: You have a very compelling story regarding Chinana/o/e/x legacies, would you tell me about your encounter with Sam Coronado and how this may have shifted things for you, creatively speaking?

PC: Oh yeah, meeting Sam Coronado was a game changer for me.

I meet Sam at a class that he was teaching and after the session we stayed and talked. The first topic of our conversation was about our last names, and from there we talked about art. Sam had just started the Serie Project, a screen-printing residency program modeled after Self Help Graphics in East LA, where he had just returned from and wanted to replicate that program in Austin.

I was a commercial screen printer at the time, so our experiences matched, He needed a printer, so I went to meet him at the shop the very next day and never left. At the time, I was making jewelry and had a line of Taíno design shirts that I would sell at markets and festivals. So having the opportunity to work on an art project with Sam Coronado was perfect for me as a self-taught artist.

NDEREOM: I have been to Texas several times and the last period that I spent there, because it was the longest, I was culture shocked. I had to rethink how to be Latinx outside New York City. I am glad that I stayed in Texas and that I ended up learning so much from my Mexican and Chicana/o neighbors, who are incredible activists and beings. How has it been for you?

PC: My experience has been similar to yours. Through Sam I was expose to Chicano culture and that was really crucial for me to understand the social political situation of this country and the work that has been done to fight for equality including in the arts.

NDEREOM: How do you navigate Dominicanidad and Dominicayoridad (my neologism) in a place that is heavily Mexican and Chicana/o/e/x, for obvious reasons–and in my opinion–because Texas was stolen from the ancestral peoples to whom it still belongs?

PC: Yes, it is hard to be in a place were there are not many Dominicans. Most of the non-white population in the state is Mexican. A lot of my work may seem out of context here but in reality, it does relate. When we talk about borders and history, our stories have many commonalities. Decolonization is a topic that binds us even if the main discourse is related to the history of this region.

NDEREOM: I admire what you have been building, creatively. You have a well-organized studio and gallery in Austin. What are your thoughts about collaboration? How would you say fostering partnerships has contributed to your cultural work in general and to your persona?

PC: To me collaboration is a crucial aspect of my practice, and creating spaces that are inclusive is very important for exposing the works and ideas by many different artists. The collective voice to me is necessary and powerful and that includes embracing artists outside the main stream.

NDEREOM: When I visited your studio in Austin, we talked about the presence of Sam Coronado and how this remains alive. You told me about his commitment to communities and his humble heart, despite being one of the icons of the Chicano/o/e/x movement. This is something that I miss within the art industry, which is so much about image, social media, and the banalities involved in the making of objects for collectors. Please do tell me about Sam, whom I wish I would have met in person.

PC: Sam was a mentor, friend and father figure to me at a very important time of my life because he was so humble and so committed to social justice. In his studio he provided a home and a creative space for so many artists, and by opening this space a community was created that you can feel the effect of even after he has left this world for more than 10 years.

The impact of Sam’s studio on the culture of this city has been felt beyond Austin and the state of Texas. The project was housed on the East Side of Austin, which at that time was a segregated part of town and that’s were he wanted people to go to expose our experiences without compromise. But now, the East Side has been gentrified and the original culture of mainly Mexicans and African Americans has been compromised.

NDEREOM: What is your connection to places that I so much value, like La Peña and Mexic-Arte? Something that kept me in Austin, despite the top-down politics which seem to dominate Texas, is the incredible amount of activisms that have been happening there. Communities in Austin keep pushing back against some of the most regressive, racist and xenophobic government policies in our nation. I left Austin with a quivering heart inspired by these forward-thinking neighbors.

PC: La Peña is beacon for the fight for social justice, Sam and las hermanas, Cynthia and Libby Pérez, from La Peña, were very close to each other and they were crucial in helping get support to the Serie Project to get off the ground. Cynthia and Libby are still holding the space downtown and their history of activism, projects, and exhibitions have been so powerful and a model to many.

There are now other new and younger organizations that are modeled out of the La Peña’s history, so the legacy is alive and is so needed. As you said, the political leadership of Texas has some of the most “regressive, racist and xenophobic government policies in our nation.”

NDEREOM: What moves your spirit these days?

PC: I carry on the intention of my work even from a different space. New York was and will always be a time for my practice that was a defining moment for my development and for the creation of a lot of my work. So, I keep feeding my interests even from a place where my culture is not as present as it is in NYC.

NDEREOM: We will leave it here because I know that you are a busy person and you must go and do your work out in the wider world with the students and creatives who you support. ¡Muchísimas gracias! Wait, I hope to return to Austin so we can have the some of the delicious food in town. We did not get to meet before I left.

PC: I hope you come back. In your short stay in the City you had a big impact. Your commitment to work that is socially-conscious and how it conceptually reached out to many people in the community. This has been of great value, brining the community into the academic space of UT–that has been critical.

All images courtesy of Pepe Coronado unless stated differently / For specific credits hover over the image.

Pepe Coronado’s links: Website / Instagram and also / Contact

Coronado is a founding member of the print collective Dominican York Proyecto GRAFICA, and founder of Coronado Print Studio. He teaches printmaking at St. Edwards University in Austin, and has taught at Purchase College School of Art and Design, SUNY; at the Corcoran College of Art; Georgetown University; and at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he earned the Master of Fine Arts. Coronado was a master printer for Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, Maryland; the Hand Print Workshop International in Alexandria, Virginia; and the Serie Print Project in Austin, Texas. He was a resident teaching artist at the Hudson River Museum in New York, and visiting artist at Self Help Graphics in Los Angeles.

As the Director and Master Printer for Coronado printstudio, Coronado provides mentorship to emerging artists, and through the Coronado Print Room, a platform to artists in the U.S. and the Caribbean to disrupt discrete notions of American visual and material culture.

Coronado’s work is in many collections including The Metropolitan museum of Art; Yale University Art Gallery; The Smithsonian American Art Museum; The Archives of American Art; Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, MA.; Blanton Museum of Art; The Amon Carter Museum; The Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios; CUNY Dominican Studies Institute, City College of New York City; El Museo del Barrio; El Museo Latino; Georgetown University, Lauinger Memorial Library of Rare Books and Prints Collection; The Library of Congress; The Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation; The Federal Reserve Board of Governors Art Collection; District of Columbia Government: Arts and Humanities Commission; and El Paso Museum of Art and Mexic-Arte Museum.