It’s a busy month for the arts in San Antonio with so many brilliant, bright, and uplifting art installations and performances. Go back to your roots at the Botanical Garden with artist Steve Tobin’s series of bronze and steel “roots” sculptures, discover the scenography, costumes, lighting and projection design at the McNay Art Museum as part of the “Great Stage of Texas” show and meet budding artists. high school artists at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Meet established contemporary artist John A. Coleman at the Carver Community Cultural Center and hear about the “dialogue between creative cultures” in the “Crossing Borders” exhibition at the Presa House Gallery. April is a glorious time for the arts in the city of Alamo.
San Antonio Botanical Garden
“Steve Tobin: Rooted” – April 16 to October 30
Contemporary artist Steve Tobin presents his largest exhibition of sculptures, ‘Steelroots’ and ‘Bronze Roots’, along with new nature-inspired sculptures rooted throughout the garden, revealing power, grace and complexity of nature. The Bronze Roots series features casts of upturned trees that expose and immortalize the complex life below. The Steelroots series includes soft, abstract interpretations of roots that explore negative space and shifting shadow. New pieces are inspired by the forces of nature, including polished clouds, egg-laden nests, and spiraling tornadoes. Tobin developed an interest in the fusion of art, science, and ideas as a student of theoretical mathematics at Tulane University. Throughout his 40-year career, he has created organic works in glass, clay, wood, bronze and steel.
McNay Art Museum
“The Big Texas Stage” – Now through August 14
“The Great Stage of Texas” celebrates Texas designers making great theater. In the exhibition, thirteen contemporary designers share their works in the arts of theater – scenography, costumes, lighting and projection. Works from the Tobin Collection of Theater Arts by Jean and Bill Eckart, Robert Wilson, and John Rothgeb—also all Texans—are paired with theatrical designs by the thirteen Texan artists featured in the exhibit. Artists Carlos Merida, Mary Lee Bendolph, Keith Haring and Marion Koogler McNay, among many others from McNay’s permanent collection, seamlessly blend into the exhibit, adding context to the creative conversation.
Presa House Gallery
“Crossing Borders: Tres de Oeste” – April 1-30
“Crossing Borders” is the first of a two-part exhibition and artist exchange created in partnership with New Mexico artists Vicente Telles, Brandon Maldonado and San Diego artist Ricardo Islas. Each presentation promotes communication and creates a dialogue between creative cultures to explore similarities and differences shaped by parallel histories and examine how visual expression relates to unique physical landscapes.
UTSA Main Art Gallery
“Kim Bishop: Rehearsal Exercise” – April 11-22
In this thesis exhibition, Kim Bishop offers a cross-sectional view of the effects of experience on memory, dreams, and repetitive rituals within an interdisciplinary framework. Bishop reinvents her self-portrait of navigating, as a woman, the social condition of her time in her constant effort to measure the norm that determines her value through a variety of drawing and printing processes. Her imagery focuses on the entanglement of body, time and movement to create a holistic self-portrait that carries a universal theme of quantum remembrance and the physical as experienced through memory during a time of closures and transitions. pandemic.
Carver Cultural Community Center
“John A Coleman” – April 21 to May 27
Long a staple of the San Antonio art scene, Coleman returns to the Carver with new works influenced by Cubist geometric representation of humans and other forms using bold colors, strong lines and working-class imagery. Inspired by the portraits of fellow African-American artist Robert Blake and a desire to tell the African-American story, Coleman evolved his work into his current medium, acrylic on canvas, portraying life in society. Afro-American. “I think it is of the utmost importance that our culture be recorded on canvas and sculpture. The daily lives of individuals define a culture and constitute a record of those experiences. Our culture would be lost to future generations and the history would have no landmarks without it.
Guadalupe Cultural Center for the Arts
“Still Here: Transitions from the Westside” – April 1-30
“Still Here” is an exhibit produced by students from Lanier High School presenting observations from their own perspective, addressing their environment and the changes occurring in and around it. Throughout the 2021-2022 school year, artist Ashley Mireles collaborated with artist and educator Jennifer Arce to provide innovative artistic skills and introduce creative careers to students at Lanier High School. Encouraging experimentation and growth, students were challenged to expand their creativity through guidance in a variety of media and practices including drawing, collage, image transfer, cyanotype, relief engraving, documentation and conservation.
