mud + corn + stone + blue

ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

During the 2024–2025 academic year, the Rubin Center was proud to invite six artists and designers to UTEP for micro-residencies as part of the exhibition program for Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue. In collaboration with UTEP faculty, staff, and students, these residencies included a public artist talk, a skills-based workshop for students, and informal gatherings to discuss topics of contemporary practice and professional development. These residencies were generously funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation.

LORENA MOLINA Danzas del Retorno March 27 | 5 - 6:30 pm Rubin Center  Attendees experienced a participatory performance by artist Lorena Molina in collaboration with dance faculty Sandra Paola López Ramírez and UTEP students. This performance, the culmination of a week-long residency with UTEP’s Performance Activism class, explored themes of homeland, migration, and return through the lens of cumbia dance. Danzas del Retorno was a participatory performance that explored the ideas of homeland, migration, and our dreams and hopes for a (many) returns. Using cumbia as a social dance with deep roots throughout Latinoamérica, participants embodied their inquiry while engaging with its history as a form of resistance and celebration of physical agency.

Lorena Molina is a Salvadoran multidisciplinary artist, educator, and curator. Through the use of photography, video, performance and installation, she explores identity, intimacy, pain, and how we witness the suffering of others. The work interrogates relationships and the formation of relationships as political acts that are guided by negotiations of power and privilege. She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota and her BFA from California State University, Fullerton. She is Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Media in the School of Art at the University of Houston. https://www.lorenamolina.com/

ANTHONY & FRANCIS ALMENDAREZ

An improvisation-centered workshop focused on exploring how histories, cultural traditions, and personal experiences were kept and transmitted. Using sound as a point of departure, the workshop facilitated a safe space in community through the act of music-making, serving as a method of healing, investigation, knowledge exchange, creative work, and play. Recognizing the potential of listening as a space for the development of self-identity, group-identity, and mindful listening through collective experimentation and play, participants from all backgrounds, abilities, and identities, regardless of musical background. All instruments and voices were welcome. Students of any discipline were encouraged to attend as well.

Schedule
11 am - Walkthrough of Exhibition 
12 pm - Film Screening followed by Q&A 
1 pm - Lunch
1:30 pm - Improvisation Workshop 
3:30 pm - Reflection 

Anthony Almendárez is an artist and composer who uses sound as a point of departure to explore modes of storytelling that reorders, remixes, and plays with the intersection between art, literature, and music. His work has been presented nationally and internationally including at the Cité International des Arts, Paris, France, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada; CIRCA, London, UK; and Seen:Sound Visual/Music, Melbourne, Australia. He received his BA from California State University, Dominguez Hills; MA from Marshall University; and the MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.

Francis Almendárez is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from South Central, Los Angeles. His work takes many different forms including collaborations, performances, screenings, workshops, and exhibitions that have been presented in museum, university, arts nonprofit, artist-run, virtual, and DIY spaces both nationally and internationally. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile with intergenerational trauma, and reclaim diasporic identities. Almendárez is Assistant Professor of Photography/Video and Studio Art at California State University San Bernardino. He received his MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, and BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design. https://francisalmendarez.com/

TESORA MOLINA-GARCIA Workshop with UTEP Art Students February 12 - 14, 2025 Rubin Center Auditorium  Hosted a collaborative zine workshop during her residency in El Paso. Participants in this workshop explored maternal archives and storytelling by creating a collaborative, handmade accordion book. The process involved gathering family photos and narratives, learning basic digital collage techniques, and engaging in discussions about the stories uncovered. A hands-on printing and assembly session then transformed individual contributions into a large-format, experimental accordion book celebrating maternal legacies, which was archived in the UTEP Library’s special collections.

Is a Salvadoran-American media artist, writer, and educator. A citizen of the Global South and an American Dreamer, Tesora’s research engages mystical and esoteric traditions of ancient Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and Buddhist sects. In this pursuit, she synthesizes marginalized realms of knowledge alongside science, science-fiction, non-western philosophy, and leftist political theory. Tesora holds an MFA degree in Photography+Extended Media from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), and graduated with dual degrees in Photography and Art History from the University of North Texas. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Futures at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. https://jmolinagarcia.xyz/

ARON ADRIAN VENEGAS Raices Family Day Inspired by Mud+Corn+Stone+Blue Saturday, February 01, 2025   Rubin Center Auditorium  Local artist Aron Venegas, who was featured in the exhibition, discussed his artistic process and inspirations. He then led a hands-on printmaking workshop, where participants explored the techniques behind his captivating work.

Border artist works and lives in the border region of Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, USA. He works with contemporary graphics using traditional techniques such as woodcut, lithography, and gravure. He also experiments with new technologies in graphics processes, making the link between modern and traditional printmaking. He currently works in his studio in the city of El Paso TX, which is named Puroborde! - Border Graphic. Established in 2011, Puroborde! promotes graphic arts and cultural projects in the Borderplex. www.puroborde.com

OSCAR RENE CORNEJO Artist Residency October 7 - 11, 2024 Artist Talk: Thursday, Oct 10  Coffee with Students: Friday, Oct 11  Students learned about Oscar’s career trajectory, experience with artists residencies including the Skowhegen School of Painting and Sculpture, and his work with contemporary frescos.

Oscar Rene Cornejo is an artist and educator from Houston, Texas. His socially-engaged practice draws together histories of abstraction in the U.S. and Latin America with personal experiences of the construction site, family memory, and historical reconciliation. He earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art, a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union, and was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship for research in El Salvador. In 2004, he co-founded the Latin American Community Art Project (LA CAPacidad), an artist residency advocating for intercultural awareness through community art education. Cornejo has taught at The Cooper Union, Hunter College, and Yale School of Art's Painting and Printmaking Department. He teaches Fresco at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.https://oscarrene-cornejo.squarespace.com