Today we’d like to introduce you to Rigoberto Luna.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
This month Presa House Gallery is celebrating its 5th anniversary. However, the story goes back nine years to when the project began as a hallway gallery housed inside a hair salon. It didn’t take long before the gallery became the main focus and after a couple of name changes, we reorganized and rebranded ourselves as Presa House. In 2016, we realized we needed to restructure and give this project the focus and attention it would need if we wanted it to succeed long term. When I initially went into this, it wasn’t about money, and we weren’t paying attention to our place in the “art world” or the trajectory of our careers. I was selecting, working with, and exhibiting artists I liked and trying to have a little fun doing it. I’ve organized DIY art exhibitions since the late 90’s I was just out of High School and quickly found a community of artists that welcomed me and allowed me to make my own space within its thriving art community. In my opinion, Austin is to music what San Antonio is to visual art, and the energy here is like no other place I’ve ever been. Those early shows, and coming of age within this art community, and learning and working within it helped me shape an idea of what type of space I would like to run one day, which was something I’d always wanted to do. Once we had the space, I had a foundation of ideas from my time here and living in New York to build on and other models to aspire to be or not to be like, and after a while, we grew into our skin and developed our own way of doing things and formed the program we have today.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Ha, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. Working in the arts is a grind, and you have to love the work you’re doing because it can be a meat grinder of an experience. Rollercoaster is so cliché, but the highs have been high, and the lows have been very low, but in that, you figure out how important something is to you. We’ve been fortunate to survive as a business through a maze of obstacles, and I’m sure there’s more in store. For example, when COVID reared its head, we felt ready for it business-wise because of previous hurdles we had to jump. So instead of buckling to the unknown, we kept working and adapted to change and remained flexible to whatever the current conditions may be.
As you know, we’re big fans of Presa House Gallery. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Presa House is a D.I.Y. artist-run gallery co-owned by interdisciplinary artist Jenelle Esparza and myself. We’re operating out of a 1300 sq ft house in San Antonio’s historic Lavaca District, and we host monthly art exhibitions featuring local, regional, national, and international artists. We’re event-driven; by that, I mean we only open for specific events. That could be an art opening, live music show, performance, film screening, poetry event, book release; we try to maximize our home usage. Other than that, we’re only open by appointment; Jenelle and I both work for art museums here in San Antonio, she’s in the education department at the McNay, and I’m in the exhibitions department at the San Antonio Museum of Art, so it’s difficult for us to keep regular hours. At the root of our work at Presa House, we provide a platform for artists and their messages. We make a concerted effort to be inclusive and non-discriminatory to ensure an accurate representation of the cultural diversity of San Antonio. However, our program has a heavy focus on Latinx artists from Central and South Texas. We felt the need for a space to centralize non-white voices considering that more than half of the San Antonio population are people of color. One of the things we’re most proud of is watching so many of our artists develop, and to be a part of their growth, and being able to provide a bit of reassurance at a point in their career when it might be most vital. Offering whatever support, we can is to everyone’s benefit because your gallery is only as good as the artists you exhibit, and we attribute any of our success to the great fortune of working with incredible people.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Pretty normal childhood, big Mexican household, I’m the youngest of six kids, and they’re all a lot older than I am, so naturally, they had a significant influence on me, music, tv, pop culture-wise. My next closest sibling was a natural talent, good at drawing and tinkering with things, so I looked up to him, and we both he and I got really into drawing and art. I think we inherited that from our father. My other interest was basketball, my brother got me interested in collecting basketball cards very young, and we share a deep love for that game, playing it and watching it, and we bonded over it. In school, I was the kid that drew. I think every class had one. By the time I got to high school, I knew I wanted to pursue art, and thankfully I had avenues to do that through the support of my family and a handful of teachers and direct links to opportunities thanks to friends of the family. I wasn’t a great student, but I focused on getting to art school and making some or several careers within art. It wasn’t until I got to art school that it sunk in that although I started drawing and painting and shifted to graphic design, art creates a lot of different paths you can take so many kinds of professions. You may end up doing things you would have never imagined because creativity opens up many avenues. As long as you’re open to learning new things and willing to take on new challenges, I’ve experienced so many unforgettable moments in my life through art, and I’m so glad I was encouraged when I was young and exposed to it so early.
Pricing:
- Gallery is FREE and Open to the Public
Contact Info:
- Email: presahousegallery@gmail.com
- Website: http://www.presahouse.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/presahousegallery
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PresaHouse
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/presahouse
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt_L0aJsXThZFfa_pEC_3A
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/
company/70819909/
Image Credits
Presa House Gallery
