San Antonio

The therapeutic process of making a piñata from papier-mâché over a balloon and then decorating it with colorful fringed tissue paper and the tension releasing experience of hitting the piñata with a stick at a birthday party as well as the feeling of sheer joy when the piñata bursts open and rains candy all come to mind when looking at Chuck Ramirez’s Piñata: Gregory. Ramirez (1962-2010) was a San Antonio-based artist with a reverence for material culture.

It’s been 11 years since painter Francisco Moreno took the local art world by storm with a hot-rod performance in an empty warehouse.

Stories first live in the body. They prickle across the skin as goosebumps, catch in the throat as a gasp, and move along a family line, changing slightly with each retelling. A good story lingers, reshaping memory and place so that a river, a vacant lot, or a patch of brush never feels quite the same again.