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Photographs, poetry, and book design
by Amy Truong at St. Edward's University.
Graphic Design III, Fall 2018.

INTERVIEWS:
Prizer Arts & Letters: Carrie Kenny
Resistencia Bookstore: Lilia Rosas
Arte Texas: Bertha Delgado

ADDITIONAL PHOTO CREDITS:

Riojas, Yocelyn. Jolt Texas−Migration is Sweet.
Arte Texas. Artist in Front of the La Loteria Mural.
 ART IS POWER.
Dedicated to the people of East Austin
who continue to fight to keep their homes,
businesses, identity, culture, and freedom.

NEVER STOP FIGHTING.

The Role of Art Galleries
in the Neighborhood
4
 Their Story:
Prizer Arts & Letters
Prizer Arts & Letters isn’t your typical art gallery.
They are socially engaged arts and literature nonproft
who are constantly opening up the conversation on social
issues to the community through their diverse exhibitions.
Opening its doors to East Austin in 2016, Prizer Arts
& Letters was extended on the work of Prizer Gallery,
founded by Carrie Kenny in 2012. The gallery space was
a 1920’s home transformed into this open gallery to bring
new and different communities together for meaningful
dialogue and creative engagement. The building continues
to be home to other arts nonprofits as well, including
Forklift Danceworks and Fusebox Festival.

Their mission from the beginning has been

“to exhibit socially-engaged art and literature,
foster dialogue and pollinate creativity.”
Prizer Arts & Letters strives to create a space that is
welcoming to people of all ages, abilities, identities and
backgrounds, helping create equity and diversity in the
arts, and making art and literature free and accessible to
the public. They go above and beyond to support artists
by giving them a space to showcase and share their work
with the community, free of charge.

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“Bring different communities
together for creativity and
meaningful dialogue”
Carrie Kenny: “Each show brings in different members
of the community. Each artist brings in their own circles,
as well as people interested in the themes and ideas they
are exploring. Each exhibit is curated to explore and
invoke conversation about human rights, social justice
and social change, issues of sustainability, climate and the
environment.

With each exhibit, we include an interactive aspect where

the public can reflect on the theme of the show and have
an opportunity to contribute to the show.

Another socially engaged artist we worked with recently

is Drew Riley for her show, “Gender Portraits.” About her
work, Drew write, “My series, Gender Portraits, explores
the complexity of gender by documenting the experiences
and struggles of transgender, intersex, and gender
nonconforming people. My goal is to introduce the viewer,
in an intimate and relatable way, to real people whose
existence challenges narrow, binary concepts of gender
identity, expression, and bodies.”For this show, we included
the written interviews that Drew did with her painting
subjects. We printed these interviews in full and put them
on the wall with the paintings. Several visitors to the
gallery said the stories in the interviews were very moving
and made the visual art all the more powerful. We also

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 hosted an artist talk with Drew, and this was posted online
for people who couldn’t attend. For most of our artists, we
host artist talks as this gives community members a way
to talk with and hear directly from the artist.

We also do a show every year called “Farmer as Artist.” For

this, we invite people who work in agriculture to submit
artwork. It has turned into a great community event,
bringing together both farmers and non-farmers. It also
gives people who don’t typically show in a gallery a chance
to do so and it expands the idea of what belongs on the
gallery walls. For the show ROUX, we exhibited the work
of Ann Johnson, Rabéa Ballin, Delita Martin and Lovie
Olivia, four women printmakers who together examine
cultural and societal issues of genealogy, feminism, identity,
& other topics affecting women of the African Diaspora.
We displayed a series by Delita Martin that included over
200 dinner plates upon which she had drawn portraits of
African American women. Seeing all of these portraits
together was very powerful.

To accompany this, we had an activity that allowed visitors

to create portraits of their own on plates and reflect on
the question of identity. We also do group shows centered
around a theme and striveto include a diverse group of
artists. For example, we did a show called, “Care/Giver: In
Memory’s Hold for which we askedthirty artists,writers
and community members to explore a significant
caregiving relationship--or the meaning of care itself.
This show included visual art and written pieces, and
happened to openright after the election of Trump. For the
participatory activity, we asked visitors to write or draw

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 “We believe in art as an essential conduit
for social change & in bringing writers and
artists into conversation & in participatory
co-creation with people of all ages.”
about the following prompts: “How do you want to be cared
for? Who cares for you? Who taught you about caring for
others? Who do you give care to, and how? Who needs
care and isn’t getting it? What is care?” These writings and
drawings were displayed on a community wall during the
show. We received lots of feedback on how helpful it was
to have a space for this kind of expression after such a
divisive election.

We try to be a space that is free and open to all, but I wish

we had more long-term East Austin residents coming to
the gallery. This is something that I know we need to work
on –it’s not just going to happen on its own. Unfortunately,
it is getting more and more expensive to live and operate a
business in Central East Austin.

My goal is for Prizer to be a space that is truly inclusive and

that fosters dialogue and the exchange ofideas in an area
of town that is becoming more and more commercialized.
I think it is important to still have physical spaces such for
people of diverse backgrounds to gather.

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push against the tide
Get out they said,
while you still can
because the grass isn't looking any greener
on your side.

This wave only gets stronger.

They said if you push against the tide,

they cannot be held responsible
for what happens to you.

This fear turned into a healthy awareness

Revved up my internal fire
So I can rise above
and outcry alongside my brothers and sisters.

I cannot turn my back on my home

and let them plant their seeds on my soil.
We were here first,
the roots of who we are run deep
in the veins of East Austin.

There's no use in shouting anymore they said,

but I say
I won't hush.

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11
The Role of Non-Profits
in the Neighborhood
 Their Story:
Jolt Texas
Jolt Texas is a Texas-based multi-issue organization that
supports Latinos across Texas through their movement to
drive change in their communities and mobilize others to
action. 

“Jolt doesn’t stand for any one party or

politician — it stands for the Latino community,
families, and parents who worked hard to give
their children everything they didn’t have. Jolt
supports Latinos to make change by making
sure they have a say in how Texas is run.”
Jolt is building the capacity of grassroots leaders by
bringing together Latino organizations across Texas to
create and implement campaigns that tackle the issues the
community faces. Their goal is to ensure that the voices of
Latinos are being heard and that the major issues impacting
Latinos in Texas are being discussed and addressed.
Through bringing artists and musicians together to share
the stories of Latino families and creating a culture of
resistance, Jolt is bringing pride and a sense of belonging
to the community. 

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 Their Story:
Resistencia Bookstore
Lilia Rosas: “Resistencia Bookstore right now is probably
the longest running Chican@/Latin@/Latinx/Indigenous
bookstore in Central Texas, that is continuously run. It
was started in 1981 by Raúl Salinas, who passed away in
2008, he was a poet, a human rights activist, a prisoner,
a community leader, a filmmaker, and a professor at St.
Edward’s. When he got released from prison, his dream
was to create a space that reflected the vibrancy and beauty
of the emerging Chican@/Latinx/Indigenous literature.

“his dream was to create a space that reflected

the vibrancy and beauty of the emerging
Chican@/Latinx/Indigenous literature”
It was during the 80s, so it was kind of the tail-end of a lot
of the social movements - the Civil Rights movement, the
Black Freedom movement, the Women’s Rights movement,
the Chican@/Chicanx Power movement. All these different
movements at this point were reconfiguring themselves.
People were writing and reflecting, but the thing was that
you didn’t see that represented in bookstores. Since it was
80s, a bookstore would have been the most logical place to
go for this kind of information. People didn’t have access
to the Internet like today. So people had to go to a cultural
site to read or talk to people to see what they could find
out. So he wanted to create a space in that spirit.
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Resistencia right now is in its fifth iteration, which means
we’ve moved, at least in Austin, five times. One of the
ways we’ve survived was moving. Running a bookstore is
extremely difficult, it’s not always viable, so there’s creative
ways in which you have to think about how to survive.
And trying to keep rent low is one of them. In Austin,
this is a recurring question everywhere. For cultural arts
organizations, this is a really pressing question because
the city supports in some ways, but there isn’t any such
thing as rent control. We can make some parallels to
students: It’s like you want us here, but we don’t have any
affordable place to live. Same idea - you want us here, but
you don’t give us any affordable place to work. So what
are we supposed to do. Red Salmon Arts is what enables
us to do all of Resistencia’s programming for free. We’re
not confused about that, we want our programming to
be free. In order to fully enact and support and create
cultural arts that was Chican@/Latin@/Latinx/Indigenous-
centered, that maybe a way to do this was to create a non-
profit that cultivates that programming. So Red Salmon
Arts is dedicated to that one simple premise−how do
we create Chican@/Latin@/Latinx/Indigenous-centered
programming that emphasizes cultural arts and literature
and literacy.

Red Salmon Arts officially became a non-profit in 2001,

but had existed prior to that in the 90s. Which allowed us
to apply to get funding from the city, and the city actually
has a rich cultural arts program that provides grants to
arts organizations. This Red Salmon Arts-Resistencia
partnership allows us to have the freedom, so at least in this
iteration, we don’t have to be a traditional bookstore. With
Resistencia, we’re very small, part of it is volunteer-run,

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 it ebbs and flows, our hours can range from consistent to
inconsistent because it depends on the obligations of other
people. But at least with Red Salmon Arts, we are able to
consistently fulfill our different kinds of programming and
make them available−some have been really successful
and huge, and some of them have been really intimate and
small. Now that Austin is very huge, I have to consider how
do we market to people. 

“We don’t have to be a

traditional bookstore.”
When Resistencia first started, it was more of a traditional
bookstore, and it was only in the last 5 years that we’ve
reconfigured that model. Resistencia started on East 6th
Street, which traditionally was a Mexican-American
working-class neighborhood. You can see remnants of it
now, but not really. Then it was moved to three locations
off of South 1st Street. The third location was the most
consistently recognized location−when people remember
Resistencia, they remember that location. We were also
there the longest−we were there from 1999 to 2014. I’m
not sure about the reasoning behind the other moves, but
the last move was directly because of gentrification. We
couldn’t afford to be off of South 1st anymore. I used to
live in that neighborhood too, so I know that neighborhood
really well. South 1st was a working-class, Mexican-
American neighborhood. This was in the 90s, and South
1st was known then for its Mexican restaurants, they were
just small restaurants−nothing fancy−and auto shops. That
was it. But now it’s very different. 

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 “I still really struggle with that, like I question
am I doing a good job? Is this fully-represented?
Could it be better? Then people remind me that I
don’t do this full-time.”
After Raúl’s passing in 2008, the caretaker and director
of Red Salmon Arts, Rene Valdez, asked me to take over
because he needed someone he could count on and trust who
was familiar with the inner-workings of the organization.
He left in 2013, so I’ve been the director of Red Salmon
Arts since then. And all of this that we do is mostly part-
time, that’s the other thing that’s really challenging−we’re
not a very large organization, so we simply don’t have the
kind of funding that people get where this is the only thing
they do.

This isn’t the kind of work that’s going to end anytime

soon. For me, it’s about cultivating the space. I had no
plans to become the director, but my friend wanted to
move on so he gave my partner and I the choice - ‘you can
continue the Resistencia Bookstore and Red Salmon Arts
or you can shut it all down.’ That also shows the level of
burn-out sometimes people experience. So we really had
to think about that. And I still really struggle with that, like
I question am I doing a good job? Is this fully-represented?
Could it be better? Then people remind me that I don’t do
this full-time. But for now, I think it’s good that the space
ebbs and flows the way it is, and for the most part, I make
my peace with it. 

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 we are not responsible
We are not responsible for any damages to your dignity.
We reserve the right to paint over your history.
The colors are faded.
Some fresh white paint won’t hurt anybody.

Out with the old,

In with the new new new
Renovation trumps preservation
Let’s not waste resources on things with no value.
Community is overrated.

We cannot guarantee you a reservation.

It’s not first-come, first-serve any more
It’s either make some more pocket change or get out.
There are no handouts.

There’s no room for you here.

You can try across town.
Maybe they fit your budget.

If you cannot keep up,

Step aside or
you will be pushed out of the way.

It’s not our obligation to make space for you.

We have no interest in you
So move on.
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 The Role of Street Art in
the Neighborhood

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 Their Story:
Arte Texas
The legacy of Arte Texas is for artists and muralists to
give back to the community they are rooted in and draw
inspirations from their works of art. Arte Texas is focused
on preserving, restoring, and celebrating the murals of
street art and public painting from the heart and soul
of East Austin and its historic and indigenous Mexican
American Chicano/Latino community. 

“Instead of complaining about gentrification,

a group of middle-aged graffiti artists have
come together to form Arte Texas, a group
of talented, civic-minded activists, repairing
their world one wall at a time.”
Executive Director Bertha Delgado developed Arte Texas
when she began to see that murals around East Austin,
where she grew up, were being painted over or taken
down. She felt that losing these murals was a significant
loss to the community and their culture. They not only held
a lot of meaning and value to the Latino community in
East Austin neighborhoods, but to her as well. 

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“Daughter of a Brown Beret,
daughter of a family of
advocates and activists”
Bertha Delgado: “In 2011: when I became President of
the East Town Lake Citizens Neighborhood Association,
sitting on the Parks committee, I learned that there were
several murals in my Master Plan were once there when
I was growing up - and I always wondered how did they
get there? Why are they not there anymore? Why are some
of them still there but some are destroyed - and some of
them are fading away? So I saw that these murals needed
attention and they needed preservation.

Those murals were part of our identity. I was really really

curious about figuring out how those murals got there,
so I started to research who did these murals and when -
and I started to find these individuals and I grabbed them
together and I told them how important these murals were
to many of us who live here and have lived here.

During this time back in 2015, gentrification was hitting

my neighborhood really bad. Left and right, I was trying
to save homes, I was trying to save businesses, I was trying
to get an exact understanding of what was going on here
- and why. Then in 2016, one of the murals that meant so
much to us and had been up for more than two decades,
the La Loteria mural, was painted over on East Cesar
Chavez for a South by Southwest art project. Because I

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 served as president of a neighborhood association, was a
member of a Neighborhood Plan Contact Team, and served
on the board of Community Development Commission
(CDC) for the City of Austin, I was able to outcry, get my
neighborhood together and unite and outcry for the mural
to be put back. And that became the launching point of
why I became an art organizer. Because of the disrespect,
and the fact that our mural had been stripped from us. And
it was happening during the exact time I was researching
what happened to all of our murals in the neighborhood,
so it was great timing - I was able to get it saved, I was able
to bring back the local original artist and even integrate
other artists to redevelop the mural to what it is today. 

“I believe that made people realize that there’s

still a voice in East Austin. People still care
about their culture, art and homes. When
murals like these are lost, it’s heartbreaking.”
For the 20 to 30 years they were doing art in the street,
these artists never actually got recognized, they never
got compensated. Especially as minorities, I felt like we
were receiving the end of the stick, and I wanted to know
how could we be put on the map? How could artists be
compensated and actually recognized for their work?
So I organized a cultural barrio art exhibit in 2016,  “La
Lucha Sigue” (“The Struggle Continues”), that featured 30
paintings from 12 artists, where they could express who
they were and what their statement was. 

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 Serving as a Park Committee president, I had allocated
2% of the Holly Shores Master Plan’s budget to the Art
in Public Places program. The “For la Raza” project was
my first commissioned piece through the City of Austin.
We brought back the original artists, Robert Herrera and
Oscar Cortez, who had painted the mural 26 years ago
in 1992, to restore the mural that meant the world to our
neighborhood.

Throughout the decades we saw the mural get distorted

and we wanted that mural to bring the community back
together. The "For la Raza" mural stands for who we are
and how the knowledge about our culture is so vital,
especially as we are being raised in our community - that
we keep it vibrant and alive so we can show our children
decades later that we were part of a masterpiece. 

“It's not about how much money you make, it's

not about who did what and who didn't do what,
it's about preserving our culture.”
Throughout the last three years, art shows and street
murals have been my main focus and it's been very
important for our people to know that we have a place
somewhere. That's why I keep doing it - to bring murals
back to street and to bring people together. We brought
congressmen, the mayor, elected officials to our event, we
brought artists, and even children - where the artists teach
the children how to participate in a masterpiece. 

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 “preservation lasts a lifetime−it will always
be there for generations to come and that's
my main goal right now in East Austin:
preservation because we're being stripped
away, little by little, piece by piece”
I want to make sure the people I grew up with, the people I
saw, would be recognized and appreciated for their work.
I've done 4 murals and the artists involved all received
recognition and compensation. It's not about how much
money you make, it's not about who did what and who
didn't do what, it's about preserving our culture. When you
preserve your culture and you preserve art−preservation
lasts a lifetime - it will always be there for generations to
come and that's my main goal right now in East Austin:
preservation because we're being stripped away, little
by little, piece by piece. And making sure our artists feel
like they're someone and that they're part of something
and don't have to feel ashamed about what they want to
express. 

I see people just giving up. Not picking up the paintbrush

again, not picking up the canvas again, not picking up the
spray can again. Why? Because nobody cares. Well we
care, I care, let's make something happen.

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every person counts
All we have is each other.
we have been pushed down
too many times
but we haven’t fallen.
we refuse to.

We keep holding
onto our dreams
onto the hope
to one day,
embrace the entirety
of our true selves
loud and proud,
in the faces of the disdain.

I grab your hand,

you grab mine
we empower each other
with strength and glory,
undying forces,
entitled to a place in the world.

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