episode sixteen | marco sánchez

Published 12 June 2019

Miranda Metcalf Hello print friends, and welcome to a very special episode of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend), the internet's number one printmaking podcast. This week is a double release with one version of my interview in Spanish and the other in English. My cohost this week is the lovely and talented Maya Verdugo. Oh, hi, Maya.

Maya Verdugo  Hi, Miranda. I'm Maya, and I'm a longtime friend and one of the many superfans of Miranda and all the hard work that she does with Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) and the global printmaking universe. I'm super excited to be a part of her work this week and looking forward to your guys's feedback and contributions to our future collaborations. For my interview with Marco in Spanish, please see our second episode released this week.

Miranda Metcalf  Thanks, Maya. I know everyone will be looking forward to listening to that. Our guest this week is Marco Sanchez. Marco is a Mexican born printmaker, currently getting his MFA at Edinboro University, but grew up in the border town of El Paso, Texas. His work ranges from his relationship with his mentors and peers to his cultural background and Mexican folklore, and is most recently exploring the notion of immigrant identity and the role it plays in society as a result of the current political climate in the United States. For more information about Marco, as always, there's links in the show notes. I'm going to keep the housekeeping this week pretty short so we can dive right into this special episode. But lest we forget, there's a great online print gallery at helloprintfriend.com with prints from Southeast Asia and Australia, and our Patreon page has levels starting at just $1 a month. And last but certainly not least, if you like this episode, maybe share it with a friend or fellow printmaker. Alright, without further ado, here's Marco. Hi, Maya. Hi, Marco. How's it going? 

Maya Verdugo  Hi. 

Marco Sanchez  Hello. Going well. 

Miranda Metcalf  Thank you both for joining me for this experimental version of Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend). 

Maya Verdugo  Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, absolutely. Just the way like it, experimenting. 

Miranda Metcalf  So I'm doing something a little different, as any of my listeners may have guessed today. I have two people on the line. One is in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, and the other is in Seattle, Washington. And I am, of course, sitting in Sydney, Australia. What we're doing though, is we're going to do a double release of this episode, once in Spanish and once in English. My guest this week is Marco Sanchez, who we're going to get to know, and my cohost this week is Maya Verdugo. And so I will be conducting the interview in English with questions that Maya and I have both contributed, and then for the Spanish version, Maya will be conducting it in Spanish with Marco. So Marco gets to talk about himself for two hours tonight.

Marco Sanchez  I hope you don't get bored, guys. 

Miranda Metcalf  No no no, you've got stories to tell. I know. So Marco, I met you through kind of funny circumstances at SGCI, because we had a mutual friend who you hadn't met before in person, but you'd helped with one of the fundraisers. And we just met on the one of the famously unreliable SGCI buses - no shade to SGCI, we love what you do, but goddamn, your buses, people - and we hit it off, and we've been chatting and I got interested in your practice and your backstory, so I'm excited to share that with people. But would you like to introduce yourself a little bit, where you are and what you do?

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, absolutely. Originally I'm from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. And I migrated, I suppose, to El Paso, which... it's a funny word to say, "migrate," when you're from the border, because it's like you're always in this realm that's like you're in one, then the other, and there's just kind of a duality that you're from both places, I guess. Now I'm finishing my second year and going into my thesis year in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, where I am doing my MFA in printmaking. I did a double major, dual concentration, for my BFA in painting and printmaking. But again, we're in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, a little far from home, but I think it definitely helped develop my practice even further.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, definitely. I think that sometimes going to those out of the way places where you feel sort of isolated can be hard, but it can also make you really focus on what's going on internally, because all of a sudden, these distractions that you have fall away a little bit, and then it's just like, Oh, shit. It's just me and my work now.

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, you're absolutely right. And when I was back home in El Paso, people always said, 'Oh, El Paso, such a small town.' And this was out of towners, whether they were from, I don't know, Chicago or St. Louis or wherever, even from smaller towns. And El Paso's close to 700,000 people and then Edinboro is about 7,000. So I consider this quite a big change. This is a small town, it's definitely rural town USA.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, that sounds like a big change from a town of 700,000 to 7,000 and from the south to the north. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in El Paso and being on the border? You touched on it a little bit, but it seems like it's such a culturally specific place. You know, something that's sort of interesting is that my cohost this week, Maya, she's also from a border town. She grew up in Nogales, Arizona. And so we've got two border town kids on the pod today.

Marco Sanchez  And we're both up north now, right, one's East Coast, one's West Coast. To go back to your question, I don't know, living on the border is always... you know, I hadn't really left the border till I was about, I want to say 23, when I started traveling abroad. I really wasn't doing much prior to enrolling in college. I was a non-traditional, because I started university at 27, but we can come back to this in a bit. It was always different, because the politics around the border, I think there's always a lot of history that isn't told. There's a lot of stuff that not even people within just that region are aware. And there's a big multicultural prescence, primarily Hispanic, primarily Mexican, but we do have a base in El Paso, which is called Fort Bliss. So there's a lot of German, there's a pretty big Asian community in one part of El Paso. And I don't know, I always enjoyed that. I always enjoyed having friends from all walks of life, from different parts of not just the country, but different parts of the world. And moving up to a place like Edinboro, Pennsylvania, which... I've always been a minority, being Mexican in the US. My father was born here, my mom naturalized, and then all my siblings were born here, they just happened to be living in Mexico when I was born. So there's a saying in Spanish, "ni de aqui, ni de alla." So you're not from here, you're not from there. It's weird. I don't know if Maya can attest to that. 

Maya Verdugo  Definitely. 

Marco Sanchez  But yeah, moving from a place where I've always been a minority, but not the minority, because the Hispanic population or Latino population was always about 70 percent, and white was the next, being I think like 15 something percent or so. And then the rest, you know, Asian or African American or whatever, fall in between. But coming up here, I think white makes up like 92 percent of the population. I think Latino was about 0.5 percent. So I am finally the minority, or I've always been a minority, but now I'm the minority. And that was a whole can of worms, too.

Miranda Metcalf  Was that sort of... I mean, I'm sure it must have been a bit of culture shock.

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, absolutely. I came to visit before agreeing to come here. When I was applying to grad schools, I knew a couple things. I knew I didn't want to stay in Texas. I knew I didn't want to stay in the southwest. And I didn't want to go to California or New York because of the cost of living. And when I was looking at professors and places at different schools, I really loved my professor's work. His name's Bill Mathie. And Doug Eberhardt wasn't on my radar, but he's a phenomenal screen printer as well. So I came to visit in March and it was definitely strange. I landed in Pittsburgh, Doug picked me up, and we drove almost two hours up, Edinboro's about two hours from Pittsburgh. So he picked me up from the airport, we drove up. And yeah, it was definitely small and cold. The food was absolutely the thing that worried me the most. It did not - I was gonna say did not disappoint, but I guess it did not disappoint fully. I cook quite a bit. I love to cook and so I make sure I eat well.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, yeah, for sure. I bet that must help a little bit with homesickness, to be able to at least eat somehow how you want to eat when you're far from home.

Marco Sanchez  Oh, yeah. It does. Two weeks ago, I was making food for my roommate, myself, and a couple other friends, and I was roasting chiles, like chile de arbol and a couple other dry chiles, like guajillo and ancho, and they were all choking and dying and coughing and were like, 'Are you macing us? Are you trying to mace us?' I was like, 'Relax!' Or like, 'The smoke alarms are gonna go off!' I was like, 'Let them go off.' It was too spicy for them.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, I'm sure Maya is having flashbacks to Sunday mornings in our apartment making food, I'm just like, 'These Scandanavian taste buds cannot handle this! I'm not built for this!' So growing up in El Paso, what role did art play in in your childhood?

Marco Sanchez  That's funny because, well, you and I had a brief conversation about printmaking and artwork and how I came to be in the field. And it always was - I guess more so when I lived in Mexico and Juarez - because my grandfather, Guillermo Cordero, was a painter and printmaker, and I used to draw a lot with him when I was a toddler. And then when he moved to southern Mexico, he moved to Michoacan, I think when I was like six years old, so I wouldn't get to see him too often. But we always had a lot of his paintings around at home. And he just passed away this September, and his preferred mediums were always watercolor and ink and tempera. He still mixes yolk in his pigment. So that was always something that was present at home, and even in El Paso. And he would send work up, and my mom was kind of like his manager and would try and get shows set up for him, both in Juarez and in El Paso. And I think he set up Santa Fe, New Mexico as well at one point. But it wasn't, I don't know, it's something that I did not practice at all up until when I was 27. But I don't know, I guess I dismissed it, I didn't really partake of the drawing or painting or any form of art making. When I did it is more when I felt a little bit all alone, you know, and just to pass the time. And I always found a bit of companionship with a pen and paper or whatever the mediums I was using. And I just found friendship with friends, you know, like little kids seek other kids, and they seek friendship and have a good time, and I did sports all my life. And so I stopped doing artwork for... if l say a decade, it's probably more than that. I didn't do any sort of artwork for 12, 13, 14, maybe 15 years.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, it almost sounds like it was so present that it was almost invisible in an interesting way. 

Marco Sanchez  That's a good way to put it.

Miranda Metcalf  So what were you sort of doing between, it sounds like getting interested in sports, and then between then and 27? What was your life like?

Marco Sanchez  That's funny. A whole lot of nothing, I guess. A whole lot of finding yourself, you know, as a lot of kids do. Getting in trouble a bit. But I also started backpacking, I started traveling, and what interested me the most was anthropology. I love learning about cultures, and granted, I've only traveled in Latin America, Central America, South America, like Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, again, Central America, from Panama to El Salvador, and then plenty of Mexico. Nowadays, it's mostly Mexico that I travel, and primarily because of printmaking. But I wasn't doing much more than that. I was working, I was bartending. I think I bartended for about 12 years of my life. And it was because of the traveling, because of backpacking with one of my best friends. We started in Venezuela. And again, it was because of sports, we flew to Caracas to go watch the Copa America, which is kind of like the World Cup, but just the Americas. And we went to, of course, watch the Mexican national team. And we didn't fly back at all, we took buses, we took private, I guess kind of like Ubers before Uber were a thing, that people would set up outside of bus stations. They're like, 'Oh, well we have a car, we'll take you for like a fraction of the cost. And we can stop whenever you want, blah, blah, blah,' so we took that, we also took a boat from Colombia, from Cartagena, to Colon, Panama, that took like six days out at open sea. And I guess at this point, I was doing a bit of photography, too. I don't know how many of us, when we're kind of getting into artwork, photography is the easiest medium or the first that kind of comes to mind to be sort of deep. And I still do a bit of photography. And it's mostly to use most photos as reference, but I don't take like artistic photos. And I never seeked out, you know, finding models to do the whole modeling photography either. It's something that I've never enjoyed. But I guess that's kind of how I started, and then my best friend and I, Raul, we ended up visiting my grandfather in Pátzcuaro Michoacán. And we visited, we stayed with him and you know, saw him working in his studio, and it's something that I had not seen in, hell, like 18 years. You know, he kind of showed us around and showed us the historical spots, like national parks and different haciendas and studios, and - I guess not a print shop, because he wasn't a printmaker until maybe the last eight years of his life. On the third day that we spend time with him, he was like, 'Hey, why don't you help me paint? What are you doing sitting on your ass?' And you know, it's like, I didn't paint, so I was like, 'No, what if I mess it up?' And he's like, 'If you mess it up, I'll fix it.' So he's like, 'Here, blend this color, try and get this blue for the background. And that's all you got to paint.' So I did that. And it went fine. And he was like, 'Are you drawing anymore?' And I was like, 'No, I don't draw anymore. You know, I haven't drawn since I was a kid.' And then he tells me, he's like, 'Well, you used to draw pretty well.' I was like, 'Dude, I was seven. What do you know?' But yeah, that's kind of what sparked my interest in artwork. I was like, all right, well, anthropology, and painting, and I was thinking about cave paintings. And I was thinking about just artwork, whether it's textiles or drawings or whatever, from different cultures, I was like, I'll pursue that. And that's kind of how I got started.

Miranda Metcalf  So how much time passed between that meeting with your grandfather and pursuing formal training?

Marco Sanchez  I think about three years. And then I did start drawing more and making stencils. But formal training, yeah, it took about three more years. And again, I started originally as an anthropology [major] and painter. It wasn't until I was in my seventh class, in my second to last class to finished my painting degree, when I took my first printmaking class. I'd seen screen printing, and I'd heard terms from my grandfather, like etchings and lithography, and I was like, 'Okay.' I just saw them as artwork. I didn't know what the heck they were. And it was in my first printmaking class, you know, when I first touched a copper plate, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, this is beautiful.' 

Miranda Metcalf  I love that moment that I think so many people have had, where they're floating around in the world a little bit and then there's just something about printmaking. When they arrive, they're like, 'Oh, I'm home.'

Marco Sanchez  It sparked more of an interest, too, than painting, and I guess drawing, because I feel like they're more immediate, and there are plenty of ways to work a painting or a drawing, but printmaking was just completely foreign and alien to me that I just wanted to dive head in and not get out of there until I was done and ready. 

Miranda Metcalf  Which, it sounds like you're far from it.

Marco Sanchez  Hopefully. I mean, there's times that print does test my patience, but it is what I love about it. It's like, Crap, well okay, how do I fix this?

Miranda Metcalf  So really just kind of through the internet and through various conversations that I've had, it seems like the state of printmaking in Mexico, specifically, incredible work is coming out of there. It seems to be much more present, it seems like, in people's minds, than maybe in the US. And maybe less of the hierarchy that of course we talk about here, where it's like, painting, sculpture, and then printmaking. But I don't know if any of that's true, because again, I've never gone to Mexico specifically to seek out printmakers or do printmaking things. I really want to. But I guess this is just sort of a long winded question of trying to ask you if you could speak to kind of the state of printmaking in Mexico and what's exciting happening that you're interested in, what do you hope to go back and see, where do you travel when you travel for it there? Just a little bit of an overview, because it seems like really exciting things are happening.

Marco Sanchez  Sure. Gladly. In my time off here, I go back home and I work either at the museum - this summer, I'm actually doing a residency at the El Paso Museum of Art from June. There's also a group of print makers in El Paso, which, they're called - one of the professors from UTEP, his name is Manuel Guerra or Manny Guerra - and he has his own print shop called Horned Toad Prints. So it's him, Francisco Delgado, and Raul Monarrez. And Francisco Delgado used to be my painting professor at UTEP. But he's doing a lot more print now. So us three, along with Karl Whitaker, who's kind of like a collector. He likes to call himself an art agitator, and we all kind of call him that as well. Manny's been putting together a print exchange, and this one was the third. I barely participated on the first one last year, and that one, we had 52 or 57 artists. Don't quote me on the number, I don't remember. I think was 57. And the number from last year, from 57, to this year, went up to like 153. So it went up almost 100 artists. And artists from Oaxaca, which is primarily where we work in, with Taller Grafica Libre. We work in Mexico City with Arturo Negrete at his print shop, which, he's solely a screen printer, and his shop's called Taller 75 Grados. And the work he does, he's a master printer, he doesn't make any work himself, but I'm gonna call him the best screen printer I've ever met. And then in Veracruz, there's La Ceiba, but I've yet to go to La Ceiba. I've gone to Oaxaca a couple of times and Mexico City with him. And this summer, in July, I'm gonna go to Queretaro to display a portfolio that I was fortunate enough to have been selected to lead during SGC this year in Dallas, which is titled "Saints, Superheroes, and the Demonized," and that will be showing at a shop in Queretaro, again, that one's called La Madriguera Grafica. So yeah, that's a little bit of that. The work is phenomenal, too. If Mexico wasn't on your radar for printmaking, it's all over. I think it's also, you mentioned the hierarchy of painting, and the importance of - and I think a reason why printmaking's so big down there, also, is... my professor often calls it a democratic process. And I actually had never really thought about it in that sense, but I've always understood the sense of, okay, you make multiples, and you can sell more and for less than what a painting would be. Not to say that our end goal is to sell and sell and sell, but it's to have our works shared and be able to have one piece in multiple places at once. So it's not just for a specific view, or for an elite view, if you're a painter or a sculptor.

Miranda Metcalf  And I think specifically what I'm thinking of is, there was an SGCI once where I went to a talk, and there was a printer who worked in Mexico. And he told this anecdote to kind of start, he's like, 'I travel a lot for my work. And when I come to America, people ask me at the hotel, or who you're doing your Uber share with, "Oh, what are you here for?" And you say, "I'm here for printmaking." And they're like, "Oh, so you do like photocopiers?" You know, like, nobody gets it. But when I fly home to Mexico City, and I get in the cab, and the cab driver's making conversation with me, he's just always like, "Oh, yeah. Grafica. Yeah, yeah."' Like, it's understood there, maybe just sort of culturally, more broadly. And so it just takes up more present space in when people think about art. Would you say that that's your experience as well?

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, I completely agree. Because I think, again, going back to being a democratic process, and we think about printmaking and some of the origins, at least in Mexico, they were propagandistic. And one of the biggest movements or shops was Taller de Grafica Popular, which was led by Leopoldo Mendez, who is the creator of it, and he was my favorite artist. What they wanted to do was try and find a voice for Mexico. Because when he started this, I think he started in the 1930s. I don't know if it was 1937, to be honest, but that might be correct. And he started this as a way to find Mexican identity, because this was shortly after the Mexican Revolution, where there was still a lot of Spanish influence. And then there was a lot of Mexican nationals that were moving to the US. And then people in the US were being sent back to Mexico. And it was a way to try and find an identity. And I think it was more of a grassroots movement down there, too. And I feel that when I go down there, you know, everybody here knows Takach a phenomenal spot, right? But the presses are expensive, they are pricey, not everybody can afford them. And in Oaxaca, a lot of the presses, there's like 12 or 13 print shops in Oaxaca, like in one city. 12 or 13 within like a five mile radius. That's insane. And I was like, how the hell is this happening here, when I think the population is like half the size of El Paso, and then El Paso has only one outside of UTEP and maybe Manny Guerra's, you know? Horned Toad Prints. And down there, a bunch of those presses, if not all of them, the majority of them, are... and I might be wrong, because I know that at least a few places who I've spoken to, like the print shop owners, and places where you go and do residencies, and some of these print shops are like galleries, and they have a press and it's like, 'Hey, well, where did you guys get your press?' And there's a man that used to be an engineer. And now he's just making presses. A really nice size press that you can print like 30 x 40, a matrix 30 x 40 fits on there, will cost you like $2500. If you try to get something here in the US, even if it's refurbished or used, you're gonna be dropping like $8000 or so. And I think that's why one of the big reasons is, it's just so much easier. And same thing, screen printing is not all that expensive. And I don't think Mexico is like, big on hierarchy. I mean, of course, there's great artists that are painters and sculptors, but yeah, it's like you said, grafica. Anywhere you go, whether it's Mexico City or anywhere, it's like, 'Yeah, grafica, grafica.' They're all aware of it.

Miranda Metcalf  It's such an interesting point, and it makes so much sense, that accessibility to the actual physical objects that you need to create this art, if it is more accessible, that it is going to be more prevalent. So it's not just either you're independently wealthy and you can have your own studio, or you're lucky enough to live in a city with a great community shop, which, you know, that's only a handful of cities, or you're in an academic institution. That's kind of the only three options when, as you say, you're looking at something that, if you're lucky, it will be $8,000 to do this work. So that is really, really neat, and it would be great if more people in the world had access to that kind of thing.

Maya Verdugo  Jumping in, I wanted to ask you if you thought that printmaking was a less accessible art medium in the US?

Marco Sanchez  I think Miranda did touch up on that a little bit, that if you're not an academic institution, or if you're not in a big city that has print studios, it can be harder to get in. And I mean, even here, in my undergrad and here, professors always reiterate the fact that, hey, you guys should take advantage of the facilities. Because if you don't pursue, I guess, further education, or if you don't think of working at a print shop or buying your own press, you're not going to have many opportunities to be working with this type of equipment. So I think it is a little harder here.

Miranda Metcalf  So I'd love to transition and talk a bit more about your work specifically now. It looks that immigrant identities and sort of their role in society within the current political climate that's happening in the United States with border politics... maybe before we jump into that, you know, I know I have a lot of listeners who are in the UK and Australia and maybe places that, because it's not as close to home, maybe only have sort of a tertiary understanding. So I thought maybe you, or even Maya as well, being both people growing up in border towns, wanted to speak to that current state.

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, gladly. How do I start? I guess, coming up here, when I was looking at grad schools, I was actually looking at Tennessee at Knoxville. And I had people that would come in, professionals, people that I've known for years, and they're like, 'Hey, careful, you know, there's still a lot of prejudice.' And all this was in 2016, while the elections were going on, and so I was like, 'Crap, do I really want to go somewhere like that?' So that had a big sway when I was applying to grad schools, and now I'm in rural Pennsylvania, very red, but... oh, my god. Anyway. When I started making work, or when Trump won and everything, and remarks that he did against, you know, Mexicans being "drug dealers" and "bad hombres" and "Mexico sending their worst," you know, that really ticked me off. And then I was in Oaxaca when it started with the child separations. And that was happening in El Paso. So that was right at home. And my mother was a social worker who was working in a shelter for a while, and her job was, along with others, to kind of do the psychological evaluations of the kids and making sure that they were okay. And they had psychologists, they had attorneys to try and do all the legal matters to get them to where they were going. But this was before the child separations, or at least the way that we see them now. So then that was right at home. And it they build this place in Tornillo, which is maybe 45 miles outside of El Paso. And again, being an immigrant myself but always being from the border, and them creating that to hold detention centers for children, alone, for scared children ranging from an infant to adulthood, so like 17, right before they turned 18. And when they turned 18, they were taking them out of there and throwing them in prison. So a lot of my work kind of started happening because of that. And so many other things, like my brother going into the Marines, one of my younger brothers, he's a Marine, he's in the reserves. And I noticed how differently people started to treat him, but not just him. Also the family. And telling us how we should all be very proud. And people had never met him, then I'd mention, 'Oh, he's a marine,' and they're like, 'Oh, tell him thank you for his service.' Not trying to attack the military or anything, because I'm a supporter of the troops, but it's like, telling us, oh, you should be really proud. And it's like, well, I should be proud to be an American moreso now? It's as if it was granted, this whole thing, this cloak, this magical cloak, that you're more patriotic because your brother or somebody in your family's in the military. And it was strange, it was really weird that they held him in higher reverence because of that, but us too. And it's like, is this what it takes for you to be patriotic? No. You can care so much about the people around you and your country without being in the service. And not just that, before leaving to the service, maybe two months before that, my brother came out as bisexual. And then now you have that whole fiasco with trans people not being permitted to fight in the military. And so I don't know. I was really mad at all that and my brother not aligning his beliefs directly to commander in chief. So yeah, a lot of that. And I felt like he was kind of being marginalized also, not just him, but you know, the kids. I don't know. That's kind of how it started. And I was in Oaxaca when all that was happening, and just one day, sitting around, and the guys at the print shop were like, 'Hey, do you want to do an etching too?' And I was like, 'Yeah.' I had this little drawing of Trump, which again, my work had never been political up until then. It had always been more about folklore and tradition and culture and heritage and what I was proud of. But then I felt like I had to be reactionary, you know, and I think that's a big thing about Mexican printmaking. Going back to like Leopoldo Mendez and Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, they were all post revolutionary artists, and they were also reactionary. And I think that's kind of what drives my work, too, looking at artists like that, looking at artists from back home like the ones I mentioned earlier, like Fransisco Delgado and Manny Guerra. And it's a way to kind of counteract that ignorance and resist those phobia, and the bigotry, and the racism that was being spewed out by specific members of the Republican Party. But yeah, I made this little print of Trump just under a bed with a pillow that said "ICE" and had a little monster repellent spray bottle. And that was when I was in Oaxaca, this last summer, was the beginning of my work going political.

Miranda Metcalf  I think that for many artists, and it sounds like for you, you have very personal connections to it through your own identity and your family's identity to the horrendous state of politics right now in the US, that kind of echoes similar things, is that they were doing one thing, their practice had this certain aspect to it, that they were maybe doing some of the work that celebrates their culture, they were doing landscapes, or they were doing just anything. And then when things started to take such a scary turn with US politics, with the election of Trump, and that kind of floodgates that it seemed to open for this simmering racism and disrespect and xenophobia that was under the surface that kind of all of a sudden seemed to be like, 'Okay, well, our commander in chief is saying these things, thank God, I can finally say them now, too.' And everything that comes with that, that the artists who've been working, it's almost like, 'Well, how can I not make work about this now? It's so on my mind, it's so eating away at me, that it has to come out somehow.' And I think that a lot of artists have made that switch and started to make really great work about it, yourself included, which is wonderful and important. It reminds me a little bit, I actually did an interview with Aaron Coleman, and one of the things, considering how disturbing and how present this is, is what role does artmaking really have to play? We're all angry, we're all scared, we're all sad. Shouldn't we just all put down our burins and go be political activists or social workers? And he said, 'I think in these times, everyone has to do what they're good at.' And everyone has that kind of role. And if you are an artist, you need to be a part of documenting, because the art is how future generations are going to remember this time and learn from it. And that all of it is part of sort of an ecosystem of resistance with everyone doing their role, which I really loved. And it certainly reminded me of what you were saying about having your work kind of take this turn. It's like you were stepping into that as like, 'Okay, I have to do this now.'

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, exactly. It's like how can you not? Whether you're a musician or a visual artist.

Miranda Metcalf  So to get into the real specifics of your work, what I've been seeing you do lately is, looks like large scale wood cuts. Really intriguing imagery, like you've got one where - are you beheaded in the most recent one?

Marco Sanchez  Yeah, yeah, that's my head. Exactly. That one, well, this is a triptych that I'm working on. And it's also, you know, having conversations in class and stuff, also, what can you touch as an artist? What social issues can you touch? Going back, let me backtrack for a second. The show that I put together for SGC was, again, titled "Saints, Superheroes, and the Demonized." And it was meant to elevate all these people that have been marginalized and demonized. After making these kind of angry prints, I was like, 'Whoa, I don't want to be angry.' Because it wears on you, too. I was like, 'I can't be making these.' So I started making other little things to kind of not be so mad all the time. And those "Saints, Superheroes, and the Demonized," it's meant to uplift people and to put them in a pedestal, where I think they belong, whether you're an immigrant, anybody who has been attacked, who's been targeted by this current administration. So whether you're a female, an immigrant, person of color, member of the LGBTQIA community. And I posed this question in seminar and said, 'Well, what can you touch? What is ours to touch, and what can't you touch?" And I've been trying to figure out what to do, and one of the things I wanted to do was a kind of a patron saint for, I guess, queer people. And I was like, 'Well, would that be okay, with me doing something like that?' And somebody in class nodded their head at me disapprovingly, like, 'No, that's not yours.' And I was like, well, everybody that I use in my work, it's people that I have conversations with, and people who I want to make sure that I represent them in the way they want to be shown. So it is about having a conversation, too. And the large scale, the one where I'm beheaded, that one was also sort of reactionary, but to violence against women and mistreatment and sexual abuse, or whatever else have you. Because also, Cuidad Juarez, where I was born, has been for many years, I believe since like 1993, the place where most femicides have occurred since, at least statistically. So this is what this triptych is supposed to be. And being a male, I'm putting myself on there, because it's like, I'm not free of guilt. I've not killed or attacked or hit a woman. But you know, I'm not proud to say, but we've all made or done or said something that would constitute abuse, whether it's in a relationship, and it was kind of like a toxic relationship, and I can definitely think of one or maybe two, that it wasn't either good for both of us, and just, you know, you kind of stay. And it's just kind of taking a bit of ownership to that sort of culpability, but also just trying to elevate these women and make something out of it. And every time that I make a piece, or at least I try, every time that I try and make a piece like this, if I sell one or two or three, I try and donate some of those proceeds to an organization. So for this, there's a battered women's shelter that, for every one of these that I sell, I'm going to try and donate like 30%. So as opposed to having it be the 30% that a gallery would take, I would donate this money, these funds, to the women's shelter. And I'm actually like working on one right now as I'm speaking to you, just kind of doing some more carving. I've printed two. But I don't want to post anything more than that until I'm done with the triptych.

Maya Verdugo  I just wanted to comment, kind of on behalf of the Mexican or even Mexican American female community, thank you for everything you do, and just your attitude towards feminism as a Hispanic male, I feel like being from the Latin American community and having the creative power to create the way that you do, it's really significant to hear your attitude towards feminism in a not forced or needy way. And I just wanted to say thank you.

Marco Sanchez  No, thank you. You know, I try. We try, and again, it's just trying to react and see what's important to me, and why I try to do what I do, you know. People can paint like a really nice portrait. And it's like, I can sit here and do portraits, because I've done a couple, and I don't know, they're no more than that. But I'm trying to tackle issues that are either important or dear to me. And I also saw a lot of just abuse at home when I was growing up. In the Latin American community, unfortunately, there's a lot of that. And then I remember just seeing a lot of it at home. And when I was growing up, fortunately, for the better, both my parents just became better people. Part of the reason, I guess, of this triptych, is my response to a lot of personal issues that I've had and things that I have been I guess both remorseful and resentful, but also ashamed of, and just trying to tackle certain things.

Maya Verdugo  I think it's inspiring to hear that you take the initiative to tackle that or to feel and express that in the ways that you do. And coming from a mutual border town as well, and that community and the "neither here nor there" concept that's very true amongst I think many border children and people in general, it's really refreshing and inspiring to hear that out of that, you've chosen to bring that with you no matter where you are in what you create. It's inspirational to hear that. 

Marco Sanchez  I appreciate you saying that as well.

Miranda Metcalf  I was thinking, in line with what Maya was saying, is that it seems like what you're sort of tackling and wrestling with then is something that a lot of men that I know are dealing with, which is sort of in these last years, when the Me Too movement and call out culture and all of that is happening, I think every single man that I'm close to, all of them are looking to their past and saying, 'Oh my gosh, was that ever me?' And really having very hard emotions about it because, it probably isn't a surprise to know, that pretty much every man I'm close with enough to have those conversations with are liberal, they're artists, they would say they're feminists, they're sort of like, 'Well, I'm one of the good ones.' And I mean that in a way that they've earned thinking that, because they have been making an effort. But now this prevalence, and especially the casualness, of these male-female dynamics, particularly in social, sexual, and romantic situations, are coming out. That is some hard shit to wade through. And I have so much respect and love for the men who are doing it because it's not easy, but it is so important. So shout out to you boys who are doing the work. For sure.

Maya Verdugo  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thank you.

Miranda Metcalf  We see you and we appreciate you. We're all kind of treading forward into this unknown world and figuring out what the other side's gonna look like as this super turbulent time is upon us. So maybe going back a bit specifically to your work, is there anything else particularly related to border politics or Mexican-American cultural identity that you've done in the past, or that's on the horizon, that you wanted to speak to?

Marco Sanchez  I guess, not really tackling much of identity per se anymore, at least not on personal identity. You know, moving up here at first, it was more about... first of all, I have to tell everybody, who am I and where I'm from and what my identity is, inform everybody about that. And that can be tiresome as well. Like going out to a restaurant or going out to a bar and having people tell you like, 'Oh my god, what are you?' Because you look like nobody up here. Or you know, I wear jorongos, or ponchos, I guess. And getting to the bar and I'm wearing one of those and they're colorful, and people are asking me like, 'Oh my gosh, is that for religious purposes?' I'm like, 'Dude, you know it's like 13 degrees out right? Like, it's cold. I wanna stay warm. I brought these up for a reason.' But no, right now, I think I'm trucking through this, which is more - this series, which is, again, to just elevate everybody. I've been also trying to break off from just working on paper, I've been trying to work a bit more multidisciplinary fashion, where... I have this idea for an installation. One thing I've been trying to do is, in a sense, decolonize my work, so not thinking too much about European aesthetic, but I've also never considered myself a Chicano artist, which I think there's a good indicator, when you look at a piece of work, and it's a good indicator that it belongs to a Chicano or Mexican-American artist. No, I've always said, I'm a Mexican artist living and working in the US. But I do align myself, I think we do go hand in hand with Chicano artists. I'm also not trying to look at shrines too much, or altarpieces. Bec ause I am trying to kind of make some of those but to house like either a superhero or like this cumbia playing, xenophobe fear-inducing cumbia players, but I'm trying to decide, well, how am I going to display them outside of just paper? And so I have all these tires that, luckily, one of my professor was going to get rid of them. And, you know, trying to house those prints or that work, those images, within these tires, and just kind of going back and using my painting degree, and paint a little bit on these tires and making other sort of installations for them. But that's me also trying not to look at traditional Catholic elements or European elements. So I don't know if that answers your question or not.

Miranda Metcalf  Yeah, no, definitely. I'm really interested in what you were saying about, as you said, like decolonizing your work and moving away from that Western European aesthetic, which is interesting, because I know that you've used a little bit of folklore before and I know that your grandfather had really beautiful folkloric characters and figures in his paintings as well. Is there any connection in there between that inspiration and what you're doing now?

Marco Sanchez  You know, I have ideas to make work... I guess there is a bit of folklore with what I'm doing. And that would be not directly tied to my grandfather. I have a couple of ideas for a series or two to kind of make work again to pay tribute to him. But yes, "rasquachismo," I don't know if you've ever heard the term, or "rasquache." So rasquachismo is sort of a movement that used to have... rasquache comes from a pre-colonial term from Nahuatl, and rasquache had negative connotations, it meant to be of lower class or just kind of ghetto, and then it made a transition to, you know, we call something "rasquache," or like, this style has "rasquachismo." That means that you're kind of dismissing the necessity for precious materials or formal training or, you know, things can be crude, and they don't have to be pristine and think about everything entirely too academicall. So it's like, people would make work with what they had. And I'm trying not to make it look like I'm trying hard, because I'm really not trying hard. But I've built a couple art altarpieces before that were a little different. But now it's like using tires. I remember living in Mexico and Juarez, or you go elsewhere, and poor neighborhoods, they use tires to make some sort of divider or to make, I don't remember where it was in Latin America that - I don't know if it was Colombia or Venezuela or where - that I saw a documentary, and they were building kind of like a levee out of tires. So to prevent the water from coming up, and it's like, tires are something that's always present. And it's something that were always present in my mind when I was a kid. We'd play with tires, or we prop up a tire that was discarded in the back, you know, thrown like in a field, and we'd prop that up against a wall and we'd use that to jump the wall. So I don't know, I'm trying to kind of work in that way too. And I've been trying to do that for a while, but I always just find myself going back and editioning work. And I don't know, I've been trying to step away from that, and just exploring different outlets and different ways to making work and showing the work. So I don't know, I think that comes a bit with that sort of identity. One thing I took from one of my professors was to not treat everything like a precious object.

Miranda Metcalf  I think that's significant. Particularly when you're talking about that idea of decolonization, because that formal training hierarchy, that idea that the very best art is the art that is the most realistic and you can really see that kind of very formal training in, let's say, figure drawing, or something like that, of course that has to do with access to institutions, access to teachers, access to money that opens the door to all those places, and comes very much from a European model of thinking about what makes quote-unquote "good" art. So I love that idea of kind of breaking down that kind of tightness and the rigidity, and just returning to a looseness of creation where you don't feel like you're beholden to these structures that you're born into but that may not be a part of you. One of the most amazing classes that I took when I was doing my graduate work was a graduate seminar on Aztec art. And you know, we looked at the codices from Tenochtitlan and the sort of pre- and post-colonial images and how they changed so much, but the kind of imagery that comes before any kind of European influence is incredible. And it's so affecting and beautiful and significant. And it makes you realize how rarely in our lives we see visual culture that is not, one way or another, brought back to the fucking Renaissance. You know? It's just like, it's like, wow, we're missing out on a whole world. We're missing out on 1000 worlds, because everything that we do is just like, "Michelangelo was the best."

Marco Sanchez  I guess one thing too that I didn't touch upon is, thinking about where you come from and what's important, I was just staring back at those tires and I have this plaster piece, this etching that I did of my father, and he's a contractor. So I wanted to make a piece to kind of tie it down to him and it's like, well, how do I make something that connects to my father, which in turn kind of connects to me? Because I did construction for a bit with him as well. And you know, I made this piece on plaster and I had a solo show, my first year that I was here, I had a solo show back home, and I was like, 'Well how else do I display it?' So I started adding chicken wire, and that was the reason that I built my first altarpiece. And it's like, again, what's important? And what's part of your identity? And you know, kind of shifting that to him as well. And I think that's part of the whole "rasquachismo," too, why I'm interested in materials that aren't precious and tying it together and seeing where the heck we end up. I stumble upon myself all the freakin time. So when Miranda asked me if I'd be interested in doing this, I was like, 'Yeah, heck yeah.' We had a good conversation about my grandfather and a couple other things, and it was like, hey!

Maya Verdugo  And I just wanted to make a really quick comment on this rasquachismo concept you've been discussing. It's very familiar in the small town community where I come from. And to go outside, quote-unquote, "rasquacha" was very typical of kind of like a white trash concept, where you know, you exit the house in your PJs and a messy bun. And it's just interesting to hear it used in an artistic setting where, you know, my families use it in reference to the way people dress, but it really does apply to a lot more than just that. And it's funny to hear someone else use it in a much more sophisticated setting.

Miranda Metcalf  That's so interesting. You know, being from a border town, and that's a place where, at the moment, that imaginary line in the sand, so to speak, is a place of such tension and pain and politics, and it's inspiring a lot of art. But what do you think is kind of like the state of art in border towns? You know, how is it in people's lives, who are sort of being most directly affected by it?

Marco Sanchez  Well, we have the Rio Grande, right. And at the bottom, there's always different murals. And I remember crossing, walking over the bridge that connects El Paso to Juarez. So walking over and just seeing all these murals, I remember, going back, seeing Bush. Like stuff anti-Bush during like, the Gulf War. So it is prevalent, and it always goes to politics. And there's always comparisons between, I guess, Nazis, again, like a kind of rebirth of them. I don't know, at least in El Paso and in Juarez, the politics are very present. And it is all mostly, I don't want to say to attack or target, but it's trying to bring light to certain issues. When the whole family separation started happening, one of the professors from UTEP, now he's a sculpture professor, his work is very based on that too and just kind of demonizing the current administration, but we put up a fundraiser exhibition to try and get funding for this place called Annunciation House, which is a house that's supposed to - it's a shelter. And the goal was set at $1000. And there was an online auction, it was open, I think, from Monday to Friday, and Friday was the reception at the small gallery, that you could also go and bid in person. And our goal was, again, a grand, and we sold just shy of seven grand, we made just shy of seven grand for Annunciation House. So it's something that is very present right now. I don't know what is going on right now, I haven't been in touch with many of them as to if they've been doing any more fundraisers of that sort. I think the reason why we met, Miranda, was because a piece that I donated to your friend's gallery up in New York was to raise funds for that sort of thing, also, right? Like family separation. So I do kind of try and keep that on my radar, whether it's on the border or not, if there's something that I can do, whether - hardly ever do I have the opportunity to donate money out of my pocket - but if I sell one or two or three pieces of that specific theme, then I will try and donate a bit of the proceeds to that.

Miranda Metcalf  So Marco, would you tell people where they can find you? What's the best way to follow you and see your work and buy your work and support you and all the good things?

Marco Sanchez  Sure. On my Instagram, I guess, is where I do most of my uploading and my sharing and a lot of process videos and whatnot, my Instagram handle is @onpaperandcanvas. And then my website as well, which is marcoprintsanchez.com. And that's probably the two easiest ways to find little old me.

Miranda Metcalf  I will put those in the show notes, of course. I can personally attest that Marco's stories on Instagram are always pretty much good for definitely being amusing and fun. Well, thank you guys again, and we'll be in touch about when we can meet up and do it again.

Maya Verdugo  This episode, like all episodes, was written and produced by Miranda Metcalf, with editing help from Timothy Pauszek, music by Joshua Webber, and translation and creative contribution by me, Maya Verdugo.

Miranda Metcalf  And so many extra special thanks this week to Maya for making it all possible, with her language translations, creative contributions, and general good vibes. And of course for Marco, for doing the interview twice. Did you like having this double episode? If so, hop on the Pine Copper Lime (Hello, Print Friend) Instagram and let me know. We can do more in the future. See you in two weeks.