Passport to Texas

Centennial Artist, Clemente Guzman

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This is Passport to Texas

I love nature. I love being outside.

Artist Clemente Guzman has a genuine affection for the outdoors. He spent twenty-nine and a half years at Texas Parks and Wildlife depicting the natural beauty of the state.

I create art because it inspires me, it moves me, and being out in nature does that to me. It has that magic. You know when you have it, because you can’t sleep. You know you get up. It’s like falling in love. You know, you’re just thinking of that all the time.

Now Clemente has come out of retirement for a higher calling. He’s one of thirty-one centennial artists chosen to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Texas State Parks. Government Canyon State Park is his first assignment.

I went out there to Government Canyon and I did some of the trails, especially one of them that goes to the dinosaur tracks. And I took some pictures and got my mind thinking. I found this lizard that I though it would be a great idea to put him inside of a dinosaur track. It just fit beautifully, the angle of the lizard and the footprint. I’m going to paint that for Government Canyon.

The centennial artists will cover sixty-two parks in all, and their work will be featured in a printed book to be published in the centennial year 2023.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Texas State Parks.

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This is Passport to Texas

The year 2023 is the centennial anniversary of Texas State Parks, and thirty-one Texas artists have been chosen to create illustrations for a printed book about the State Park System.

The whole history of conservation in the United States, particularly in the national parks, it was aided and abetted by artists.

Former Texas Parks and Wildlife executive director Andy Sansom is project organizer and co-author of the centennial book.

They are all Texas artists. Each one of them will paint two paintings. There will be sixty-two parks in the book. And then the text will be written by me and my colleague Bill Reaves. And Bill will write mainly about the artists, and then my portion of the book will be about the State Park System. ‘Be a little bit of history, a little bit of personal reflection on my own experiences, a little bit about contemporary issues facing state parks, and celebration of the hundredth anniversary.

The paintings will be offered for sale, and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation to benefit the State Park System.

The book is scheduled to come out during the centennial year, along with an initial public exhibition of the paintings at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Painting: An evening walk along looking at the Resaca off Retama St by St. Joe. Artist: Jesus Toro Martinez

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This is Passport to Texas

When San Antonio artist, and native Texan, Jesus “Toro” Martinez, isn’t inside his studio at Lone Star Art Space, he’s nearby, collecting materials for his work.

This morning I got some trash along the San Pedro Creek, here outside my studio. This is a piece of aluminum can; I’m cutting it into pieces, so I can put it into my grinder and start making different levels of pigment.

He creates pigments from trash that washes up along the creek bed. When we met, he was working on a series called Creeks and Rivers.

Our Texas lands are so beautiful and vast, and we need to figure out how to protect them. This is more or less a way of me trying to advocate for that by showing it in my work, and then showing them the process of where it came from.

For years Toro has turned non-traditional elements into pigments for his abstract paintings

And now, I’ve created more of a stronger cause, such as: let’s clean our rivers and creeks. This is stuff that I’m finding here. And going down to the gulf—these will end up down there. And since I love fish, I don’t like to see my fish to start tasting like plastic.

Toro’s work is available in Texas through Lone Star Art Space and Dock Space Gallery in San Antonio.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.