The Legacy of Sam Coronado

All of us lost a visionary artist, cultural activist and community leader with the recent passing of Sam Z. Coronado, but he lives on through his work and the people he touched.

Coronado’s path to becoming an artist was full of twists and turns. Born in Ennis, Texas on July 12, 1946, he voluntarily enlisted in the Army after high school.. When he came out of the military, he started going to art school at a community college in Dallas. “I decided that maybe I should do something different outside of art to support my habit, so I started taking engineering drawing classes,” said Coronado in a video interview recorded as part of a retrospective exhibit of his work in 2011 at the Mexic-Arte Museum.

Coronado went on to graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, where he co-founded the Chicano Art Students Association, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1975. After finishing his undergraduate studies, he tried to make a living as an artist. “But it was hard in those days, in the mid-70s,” Coronado explained in the interview. “So I decided to go to Houston to teach art at a place called the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans, but that wasn’t very lucrative. So I went back to my original field of technical illustrating and did that during the day, and did my art at night.”

Following a successful career in commercial illustration, including working for Texas Instruments, Coronado turned to cultural activism. He founded Houston’s Arcoiris, a state-wide network of Latina/o artists, in 1980. Together with artists Sylvia Orozco and Pio Pulido, he also co-founded Austin’s Mexic-Arte Museum in 1984. During this time, he owned a private gallery named Cibola Studio on 5th Street in Austin.

Coronado recalled “thinking about what my direction, in terms of an artist, would be. I started experimenting with different media from watercolors to pastels – you name it, I tried to do it. The only thing I wasn’t involved with was traditional printmaking media. Somehow or another, I got involved with printmaking, through Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles.”

During his participation at Self Help Graphics in 1991, Coronado learned that prints, a vital aspect of the Chicano art movement, could continue to reflect the Mexican American and Latino experience in the United States. It was this experience that inspired him to return to Austin and set up a studio with a similar vision.

Coronado established Coronado Studio in 1992 as a commercial facility and the Serie Project as a nonprofit in 1993---both located in the Montopolis neighborhood of East Austin---with the mission to provide affordable printmaking services and the hope to create a place where established and emerging artists of all ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds felt welcome.

“When I started, I was possibly one of two, possibly three screen printers here in Austin, about 20 years ago, and since then there have been a lot of young designers that have come through these doors and learned about the process,” said Coronado.

For twenty years, Coronado was able to offer the Artist in Residence program, with a focus on supporting Latino artists, which has provided printmaking facilities, training in the art of serigraphy, and housing for the duration of a week---at no cost to the artist. During the residency, each artist produces an edition of 50 prints in a one-on-one apprenticeship with a Master Printer. The program has fostered over 250 artists, many who have gone on to have successful careers.

“Perhaps because he began his career as a commercial illustrator, he wanted to empower artists to find creative ways of making a living from their work,” stated Tatiana Reinoza in her dissertation, “Latino Print Cultures in the U.S., 1970-2008.” Reinoza, one of the foremost experts on Coronado’s work, is a Ph.D. candidate in Chicana/o and U.S. Latino Art at the University of Texas at Austin.

While Coronado has supported an impressive number of artists, he also continued to develop his personal work. His paintings and prints have been the subject of many exhibitions and publications across the United States, Mexico, Europe and Africa. In 2012, the Austin Visual Arts Association presented him with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Those who met him remember a gentle, down-to-earth man with a twinkle in his eye. A visitor to the unassuming house where Coronado Studios was located would be greeted with a smile and a tour of the Serie Project, of which he was proudest. For an artist, he was a man of infinite patience, not just to his students but to magazine publishers. Coronado is survived by his wife Jill Ramirez; his daughter Sonia Christina Sorenson; and two grandchildren Victoria and Noah Sorenson, whom he doted upon.

After this sad loss in November, his legacy continues. The Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas recently renamed their annual poster art scholarship contest in his honor, and the Serie Project has set up a memorial fund to continue fostering artists. The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin memorialized him by renaming the Center’s main gallery in his honor. They are also hosting the exhibit, Sam: His Life and Work, which includes photos, writings, drawings, and previously unseen works. The exhibit will run through April 19, 2014.

By Alexandra Landeros