FA L L 2 0 2 6
Inside
Hotel
Emma SAN ANTONIO’S
LIVING ROOM
FORCES OF
CULTURE
THE CREATIVES SHAPING
SAN ANTONIO NOW
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ARTS & CULTURE
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Opening doors for connection and discovery. Built by artist and educator Marion Koogler McNay in the 1920s, her Spanish Colonial Revival residence became the site of Texas’s first museum of modern art. Explore the McNay Art Museum’s historic architecture, beautifully landscaped grounds, and works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Vincent van Gogh, Diego Rivera, Edward Hopper, Joan Mitchell, and more. Moments of inspiration and surprise await you.
McNay Art Museum 6000 N. New Braunfels Avenue San Antonio, TX 78209 210.824.5368 mcnayart.org | @mcnayart
ARTS & CULTURE
110 Kennedy Avenue Unit 6A, San Antonio, TX 78209 | Listed by Janet Heydenreich
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Exceptional Real Estate. Distinctly Texas. Phyllis Browning Company brings a highly personal approach to exceptional real estate across Central and South Texas. With seasoned local expertise, trusted relationships, and a global network, we connect our clients and their properties to opportunities far beyond Texas. www.phyllisbrowning.com
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A RIVER RIVERWALK WALKOASIS OASISIN IN THE THE HEART HEARTOF OFSAN SANANTONIO ANTONIO
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The wait is over. Luxury has evolved. Corie Properties joins Engel & Völkers We are honored to welcome Corie Properties Group to our brokerage. Built upon the distinguished legacy of Corie Boldt, this team continues to define the standard for expertise and integrity in our community. By uniting her storied tradition of "clients-first" service with our global resources, we are proud to steward the next chapter of this iconic brand. Join us in celebrating a partnership rooted in excellence and dedicated to your future. @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 9
The TREES Initiative
Roots Along the
Guadalupe From devastation along one of Texas’ most treasured rivers, thousands of new trees are beginning to grow. When the July 4, 2025 flood swept through the Texas Hill Country, it changed more than the course of the Guadalupe River. Along stretches of the river, towering bald cypress and other native trees that had defined the landscape for generations were damaged or swept away. In some areas, more than 90 percent of mature trees were lost. The loss was more than visual. Trees along a river are part of a living system. Their roots help stabilize riverbanks and reduce erosion. Their canopies
provide shade and habitat. Together, they help support the health and resilience of the river itself. In the aftermath, San Antonio Botanical Garden saw an opportunity to put its conservation expertise to work beyond its own 39 acres, in the Hill Country landscape that shaped it. The result is the TREES Initiative, Texas Recovery for Ecological and Environmental Stability, a five year effort led by the Garden to restore 50,000 native trees along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
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It Starts With a Seed Garden staff, volunteers and conservation partners have collected native seed directly from the Guadalupe River watershed. Growing trees from locally collected seed preserves the genetic characteristics of Hill Country plant populations, helping ensure the next generation is adapted to the place it will call home.
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The collection includes species closely tied to the Guadalupe, including bald cypress, sycamore, ash, black willow, chinquapin oak, and pecan, along with native understory plants. Each collection is documented, and no more than 20 percent of available seed is taken from any one location.
Each tree begins as a hand collected local seed from the river’s own canopy, ensuring it’s naturally adapted to its home.
From seed to riverbank. This fall marks a major turning point. Beginning in November 2026, TREES will launch its first annual planting season, with a goal of putting 30,000 seedlings into the ground between November 2026 and March 2027, across roughly 40 restoration sites between Hunt and Comfort. More than 20 organizations are contributing to the effort, including the City of Kerrville, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Forest Service and Hill Country Conservancy.
850,000+ 30,000 50,000
Plant Your Part in the Comeback Donate $25 dollars to plant one tree.
Native seeds collected Young trees growing Trees to restore the Guadalupe
ARTS & CULTURE
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ARTS & CULTURE
SOLD ON LAKE LBJ
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life is better
911 LEGENDS PARKWAY // LAKE LBJ 8 BEDS // 9 FULL 2 HALF BATHS // 9,788 SF 250 FEET OF OPEN WATERFRONT // 3.33 AC
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proudly features
The Silo and the City
FEATURES
26
Forces of Culture
30
Features on leaders whose work is redefining the city’s cultural life
Hospitality as Homecoming with James Lindbloom 31 The Human Frequency with Bria Woods 36 Ten Years, Six Hundred Artists with Sebastian Guajardo 40 The Art of Returning with Mia Lopez 44 The Architecture of Wonder with Dan Menelly 48 Felíz, by Design with Ginger & Mario Diaz 52 Profiles of creatives shaping the city’s art, food, style and design right now
Ryan Hunter Juliana Huff de Leon Jason Navarette & Chelsea Chavez Caroline Timmins & Ryan Hoskins Sean Wen, Andrew Ho & Andrew Samia Gio DiZurita Erinn Einhauser Danny Parada Morgan Hook Jessica Thompson
STYLE & LIVING Check In, Dress Up
EVENTS & CAUSES
(830) 816-7777 BechantsMens.com BechantsMens
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San Antonio’s Living Room
The Creative Current
194 South Main Street Boerne, Texas 78006
CONTENTS
Men’s
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Bechants
EDITOR’S LETTER
60
60 62 64 66
68 70 72 74 76 78 79
The Company We Keep 82 A Garden of Earthly Discoveries for Texas Biomedical Forum 84 Couture in the Courtyard at the San Antonio Botanical Garden 86 Deep in the Heart for Darlene’s Vision 90 A Feast for the Eyes at the McNay 94 The Pointe of It All with Ballet San Antonio 97 Starlight, Starbright with OPERA San Antonio 99 Music to Our Ears from The Orchestra San Antonio 101
OF SAN ANTONIO
VOICE Publisher
VOS Media, LLC. Editor-in-Chief & Creative Director Eleanora Morrison Chief Executive Officer Daniel Morrison Chief Content Officer Lorenzo Gomez III Publisher Emeritus Rossana Leeper Graphic Design Edy Hernandez | Kyle Ossinger Beast Creative Agency Photographers Sam Beimer | Jana Cantua | Katie Clementson Francisco Cortes | Kaity Cox | Josh Huskin Angela Jazmín | Molly Johnson | Robert Lerma Paola Longoria | J.B. Lyde | Oscar McAnally | Jason Navarette Eric Pohl and Victoria Quirk | Siggi Ragnar Gabriella Rangel | Jason Risner | Michael Rodriguez Raul Rodriguez | Chris Stolze | David Teran | Mariah Tyler Voice of San Antonio is published by VOS Media, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without the express written consent of the publisher. Material contained herein does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher or its staff. Voice of San Antonio reserves the right to edit all materials for clarity and space and assumes no responsibility for accuracy, errors, or omissions. Voice of San Antonio does not knowingly accept false or misleading advertisements or editorial content, nor does the publisher assume responsibility should such advertising or editorial appear. Articles, photographs, and other submissions are welcome and may be submitted for consideration subject to the discretion and review of the editorial team. All real estate advertising is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968, which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. Printed in the USA.
Cover: San Antonio’s Living Room Photography by Jana Cantua Floral design by Morgan Hook
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CONTRIBUTORS JANA CANTUA is a photographer and creative director whose vibrant, emotionally resonant imagery explores culture, identity, and the richness of everyday life along the U.S.–Mexico border. Her bicultural perspective informs a visual language defined by color, movement, and human connection. Collaborating with global brands and local institutions alike, she has helped shape the visual identity of Voice of San Antonio, photographing our cover feature and much of the magazine’s defining imagery.
A World of Delightful Choices
LORENZO GOMEZ III is Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer of Voice of San Antonio, where he contributes his column The Urban Nerd. A community builder, bestselling author, and nationally recognized advocate for entrepreneurship, he is a former executive at Rackspace Technology and past chairman and CEO of Geekdom, helping guide startups that raised more than $422 million and created thousands of jobs. He is also Co-Founder of The Local SATX and founder and host of The Cilantro Diaries podcast, championing opportunity and civic imagination in San Antonio. EDY HERNANDEZ and his team at Beast Creative Agency designed the fall print issue. Beast Creative is a San Antonio-based digital and creative firm known for building brand identities, web experiences, and embedding AI into the core of how businesses think, operate, and grow. He also serves as President and Co-Founder of Premier Futbol Academy, a competitive youth soccer organization dedicated to developing players on and off the field. A builder at heart, Edy sits at the intersection of technology, creativity and community.
MORGAN HOOK is a florist and the founder of Master of None Flowers, a San Antonio-based studio specializing in sculptural, organic floral design for intimate weddings, carefully curated private events, and editorial work. A San Antonio native and former professional dancer, she built the studio around the idea that growth and beauty emerge from uncomfortable periods of change, and that being a master of none gives an artist the freedom to evolve, play, and grow. Morgan created the floral sculpture inside Hotel Emma, featured on this issue’s cover.
ELEANORA MORRISON is an editor, creative director, and cultural entrepreneur whose work lives at the intersection of storytelling, design, and civic imagination. A fifth-generation San Antonian, she co-founded Voice of San Antonio, serving as its Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director. Her career spans theater, broadcast media, nonprofit communications, and independent publishing, all rooted in a lifelong belief in San Antonio’s creative potential and the power of story to shape a city’s identity.
Fresh-Made Organic Gelato, Smoothies and Gourmet Goods 210 South Main Street | Boerne, Texas 78006 (830) 331-9355 | BoerneEpicure.com BoerneEpicureGourmetMarket
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BoerneEpicure
MASHA POLOSKOVA is the owner of MOSS, the San Antonio consignment boutique she opened in 2019 and has built into a destination for couture and contemporary designer style in Alamo Heights. With more than 3,000 consignors and a rotating mix of designer and contemporary labels, MOSS offers a curated, everchanging edit for its shoppers. Masha and her team produced this issue’s fashion feature shoot, lending it the same discerning eye that has made MOSS a fixture among San Antonio tastemakers.
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The great thing about working with Brighton — the very first conversation I had with Katrina, I felt an energy which I feel is immersed in all of Brighton: let’s find a way to make that happen. We’re building new roads, not just tearing down old ones.
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— Dr. Albrey Hogan, Assistant Superintendent, Southwest ISD
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It puts us in a position to serve more families that otherwise would not have been exposed to Brighton Center. — Katrina Campbell, CEO, Brighton Center
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@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 23
ARTS & CULTURE
n the spring of 2024, Dan, Lorenzo and I met for coffee in a silo at Sternewirth. Hotel Emma calls it “San Antonio’s living room”; our team would argue it’s San Antonio’s best room. We were three local creatives with a question: what would it take to make a magazine that saw San Antonio as we did? Week after week, we returned to the corner pictured on this fall’s cover and began to build it together. I often wonder how many other ideas have taken shape in that room and found their way into the life of the city. That thought helped reveal this issue’s theme: Forces of Culture, the people shaping San Antonio through what they make together. Our cover returns to Hotel Emma because it brings big-thinking, like-minded people together and embodies the statement on our inaugural issue cover: “Made in San Antonio. Meant for the World.” So do the people whose stories fill these pages. The nook that held our team’s earliest conversations felt like the natural choice for this fall’s cover. Its towering antique European tapestry lends it romance and intrigue, while the worn leather chair invites you to sink in and dream up your next big idea. It could be a room anywhere in the world, yet anyone who knows Sternewirth would recognize it as San Antonio. The idea was to add an artistic layer that made a wandering, dreaming mind visible. Morgan Hook’s whimsical and wild autumnal floral sculpture climbs toward the tapestry like a thought taking shape. A San Antonio native and former soloist with the Colorado Ballet, she is the founder and designer behind Master of None Flowers. She brought movement to that familiar corner, creating something with the fleeting beauty of a live performance. Jana Cantua captured that moment, along with many of the faces and spaces in this issue. A cherished collaborator since our digital launch, she has helped shape the look of Voice of San Antonio through its first two print issues. As a visual director and photographer, she makes San Antonio itself an aesthetic: unmistakably local, unapologetically vibrant and seen through an elevated editorial eye. She is a force of culture in her own right, and I am grateful for the stories she continues to bring to life with us. Many of the people in these pages grew up here, left to work and learn in other cities around the world, then came home to build something informed by those experiences and particular to San Antonio. Others arrived from elsewhere and put down roots because they recognized
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Photography by Jana Cantua
THE CITY I
Photography by Kaity Cox
The Silo and
Photography by Jana Cantua
EDITOR’S LETTER
something here worth joining. Together, they are helping this city’s creative economy grow. At Historic Pearl, a brewery that once helped power the city has become a cultural center that has changed how San Antonio gathers. Its heart and crown jewel, Hotel Emma, occupies the original brewhouse and has made that history entirely its own: independently owned, unmistakably local and recognized among the world’s finest. It has raised expectations for hospitality here and shown visitors a San Antonio worth traveling the world to experience. Its AAA Five Diamond designation and two MICHELIN Keys reflect that standard. Interviewing James Lindbloom, who leads food, beverage and special events across the hotel, gave me a closer look at the daily creative production behind that atmosphere, and the people who bring it to life for locals and travelers alike. Our fall fashion story, produced by the creative team at MOSS, brings owner Masha Poloskova’s point of view to the page: top labels in their next lives, styled with imagination and a commitment to more sustainable fashion. You will also meet artists, designers, curators, chefs, editors, creative directors, entrepreneurs and civic leaders leaving their mark on the city. Some create experiences that last an evening; others build brands and institutions that will serve San Antonio for years. Their work grows from a character that cannot be manufactured. It is a particular honor to partner with Hotel Emma on this issue. Copies of Voice of San Antonio will be in every guest room, where travelers can meet the people behind the city they are visiting. I hope San Antonians find something new here, too: a person to follow, a place to visit or a reason to look again at something familiar. When we left that first meeting at Sternewirth a few years ago, none of us knew where the conversation would lead. Returning with this issue and sharing it with people arriving from around the world is a moment we will always remember, and one for which we’re deeply grateful. V
Eleanora Morrison Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director
INSIDE HOTEL EMMA
SAN ANTONIO’S
LIVING ROOM At Hotel Emma, the city has found a place to gather, linger and imagine what comes next.
Photography by Jana Cantua | Floral design by Morgan Hook
Between its lush leather lounges, lamplit library nooks and the glow of grand fireplaces, Hotel Emma was made for lingering. On any given afternoon, its tables hold every walk of life: a famous actor and a local designer, an author on deadline and an NBA player, a founder sketching an idea and a neighbor meeting a friend. Whether guests are known around the world or around the block, Hotel Emma is where they find one another. Here, San Antonio meets the world, and the world meets San Antonio.
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INSIDE HOTEL EMMA
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ome rooms simply hold people, while others hold possibility. Sit long enough beneath Sternewirth’s high ceilings, with the light shifting across old brick and a dozen conversations rising around you, and the city begins to look different. A passing thought becomes a plan, a stranger becomes a collaborator, and a place you were only visiting becomes a place you could call home. Ideas arrive here the way evening does, quietly and all at once, and few people leave the way they came in. That is the enchantment of a true civic commons. It asks nothing of you except that you stay a little longer, and in return it gives you space to wonder, to wander and to imagine a different future for yourself and for your city. The Forces of Culture in these pages need spaces like this one, and Hotel Emma has given San Antonio one of its finest. Since the day its doors opened, locals and travelers alike have been filling it with stories of their own. V
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Downtown, near the Pearl 200 West Jones Avenue | www.samuseum.org Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819–1904), Passion Flowers with Three Hummingbirds (detail), 1875, Purchased with funds provided by the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, 82.77; Robert Julian Onderdonk (American, 1882–1922), Near San Antonio, circa 1918, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. I.L. Ellwood, 84.103; Kehinde Wiley (American, born 1977), David Lyon (detail), 2013, Purchased in honor of Harriet O’Banion Kelley with funds provided by The Walter F. Brown Family, 2013.13. © Kehinde Wiley. Photography by Peggy Tenison, Statue of Cupid and Psyche (detail), Roman, ca. 117–138 A.D., Gift of Gilbert M. Denman, Jr., 86.134.118; Still Life with Parrot (detail), Mexico, 19th century, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Mexican Folk Art Collection, 85.98.97
ARTS FORCES &&CULTURE OF CULTURE ARTS CULTURE
Photography by Jana Cantua
FORCES OF CULTURE Every city has its keepers of tradition and its instigators of change. In San Antonio, the most compelling people are often both. They lead museums and radio stations, kitchens and galleries, studios and storefronts, and they share a quiet conviction that the institutions worth keeping are the ones willing to keep evolving. Some carry three centuries of culture forward. Others are building what comes next. Together, they are shaping how San Antonio sees itself, and how the world sees San Antonio.
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THE FORCES In conversation with the leaders redefining the city’s cultural life James Lindbloom / Bria Woods / Sebastian Guajardo / Mia Lopez / Dan Menelly / Ginger & Mario Diaz THE CREATIVE CURRENT The new wave of art, fashion, food and design setting the city’s pace now. Ryan Hunter / Juliana Huff de Leon / Jason Navarette & Chelsea Chavez / Caroline Timmins & Ryan Hoskins / Sean Wen, Andrew Ho & Andrew Samia / Gio DiZurita / Erinn Einhauser / Danny Parada / Morgan Hook / Jessica Thompson
FORCES OF CULTURE
HOSPITALITY AS HOMECOMING
At Hotel Emma, James Lindbloom is proving that hospitality is a form of storytelling, one cocktail, one season, and one guest at a time. Photography by Jana Cantua
When James Lindbloom left Montana for San Antonio in 2021, he had never set foot in the city and was traveling on little more than a hunch and a love of the Spurs. Today, as Director of Beverage & Special Events at Hotel Emma, he has helped make Sternewirth, the hotel’s storied bar, the city’s living room. It is a place where locals and seasoned global travelers alike come to feel, however briefly, completely at home. Here, he talks about menus, migration and shaping culture from behind the bar.
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early every department meeting James Lindbloom leads at Hotel Emma begins with the same words. “There’s a thousand beautiful spaces,” he tells his team. “There’s not another one of you.”
It is a reminder of what he believes his guests are really paying for. The cocktails at Sternewirth are meticulous, the room is one of the most beautiful in the city, and neither, in Lindbloom’s view, is the point. What matters is how a person feels once they sink into a leather chair beneath the old brewhouse ceiling. “We want the outside world to melt away,” he says.
James Lindbloom
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a geriatric pharmacist, matched with the San Antonio VA for her residency. Neither of them had ever visited. What tipped the decision, by his own account, was little more than a mutual devotion to the Spurs and a willingness to try something new. “We were young,” he says. “If we don’t like it, we can always go home.”
I want to bring the world to San Antonio. And I also want to bring They never went home. The trial run became a and the city won him over in ways he still San Antonio to the life, has trouble summing up. “I think it’s a beauty in all aspects,” he says. “I tell people it’s the world. biggest small town you’ll ever live in.” He talks
He holds every guest to that standard, whether they are longtime San Antonians who treat the bar as their third place or travelers who have been poured drinks in the finest hospitality rooms in the world. The travelers, he says, offer the clearest measure of success. Again and again, they tell him that what they feel at Sternewirth is real, the rare sensation of being cared for as a person rather than processed as a room number on a guest folio.
about the old oaks shading his yard, the 1920s architecture downtown, and an authenticity he insists no amount of money can buy. San Antonio, in his experience, is a place you have to become part of rather than simply pass through.
The Biggest Small Town Lindbloom’s own welcome to San Antonio came as something of a leap. He grew up in Montana and was twenty-four when his wife, Tori,
That sense of belonging, earned rather than assumed, shapes how he understands his work. As a newcomer who chose to stay, he feels a responsibility to add to the city’s legacy rather than simply benefit
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FORCES OF CULTURE from it, and to help others who arrive here come to know and respect its culture the way he has learned to. Elevated, and Open to All “We want to reflect our city in the most authentic way possible,” Lindbloom says. “So as our city changes, so do we.” That conviction has quietly reshaped what a hotel bar can be. In 2023, his team began hosting Fiesta programming at Sternewirth, bringing the city’s most beloved celebration inside the hotel’s own doors. For a place that sits so close to the heart of Fiesta, it felt only natural to open the bar to the festivities and give guests, whether they were born here or just arrived, a way to take part in a tradition that belongs to all of San Antonio. It is one small expression of a philosophy that runs through everything at Sternewirth, the belief that elevated need not mean exclusive. “It’s the most elevated experience you can have in San Antonio,” Lindbloom says of the room, “but yet it’s accessible to everybody.” Holding both of those truths at once is a delicate balance, and his team strikes it anew twice a year, with every seasonal menu. Cocktails as Chapters Lindbloom describes Sternewirth’s cocktail menus as storybooks, and he means it. Each one is organized into chapters drawn from the hotel’s history, its people, and the city around it. Past editions have traced the story of the Koehler House and wandered through the flora and fauna woven into the Hotel Emma grounds. The newest menu turns the spotlight on the bartenders themselves. It is built around the Sternewirth privilege, the old brewery custom that allowed workers to drink on the job and gave the bar its name, reimagined here as a tribute to the people behind the bar. Lindbloom put a simple question to his staff: if you could have any shot or cocktail at Sternewirth, what would you drink? Their answers became the menu.
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It’s the most elevated experience you can have in San Antonio, but yet it’s accessible to everybody.
Each menu takes about six months to travel from concept to print, and it passes through a remarkable number of hands along the way. The branding, marketing, and public relations teams weigh in first, and then the bar team translates the story into cocktails. The bar backs are consulted on logistics, and trusted peers in the industry offer a gut check before the design is handed to Studio Morris, the hotel’s longtime design partner, for final layout. By Lindbloom’s count, close to twenty people shape a single menu before it ever reaches a guest’s hands. The process has more in common with a magazine than a drinks list, with its seasonal calendar, its layers of collaboration, and its instinct for narrative, and with guests as its readers.
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A Ladder, Not a Revolving Door The care that Sternewirth extends to its guests begins with the people 32 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
who work there. Hotel Emma shares the Historic Pearl campus with the Culinary Institute of America San Antonio, and the hotel has made it a mission to develop local hospitality talent and keep it here rather than lose it to bigger markets. At Sternewirth, that commitment takes the form of a deliberate ladder. Bartenders, whose positions rank among the most coveted in the city’s hospitality scene, begin as bar backs and earn their way up. The results are visible across San Antonio. Lindbloom points proudly to alumni such as Lauren Beckman and Haley Pruitt, who trained at Hotel Emma before moving on to Mixtli, and to the chefs and managers who passed through Supper and Sternewirth before launching ventures of their own. Investing in people first, he says, is what keeps that talent circulating through the community instead of leaving it behind. He is quick to credit others doing the same kind of work nearby. He singles out Garrett Zimmerman and Michael Mangler at Stable Hall, whose Two Step Tuesday opens with a free dance lesson, follows it with a live band and asks nothing of anyone who wants to join in. “Just small things like that create a better experience on campus,” Lindbloom says, “and continue to evolve who we are.” The sight of neighbors learning to two-step in the heart of one of the city’s most polished districts is, in his view, exactly the kind of detail that makes San Antonio itself. The World at the Bar Study Sternewirth’s calendar and a pattern emerges, a steady and carefully choreographed exchange between San Antonio and the rest of the world. This fall brought a partnership with Glenfiddich, a pop-up from New York’s Overstory, and a paired dinner in the hotel’s Elephant Room. In January 2027, Clemente Bar, ranked among North America’s 50 Best Bars, arrives from New York with collaborators from Stone & Soil and Nubeluz. In February, the Texas Old Fashioned Off comes to Stable Hall in time for rodeo season. Woven through the year are Fiesta dinners and the return of Agave Fest, which in 2026 welcomed makers and creators from Guadalajara. That last exchange is the one Lindbloom describes with the most feeling, and he designed it to run in both directions. “I want to bring the world to San Antonio,” he says. “And I also want to bring San Antonio to the world.” The makers who travel north from Guadalajara return home having seen their own values reflected back at them, while San Antonians who may never make the trip south catch a glimpse of the creative movement unfolding across the border. Over time, he believes, those visits add up to something sturdier than any single event, a mutual understanding between two creative communities that keep sending their people back and forth. Work Hard and Care Asked how it feels to be counted among the people shaping San Antonio’s culture, Lindbloom deflects the attention almost immediately. “I don’t think there’s anything special about me,” he says. “I think I just work hard and care. And if I can do it, anyone can do it.” It is a characteristically modest answer from a man who arrived on a hunch and stayed to help write the city’s next chapter. Five years after a young couple from Montana decided they could always go home, he has made a home for everyone else, a room where the outside world melts away and every guest is reminded, in one way or another, that there is not another one of them. V @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 33
Pearl is the place to find
that perfect something...
FORCES OF CULTURE
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, Bria Woods moved to Texas in middle school and discovered radio as an undergraduate at Trinity University, in the Communication class that first put her on the air. She went on to earn her master’s degree at the University of Westminster in London, where she hosted a jazz show on the student radio station. For twelve years, beginning with that first class, she was a fixture on KRTU’s airwaves as a student, an intern, and a volunteer host. In 2025 she became the station’s Content Director, just in time to help lead it through its fiftieth anniversary. Here, she talks about homecoming, the soul of San Antonio jazz, and why the city’s radio still needs a human touch.
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ome afternoons, Bria Woods steps away from her desk at KRTU and takes a slow walk across the Trinity University campus. The paths are the same ones she walked as an undergraduate. What has changed is the woman walking them. “What I’ve been struck by is this juxtaposition,” she says, “from the memory of who I was as a student versus who I am now, walking around campus as a 32-year-old woman who has lived so much life since I graduated.”
Bria Woods, Content Director at KRTU 91.7
THE HUMAN FREQUENCY
Bria Woods found her voice at KRTU 91.7 FM as a Trinity University student. Now the station’s Content Director, she is carrying San Antonio’s jazz station into its next fifty years, keeping it deeply human for listeners at home and around the world. Photography by Paola Longoria and Mariah Tyler, courtesy of Bria Woods 36 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
She has told the students she mentors that the arc will become a full circle. Coming back to Trinity, the place where so many of her life’s milestones began, she is living proof of it, and she describes the feeling as a deeply satisfying story arc. She is also honest about the harder parts. Returning to the place that shaped her has meant facing the ways she has grown and the ways she still wants to. “I think that quintessential Trinity student in me still has so much ambition,” she says. “But I’m also learning how to feel fulfilled with how far I’ve come, and appreciating all the versions of Bria that have gotten me here.” The Station That Raised Her For more than a decade before she joined the staff, Woods knew KRTU as a volunteer host. Even so, she is quick to say she did not truly know it inside out. Running a local nonprofit community radio station, she has learned, takes far more than any student or volunteer ever sees. “As a student, I did get a glimpse into that,” she says, “but it was maybe a tenth of what I actually see now.” What those twelve years gave her instead was familiarity, with the station’s mission, its roots, its story, and its people. Many of the faces around KRTU have known her since she was a teenager taking her first class in Trinity’s Communication Department, learning to go live, run the board, host, and present. “There are so many faces in the KRTU realm that have literally watched me grow up,” she says. That history gave her confidence on her first day as Content Director, and it freed her to focus on the creative work. She created Next Gen
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 37
FORCES OF CULTURE Jazz, a program that brings music students from across San Antonio into the studio to perform live on air. She helps plan the station’s live music events around the city, and she has helped lead KRTU through a rebrand, rethinking how the station tells its story online and in the community. None of it, she says, was anything she could have imagined as a student. “This has definitely been a playground for me to discover more about my leadership and my ideas,” she says, “and to work with people who quite literally watched me grow up.” Fifty Years Standing KRTU turned fifty in January, and Woods does not take the milestone lightly. She has never worked for an organization with that kind of staying power in the community where it was founded, and she knows how rare it is. Across five decades, the radio landscape in Texas has transformed, and many stations have closed their doors or abandoned their formats. The fact that KRTU is still standing as a nonprofit, noncommercial educational station in San Antonio is, in her words, “nothing short of a miracle.” She is clear about what that legacy must protect. The station began in 1976 as an almost entirely student-run operation, and hands-on learning has been a pillar of KRTU ever since, for Trinity students and for young artists and musicians across the city. Just as essential is the station’s habit of teaching its listeners. KRTU has never been content to announce a song title and move on. Its hosts dive deep into eras and movements, showing how the music fits within the larger history of the country and the world, and why it matters. “It’s a station where we like to do deep dives,” Woods says, “and guide our listener through the larger context of this music.”
The Sound of Home That global perspective sharpened her ear for what makes San Antonio’s jazz its own. Through programs like the South Texas Jazz Project, KRTU has spent years introducing the city’s musicians to listeners far beyond it, and today the station counts listeners outside the United States. Woods has made raising its national profile one of her goals, and she knows exactly what she wants the country to hear. Jazz musicians, she says, are shaped by the cities and cultures that surround them, and the through line she hears in San Antonio is soul. She points to Mickey & the Soul Generation and the West Side Horns, to Ron Wilkins and the hint of gospel he brings to his playing, and to younger players like the Bluprint Band, who are making excellent jazz right here at home. It is a different soul from the sound of New Orleans, she says, and a world away from Chicago or New York. “It’s easy sometimes to think of things from San Antonio as very homegrown,” she says, “but we have some really grade-A musicians who grew up here and who play here.” What unites them, to her ear, is warmth. “There’s this nostalgic, comforting soul sound that I think really defines San Antonio jazz,” she says. “I think the world needs to hear more of that.”
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Everything we do has a human touch.
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What has to change, she believes, is the size of the team. KRTU runs on a staff of five, a number that has surprised her given how much larger many other jazz and college stations have grown. “We punch so far above our weight every day with just five people,” she says. “So imagine what we could do with ten, fifteen people on staff.” More hands would mean more reach, more new initiatives, and more work in and through the community. Until then, she adds with a smile, “with this mighty five, we do a mighty fine job.” A Glass Booth in London Woods’s first taste of carrying American music to a foreign audience came at the University of Westminster, where she earned her master’s degree. The student station, Smoke Radio, broadcast from a small glass booth in the student center of the Harrow campus, so that students passing through the building could watch the hosts at work and the hosts could watch them in return. The station was open-format, and as far as she knew, hers was the only jazz show on it. Its audience was mostly her peers, and the stakes were casual. The lesson, though, has stayed with her. Her friends in London cherished the music she played, and she came to understand how far it had traveled. “This is American music, specifically Black American music, and it is appreciated far and wide,” she says. “The diaspora of jazz is mind-boggling.” Around the world, people play it, learn it and teach it in every language, and London, she found, values it deeply.
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Handing Over the Microphone Woods has long believed there is great power in people using their own voices to tell their own stories, and coming back to KRTU, she found colleagues, and a university, who already shared it. “That is a shared principle that makes me feel at home at this organization,” she says.
On the air, the principle takes the form of a station that freely shares its airwaves. During one recent week, Woods devoted the noon jazz break to pollinators, in collaboration with Ashley Bird, founder of Blooming with Birdie and organizer of the annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival, who gathered experts to talk about the local ecosystem, foraging, and eating locally. “Someone tuning in for the first time will be like, ‘What in the world do birds, bats, bees, and butterflies have to do with jazz?’” she says, laughing. Bridging that distance is the part of the job she loves. Poets come in each year to read live over jazz, and Trinity students back from studying abroad sit down with her to talk about how the experience changed them. Partnerships with The Carver, Ruby City, and The Contemporary bring still more voices to the microphone. The artists speak for themselves too. In the past year alone, Woods has interviewed Samara Joy, Terri Lyne Carrington, Joel Ross, Helen Sung, and the trumpeter Brian Lynch, while her colleagues have welcomed Arturo Sandoval, Delfeayo Marsalis, and Benny Green. San Antonio artists have their turn as well, among them Gerry Gibbs, along with Henry Brun and Joan Carroll, both longtime KRTU hosts in their own right. The goal of every conversation is to hear the music’s story from the people who made it. “Why do you do this? Why did you create this album? What puts the wind in your sails?” she says. “There’s nothing like a good conversation.”
Swing, Revived In a media landscape Woods describes as crowded to the point of excess, she believes jazz stays alive through collaboration. KRTU partners with Ruby City for Music in the Park, with the San Antonio Parks Foundation for Jazz in the Garden and the annual Jazz’SAlive festival, and with the Carver Community Cultural Center, all in an effort to reach pockets of the city that might never otherwise think to tune in. It is not that those listeners don’t care about jazz, she says. It is that every station, artist, and organization is competing with the day’s headlines, a favorite influencer, “and your aunt’s new puppy.”
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There’s this nostalgic, comforting soul sound that I think really defines San Antonio jazz. I think the world needs to hear more of that.
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This October, one of those partnerships is personal. KRTU is joining the San Antonio Swing Dance Society and the Dirty River Jazz Band to honor Skyline Swing, a long-running KRTU swing dance social where the Jim Cullum Jazz Band once played while dancers came from all over the city to dance the night away. Among them were the Swing Bums, a Trinity club Woods belonged to as a student. She pitched the revival herself. Welcome to the Club A little more than a year into her role, Woods is now training a new class of KRTU hosts, and she hopes the studio will become for them what it has always been for her. “A place of recess,” she calls it. Even with a full-time job at the station, she has held on to her Thursday evening show, Women in Jazz, and stepping into that room never fails to restore her. “Just hearing your favorite tunes on these really nice monitors, drowning out whatever was making you feel off that day,” she says, “and then making a playlist for the city of San Antonio every week. It is so fulfilling.” When one of her trainees, a Trinity student, went live for the first
time, she greeted him with a welcome to what she calls an exclusive club of radio broadcasters. It is a smaller club than it once was. Commercial radio has changed, she says, and in an age of artificial intelligence, much of what reaches listeners is no longer curated by human hands. KRTU, as a noncommercial station, is the exception. “Everything we do has a human touch,” she says. “The playlist you’re hearing, the hosts that you’re hearing, the programs, the special features, all of that is from just a human love for this work.” Radio, she reminds her new hosts, is a storied medium with a long lineage, and it is an honor to be part of it.
The Question No One Had Asked We closed with a question Woods usually asks of others, and when she heard it turned back on her, she paused. No one, she said, had ever asked her before. What brings her joy right now, in this work and in this city? The answer, it turns out, is people. She lights up when she collaborates with others who are as passionate about their work as she is, people who stand for good things and want to see good come to the city, whether through music, art, or education. “When I get to work with people who want better, who are about something, it’s like I can never get enough,” she says. In San Antonio, she finds that joy at The Carver and Ruby City, at The Contemporary and the McNay, at the Pollinator Festival and Jazz’SAlive. “It’s the doing, it’s the creating, it’s creating space for others to tell their stories,” she says. “That’s what brings me joy.” It is the same joy that first drew a Trinity student into a radio booth, and the arc that carried her to London and back has closed into a circle. Now it is her turn to hold the door open, and to hand the microphone to whoever comes next. V @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 39
ARTS & CULTURE FORCES OF CULTURE
Sebastian Guajardo Photography by Raul Rodriguez for Glasstire
TEN YEARS, SIX HUNDRED ARTISTS
Handed a gallery that had already closed twice and only weeks to make it work, Sebastian Guajardo went straight to the artists. A decade later, Centro de Artes is sending San Antonio’s art across the country. Photography courtesy of the City of San Antonio Department of Arts & Culture Sebastian Guajardo never planned a career in the arts. A South Texas ranch kid turned City of San Antonio social services professional, he joined what is now the Department of Arts & Culture nearly two decades ago and, in 2016, helped build Centro de Artes from scratch in a matter of weeks. The gallery has since presented 28 exhibitions, featuring 600 artists and more than 3,000 works, and one of its shows has traveled the country. Here, he reflects on heritage, the value of artists, and what San Antonio cannot afford to lose.
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I
n early September 2016, Sebastian Guajardo learned that on October 1, the City of San Antonio would take over the management of Centro de Artes, and that he and his small team would be the ones running it. Two other galleries had already closed in this space. The building had walls, lighting, and the infrastructure to hang a show the moment one arrived. What it did not have was a show big enough to fill it.
The team did have an exhibition in the works, a celebration of San Antonio’s Mexican American artists planned for the department’s more modest Culture Commons Gallery. With no time to start over, they chose to make it bigger. Over the next two weeks, they went into artists’ homes and studios across the city, selecting more work to fill the larger rooms. “It was challenging and exhilarating at the same time,” Guajardo recalls. The artists, he says, were thrilled to be part of something larger than themselves. On opening night, more than 400 people came through the doors of SATX/MX: Un Viaje Lleno de Cultura, a crowd of council members, arts administrators, educators, and neighbors gathered around the work of 21 artists telling stories of their Mexican and Mexican American heritage. Many of those artists have since shown in museums across the country, and their work has entered museum and private collections. For a gallery space that had twice gone dark, it was an auspicious way to begin again. The Boy and the Book None of this was the plan. Guajardo grew up on a ranch in South
Celebrating 100 Years We’re kind of a Texas-sized deal. WitteMuseum.org/Birthday
FORCES OF CULTURE Texas, in a Mexican American family that has been here for generations, and his first encounter with the wider world of art arrived as a gift from an uncle, a book about King Tutankhamen. He finished it and went looking for more in the family’s Encyclopedia Britannica, losing himself in ancient myths, temples, and the treasures of Egyptian tombs. As an adult, traveling with his partner, he sought out the great museums, from the Met in New York to the Art Institute of Chicago and the de Young in San Francisco. But he admired art from the far side of the velvet rope. “I never planned to work in the arts,” he says. At home, his family’s heritage lived in the rituals of church and celebration, in the Virgen de Guadalupe, in mariachi, in Día de Muertos. What went unspoken was the history beneath those traditions, that Texas had once been part of New Spain and then of Mexico. It is one reason the city’s Fiestas Patrias and Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations still move him. They give families and children the fuller story he grew up without. He built a career in social services instead, first in nonprofits and then, beginning in 1997, with the City of San Antonio, where he moved through community development and Parks & Recreation. The turn came in 2008, when a change in his partner’s role at the city meant he needed a new post. He found one in the Office of Cultural Affairs, now the Department of Arts & Culture.
in the Culture Commons Gallery, his team develops a theme and then goes searching, through the city’s free online Artist Registry, local gallery shows, and social media, for work that answers it. Quality comes before everything else, followed closely by range, across painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media, and across every part of San Antonio.
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Centro de Artes The exhibition that best tells the gallery’s story in 2023. Soy de Tejas: A Statewide Survey represents far more arrived of Latinx Art was curated by Rigoberto Luna, and co-owner of Presa House Gallery and, than a career to me. It director fittingly, one of the 21 artists in that first 2016 show. gathered more than 100 works by 40 artists has become an integral Luna from seven regions and fifteen cities across Texas, some born here and some who had chosen it as part of who I am. home, and filled both floors with the complexity
His first assignment was carrying out The Cultural Collaborative, a ten-year plan for the city’s creative economy adopted in 2005, and it rearranged how he understood the thing he had loved since boyhood. Art, he came to see, was more than what hangs in museums. It was work and livelihood, an economic engine powered by painters and writers, performers and filmmakers, reaching individuals, neighborhoods, and the city as a whole. Eighteen years later, he speaks of it less as a job than as a part of himself. “Centro de Artes represents far more than a career to me,” he says. “It has become an integral part of who I am.”
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The Show That Traveled In the years after that first opening, Guajardo’s team built the gallery’s program with a steady hand, mounting an exhibition devoted to Día de los Muertos, another exploring food as a vessel of cultural identity, and collaborations with guest curators Kathy Vargas and Dr. Ruben Cordova. They also asked the city what it wanted the gallery to be. More than 100 artists, curators, educators and residents came to three public meetings, and their answers became the strategic plan that still guides Centro de Artes, including the open call through which artists and curators now propose exhibitions. The first call drew 20 applicants. The most recent drew 77, and Guajardo reads that growth as proof of what a show at Centro de Artes has come to mean. He is careful to say that deciding who gets a wall is never one person’s call. Proposals for Centro de Artes are selected by the San Antonio Art Commission’s Centro de Artes Committee. For the annual exhibition 42 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
of Latinx identity. More than 700 people came to the opening, and 15,000 visitors followed over five months, nearly triple the gallery’s previous attendance. Forbes took notice, and the catalogue earned an honorable mention for the Thoma Foundation Exhibition Catalogue Award from the Association for Latin American Art. Then the show left home. It toured galleries across Texas and the Southwest and, in 2025, arrived at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California, which acquired work by several of its artists for its permanent collection. It is on view at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi’s Weil Gallery through January 29, 2027. “It’s amazing to recognize that something that was created for the Centro de Artes Gallery has been all over the country,” Guajardo says, “and continues to benefit our local artists.” The Worth of the Work If one conviction runs through Guajardo’s career, it is one he learned early and has never softened. Asked how San Antonio can make sure the people who create its cultural value share in it as the city grows, his answer is disarmingly simple. “Ensure they are paid.” San Antonio understood this sooner than most. In 2003, the Office of
FORCES OF CULTURE
L
ong before she had an office at the McNay Art Museum, Mia Lopez was a San Antonio kid who loved to visit it. So when the museum created the position of Curator of Latinx Art, the first in its history, and the job opened in her hometown, she could scarcely believe her luck. “I was honestly stunned,” she says, “because it felt too good to be true.” Nearly three years later, the girl who once walked those galleries as a visitor helps decide what hangs in them. “I grew up visiting the McNay,” she says, “and now I am helping shape what the museum will be for future generations.” The path between those two moments ran through Houston, Chicago and Minneapolis, and it was never meant to take as long as it did.
Mia Lopez, Curator of Latinx Art, in the McNay Art Museum’s Sculpture Gallery.
THE ART OF RETURNING
The Long Way Home After finishing her bachelor’s degree at Rice University, Lopez came home and went to work at the Museo Alameda, the Smithsonianaffiliated Latino museum that has since closed its doors. She was a young museum educator and arts administrator, energized by the breadth of creativity she found in the city and delighted to be getting to know her hometown as an adult. She did not especially want to leave. But she knew a graduate degree lay ahead, and the pull of a bigger city and its opportunities was hard to resist. The plan was to finish her program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and come straight back. “Obviously that didn’t happen,” she says with a laugh. In Chicago, she studied art history alongside arts administration, and she found herself introducing her classmates to artists they had never encountered. As she carved out a specialty in Latinx art, she understood how steep the climb would be, even with the backing of her professors and mentors. What sustained her was San Antonio itself, a community that cheered her on from a distance and, through its own work, proved how valid and urgent her research was.
Mia Lopez built her career in Chicago with San Antonio never far from mind. Now the McNay Art Museum’s first Curator of Latinx Art, she is writing her city’s stories into the history of American art. I grew up visiting
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After graduate school came the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, then DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, along with collaborations with nonprofits across the Photography courtesy of the McNay Art Museum | Portrait the McNay, and now region. Everywhere she went, she studied how things photography by Chris Stoltz I am helping shape worked. The arts ecosystems of the Midwest were Mia Lopez grew up visiting the McNay Art what the museum shaped by the size of their institutions and the depth Museum. A career that carried her from San will be for future of their funding, and she made a practice of learning their models and best practices, knowing that one day Antonio’s Museo Alameda to the School of the Art generations. she would bring what she had learned home. “I knew Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, and that I would eventually come home,” she says, “and I DePaul Art Museum eventually brought her back wanted to share this knowledge and experience with San Antonio.” through its doors as the museum’s first Curator
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of Latinx Art. Since then, she has brought Chicago artists to San Antonio, carried San Antonio’s stories to a national audience, and helped usher a Chicano sensibility into the art historical canon. Here, she reflects on homecoming, the language of identity, and what a museum owes the city it serves. 44 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
The Ambassador Her graduate school classmates, she suspects, thought she had been appointed San Antonio’s official envoy. She would rave to anyone who listened about the city’s hybrid culture and its art scene, laid back and vibrant at the same time. It frustrated her how often the broader art establishment overlooked her hometown, and she set out to do something about it.
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ARTS & CULTURE FORCES OF CULTURE
Visitors explore Rasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility in a tour led by Mia Lopez, Curator of Latinx Art.
At DePaul, she had her chance. She presented the work of San Antonio artists Jimmy James Canales and Jenelle Esparza to Chicago audiences, placing them alongside two Chicago artists within the larger story of contemporary Latinx art. The pairing drew out the parallels and connections between two very different cities, and it showed Chicago just how inventive San Antonio’s artists could be. Audiences responded to it. A Foundation Already Laid Lopez is quick to point out that she did not bring Latino art to the McNay. It was there from the beginning. One of the very first works Marion Koogler McNay acquired was by Diego Rivera, and over the decades artists including Chelo Amezcua, Cesar Martinez, Kathy Vargas, and Vincent Valdez exhibited on its walls and entered its permanent collection. She likes to imagine the parties, salons, and classes once held on the museum’s grounds, and the artists and art lovers from everywhere who gathered there. “I may be the first to have this amazing role and title,” she says, “but I am fortunate to have a great foundation built by previous curators and scholars.”
Antonio the Mexican American cultural capital of the United States, and she understands why. The city’s demographics and history place it on the front lines of Latino cultural production. She has spent many hours with fellow curators debating what it means to insist that Latinx art is American art, and how that idea should shape the way the work is valued and understood across the country, well beyond the art world. At a moment when the nation contends with whose memory gets preserved, she believes art remains one of the most powerful ways to share stories and safeguard history, and that San Antonio’s institutions carry a particular responsibility to reflect the city they serve. The vocabulary of that work has been a lifelong interest. Her undergraduate thesis at Rice examined the words used to describe identity in Latino art, a subject that turned out to be more prescient than she could have known. “I certainly hope my writing and research skills have improved over the last 20 years,” she says. At the time, scholars were debating the term “Latin@,” and she disliked the @ symbol intensely. Years spent thinking about semiotics have softened her view. She now sees how the symbol captured a moment when identity was intersecting with the new digital age, much as the x in “Latinx” works today as a placeholder, an invitation to fill in the blank. It acknowledges expansive gender expression, she says, but it also speaks to possibility and agency.
❝ Latinx art is American art. ❞ At the McNay, she uses Latinx as an umbrella term,
What she has added is a way of looking. The McNay, she believes, must evolve alongside its audiences, serving as steward of the collection it inherited while building an institution that will matter in the future. Recent exhibitions have celebrated works from Marion Koogler McNay’s original bequest and new work made by regional artists in the past few years. Lopez is especially drawn to transhistorical and intergenerational projects that bring together artists of different eras and backgrounds, and she has watched those exhibitions open multiple doors into the art for visitors of every background and identity. Latinx Art Is American Art Colleagues in other creative fields, Lopez notes, sometimes call San 46 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
just as earlier generations used Latino and Latina, and she always defers to the terms an individual prefers. For herself, the answer is simple. She identifies as Tejana. Both Directions at Once When Lopez began her career, artists working outside New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago faced a long and uncertain road to national
recognition. It is still difficult, she says, but the internet has opened an entire new world for artists to share their work, and the old idea that success means making it on one of the coasts has begun to feel outdated. Artists, collectors, and galleries are catching up to something San Antonians have always known: that extraordinary art is being made everywhere. She sees the McNay as a platform where local, national, and international artists and audiences can meet. She has been busy proving it in both directions. She has brought some of her favorite Chicago artists to San Antonio, acquiring a major outdoor sculpture by the Puerto Rican, Chicago-based artist Edra Soto and a ceramic sculpture by Salvador Jimenez-Flores, who moved to Chicago from Mexico as a child. She invited Caroline Kent, a friend from her Minneapolis years, to create a site-specific project in the museum’s lobby, and artist Victoria Martinez drew on her Chicago neighborhoods for an installation in the museum’s Rasquachismo exhibition. A forthcoming project, planned for 2027 and 2028, will place international artists from Peru, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela alongside Latinx artists working in the United States, and Lopez can hardly wait to say more. Beyond the McNay’s walls, she organized Mercado/Material for the city’s Department of Arts & Culture, an exhibition that opened this October at Centro de Artes Gallery. It gathers artists who use vibrant imagery and popular culture to explore Latinx identity and consumerism, and it takes its cue from the gallery’s own address, a site that served as a hub of agricultural commerce long before it became Market Square, to see the visual culture of the market with fresh eyes. For anyone who has never felt the McNay was meant for them, her advice is to come anyway. A first-time visitor might take in the greatest hits of the permanent collection and the museum’s remarkable Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, stop by for a single exhibition or program, or simply wander acres of outdoor sculpture garden that are always free to see. “Art is for everyone,” she says. She recommends an open mind and a comfortable pair of walking shoes, because there is a great deal to see.
Mia Lopez shares a moment with her daughter, Gabi, at Rasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility, her first exhibition for the McNay.
Mia Lopez joins Einar and Jamex de la Torre in conversation about their career; the banner exhibition, de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility; and Mi Chicano Corazón, which the museum acquired.
Into the Canon If one project captures what Lopez came home to do, it is Rasquachismo: 35 Years of a Chicano Sensibility. The exhibition revisited the aesthetic first defined by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, the scholar, beloved community elder, and fellow San Antonio native whose scholarship gave rasquachismo its name. When ARTnews critic Max Durón reviewed the show, his headline declared that rasquachismo had officially entered the art historical canon. Lopez counts it among the great honors of her career, and she is proudest that Ybarra-Frausto lived to see his life’s work receive that recognition. The exhibition embodied everything she hopes to do with the platform of Texas’s first museum of modern art: telling stories no one else is telling, honoring voices the art world has too often overlooked, and connecting them with the McNay’s longtime audience while drawing new visitors through its doors. She wants to keep doing that work on a larger scale, with publications and exhibitions that travel to multiple venues. A decade from now, she hopes to look back on this moment with a single, satisfied thought. “We did it!” V Lopez’s daughter and fatherin-law watch her lead a tour.
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 47
ARTS & CULTURE FORCES OF CULTURE
T
he best review The DoSeum ever received was three words long. A small visitor peered through the window of the museum’s Spy Academy, took in the world on the other side of the glass, and turned to ask, “Is it real?”
Dan Menelly still treasures the question. He wants the museum to be exciting to look at, visually dynamic, as much a work of art as a lesson in science, and a child who wonders whether it is real has already stepped halfway inside. The rest of the journey, in his view, happens through the hands. “If a child can handle, touch, manipulate, ultimately experiment,” he says, “then the big idea becomes their own.” Over the years, those hands have added up. More than 4 million children have come through The DoSeum’s doors since it opened, a tally Menelly likes to put in terms only a children’s museum could claim, some 40 million little fingers on its exhibitions.
Dan Menelly CEO of The DoSeum
THE ARCHITECTURE
OF WONDER At The DoSeum, Dan Menelly is proving that a beloved children’s museum can keep growing up, one exhibition, one experiment, and one curious kid at a time. Photography courtesy of The DoSeum | Portrait photography by Josh Huskin
When Dan Menelly came to San Antonio from New York in 2018, he brought more than two decades in the classroom, two museums’ worth of experience, and a mandate to deepen the science, technology, and design of an institution the city already loved. Today, as CEO of The DoSeum, he leads a museum that has welcomed more than 4 million children since it opened and now sees more than 462,000 guests a year. Its exhibitions travel the world, and its team designed the children’s wing of the Museum of the Future in Dubai. Here, he talks about play, access and building a city’s future by starting with its smallest citizens. This feature is adapted from a conversation on the Voice of San Antonio Podcast, available in full at voiceofsanantonio.com. 48 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
The Teacher Menelly came to that belief the long way, through 23 years of teaching, most of them in New York City and in France. Somewhere along the way, a question about impact began to pull him toward museums, where he found a kind of learning that complements school without imitating it, open and exploratory, with room for children to make decisions of their own. He led two museums before The DoSeum. He has no children himself, and when the invitation to San Antonio came, it caught him by surprise. Then he visited, and the city made the decision for him. “San Antonio just jumped out at me as the best community to do this type of work,” he says. He inherited an institution with deep local roots. Long before it was The DoSeum, it was the San Antonio Children’s Museum, a downtown fixture on Houston Street that a generation of local kids claimed as their own. In 2015 it moved to a new campus under a new name, a leap in ambition and a new way of imagining what a children’s museum could be. When Menelly arrived three years later, his charge was to build on that leap by adding layers of science, technology and dimension to every corner of the place, until the museum became something no single label quite captures. Play Without a Map Walk through The DoSeum today and the first thing you may notice is what is missing. There are no numbered stations, no arrows on the floor, no prescribed route from one exhibition to the next, and the omission is entirely intentional. “A lot of parents are already under so much pressure,” Menelly says. “We didn’t want them to feel they have to come in and do this one, two, three. We didn’t want to turn the mystery into the mundane.” In place of instructions, the museum offers open-ended playscapes that become a mountain range for one child, a castle for another, and an underwater cave for a third. No two visits unfold the same way, which is precisely what brings families back and keeps children talking about their day in the car on the way home, and sometimes for months afterward. The big ideas are all there, from matter and energy to light, sound and number theory, but they arrive disguised as laughter and discovery. “When you run a children’s museum, you don’t want to
ARTS & CULTURE FORCES OF CULTURE
get caught teaching,” Menelly says. “But you want it to be robust. You want it to be meaningful.” His hope is that children will play with an idea long enough that, when it finally turns up on a school syllabus years later, it feels like an old friend. That same spirit shapes the museum’s experiments with technology. The DoSeum was an early adopter of augmented reality, and its team is now exploring humanoid and social robotics. In the Spy Academy, every young agent carries a personal transponder, developed with a firm in Northern Europe, that records each mission as it is completed. For all the novelty, Menelly holds to a simple rule, which is that the technology must always serve the child and never the other way around.
❝ If it works, this museum’s guests will mirror the demographics of the city. ❞
Designed to Travel The clearest measure of how far The DoSeum has come may be how far its ideas now travel. One exhibition, Dream Tomorrow Today, began as a spiral of retired videocassettes, an installation made from obsolete technology that invited children to imagine solutions to environmental challenges. It proved so popular that the team built a new version for the road, and it now tours science centers across the country, delighting children and grown-ups alike. Then there are the dinosaurs, assembled from recycled car parts, built to scale, anatomically correct, and fully kinetic, so that children can bring them to life with levers and actuators. A lighting designer lights 50 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
each one with the care usually reserved for a gallery masterpiece. All of it comes out of a full fabrication lab behind the scenes, where an exhibition designer trained with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in New York tests every concept with children before anything is built. The team has completed about a dozen international design commissions, the children’s wing in Dubai among them, and Menelly likes to compare the operation, only half joking, to Disney’s Imagineers. Sometimes the reach surprises even him. “I travel a lot, and sometimes I’ll be in the airport and I’ll hear people describing an exhibition, and they may not say The DoSeum, but I think they’re talking about their visit here,” he says. “And if I have my badge on, somebody will always come up and say, ‘We were there the other day, and my child did this or that.’” The Invisible Learner For all its global reach, The DoSeum judges itself by a local standard, and its most telling numbers describe who walks through its doors. About 70 percent of its annual budget comes from admissions and programs, and the rest is raised, to keep admission below actual operating costs and to underwrite access. Through Museums for All, a national assisted-admission program, 23 percent of the museum’s guests visit each year, more than seven times the national average of 3 percent. “If it works, this museum’s guests will mirror the demographics of the city,” Menelly says. It is a lofty ideal, and the team runs the museum as though it were a requirement. Guest data is heat-mapped to show which parts of San Antonio families are coming from, and the marketing team reaches out directly to the neighborhoods that are underrepresented.
Menelly has a name for the children at the heart of that effort. He calls them invisible learners, the children who have not yet made it through the door. “We have to think systematically about removing barriers to their participation,” he says, whether those barriers are economic or simply a matter of distance. When families cannot come to the museum, the museum goes to them, reaching another 23,000 children a year in parks, community centers, schools and partners like Haven for Hope with interactive storytelling and design challenges. Teachers are part of the plan too, and Menelly hopes they will come to see The DoSeum as “a great big cabinet of ideas” for bringing new life into their classrooms. The Second Decade If The DoSeum’s first decade was about proving the model, its second is about widening the circle. The board has acquired two parcels next to the campus, and a new campus plan is underway. Its design will be guided by a strategic plan drawn from conversations with families, community partners, and other stakeholders, and both will be unveiled in 2027. The museum’s international school already brings immersive Mandarin and French to campus twice a week.
A Gift, Freely Given Ask Menelly what he hopes to leave behind, and he talks about the world these children will inherit and the kind of readiness they will need to meet it. “We want them not just to be ready, but to feel ready,” he says. “We want them to face the future with all the optimism and the joy and wonder that’s going to power them.”
❝ We want Then he tells a story that answers the question better any mission statement could. Every so often, he them not just than will watch three children playing together and ask parents whether they are siblings. The parents to be ready, their shake their heads and tell him the children have only met. but to feel just “But they know how to play,” he says. “That’s a great Menelly’s larger dream is drawn on a map. He imagines a gift, and it’s a pleasure to observe.” children’s district, with the trolley line extended through ready. Lions Field to Historic Pearl, linking The DoSeum to a It is the story The DoSeum tells every day, the story of cultural corridor that runs past the Witte Museum, the ❞ a city that decided its children deserve wonder and a Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, and the McNay Art Museum. “We would love for The DoSeum to be a portal to Pearl and the cultural center,” he says.
museum willing to keep rebuilding itself, again and again, to give it to them. V
Much of the groundwork already exists. The city’s museum leaders gather for dinner every quarter, and The DoSeum is a partner in a major federal grant awarded to San Antonio to build programming for its youngest learners. “If someone’s interested in us, we’re interested in them,” Menelly says.
Hear Dan Menelly’s full conversation on the Voice of San Antonio Podcast. Please scan the code to hear the full conversation. @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 51
FORCES OF CULTURE
Ginger and Mario Diaz, owners of Felíz Modern and Rancho Diaz
FELÍZ, BY DESIGN
Through Felíz Modern, their self-described home of happy, and Rancho Diaz, Ginger and Mario Diaz have built two distinct ways to encounter San Antonio, and helped the city’s artists carry their work far beyond it. Select images photographed by Jana Cantua at Pullman Market, Mezquite, and Mezcalería. Homeware by Rancho Diaz; creative direction and production by Camilla Martinez; set styling by Maria Cueva. Additional images courtesy of Felíz Modern and Ginger & Mario Diaz.
In 2017, Ginger and Mario Diaz opened Felíz Modern in Olmos Park to stock the gifts and objects they could never find close to home. Two more locations followed, at Historic Pearl and at San Antonio International Airport, along with Rancho Diaz, a home store filled with handcrafted pieces by local makers and artisans from Mexico. Along the way, their shelves have given local artists a wider audience and given travelers a truer picture of the city. Here, they talk about taste, humor and the stories that travel with a wellchosen object.
a cheeky sticker or recognizing their own culture in a work by a local artist. It is a small moment, and it is the one the couple treasures most, the sound of someone feeling seen and finding a reason to smile.
t Felíz Modern, the laughter sometimes reaches Ginger and Mario Diaz before the customer does. When they are working in their office at Historic Pearl, their favorite thing is hearing people on the other side of the door laughing at
The Store They Wanted to Shop Felíz Modern became their answer. Its shelves bring local art and design into the everyday rituals of giving, decorating, and gathering, and from the start, the store depended on the artists who believed in
A
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That exchange is exactly what they hoped to create when they opened their first store in Olmos Park. The idea grew out of the things they loved in their own lives, their friends and family and the celebrations that mark life’s milestones. When they looked closely, they realized that many of their favorite finds, the gifts, the party pieces, the objects for their home, had come from hunting in other cities or online, because nothing brought them together in one place here. They began to wonder what it would look like to change that.
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FORCES CULTURE STYLE &OF LIVING
it. “Very early on, thanks to artists who trusted our model of making their art more accessible, we were able to support local artists and makers and see them grow,” they say.
Ask the couple to define that deeper city and they describe something complex and entirely its own, a fusion of Mexican culture, cowboy culture, food, and music that runs from rock and Tejano to country, blues, punk, and emo. Mexican influence saturates the city, they say, mixing with everything else in how San Antonio looks and how it carries itself. “We are the crossroads between the desert west, the border, the hill country, Rio Grande Valley,” they say, and all of those cultures come together in a town that prizes community and connection above all.
❝ We never had intentions of growing of their favorite things about the place is that it beyond our One rarely takes itself too seriously. The other side of that is a sharp eye for anything false. In San Antonio, Olmos Park ease they say, inauthenticity is easy to spot. location. Objects With a Story Joy to Go At the airport, those ideals run up against the practical Their backgrounds in art and design have given the ❞ limits of a carry-on bag and a few minutes between couple another way to add to the mix. A few years ago, Growth of their own was never part of the plan. “We never had intentions of growing beyond our Olmos Park location,” they say. Then Historic Pearl came calling with an invitation to open a second store, and bringing local work to a wider audience, as they put it, was simply too much fun to pass up. A few years later came an invitation to open at the airport, which carried their mission to what they call the front door for many of the city’s visitors. The stores grew, but the mission stayed the same, and it has turned out to resonate with visitors and locals alike.
flights. Drawing on their own travels and the things they bring home, Ginger and Mario set out to create a distinctive portrait of San Antonio while steering well clear of what they call “the standard airport tchotchke schtick.” They filled the shelves with pieces small enough to slip into an already full bag yet rich enough to carry the flavor and heart of the city, from local art to locally made snacks, and they chose them with locals in mind as much as tourists. The story they hope travels home with each purchase is that San Antonio, and Texas more broadly, is “culturally deeper than some of the cartoonish stereotypes” that tend to travel more easily than the real place does.
54 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
they designed their own line of papel picado depicting the missions and other local landmarks. Mario also created Felíz Modern’s Virgen de Guacamole sticker, and when asked to name the one object that says everything about San Antonio, he chooses it without hesitation. “It’s a good play on our food culture and a slightly irreverent take on a religious icon,” he says. Ginger’s answer is waiting at Rancho Diaz, in its clay trees of life and candelabras. “We have many throughout our home,” she says, “and I like that they tell their own stories.” The two stores invite different kinds of discovery. At Felíz Modern, the mood is all joy and a wink. At Rancho Diaz, the pleasure runs deeper,
as customers slow down to appreciate craft and culture and grow curious about the artists behind each piece. The couple finds it deeply gratifying when shoppers tell them they want their own homes to feel just as warm and handmade. That sense of connection shapes how they choose their makers. From the beginning, they approached artists whose work they loved and asked whether they would be open to making pieces that more people could bring home, and they still work that way today. Sourcing trips for both stores introduce them to new makers, and each new find has to reflect the local culture and fit naturally into the larger story each store tells. For Ginger, the search is personal. “Finding the right gift for a friend is very important to me,” she says. “I get a high from that.” Sourcing for the stores gives her the same feeling, and she holds every object to the same standard. It has to be something she would be proud to give or happy to keep in her own home.
❝ Finding the right gift for a friend is very Carried Far From Home A guest wandering Historic Pearl important to on a Saturday morning might leave Felíz Modern with a sticker, then step me. I get a high into Rancho Diaz and linger over a piece made by an artisan in Mexico. from that. A traveler might tuck something by a San Antonio maker into a suitcase ❞ at the airport. The couple is quick to say that no single shop holds the city’s whole story. Asked whether they feel responsible for deciding which version of San Antonio gets carried into the world, they admit they have never thought of it that way. The city is full of great stores, each with its own strong edit, and that variety is exactly what they admire. When Ginger travels or shops locally, she loves a store with its own story and personality, one that never strays from who it is. That is what they have built, twice over. Over time, their choices have given artists more places to be seen and given visitors a richer, more textured introduction to the city. Somewhere far from here, an object from one of their shelves becomes a gift, finds a place in someone’s home, or starts a conversation about where it came from. The story that travels with it is the one Ginger and Mario hope every visitor takes home. “We hope they experienced what we love about San Antonio,” they say, “the slower pace, the diverse food scene, the celebrations that make life matter.” V @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 55
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Built on Legacy, Driven by Purpose
For Abigail Kampmann, leadership means honoring what came before while having the courage to build what comes next
A
bigail Kampmann grew up in a San Antonio family with deep roots in the automobile business, learning from her grandfather and father to keep your word, take care of people, think for the long term and do the right thing— even when it is difficult or costly. Her path into the family business was not automatic. Abigail was a practicing lawyer when her father invited her to become involved— not to take charge, but to learn the automotive business and grow within it. “I wasn’t handed the business or a leadership position,” Abigail recalls. “My dad gave me an opportunity to learn and grow, and I wanted to earn the responsibility that came with it. I said yes, and I’ve never looked back. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” Over time, Abigail assumed greater responsibility. When the family’s automotive holdings transitioned to the third generation, her ownership came through a combination of transfers, exchanges and purchases. Under her leadership, the organization evolved into Principle Automotive, headquartered in San Antonio and operating dealerships in multiple states. Locally, Principle includes BMW of San Antonio, MINI of San Antonio, Principle Volvo Cars San Antonio and Principle Hyundai Boerne—with Principle continuing to grow locally in Q4. Principle’s purpose is helping people move through life in a meaningful way. “Associates first” is fundamental to Abigail’s leadership. Give Associates the opportunity, training and tools to succeed, and they will take care of Guests. But that commitment works both ways. The organization has a responsibility to invest in its people, and every member of the team has a responsibility to perform, be accountable and contribute to the success of the whole. 56 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
That philosophy is reflected in Principle’s DRIVEN values. During the pandemic vehicle shortage, when many dealerships significantly increased prices on scarce vehicles, Principle chose not to follow. For Abigail, values matter most when there is a cost to living by them. Her commitment to San Antonio extends well beyond business. Abigail’s longest-standing board service is with Texas Biomedical Research Institute, where the belief that “Health Starts with Science” resonates with her—particularly the extraordinary global impact of infectious-disease research taking place right here in San Antonio. Her love of Western art and the history of the American West draws her to the Briscoe Western Art Museum, while her involvement with the Alamo reflects her belief in the enduring importance of what it represents: freedom, and a story whose significance reaches far beyond Texas. Through United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County, she and Principle also support stronger individuals and families. For Abigail, giving back means showing up and contributing time, resources and leadership. Today, Abigail remains focused on thoughtful growth and creating opportunities for Associates to build meaningful careers and become Principle’s next generation of leaders. Abigail Kampmann
“We pride ourselves on delivering an exceptional customer experience,” Abigail says. “I invite readers to visit PrincipleAutomotive.com to see our dealerships, brands and inventories across multiple states. If we have the vehicle you’re looking for, we can bring the Principle experience—and the vehicle— to you.” Over 70 years after her family entered the automobile business, Abigail remains proud of what came before and focused on what her generation will leave behind. “It’s not simply about selling cars,” she says. “It’s about delivering an exceptional experience, keeping our word and giving back to a community that has been so good to my family and Principle Automotive. That’s the legacy I want us to carry forward.” V
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Billy Schenck, Throwin’ A Loop, 2012, Oil on canvas, 32 x 38 1/8 in. (detail) Purchased with funds provided by the Jack and Valerie Guenther Foundation.
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 57
Special Advertising Feature
A Room with a Point of View:
Inside the Collected, Colorful World of Whitney Schones Design Photography by Glass Lake Media
W
hen Whitney Schones moved to San Antonio from Oklahoma nearly 15 years ago, she was afraid to decorate with color. It is difficult to imagine now, standing inside one of the rooms she and her team have created.
In one recent project, a green garden climbs across the dining room walls, surrounding citron velvet chairs, blue-and-white porcelain, an ornate gilt mirror and a chandelier that appears almost to float above the table. Nothing recedes. Nothing needs to. The pieces hold their own while becoming part of something larger: a room that feels collected, expressive and completely alive. Many of those layers were sourced through Estate, the studio’s showroom, where custom case goods mix with one-of-a-kind finds, each selected to complement the client’s own pieces rather than compete with them. The result feels gathered over time, personal, unexpected and entirely its own. San Antonio drew that confidence out of Schones. Her clients already owned colorful, deeply personal things: Fiesta trains, paintings by Kathy Sosa and objects that had been in their families for generations. She began designing with those pieces rather than treating them as obstacles to work around. Slowly, color became part of her vocabulary, followed by mixed patterns, antiques, beautiful textiles and combinations that did not need to match perfectly to make sense together. Today, Whitney Schones Design is a full-service interior design studio known for luxury interiors with an eclectic, modern point of view. The team works across new homes and turnkey remodels, carrying projects from plans and finish selections through custom furniture, art and final installation. Alongside the studio in Alamo Heights is Estate, its showroom of antiques, vintage finds and new pieces available as shown or by custom order. Some clients, Schones says, trust the team completely 58 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
and never need to see a thing. Others need to touch a fabric and sit in a chair before they know. Estate gives them that experience in person, and with it a kind of instant gratification, as they begin to understand the place a piece might hold in their home. Schones begins each project by paying attention to what is already there. She wants to know how her clients live, what they have collected and which objects they could never imagine giving up. Those details often become the soul of the finished home. “I love beautiful things, but I never want a room to feel like everything was purchased at the same time or from the same place, or like we just came in and ‘did’ the house,” she says. The home photographed here was among the first projects Schones and her business partner fully collaborated on, and it reflects the way the studio works today. Several of its pieces began on the floor at Estate, where the clients saw them and could not imagine living without them. A leopard-covered console holds art books and emerald glass. Red ikat pillows sit against a deep blue sectional. Floral ottomans bring another pattern into the conversation. Even the powder bath joins in, with vivid orange wallpaper alive with monkeys, birds and foliage, framed by a greenpatterned mirror. Throughout the home, confident choices are grounded by a genuine understanding of comfort. Schones and her team return often to one practical question: Where will someone put their feet up? It shapes the pieces they gather for Estate as much as the rooms they design. These are homes where children move through the rooms, dogs climb onto the furniture and friends stay gathered around the table. Their beauty comes from being lived in, not protected from life. Schones leads the studio alongside her business partner and CEO, Christi Pepper, who brings a degree in architecture and more than 15 years of industry experience to the work. Schones describes their partnership as two halves of a whole. Pepper has an instinct for reading her mind and an eye for some of the studio’s most beautiful combinations, which has freed Schones to travel, source and meet the artists and makers whose work finds its way into their projects. Lead designer and project manager Payton Schiel turns ideas into precise plans and keeps track of the hundreds of decisions that go into a house, while Lela Muzquiz oversees procurement and makes sure nothing slips through the cracks. As the team has grown, the studio has taken on increasingly complex projects without losing the personal relationships at the center of the process.
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The things people have collected, inherited or lived with for years are often what make a home feel special. I’m not interested in wiping the slate clean.
❞
The studio is currently completing an 8,000-square-foot home, guiding it from architectural plans and finishes through furnishings, art and final details. The clients gave the team complete trust, and they have already asked the studio to design their home in Jackson Hole, WY, which will be their fourth project together. For Schones, that continued relationship is the clearest measure of success. She has no interest in growing simply for the sake of being bigger. With a steady stream of repeat clients and referrals, the studio can choose the right projects and do them exceptionally well. There is something distinctly San Antonio in that balance of beauty and ease, history and irreverence, polish and personality. The city did more than teach Schones to use color. It gave her permission to have more fun. Her work returns that gift in rooms that feel generous, individual and ready to be lived in. On many afternoons, Schones can be found doing the same, settled into one of the recliners at Estate with her laptop, at home in a place she and her team built together. V @VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 59
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Ryan Hunter · Studio RH
Everywhere You Look
From The Newstand’s coffee-cup mascot to a runway at Paris Fashion Week, Creative Director Ryan Hunter has drawn the visual identity of a new San Antonio.
SAMA merchandise, design by Ryan Hunter.
Ryan Hunter
KidSuper’s Spring/Summer 2026 menswear show. Bag design by Ryan Hunter.
The Newstand, logo design by Ryan Hunter.
Bexar Goods x SPURS, design by Ryan Hunter.
Photography by Michael Rodriguez (@michaelxgabe), and courtesy of Ryan Hunter
R
yan Hunter’s work is already woven into the visual language of contemporary San Antonio. Through Studio RH, the independent designer has created identities for Local Coffee, Curry Boys BBQ, The Newstand and other businesses that have helped define a new generation of the city’s hospitality culture. A 2019 Trinity University graduate and former collegiate soccer player, Hunter began sketching in coffee shops as a way to step outside the rhythms of campus and athletics. A paid T-shirt commission revealed that his drawings could become a business. Work with Bexar Goods introduced him to San Antonio entrepreneurs, while a project with San Antonio FC brought his two worlds together, placing his illustrations across jerseys, commercials and in-stadium animations.
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There’s something really rewarding about walking around your own city and seeing the things you’ve designed become part of people’s everyday lives.
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Hunter describes his visual style as fun, pop-arty and influenced by streetwear. Its apparent simplicity is part of its intelligence. Bold type, memorable characters and retro references give each brand 60 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
an immediate sense of personality without crowding the idea. His identity for The Newstand, including its coffee-cup mascot, Buddy, helped turn a neighborhood shop into something recognizable before a customer ever stepped inside. His work has traveled beyond San Antonio, too. For Curry Boys BBQ’s expansion to Nashville, Hunter carried the brand’s visual identity across graphics, interiors and the building’s exterior. He also designed a Papa Johns pizza delivery bag for KidSuper’s Spring/Summer 2026 menswear show, which appeared on the runway at Paris Fashion Week. It’s a fitting extension of his style: graphic, playful and impossible to overlook.
IN THE CURRENT From neighborhood coffee cups to sports venues and fashion, Hunter’s designs move through the places people gather and the things they choose to wear. He finds particular satisfaction in seeing work made in San Antonio become part of daily life here, while following the people and ideas behind it well beyond the city. V
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@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 61
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Juliana Huff de Leon · Day Atelier
Room for a Little Chaos Painter and interior designer Juliana Huff de Leon starts every room the way she starts a canvas, with a story and space for the unexpected.
Photography by Jana Cantua and courtesy of Juliana Huff de Leon
J
uliana Huff de Leon has never been interested in choosing one form of beauty. She moves among interiors, painting, architecture, vintage objects, fashion and flowers with the conviction that each discipline can sharpen the others.
A San Antonio native, Huff de Leon began working in an art gallery at 14. She has since built a practice that moves between making art and shaping spaces, following her curiosity across disciplines instead of settling into a single one.
Juliana Huff de Leon
Andy Roddick Foundation event with Brooklyn Decker, displaying her work as part of an evening supporting opportunities for children to discover their talents. For Huff de Leon, that purpose is personal. She considers raising her two children to embrace what makes them different her most important creative project.
❝
When it comes to design, she approaches a room as
The world is she does a canvas, beginning with the client’s story and leaving space for a little chaos. Her eye has been drowning in shaped by travel, from the mysterious markets of to the colorful calles of Mexico, and by That approach became the foundation of Day Atelier, the same; it is Morocco her multidisciplinary interior architecture and design the thrill of finding one budget-friendly piece that studio. The firm works across residential, commercial desperate for the outshines an item with a luxury price tag. Across and hospitality projects, pairing technical design with mediums, she brings eras and cultures together until bespoke furniture, vintage sourcing and an eye for different. the result feels unmistakably lived in.
❞
the unexpected. Her work on The Night Heron, the rooftop concept above Casa Rio, shows how a familiar San Antonio landmark can become a place for a new generation to gather while remaining connected to the history that gives it meaning.
Her painting has taken that sensibility beyond San Antonio. At Rancho Pillow in Round Top this past spring, Huff de Leon participated in an 62 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
IN THE CURRENT Huff de Leon’s work makes a case for trusting what sets us apart. She tells her children that “the world is drowning in the same; it is desperate for the different.” It is a conviction visible in her paintings and interiors: beauty becomes more compelling when someone has the freedom to make it their own. V
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 63
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Jason Navarette and Chelsea Chavez · Cherry
A Language of Our Own
From Laredo to Houston to Southtown, the couple behind Cherry has built a collectible design boutique where every object arrives with a story.
Jason Navarette and Chelsea Chavez
Photography by Jason Navarette
J
ason Navarette and Chelsea Chavez grew up in Laredo, built their reputation in Houston and found their next chapter in San Antonio. In 2016, the partners in life and business opened Feliz Interiors, a Houston design boutique with a mission to make the city smile, one design at a time. The shop became a destination for admirers of the couple’s layered, expressive interiors. In San Antonio, they saw the possibility of creating something different. They opened Cherry in Southtown as a collectible design boutique and cultural space that resists a single house style. Antique rugs share space with contemporary paintings. Historic furniture sits alongside experimental objects and work by artists in San Antonio. The connection is not period or palette, but intention: craftsmanship, provenance, originality and that harder-to-name quality of presence. Cherry reflects how meaningful interiors are made, slowly, through travel, inheritance, relationships and instinct. At Cherry, curiosity is part of the experience, with each object offering a deeper story about
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its maker, materials and provenance. Choosing something becomes less transactional and more personal, connecting its next owner to the life it carried before. Through Cherry, Navarette and Chavez reflect a new confidence within San Antonio’s design culture. It does not ask the city to imitate New York, Milan or anywhere else. It asks us to look more closely, choose more deliberately and develop a visual language of our own. In a city learning to recognize the value of its point of view, that invitation matters. IN THE CURRENT Navarette and Chavez are teaching San Antonio to see collecting as a creative act. At Cherry, every purchase becomes a conversation between maker, object and owner, and the city gains a gathering place for anyone who believes a home should tell a story worth keeping. V
Bechants
PRESENTS
194 South Main Street | Boerne, Texas 78006 (830) 816-7777 | Bechants.com | Bechants Bechants
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Caroline Timmins and Ryan Hoskins · The Scout Guide San Antonio
Scouting San Antonio
Caroline Timmins and Ryan Hoskins have turned The Scout Guide into a year-round stage for the best of local, from neighborhood shops and design studios to MICHELIN-recognized kitchens.
Caroline Timmins and Ryan Hoskins
Photography by Michael Rodriguez (@michaelxgabe)
W
hen Caroline Timmins and Ryan Hoskins became the a design studio or a MICHELIN-recognized restaurant as part of the owners and editors of The Scout Guide San Antonio, same cultural ecosystem. The point is not simply to recommend where they inherited an annual to go. It is to reveal how much style, ambition publication. They began turning and originality already exist here. it into something more active: a year-round What makes San Antonio special has always platform connecting independent businesses been its people. There’s a genuineness here, That confidence matters. San Antonio is too a kindness and a willingness to encourage through print, digital storytelling and events. often presented through a narrow set of symbols Timmins grew up in central San Antonio and spent more than a decade in marketing and operations for a luxury real estate firm. Hoskins, raised in Helotes, brought experience in engineering, project management and real estate. Their work introduced them to the neighborhoods, makers, restaurateurs and designers who give the city its character.
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and collaborate with one another that feels incredibly unique. For us, The Scout Guide San Antonio has never really been just about a business, a brand or a place. It’s about the people behind them and how we can tell their stories in a way that shows what makes them, and this city, so special.
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Under their direction, The Scout Guide has become more editorial, visible and engaged. Its platforms move easily between established institutions and emerging businesses, treating a neighborhood shop, 66 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
or measured against cities assumed to be more sophisticated. Timmins and Hoskins reject that premise. Their San Antonio is elevated without becoming remote, polished without losing warmth and local without feeling small.
IN THE CURRENT San Antonio benefits when more people tell its story well. Timmins and Hoskins are not trying to manufacture cultural relevance. Through their taste, relationships and presence in the community, they make the relevance already here more visible. V
Christi Pepper Whitney Schones CEO
FOUNDER
A home, distinctly yours. Custom furnishings and turn-key remodels. One showroom, endless possibilities. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
7701 Broadway, Suite 139 | San Antonio, 78209 (210) 201-2360 whitneyschones.com | Instagram: @estatebywsd
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Sean Wen, Andrew Ho and Andrew Samia · Curry Boys BBQ
Smoke Signal
A pandemic pop-up and a perfectly timed group text became Curry Boys BBQ , the curry-and-brisket favorite that carried Tobin Hill all the way to Nashville.
Andrew Samia, Andrew Ho and Sean Wen
Photography by Eric Pohl and Victoria Quirk, and courtesy of Curry Boys BBQ
C
urry Boys BBQ began as a pandemic experiment and became packs. That night, each reheated the leftovers at home, and all three one of the most recognizable restaurants in San Antonio. texted the group chat at the same moment to ask whether the others Founders Sean Wen, Andrew Ho and Andrew Samia pair had tried what they had just sold. Texas barbecue with Thai curry. The combination earned them a place on Texas Monthly’s 2021 list of the best new restaurants That October, they opened in a pink shack of about 200 square feet on the St. Mary’s Strip. The pink is a nod to Thailand, where in Texas, the No. 4 spot on Yelp’s 2023 list of the best it shows up on taxis and buses. The name came from places to eat in Texas, and two James Beard Award the same plain thinking: curry tells guests exactly what semifinalist nods for Best Chef: Texas. They now run restaurants on the St. Mary’s Strip, in Stone Oak and Curry Boys BBQ is a they are getting, and barbecue tells a skeptical firstin East Nashville. testament to the San timer the place is approachable. When they outgrew the shack, they moved across the street into a historic Wen and Ho went to the same Houston high school Antonio community’s house in Tobin Hill, the neighborhood Wen calls home. In March 2026, the three published Asian Smoke: Thai but became close friends on the basketball courts at enthusiasm and and Southeast Asian Barbecue from the Curry Boys, a UT Austin. When Wen came to San Antonio through Venture for America, Ho soon followed after years in support for fun, new cookbook written in the same voice as the restaurant’s Instagram, all caps included. Thailand and Vietnam. He slept on Wen’s living room ideas! floor while the two started the pop-ups that became IN THE CURRENT Pinch Boil House, a Viet Cajun crawfish restaurant Curry Boys shows what a restaurant can become when downtown. it is built for its neighborhood first. The founders kept Samia is the pitmaster behind South BBQ & Kitchen. In 2020, with the menu short, kept costs low and grew only when the shack was dining rooms closed, the three planned a pop-up where guests picked bursting. When they took the concept to Nashville, they chose a up family packs from their cars. Ho brought the curry, which he historic house in a neighborhood much like Tobin Hill. Wen says it is learned from home cooks in Thailand. Samia brought the brisket. thriving there, too. At a moment when San Antonio is asking how to They tested recipes in separate kitchens and met in person for the make its urban core a place people choose, three friends with a pink first time on the day of the event, where they sold about 100 family shack and a group text have already answered part of the question. V
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If you are in search of a great real estate agent, look no further. Shail recently helped us sell in Alamo Heights and purchase in Olmos Park, and he was awesome throughout the entire process. This was our first time selling a home, so Shail provided helpful advice on the process, design, and staging. On the home purchasing side, Shail was a savvy negotiator and helped quite a bit with design for our initial remodel. It was a true pleasure to work with Shail throughout this process. He was always very attentive and never more than a phone call away. I would highly recommend him to anyone looking to buy or sell a home.
- Tyler + Jacqueline L
San Antonio Expertise Backed by $100M+ in Sales Shail Patel is a Real Estate Agent whose professionalism and integrity have earned him a reputation as a trusted leader in the industry. With nearly 15 years of experience, he has paired hundreds of clients with unique homes throughout San Antonio. As a proud native of San Antonio, Shail brings deep local marketplace familiarity and expertise across residential developments, new construction, condominium sales, and historic properties. SHAIL PATEL 210.454.2904 | shail.patel@sothebysrealty.com shailpatel.sothebysrealty.com
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 69
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Gio DiZurita · DiZurita Art
Shadow Work
Gio DiZurita paints the parts of ourselves most of us hide, and with Fracture of the Mask nearly selling out on opening night at AnArte Gallery, collectors keep finding their own reflection.
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Gio DiZurita and Raoufeh Taha
for the right people, those who need some kind of confirmation or message, or who are looking for something. The creation process is the gift to me. The art itself is my gift to the collector. Ana Montoya and Gio DiZurita
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Portrait photography by Oscar McAnally; event photography courtesy of AnArte Gallery
O
n September 3, Gio DiZurita’s Fracture of the Mask opened at Ana Montoya’s AnArte Gallery. By the end of the night, almost every work had found a buyer. But what moved DiZurita was watching people stop before her paintings and recognize something of themselves. Some became emotional. Others purchased several of her pieces, drawn to work that seemed to have been waiting for them. Fracture of the Mask is the fifth chapter in a body of work that began with Dancing with Ghosts in 2020 and continued through A Secret Passage, Broken Bodies and Epiphany in Paradise. Inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of individuation, the series considers what happens when we stop hiding from the shadowed parts of ourselves and integrate them into a whole. Select works from Fracture of the Mask remain available at AnArte Gallery.
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Gio DiZurita
DiZurita creates as part of her own mental health journey. The process helps her heal; the finished work invites someone else to recognize what they may have been searching for. That exchange has allowed her to build a career as a full-time artist in San Antonio without separating emotional truth from commercial success. Her practice moves between fine art, fashion, public commissions and collaborations with the San Antonio International Airport, San Antonio Zoo and BMW. She teaches classes, hosts events at her Dignowity Hill studio and creates accessible points of entry for firsttime collectors. IN THE CURRENT DiZurita follows her own rhythm while making room for others. Her openness, warmth and generosity have made her more than a successful artist. They have made her a community fixture. V
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Erinn Einhauser · Everyday Aire
The Considered Closet
After 15 years in luxury fashion, including leading the women’s division at The RealReal, Erinn Einhauser teaches women to buy less and choose better.
Erinn Einhauser
Photography by Sam Beimer
A
fter more than 15 years inside the luxury fashion industry, Erinn Einhauser has learned that the most compelling wardrobes are not necessarily the largest or the newest. They are the most considered.
whether something feels personal, functions beautifully and deserves a lasting place in a client’s life.
Through Everyday Aire, she helps women move beyond the cycle of acquiring more while feeling as though they still have A former New Yorker who now calls San Antonio nothing to wear. Her work is grounded in discernment: home, Einhauser built her career in luxury fashion, Personal style isn’t something you understanding which silhouettes feel natural, which including serving as Director of the Women’s Division can simply buy; it comes from pieces serve a person’s real life and which choices allow at The RealReal. That experience sharpened her eye understanding what truly works individuality to come forward. for construction, proportion and enduring value, but for you. I help women identify the proportions, pieces and it also clarified a philosophy she now brings to women combinations that make them In a culture built around constant consumption, in San Antonio and across the country through feel their best so they can shop Einhauser offers something quieter and more lasting: Everyday Aire, her personal styling practice: great with intention, get dressed with the confidence to know what works, the clarity to style is not about having more. It is about choosing confidence and build a wardrobe recognize what does not and the freedom to make style they genuinely love to wear. entirely one’s own. with intention.
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Einhauser approaches a wardrobe as something collected over time. She mixes old with new, investment pieces with unexpected discoveries and recognizable designers with objects that carry character. Trends may provide inspiration, but they are never the final authority. What matters is 72 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
IN THE CURRENT Einhauser brings the discipline of the luxury resale world into the most personal room in the house. Her work offers San Antonio a quieter definition of style, one built on knowledge rather than accumulation and on pieces chosen to be worn for years instead
355 E Basse Rd San Antonio, TX 78209 @grovehill_ltd
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Danny Parada · Emmer & Rye / Pullman Market
Where Gathering Still Matters
After cooking in some of the world’s most respected kitchens, Danny Parada chose San Antonio, where he now shapes the MICHELIN-recognized restaurants of Pullman Market.
Danny Parada
Photography by Robert Lerma
D
anny Parada could have built his life anywhere. His career The results have placed San Antonio in a national culinary began at Emmer & Rye in Austin, where he joined the group conversation. Isidore earned both a MICHELIN star and MICHELIN as it opened its namesake restaurant. From there he spent Green Star, Nicosi received a MICHELIN star and Mezquite was recognized with a Bib Gourmand. Yet Parada’s measure a year cooking in Sydney, Australia, and of success extends beyond recognition. He wants went on to two of Chicago’s most respected kitchens, Alinea and Lula Cafe, before returning to Emmer & Rye I could live anywhere. But San guests to lower their shoulders, feel welcomed and Hospitality Group. But San Antonio offered something Antonio feels like a city where leave carrying the memory of a meal that could only he had not found elsewhere: a city where ambition and gathering still matters, where have happened here. warmth could occupy the same table. creativity still feels collaborative, For Parada, food is a living history. It reveals where As Director of Innovation, Parada helps shape the and where hospitality remains people came from, why they stayed and what they continue to share. In San Antonio, he found a city that culinary vision across Pullman Market, including deeply human. still understands the table as a place of belonging. Isidore, Nicosi, Mezquite and Fife & Farro. Each restaurant has its own identity, but all share his belief IN THE CURRENT that food should create an immediate sense of place. At Isidore, ceramics made by his wife, Clair Aleece, and china inherited Parada brings a global standard to San Antonio without asking the from his grandmother bring personal history into the dining room. city to become anything other than itself. As Director of Innovation, Across Pullman Market, local ingredients, preservation, whole-animal he is helping define what culinary progress can look like when cooking and fresh-milled grains connect technical rigor to a deeper experimentation remains grounded in place, responsibility and responsibility toward land and community. genuine human connection. V
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Amelita Mauzé Curating San Antonio’s most distinctive addresses
Specializing in Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, and surrounding neighborhoods, Amelita Mauzé represents clients throughout San Antonio’s luxury market. With $65M+ in sales over 10 years, she brings deep local expertise and access to exceptional opportunities. A Kuper Sotheby’s President’s Club member, Amelita is also a Platinum Top 50 Finalist, RealTrends Verified, and ranked No. 26 in the San Antonio Business Journal’s Luxury Real Estate Awards.
R E A L ESTATE CO NSULTANT 2 10.410.7782 ame l i ta.mau ze@sot hebys rea lty.com ame l i tamau ze.sot hebys rea lty.com
THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Morgan Hook · Master of None Flowers
Composed in Motion
The former ballet dancer behind this issue’s cover sculpture builds arrangements that move like a body onstage and are as ephemeral as any great performance.
Morgan Hook
Portrait photography by David Teran | Floral photography by Angela Jazmín Studio
T
he floral sculpture on the cover of this issue was created interrupt one another. Color gathers in unexpected concentrations, by Morgan Hook, whose arrangements bring movement, while open space gives each arrangement room to breathe. The result tension and a sense of the unexpected to the frame. Before feels considered and alive, shaped for the people who will experience working with flowers, Hook spent years learning how it. movement occupies space. As a professional ballet dancer, she developed an instinct for line, proportion, For Hook, dance and floral design are parallel art forms rhythm and restraint. Those ideas now appear in the Dance and floral design both because both are ephemeral. A performance exists floral compositions she creates through Master of create beauty that is fleeting. You only while the body is moving; an arrangement begins None Flowers. know the experience will only changing from the moment it is made. Both offer an Her path eventually moved through the business encounter with beauty that cannot be held in place, exist for a moment, and that is world, but flowers offered a return to physical, intuitive and the knowledge that it will disappear is part of what work. At the beginning of 2026, she stepped away from part of what makes it so powerful. makes us pay attention. account management to devote herself to Master of None full time. IN THE CURRENT Through Master of None Flowers, Hook carries the Hook creates flowers for intimate spaces and elevated events, working with the character of a room as closely as she does discipline and spatial intelligence of dance into work made to be with the flowers themselves. She allows stems to retain their natural experienced in person. Whether for a gathering or a room, her flowers posture, finding beauty in the places where they reach, bend or shape how a space feels for the time we are in it. V
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THE CREATIVE CURRENT
Jessica Thompson · Audience
Center of Gravity
Born in San Antonio and fluent in the world, brand strategist Jessica Thompson has made her hometown the center of an international practice.
Bumble Photography by Clay Grier
Jessica Thompson Photography by the Sartorialist
Outdoor Voices Photography by Joshua Anderson
Jessica Thompson Photography by Marcy Swingle
Photography courtesy of Jessica Thompson
J
essica Thompson embodies a version of San Antonio creativity that has always existed here but is becoming increasingly visible: deeply rooted in the city and entirely fluent in the world.
Fran Drescher for ThredUp Photography by Ashley Batz
includes Old Céline, Prada, Loewe and Luke and Lucie Meier’s Jil Sander, with rare pieces assembled into looks that are cerebral, surprising and entirely her own. Featured in Tommy Ton’s New York Fashion Week street-style photography and recognized within an international community of serious fashion collectors, she understands clothing as design, cultural history and a language through which identity can continually be reconsidered.
A San Antonio native, Thompson began her career at Diesel and Barneys New York, working across sales, merchandising and buying before moving into research and development at a digital media and technology company. She entered the artificial intelligence space around 2014 and later A global creative life is shaped by founded Audience, the brand services agency through the ideas, people and cultures What distinguishes Thompson is not access, although which she now advises fashion, lifestyle, wellness and you remain in conversation with. emerging technology companies serving both luxury she has it. It is discernment. She knows the difference San Antonio gives me a grounded and mass-market audiences. between acquiring beautiful things and developing a
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center from which I can continue learning, traveling and building point of view. Her career has carried her from Shanghai to Los work across the world.
Angeles and into work with companies including Outdoor Voices, Bumble, ThredUp, Halara, Eagle Creek and GigaOm. Now back in San Antonio, she directs an international practice from the city she has chosen as home.
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Thompson’s personal style reveals the same mind at work. Her archive 78 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
IN THE CURRENT Thompson demonstrates that global reach and local belonging are not opposing ideas. Her life moves among industries, cultures and cities, with San Antonio as its center. She represents a creative community that is worldly because of where it comes from, not in spite of it. V
STYLE & LIVING
One night at Hotel Emma. More than one way to make an entrance. Produced by Masha Poloskova and the team at MOSS Designer Consignment Creative direction by Anna Jarema Photography by Kaity Cox Model Taryn Olevia Faith Ellis with Kim Dawson Agency
H
er driver pulls away as the last of the South Texas sun catches the brick of the old Historic Pearl brewhouse. A fire flickers beside Hotel Emma’s entrance, though the evening is still warm. Inside, she crosses the patterned tile to give her name at reception and catches a glimpse of Sternewirth beyond. She has a dinner reservation at Supper, a suitcase full of clothes and an hour that belongs entirely to her.
Denim layer: Sacai; cream dress: Khaite; quilted handbag: Chanel; pointed shoes: Amina Muaddi.
CHECK
IN
DRESS
UP 79
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STYLE & LIVING Jacket: Understated Leather.
Upstairs, the paisley suit comes out first, then the fringed jacket. She tries both, deciding which version of herself she feels like being tonight. Supper can wait a few minutes. Later, she may stop at Sternewirth for a La Babia Margarita and find a reason to stay longer than she planned. The clothes have already had one life; in her hands, they begin another. Masha Poloskova and her team at MOSS Designer Consignment assembled this wardrobe of singular finds, with creative direction by Anna Jarema. For anyone who loves the thrill of becoming someone new for an evening, shopping secondhand offers a particularly delicious possibility: the next chapter is yours to invent. V
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Jacket: Etro; trousers: Etro; green top: Rosetta Getty; handbag: Loewe; shoes: Wales Bonner.
Jacket: Stella McCartney; skirt: Alaïa; clutch: Bottega Veneta; slingback shoes: Gucci; bracelet worn as an anklet: Hermès.
Red jumpsuit: Chanel; black heels: Saint Laurent; plaid shirt: R13; belt: Max Mara.
Pink top: Christopher John Rodgers; pink skirt: Christopher John Rodgers; shoes: N21.
@VOICEOFSANANTONIO | 81
JORGE L MENENDEZ Certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery Fellow of The American College of Surgeons Member of The American Society of Plastic Surgeons Member of The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
Why Choose Pre-juvenation?
using Pre-juvenation is a simple concept to rejuvenate of self self and slow the aging process specifically of facial tissues. ! ! ! ! By using our own body’s healing capacity we can improve ! ! the changes of facial aging and use the same modalities * &$ !&# !( ! *,$ " %* ( "#!' % to* &$ complement a ! *,$ planned facial surgical procedure. * &$ !&# !( " %* ( "#!' % !&# !( ! *,$ " %* ( "#!' % $ ! +!# % $% $ !( % !( $ ! +!# % $% % $ ! +!# % $% $ !( $ !( % !( !( 2=>-6)<176 \ZMI\UMV\[ IZM XMZNWZUML QV W]Z WٻKM The primary concept of microneedling with the FDA approved 2=>-6)<176 \ZMI\UMV\[ IZM XMZNWZUML QV WٻKM W]Z _Q\P WٻKM 2=>-6)<176 \ZMI\UMV\[ IZM XMZNWZUML QV W]Z _Q\P _Q\P !( SkinPen is % to% promote !( % deposition of elastin, collagen and !( ingrowth of micro blood vessels. These are the key building "# #* ! ! "% %! %! "#! !% "!$ % ! ! ! $% blocks of "# #* our facial tissues. 3–4 treatments ! $ "% $ We %! recommend "#! !% "!$ % ! ! $% "# #* "% $ "#! !% "!$ % ! $% ! % * ! "! %$ ! !&# % $$& $ * * * per year spaced out by two to three months. If planning ! % * ! "! ! !&# % $$& $ ! % * ! "! %$ ! %$ !&# % $$& $ " # !# #! &$ % ( ! ""#!' a facial procedure 4–6 weeks prior to * procedure is ""#!' ideal. " # !# #! &$ % ( ! " # !# #! &$ % ( ! * * ""#!' #! $%#& % % #! $%#& % % #! $%#& % % The field of biologic therapy (using our own tissues) #! %# % % ' #$ ' #* % $% & % ! such as blood (PRP–Platelet rich plasma) and % $% & % ! facial fat #! %# % % ' #$ ' #* #! %# % % ' #$ ' #* % $% & % ! %! %! $ %! % ' % % $ $& $ "!$ % ! ! transfer to restore facial volume is very promising. An %! % ' % % $ $ "!$ % ! $ %! $ %! % ' % % $ $& $& $ "!$ % ! ! ! ( $% ! % #!(% ! #! !! ' $$ $ extensive body of research is #!(% ! presently dedicated around ( $% ! % #!(% ! #! !! ' $$ $ ( $% ! % #! !! ' $$ $ % % $&"" * !# &%# presently the % % world to $&"" * !# the field of%$ %! % $ biologics. We use facial &%# %$ %! % $ % % $&"" * !# &%# %$ %! % $ fat transfer in all of our facial surgical procedures to restore # $! ' #* ) % !&% %# % %$ ! $ ( % volume and complement the facial surgical procedure. # $! ' #* ) % !&% %# % %$ ! $ ( % # $! ' #* ) % !&% %# % %$ ! $ ( % " % % # " $ ( $ "# " # &$ *!&# !( " % % # " $ ( $ "# " # &$ *!&# !( " % % # " $ ( $ "# " # &$ *!&# !( JTWWL \W PIZ^M[\ [XMKQÅK KMTT[ \PI\ _QTT IK\Q^I\M \PM ZMR]^MVI\QWV *TheJTWWL \W PIZ^M[\ [XMKQÅK KMTT[ \PI\ _QTT IK\Q^I\M \PM ZMR]^MVI\QWV Myth and Facts of a Deep Plane Facelift.* JTWWL \W PIZ^M[\ [XMKQÅK KMTT[ \PI\ _QTT IK\Q^I\M \PM ZMR]^MVI\QWV KI[KILM _Q\PQV \PM \PM NIKQIT <PM ÅMTL WNÅMTL WN JQWTWOQK \PMZIXa KI[KILM _Q\PQV \PM [SQV NIKQIT [SQV <PM WN JQWTWOQK \PMZIXa KI[KILM _Q\PQV NIKQIT [SQV <PM ÅMTL JQWTWOQK \PMZIXa &$ &$ *!&# % $$& $ $& $ !! % $ ! ##!( %! The concept of the “Deep Plane” facelift procedure was &$ *!&# % $$& $ $& $ !! % $ ##!( %! *!&# % $$& $ $& $ !! % $ ! ! ##!( %! [\QU]TI\M aW]Z W_V JWLa \W PMIT IV QVR]Za MVPIVKM I []ZOQKIT brought forth in the plastic surgical journals in 1990 by Dr [\QU]TI\M aW]Z W_V JWLa \W PMIT IV QVR]Za MVPIVKM I []ZOQKIT [\QU]TI\M aW]Z W_V JWLa \W PMIT IV QVR]Za MVPIVKM I []ZOQKIT "#! &# # $& % !# "#!' % % $ ! $ Sam"#! &# T. Hamra, MD of!# Dallas, Texas. It $ is ! nothing new! It # $& % "#!' % $ ! "#! &# # $& % !# "#!' $ is a $ ZIXQLTa M`XIVLQVO ÅMTL _Q\PQV \PM NI[\ OZW_QVO [MK\WZ WN more extensive dissection of facial deep tissues and everyone ZIXQLTa M`XIVLQVO _Q\PQV NI[\ OZW_QVO [MK\WZ ZIXQLTa M`XIVLQVO ÅMTL ÅMTL _Q\PQV \PM \PM NI[\ OZW_QVO [MK\WZ WN WN ZMR]^MVI\Q^M UMLQKQVM 8ZM[MV\Ta IV M`\MV[Q^M JWLa WN is not a good candidate for this technique. As ZM[MIZKP we ZM[MIZKP have all ZMR]^MVI\Q^M UMLQKQVM 8ZM[MV\Ta IV M`\MV[Q^M JWLa WN ZM[MIZKP ZMR]^MVI\Q^M UMLQKQVM 8ZM[MV\Ta IV M`\MV[Q^M JWLa WN $ % %! % $ #!( % ! ! * #!& % (!# learned from our mentors “there is no single procedure $ % %! % $ #!( % ! ! * #!& % (!# $ % %! % $ #!( % ! ! * #!& % (!# &%&# !# ! ! % # " $ $ "#! $ # $ # # $& %$ for every patient” and “there is no facelift for all seasons”! &%&# !# ! ! % # " $ $ "#! $ # $ # # $& %$ &%&# !# ! ! % # " $ $ "#! $ # $ # # $& %$ !# % $ $ # !&# #! #!& % ! We tailor our procedures to the specific anatomy of every !# % $ $ # !&# #! #!& % ! !# % $ $ # !&# #! #!& % ! patient in order to achieve a safe, well planned, outcome. !! !#( # %! % *!& %! &#% # $ &$$ % $ ) % !! !#( # %! % *!& %! &#% # $ &$$ % $ ) % !! !#( # %! % *!& %! &#% # $ &$$ % $ ) % ÅMTL WN NIKQIT ZMR]^MVI\QWV We look forward to meeting you to further discuss this exciting ÅMTL WN NIKQIT ZMR]^MVI\QWV ÅMTL WN NIKQIT ZMR]^MVI\QWV field of facial rejuvenation.
7744 Broadway Suite 210 San Antonio, Texas 78209 Info@drmplasticsurgery.com www.drmplasticsurgery.com Tel: 210.829.7411 / Fax 210.829.7899 NOVEMBER • DECEMBER ĀþÿĆ NOVEMBER • DECEMBER ĀþÿĆ NOVEMBER • DECEMBER ĀþÿĆ
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EVENTS & CAUSES
The Company We Keep From galas under the stars to suppers among masterpieces, San Antonio’s institutions are finding fresh ways to bring people together Photography by Katie Clementson of Clementson Photography
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EVENTS & CAUSES
A Garden of
Earthly Discoveries Surreal by design, serious in purpose: Texas Biomedical Forum’s 55th Annual Gala backs San Antonio’s boldest scientific ideas Photography by Katie Clementson of Clementson Photography
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t The Argyle this spring, the familiar gave way to the fantastical as guests stepped into The Garden of Earthly Delights: A Surreal Soirée. Drawing on the dreamlike worlds of Bosch, Magritte and Dalí, the 55th annual Texas Biomedical Forum Gala celebrated the imagination that fuels both art and scientific discovery. Gala co-chairs Marie Mays and Ashley Quintanilla led the evening alongside Forum President Adrianna Grossman. Billinda Wilkinson and India Rhodes of Wilkinson Rhodes Event Design brought the surreal vision to life, with support from presenting sponsors the Biglari Foundation, Mays Family Foundation and Betty Stieren Kelso Foundation. Yet the evening’s purpose reached well beyond the garden. Since its founding in 1970, the Forum has supported Texas Biomedical Research Institute through fundraising, volunteer service and community engagement. Its Pilot Study Grants give San Antonio scientists the chance to pursue early ideas that could lead to advances in global health. Over the past 20 years, the Forum has awarded more than $5.5 million in pilot study funding, helping Texas Biomed researchers secure more than $90 million in outside grants. More than $2.7 million of that funding came in the last three years alone, a remarkable measure of what happens when a community believes in the first, uncertain steps of discovery. For one night, guests were invited to see beyond the ordinary. Through the Forum’s work, San Antonio’s scientists do the same every day, pursuing discoveries that begin here and reach the world. V 84 | FALL 2026 VOICEOFSANANTONIO.COM
Texas Biomedical Forum Board of Trustees
Sardar and Rose Biglari and Friends
Marie Mays, Adrianna Grossman and Ashley Quintanilla Elizabeth Roberts, Barbie Gonzalez, Nita Kiolbassa and Christine Tyng
Heather Parkhurst, Carlos Longoria, Jessica Worth and Megan Steves
Anson and Meredith Howard & Sallie and Jonathon Schneider
Christopher Grossman
Jonathan and Burkley Fitzsimons
Dr. Larry Schlesinger and Judy Schlesinger
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Couture in the Courtyard
Beneath Patrick Shearn’s Flora Borealis, Take It Off The Runway turned the San Antonio Botanical Garden into a stage for fashion in full bloom Photography by Gabriella Rangel with TFII, courtesy of San Antonio Botanical Garden
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his year, the San Antonio Botanical Garden invited visitors to look up. Above the Conservatory Courtyard, Flora Borealis rose and fell with the breeze, a vast net of multicolored ribbons that moved like a flock of birds or a school of fish. For Take It Off The Runway, it became the canopy for a fashion show unlike any other in the city. Presented by Fashion Business Network and A.D. Productions, the show sent models through the courtyard in all-white ensembles, from lace column gowns and matching two-piece sets to structured, bohemianinflected formalwear. Against the garden’s greenery and the glass peaks of the Lucile Halsell Conservatory, the restrained palette let texture and silhouette tell the story. The ribbons overhead belonged to Otherwild, the Garden’s immersive exhibition by artist Patrick Shearn and his studio, Poetic Kinetics, whose monumental installations have become signatures of Coachella and Burning Man. Its companion work, Enchanted Trees, planted a grove of 10 imaginary species across the grounds, each crafted from reflective materials that shimmer in sunlight and wind. The pairing felt inevitable. Fashion and kinetic art share a fascination with movement, with what happens when fabric meets air. As the sculpture shifted above the runway, each look gained a second life, turning the show into a collaboration among designer, artist and the Texas breeze. For the Garden, the evening revealed its grounds anew: less a backdrop than a living canvas, where art, design and nature move as one. V
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EVENTS & CAUSES
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A Unique Heritage of Selling REAL ESTATE ADVISOR 210.718.7518
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Deep in the Heart
Gabrielle Uribe, Dorsey Walker, Carroll Dorsey Walker, Evea Graham & Lindsey and Weslee Tumlinson
At its annual Cowboy Soirée, Darlene’s Vision honors a San Antonio educator’s legacy Photography by J.B. Lyde of Parish Photography, courtesy of Darlene’s Vision
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ver a long career in the classroom, Anna Darlene Dorsey saw potential in every child she taught. After her passing, those who loved her gave that conviction a life of its own through Darlene’s Vision, a San Antonio nonprofit dedicated to helping children of all backgrounds thrive. At its annual Cowboy Soirée, her belief in what a child can become gathered the community at the Alamo, under a canopy of Texas stars.
Kevin Fitzpatrick and Will Fitzpatrick
Albert and Tricia Steves
Guests at this year’s gala spread across the Convento Courtyard, the Ralston Family Collections Center and the Alamo Gardens. Beneath limestone arches, UT San Antonio’s Mariachi Los Paisanos filled the courtyard with music, trick roper Kevin Fitzpatrick delighted the crowd and the Ben McPeak Band carried the celebration late into the night. Founded by Darlene’s daughter, Carroll Dorsey Walker, the organization extends her mother’s care for children far beyond a single classroom through partnerships across Texas. For one evening, the soirée made that mission visible in San Antonio: a community united by the belief that every child deserves the chance to discover their own potential. V
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Josh Morales, Sara Mann, Will Walker, Bentley Camp and Sloane Basse
Jeff and Paula Carson, Sharron Batchelor and Carroll Dorsey Walker
Elizabeth Torres, Ana Montoya, Gobie Walsdorf and Shalimar Battah
UT San Antonio’s Mariachi Los Paisanos
Stephanie Arango, Caroline Biggs, Becca Brown, Danni Nicole, Madison Petry and Elise Rubiola
Alfredo and Tenchita Flores
Pam Gilbert and Randy Lenz
Tricia and Curtis Cantwell
Tricia and Curtis Cantwell
Sandy Saks and Nic McFaddin
Emily McMichael, Ford Durbin and Tesa Gonzalez
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The Culture of the Alamo by Taylor Bohne
EVENTS & CAUSES
A Feast for the Eyes
Art on the walls, Texas on the plate: the McNay’s Artfully Served supper series nourishes the museum’s future Photography by Francisco Cortes and Risner Photo, courtesy of the McNay Art Museum
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t the McNay, a work of art can spark a conversation long before anyone sits down to dinner. Artfully Served carries that conversation to the table, where Texas chefs create menus in dialogue with the museum’s collection and exhibitions. Guests drift between galleries, cocktails and music before a seated supper indoors or out in the courtyard, discovering familiar spaces in an entirely new light.
tion programs and care of the collection that carry that vision forward.
The inaugural supper in April paired Danny Parada, Director of Innovation for Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group, the company behind Pullman Market, with untitled: 20 Years of Collecting Contemporary Art. In June, Ladino executive chef Berty Richter found inspiration in the permanent collection. Each evening became its own meeting of artistic Launched in spring 2026, the series of- perspectives, as remarks from McNay fers a fresh way to gather the communi- leaders, curators and the featured chef ty to support the museum. It feels true to deepened what guests saw and tasted. founder Marion Koogler McNay’s vision: bring people close to art, welcome their The fall gathering welcomed Jungsuk curiosity and make room for discovery. “Sue” Kim, owner and executive chef Proceeds support the exhibitions, educa- of The Magpie, for an evening shaped cont’d...
Caroline Korbell Carrington & Kathy and Lionel Sosa
Berty Richter, Executive Chef at Ladino
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Matthew McLendon
René Paul Barilleaux
Rigoberto Luna and Jenelle Esparza
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Yvette Duenas, Rick Agosto, Chef Berty Richter & Julia and Brady Haynes
Joannah Pickett, CeCe Frost Griffin & Carla and John Brozovich
René Paul Barilleaux
Chef Danny Parada
by Modern Paris: Art of the Twentieth Century and Suki Seokyeong Kang: Mountain — Hour — Face. In 2027, Clementine owners Elise and John Russ will respond to American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection, followed by Gusto Group co-founder and CEO Gerardo De Anda and executive chef Juan Carlos Bazan, the team behind Toro Kitchen + Bar, with an evening devoted to the permanent collection.
Ryan Hoskins and Caroline Timmins
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DJ Um Novo Sol
Each supper invites a chef to interpret the art anew and guests to savor the museum from a fresh vantage point. Together, they show San Antonio’s creative voices at their most generous, drawing a beloved local institution into a wider cultural conversation, one course at a time. V
The Pointe of It All
EVENTS & CAUSES
One afternoon, a lasting encore: Ballet San Antonio’s 8th Annual Luncheon opens the theater to the city’s children Photography by Molly Johnson, courtesy of Ballet San Antonio
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Clara Ostrander, Evin Eubanks Rose, Caroline Alexander and Holly Besing
ince 1985, Ballet San Antonio has been the city’s only local professional ballet company. As a resident company of The Tobin Center, it stages three full productions each season, and its school, where many of its own dancers teach, carries the art from one generation to the next. This past March, patrons, community leaders and advocates gathered at The Tobin Center for the 8th Annual Luncheon, co-chaired by Caroline Alexander and Clara Ostrander. United by the belief that every child deserves to experience the beauty, discipline and inspiration of live ballet, guests celebrated the company’s artistic excellence and renewed a shared promise: arts accessible to all. cont’d...
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Joyce Watson, Ann Fienman, Tamra Farris, Rebekah Perez and Emily Littlefield Daugherty
Rebecca Gardner
Alegra Volpe Geibel, Linda Gutierrez, Niti Volpe and Annie Volpe
Rebecca Gardner, founder and creative director of Houses & Parties, served as the featured speaker, sharing her debut book, A Screaming Blast, a visual journey through 20 of her most imaginative and extravagant gatherings. Her reflections on artistry, inspiration and the joy of creating unforgettable experiences mirrored the spirit of beauty and performance at the heart of the ballet itself. Each year, the luncheon’s proceeds benefit Ballet San Antonio and Send the Kids to the Ballet, its signature accessibility program. In its first two years, the initiative provided 10,323 free orchestra-level tickets and round-trip transportation for children from 17 schools and 18 local social service agencies, at no cost to schools or families. For many, it is a first encounter with live performance, a moment that sparks imagination, builds confidence and lingers for a lifetime.
Clara Ostrander and Caroline Alexander
Brandi Garcia and Candace Collins
That support also sustains the dancers, artists and productions that define each season, including Dracula (Oct. 23–25), The Nutcracker (Dec. 4–13) and Carmen (Feb. 19–21). Every gift keeps the curtain rising for the next generation. Discover how you can make a lasting difference at balletsanantonio.org. V
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Starlight, Starbright
Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard lit up The Tobin Center at A Starlit Night, OPERA San Antonio’s celebration of great opera for all Photography by J.B. Lyde of Parish Photography, courtesy of OPERA San Antonio
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PERA San Antonio was founded on a civic belief: San Antonio deserves great opera, and every resident deserves access to it. From its home at The Tobin Center, the company presents masterworks of the operatic canon alongside modern works staged in intimate venues across the city, bringing established, emerging and local artists together in the service of a timeless art.
E. Loren Meeker, OSA Executive Director
That belief took luminous form this past January at A Starlit Night, the company’s gala. Three-time Grammy winner Isabel Leonard, whose career spans the world’s great opera houses and even Sesame Street, took the stage of H-E-B Performance Hall alongside her longtime collaborator, pianist John Arida, and a string quartet from The Orchestra San Antonio. Leonard is one of the most celebrated mezzo-sopranos of her generation and one of its most welcoming. Her artistry speaks to lifelong devotees and first-time listeners alike, making her the ideal voice for an evening devoted to opera’s power to move anyone who hears it.
Annie Labatt and Carolyn Johnson
The celebration also sustains the work that happens beyond the gala spotlight. Through Opera in Schools and student matinees, the company introduces young people to the human voice at its most extraordinary, while the Margaret King Stanley Vocal Scholarship Fund nurtures the singers of tomorrow. The 2026–2027 season brings Cinderella, Pinocchio and La Traviata to The Tobin Center. For one starlit evening and every season that follows, OPERA San Antonio affirms that the most transcendent art belongs to all of us. Learn more at OperaSA.org. V
Mark Johnson & Elizabeth and Eric Reblin
Yun and Alan Au
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Pagent Ferguson, Dr. Sara McCamish, Sarah Hudson and Dr. Edward Briggs
Maryanne Guido, Nick Hollis and Tom Guido
Brendan Speltz, Brook Speltz and Pierre Lapointe
Drs. Sergio and Alice Viroslav
Jim Bugg, Robert Meya, Ingrid Petty and Tom Bugg
Jim Bugg, Robert Meya, Ingrid Petty and Tom Bugg Brent Given, Alethea Bugg and Cece Given
Ian and Donna Thompson
Paul and Lissa Allen
Eduardo and Elsi Parra, James McCutcheon and Kate Davis
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John Arida and Isabel Leonard
EVENTS & CAUSES
Music to Our Ears
Two concerts, one promise: The Orchestra San Antonio makes great music an invitation to all
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Photography by Siggi Ragnar, courtesy of The Orchestra San Antonio
he Orchestra San Antonio began with an idea from its founder, President and CEO Paul Montalvo: an orchestra rooted in this city and open to the world. Under his guidance, it has grown from a chamber ensemble into the resident symphony orchestra of The Tobin Center, where San Antonio musicians share the stage with artists from across the globe. Music Director Leonardo Pineda carries that vision to the audience, guided by a simple conviction: every listener deserves a way into the music.
Leonardo Pineda, TOSA Music Director
Pineda guides listeners through beloved classics and new discoveries alike, leading with melodies they can hold and stories they can follow. On the podium, he fosters a spirit of collaboration that leaves musicians eager to play together again. In his hands, even the most ambitious score feels open to anyone willing to listen. That spirit shaped American Harmony this past spring. Under Pineda’s baton, Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town opened into Daniel Freiberg’s Crónicas Latinoamericanas, featuring world-renowned trumpeter Pacho Flores, an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon recording artist, as soloist, before arriving at Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” The program traced the threads that bind the musical traditions of the Americas, and a companion performance in the orchestra’s Youth Concert Series brought that same journey to Bexar County students during the school day.
Pacho Flores
Erika Prosper and Ron Nirenberg
This summer, Summer Tales offered another way in: the power of a story told in sound. Guest conductor José Luis Gómez led selections from Bizet’s Carmen and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and 14-year-old cellist Cameron Renshaw, a rising star already featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, performed Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme. The concert opened the 210 Festival, the orchestra’s summer celebration of performance, education and collaboration. cont’d...
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EVENTS & CAUSES
Mariana Vela, Leonardo Pineda, Pacho Flores and Daniel Freiberg TOSA family
Michael Amini, Marian Amini and Molly Amini
TOSA fans
Grace Uwizeye-Allen
Kellom Greenway, Stacye Castaneda, Pilar Castaneda, Kareem Valdez and Andrea Fair
Montalvo’s vision reaches beyond the concert hall through Ascend, the orchestra’s initiative to expand access to music education in Bexar County schools. Across every program, the orchestra reveals itself as one of the city’s true forces of culture: made in San Antonio, meant for the world, rooted in the community it serves and shaping a legacy through every young life it touches. V
TOSA Musicians After-Party
Crystal and Abby Cantu Alexandra Pietrzak and Tony Garza
A.J. Sturm and family
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Paul Garro with family and friends
Brenda Rengel and Kamilla Dotta
Dr. Alice Viroslav and Matthew McLendon
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