82. San Antonio Artist Oscar Alvarado Always Thinks Big

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Bigcitysmalltown Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Rivard. This week's guest is San Antonio Artist, Oscar Alvarado. There is no mistaking his distinctive sculptures, many larger than life, covered with thousands of mosaic pieces of glass and tile that are seemingly everywhere in the city. Murals, sculptures, benches, bollards, and enhance the surfaces of columns, walls, and floors with mosaics in Alvarado's signature style. His work is inspired in part by the great Catalan architect and designer Antoni Gaudi, the father of Catalan modernism who died nearly a century ago. Gaudi's many buildings in Spain and beyond remain some of the most distinctive and unique edifices in Europe. Alvarado, I'd argue, is having his own significant impact on his hometown.

Bob Rivard [00:00:55]:
Oscar Alvarado, welcome to Big City, Small Town. Thank you. It seems like your work is everywhere. Yanaguana Gardens at Hemisphere and Palacio Del Rio on the Riverwalk, Zarzamora bus stops in Elmendorf Lake on the West Side, on the East Side, MLK Parks, I am the dream park bench, and as far north as The Rim on I 10 West. I am just mentioning a few of your major installations here, and that includes your newest one, the figurines that dominate the lobby to 300 Main, the new upscale residential tower downtown. How about sharing with our listeners, Oscar, how you became this recognized artist in our city that you are today and your roots in education, in other words, your life

Oscar Alvarado [00:01:39]:
story? Well, I never took an art class. I got a bachelor's of business administration from UTSA in 1985. I was a a mathlete in high school and was encouraged to to follow financial sort of goals. And that's what I got my education in. But it was I was completely bored with that. I spent a couple years in the corporate world, moved to Los Angeles, made some money selling computer systems, and, at one point was able to quit my job by the end of nineteen eighty eight, only after a few years in the corporate world. And I've been self employed ever since. I traveled around to Europe, and I saw some artists at work.

Oscar Alvarado [00:02:22]:
And I thought, well, that's you know, they looked like they were enjoying themselves, and I liked what I was seeing being made. And I'm like, that's what I need to do, but I I didn't I had no medium under my belt. I need I needed to learn how to make stuff.

Bob Rivard [00:02:34]:
Did I hear you use the word, I think it's the word, mathlete? Yes. Yes. I I've never heard that before, but I like it. And I I take it that your strength was mathematics in school, and that's what led teachers to tell you you had a good business mind and should pursue it.

Oscar Alvarado [00:02:50]:
Absolutely. Yeah. My and my twin brother has the exact same, sort of we we we ranked on the ninety ninth percentile when they're when we're tested in our math skills.

Bob Rivard [00:02:59]:
So Well, I was absolutely terrible at math. It frightened me. It intimidated me. So we're not gonna focus on that too much, today, Oscar. I'm much more comfortable talking about art and your art world. But that is a very serious transition from left brain to right brain to go from corporate business selling computers, earning a good living, to wandering Europe and saying, I'm going to reinvent myself as an artist.

Oscar Alvarado [00:03:26]:
And I came back after that trip, ended up back in San Antonio, and, found an old vacant space downtown that I rented. I'd made a loft out of it. I wanted just to live a different lifestyle altogether than that sort of yuppie, you know, get ahead thing that I was working on when I was in Los Angeles. So, I lived downtown among the prostitutes and in buildings that businesses didn't want to be in, but they were vacant, so the rent was cheap, you know? I probably just paid the taxes for the landowner with my rent.

Bob Rivard [00:03:59]:
You are from San Antonio, right? You are from San Antonio?

Oscar Alvarado [00:04:02]:
My family's been in San Antonio for about two hundred and eighty five years.

Bob Rivard [00:04:06]:
That is a long time. Yeah.

Oscar Alvarado [00:04:08]:
What is their story? The, I'm I'm a descendant direct descendant of Jose Antonio Navarro. And his mother came here, from Mexico, and and, she was half, Native American or native and half, Spanish. And they had moved up to San Antonio. They were merchant class. They had a nice home. The

Bob Rivard [00:04:31]:
Was that the Veramendi house?

Oscar Alvarado [00:04:33]:
No. But the Veramendi's were eventually cousins married into the into the family.

Bob Rivard [00:04:38]:
I mean, he was a great

Oscar Alvarado [00:04:39]:
Texan. Ruizi. Okay. And so Francisco Ruiz, who along with Jose Antonio Navarro, my great great great grandfather, were were they were the only two people that signed the Texas Declaration of Independence that were actually born in Texas. And so I'm related to both of those guys.

Bob Rivard [00:04:56]:
That's a extraordinary legacy to have, and that's wonderful. Chris Christofferson, the singer songwriter from Brownsville, Texas, just died a few weeks ago. And I was listening to a long, a former interview that he did with, Terry Gross on National Public Radio, and he's he talked about the fact that he was an army ranger, a helicopter pilot, a road scholar, and was on his way to teaching at West Point when he just threw away everything and said, I've been writing songs since I was a kid. That's what I really wanna do. It cost him his marriage. It cost him his relationship with his parents, and he just decided, I'm gonna become a singer songwriter. That's really where my passion is, and your story reminds me of that. And he told Terry Gross, you know, everybody like me or Bob Dylan or whoever you wanna name, we imagined ourselves first of who we wanted to become, and then we ended up becoming that artist.

Bob Rivard [00:05:47]:
And it sounds to me like you were in Los Angeles, and something triggered a change in your life. And you imagined yourself as a different person, and you've you've become that and more. Yeah.

Oscar Alvarado [00:06:00]:
I was, toward the end of my my career in Los Angeles in computers, I was I had my briefcase going to an appointment. I was a little early, and they had just destroyed a block of buildings in Los Angeles. And I was I'd parked on the street and was walking down looking at some of the the rubble, and I saw shiny objects. And I get my nice wingtips dirty. I walk through the field, and I pick up these things, and I wrap them in a handkerchief, and I put them in my briefcase. And I started making mosaics with these pieces and other pieces that I found at a garage sale in Venice, other Venice, California? Yeah, in Venice, California. I was living in Santa Monica at the time Nice. And had rented a house with my two brothers.

Oscar Alvarado [00:06:41]:
I moved up there first after I graduated from college, and then two of my brothers came. I said, you got to come here, guys. This is you know, the money was really good. And people from Texas had a better work ethic, and Californians were more likely to hire us. That's as they told us, you know, we were there. So, we rented the house, and I was in the master bedroom, and we had a two car garage. So we didn't park the cars there, and I decided to turn that into a studio. I didn't call it that.

Oscar Alvarado [00:07:06]:
I just got a couple of basic tools and started making things.

Bob Rivard [00:07:10]:
So your original art was with found objects. On the other hand, you were already, seeing mosaics as a medium, which is interesting, and I wonder how that came about. You know, it was the shiny objects, and

Oscar Alvarado [00:07:24]:
then I bought, like, a tile sampler at a garage sale. It was just, like, all these different types of tile and stone. That was that was basically it. At first, I didn't say to myself, oh, I'm gonna be a mosaicist at the time. And it took years of, yeah, I'm autodidact in a lot of ways, self taught. Like, I would check out books from the library and try to reverse engineer some of the Roman mosaics. And then, later on, I was able to get lessons from different artists who had studied in Italy, And an Italian artist himself, Monleo Cavallini, he's in his 90s. He's still here.

Oscar Alvarado [00:07:56]:
He used to do mosaics, for Diego Rivera Wow. Among other people. And one of the mosaics he created downtown is at Hemispheric Park. He did it for, the artist Carlos Maria, maybe? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The Mexican Yeah. Carlos Merida.

Oscar Alvarado [00:08:13]:
So that that particular mural was actually crafted, put together by Mr. Cavallini, who subsequently years later when I'm at his place buying glass, his assistants, his people weren't there at the shop. So he shows up. He asked me why I was buying it, and I told him I was making a mosaic, and he asked me how I would do it. And I told him, and he said, oh, that's the Venetian method. I'm like, okay. And he goes, let me teach you another method. And he took me into the studio, and he gave me a lesson.

Oscar Alvarado [00:08:39]:
And it was more than an hour passed, and I was just like, you know, it could have been a second. It was just amazing. Just a super master giving me instruction.

Bob Rivard [00:08:48]:
Is he alive today here in San Antonio? That's a remarkable story.

Oscar Alvarado [00:08:52]:
His company is still around, and his son and his grandson, are in the business. I still buy stuff through their company.

Bob Rivard [00:08:58]:
So I described your art at the outset, Oscar, but I'd really like you to amplify that. I've been to a lot of artist studios in San Antonio over the years. I've never been to one like yours. It's part art studio, part industrial fabrication site. And what we haven't talked about is that at some point, you learned how to work steel. And the size and weight and scope of your works require an incredibly sturdy under foundation, I guess, I would say, what the what the viewer doesn't see, but that's under the mosaic. And so talk about that. And and that's a completely different set of craft skills and, and work than the actual art image itself that you finish with.

Oscar Alvarado [00:09:49]:
Yeah. And I and I think I kind of, am proud of the fact that a lot of my artist friends and and contemporaries, will work with fabricators, or they'll get somebody else to do a lot of the work. Whereas I've learned almost every process of I can't make tile. I buy tile already made. But, you know, I might buy $50,000 in ovens and learn how to make tile. I don't know. But, yeah, I do all the work myself. I learned steel and concrete work from Carlos Cortez.

Oscar Alvarado [00:10:19]:
I used to, occupy an old gas station right catty corner from his studio, I turned it into a residence where I lived there when I had sort of subdivided some rooms. Robert Tatum lived there. We had a little artist

Bob Rivard [00:10:31]:
This is in Southtown.

Oscar Alvarado [00:10:32]:
In Southtown on Perita and Saint Mary's.

Bob Rivard [00:10:34]:
That's right.

Oscar Alvarado [00:10:35]:
Yeah. And some of the mosaic is still there on the building, but they they took a lot of it off.

Bob Rivard [00:10:39]:
I'll have to look for that, but talk about who Carlos Cortez is for and the family, for people that might not know that story.

Oscar Alvarado [00:10:46]:
Sure. Carlos is the third generation of a family who does faux bois. He works in concrete that looks like wood. And I think faux bois is like fake wood in French. And so he, I would just kind of stare at him from across the street. Then he invited me over, and he let me watch. And then, you know, once in a while, he let me use his tools. And a lot of his tools are handmade to bend the steel.

Oscar Alvarado [00:11:09]:
I learned about, the different way you layer the different types of metal because of the expansion and contraction of the concrete. You want to make sure that it doesn't crack. And there's a lot of failures in the historic work that his, great uncle did, Dionysio Rodriguez. And, he I was there to help him repair, one or two of them. And so I learned what not to do, as well, what had been done in the past. And in addition to what Carlos taught me, I've learned and got higher quality materials. I use stuff inside of my concrete to make it flexible and more resilient. So from those early days of Carlos teaching me how to bend steel and how to mix concrete, I have I bend steel now my own way, and I have, professional tools.

Oscar Alvarado [00:11:53]:
I did I did make some tools, like Carlos', that I learned. I do my own welding. I do, I mix my own concrete. I have a small batch concrete plant. You said it looked like a construction site there because I've got this giant mixer with a conveyor belt, and I've got a concrete pump, stuff I've acquired over the years. You know, instead of spending my commission money on on vacations, I I kept reinvesting in in my craft.

Bob Rivard [00:12:18]:
Well, your South Side studio merits more conversation and and fabrication shop. I shouldn't just call it a studio. It's on the near South Side. I can't remember if it's on Roosevelt or Presa.

Oscar Alvarado [00:12:28]:
Yeah. I'm on Roosevelt right at Highway 90. There we go. The 200 feet of street frontage.

Bob Rivard [00:12:33]:
And you you own that. Correct?

Oscar Alvarado [00:12:34]:
I own it, fifty fifty with my twin brother.

Bob Rivard [00:12:37]:
Okay. It's, unmistakable when you get there because you must be the, owner and fabricator of the largest image of the Spurs Wembley that I know of that's standing out front. It must be eight or 10 feet tall. It's 16 feet. That's astonishing.

Oscar Alvarado [00:12:54]:
And and it's it's a few feet off the ground as well. So I I had this idea, his name is Victor, and the Vitruvian man. So I came up with this Victorian Man concept, where there's an image of him holding his arms out that is almost identical to the Vitruvian Man image. So I worked with

Bob Rivard [00:13:14]:
That's that Da Vinci?

Oscar Alvarado [00:13:15]:
Da Vinci's. And I worked with artist Robert Tatum to help me transfer it into the and so I've got a small graphic image that I I won't be selling. I don't wanna get sued. But then I've I've made some T shirts that I give away.

Bob Rivard [00:13:27]:
Well, Wembe, if you're listening, you've been, you know, compared now to a work of Da Vinci. So that adds another layer to your legacy here in San Antonio. At your, studio and fabrication site, you you have what I would call warehouses or bodegas that are just chock full of materials that you've acquired over the years. It's just a treasure chest of of raw material that you have to work with everything from thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of, mosaic pieces to very large, you know, pieces of, of raw materials, whether it's steel or or what's gonna become concrete, etcetera, that, I guess you've set aside for future projects that are somewhere in your your brain that haven't been realized yet?

Oscar Alvarado [00:14:13]:
Yeah. That's pretty much the the case. I my twin brother, after a tragic accident where my wife was killed, decided to help me out by sponsoring my me as an artist and, just to keep me busy when I was couldn't really focus on work. And so, I went to a steel salvage yard, and he paid for a lot of steel. And I also have 10 yards of different types two types of sand, 10 yards each, and then a mixed gravel that I use to mix my concrete with. I have a room filled with bags of cement. Yeah, I think I have about $50,000 just in mosaic glass, porcelain, and natural stone in one of my studio rooms. And another of them, yeah, it's kind of like a bunch of little warehouses.

Oscar Alvarado [00:15:00]:
The place used to restore travel trailers when we bought it. And we turned a lot of those trailers into offices and rooms, and then there's a big giant pole barn in the back that we re roofed, resided, and insulated, and we've got several workshops in there.

Bob Rivard [00:15:16]:
Well, there must have been six or seven people on-site the day I visited, not to mention, numerous dogs, somewhat protective dogs, I'd add. And, there was just a very good feeling there, but he seemed to be happy they were there and doing what they're doing. So I guess that you and your brother, attract other people that that, help you in the process of producing your art, that they're, in essence artists, I don't know, interns or vendors or associates.

Oscar Alvarado [00:15:46]:
Yeah. There was one case where I showed up to do a mural at, Fort Worth, and we built this giant shelter around a wall where I was to install the mural. It took a day, and I had prefabricated these these four by eight panels of wall out of plywood and two by fours. And I I erected them together to fit around this wall and used the PVC pipes to make a roof with tarps. And, the second day, I get ready to start installing the mosaic, which I had created in my studio in San Antonio. And I cut it up into, like, 50 pound pieces. And the firemen finally walked over after watching us for two days, and they said, hey, we see that the contractors are here, but when is the artist gonna show up? And the point is that, you know, the I do the work, and, you know, people think the artist just sits there and maybe paints a pretty picture. I'm not really sure.

Oscar Alvarado [00:16:32]:
But it's it's really hard work. I have cuts in my hands to prove it. You mentioned a work in Fort Worth. I'm obviously most familiar with your work here

Bob Rivard [00:16:40]:
in San Antonio, but I did wonder as we were preparing for this episode, how often you get or pursue commissions outside the city and where you where others can see your art outside of San Antonio.

Oscar Alvarado [00:16:53]:
I have I I used to pursue it more through different, national websites, call for artists, and public artists. And it's it's, a lot of times I'm competing against the the call will go out where I who's making I make stuff out of, let's say, 30,000 pieces of tile for one of my, mosaics that I I created in the Hilton Hotel downtown. And somebody else will just make a painting, let's say, five feet wide. They'll send it to a computer, who then, it gets go goes to some sort of machine that inks this painting onto tile at a larger scale. And then other people come and install the tile. So that the expense for that is probably less than what it costs me in all the labor hours to put together 30,000 pieces and put each one on one at a time. Each one had to be cut before that. So, I find myself in that aspect competing against these people and not really, feeling good about it because it's, the budgets aren't the same.

Oscar Alvarado [00:17:56]:
You know, my stuff is more labor intensive. So I'm not doing that so much. I'm lucky enough to have a few patrons, some members of the McCombs family and my friend, Henry Munoz, who, currently are have hired me to make pieces for their estates.

Bob Rivard [00:18:14]:
So Here in San Antonio or elsewhere?

Oscar Alvarado [00:18:16]:
Here in San Antonio. And for Henry Munoz, I'm making this, three two ton pieces that will sit on his mountaintop 22 acre estate in Santa Fe. Wow.

Bob Rivard [00:18:26]:
And so you'll have to build and fabricate that here and transport it there, or will you do some of the work here and some in the in the high country in New Mexico? How will that work?

Oscar Alvarado [00:18:37]:
I was up there last year, and I've already poured the foundation for it. I I had my engineer look at it when he see what he needs. So we have him underground. I rented the equipment there. I did all of the work. I did have an assistant.

Bob Rivard [00:18:49]:
There's worse places to work, Oscar.

Oscar Alvarado [00:18:50]:
Yeah. Oh, and and, it it was really tough staying in Henry's, master suite while he was gone. Beautiful. I was just looking. It was one year ago, and I had photos come up on my Facebook. It said, you posted this

Bob Rivard [00:19:03]:
a year ago. I was like, oh. The the artist privilege. Well, we recently had the opportunity to walk, here from the Ram Building across, Legacy Park and over to, 300 Main, the new, high rise residential development here by Western Urban, and we're just astonished by the four figures, I think. Is it three or maybe three that are in the lobby that are larger than life? And I wonder if you just talk about your inspiration for those and and, what they represent.

Oscar Alvarado [00:19:31]:
I've been playing with these sort of amorphic, started out as anthropomorphic, but they I they've got less human like as I drew them and and resolved how to create them. Images, I was inspired to do, after not getting one of the San Antonio Three Hundred commissions on the river, I was really hell bent on, promoting indigenous culture. So I created in my in drawings and in my mind a 36 foot sculpture that I wanted to put on the San Pedro Creek. And it was somewhat like those figures that you're seeing that you saw there in 300 Main. But I've been experimenting with these figures and then how to make them, how to use my process, the concrete, the steel, to create these pieces that will be, you know, last one thousand years. And, since I didn't get it, but I was just so I had it in my head to do these processes. And it was a combination of techniques that I'd learned and developed. And, so I, anytime I got the opportunity for another commission subsequently, I kind of stuck with that original design.

Oscar Alvarado [00:20:34]:
And so that's where those sort of alien like figures came from. Originally, I was trying to, you know, forget Christopher Columbus. Let's promote the Native Americans that have survived all of the invasion. And I'm 18 and a half percent, so, you know, the rest of us had to assimilate.

Bob Rivard [00:20:53]:
Well, they're they're literally spirited pieces. And and I if you use the word alien, I did think as we were, looking at those that, if there's life elsewhere in this universe, maybe this is what it looks like. But on the one hand, there's an enormity to the pieces when you walk in. On the other hand, there's some incredible grace to them with the curvature that you somehow achieve on something so big and that weighs so much. It's there there's a a delicate quality to that, which is very interesting for a piece of that scope and and size that must require some remarkable engineering and almost, you know, you talked earlier about your math skills. I looked at those and thought, I wonder whether or not that piece is represented first by an equation that says it's possible to do that with with something that seems to defy gravity. And I tried actually to study how you anchor those pieces, and you really succeed in hiding how you how you do a

Oscar Alvarado [00:21:54]:
lot of that. Yeah. That was that was actually a challenging part because I had to work in conjunction with one of the contractors there who did not supply me with those steel frames that they go into until very late in my process. And so I had to, adapt on how I built these things, and and they're very heavy. And I I worked on them mostly by myself in my studio with heavy equipment that I used to turn and rotate them and and stuff like that, and when when it's hanging from the the ceiling, you know.

Bob Rivard [00:22:21]:
Well, we will put those on our social media in our social media channels and maybe on our website so people can see some examples of your work and and link to your website where there's examples of other past work that that you've done. What are

Oscar Alvarado [00:22:34]:
you working on next? Well, currently, I'm I am working on many projects at once in in a way. But I'm I'm working I'm in the design phase for the McCombs sisters, each of them, their projects. So nothing solid on the ground yet. For Henry Munoz's project, I am about 80% through. And, you know, when the payments come, I'll work more on it, and then when he finally has the time to schedule me to go up there to do it. So, you know, we it's tough. The guy's a he's a real busy man. He he owns a a movie studio in Hollywood.

Bob Rivard [00:23:10]:
The timeline from commission to installation must be extraordinary for you. This is not an artist in a studio, painting on canvas. It's so much more complex, and and the physical challenges, that particularly involving geography and placement or inside a building like a 300 Main where you've you've got to adapt the work to this is a very busy public space, and it has to be a safe space. And there's a lot of other function that that has to occur around that form that you've done. I'm guessing that you you must, realize completion of a a piece sometimes more than a year, more than a couple of years.

Oscar Alvarado [00:23:56]:
It does take a while. It depends on which part of what I do that I'm doing. I am actually currently working the physical thing that you will see in my studio right now on a series of mosaics that will go inside the amphitheater courtyard at the Alamo College's district headquarters on North Main. And, years ago, I did, when they first developed that building, a mosaic for the stage they have at that amphitheater. And they subsequently hired me to enhance the adjacent walls in a similar manner.

Bob Rivard [00:24:28]:
So that's actually what I'm

Oscar Alvarado [00:24:28]:
working on right now. And it's hundreds of square feet. It took me two weeks just to start to cut the tile and prepare it, and I have it all in bins and boxes in my studio. And I had to create a special easel, because these are long pieces. It's 56 foot long long. The other one is 48 feet. So I had to create my studio's only 32 feet long, the one I'm working in, because it's air conditioned. So I had to create an easel, a horizontal easel, to make these pieces on out of wood and that would make it comfortable for me to work, but also that I could set the tile without it sliding down.

Oscar Alvarado [00:25:03]:
I can't have a vertical easel because it won't stick. So I have to create these easels. And sometimes, for a piece I did at Texas A and M University a couple years ago, I had to create a way to get to the higher areas without a scaffold because it's slanted forward. So I suspended my seating from the ceiling. I kind of enjoyed doing all this engineering, like, things you see. I actually received a presidential scholarship to Texas A and M in 1980 for engineering. So I did study physics and such for a while before I withdrew and and got my degree in business.

Bob Rivard [00:25:39]:
I've seen that that mosaic at Alamo Colleges, and, I'm very taken with the whole property, the former Playland, Ford, Paul, and Carson, Rialto. I can't remember the name of, the other, West East Design Group, that put that project together from I think it was about 12 acres of vacant property there, abutting Fort Sam Houston and just East of Broadway. When you get a commission like that, is that because an architecture firm has reached out and said you're part of our overall scheme, or is that the Alamo Colleges themselves made the decision to bring you in and and commission a piece?

Oscar Alvarado [00:26:19]:
Well, a friend of mine, Martha Henry, had a friend who worked at Alamo Colleges. And I guess they were talking, and they were looking for someone to do. They had an idea for that amphitheater, and they wanted an entire. So Martha had suggested me, and so that's how I got that introduction. And, I really went low on the price because I wanted to be able to do this, and I needed my work to be another public spaces. And it was just part of my career where I will put the vast majority of the budget into the work itself and pay myself very little. I've been able to live a bohemian lifestyle in Southtown, for thirty years now because the thirty years ago, real estate was cheap.

Bob Rivard [00:27:05]:
I want and I wanna talk about that in a minute. But first, I wanna ask you about another Mexican American artist, and I don't know if you ever knew him or not or, compare yourself to him in terms of the scale of your work. But that's Luis Jimenez, who, died in a construction accident in 02/2006, I think, in his own Colorado studio. He was the, artist behind the famous, blue Mustang sculpture that anybody who's ever been to Denver Air International Airport sees, either when you're landing or taking off the drive. It it is huge. There's no missing it, and, it's dramatic. And it and and it certainly succeeds in every way, in my opinion, as a public artwork. It it, it's something that people remember and talk about much like the Bean and Chicago and Millennium Park, and and so forth.

Bob Rivard [00:27:54]:
And but he died doing his work because there's a danger to that fabrication. And I I found myself as I wandered around your studio saying there's there's a lot that's happening here that is in the area of fabrication that I think is is higher risk than what most of us do at work every day. And I I wonder whether or not as you're working with these large, large pieces, whether it's in the production phase or the installation phase, whether or not you have to take sort of extraordinary measures to make sure that you don't suffer the kind of, accident that Luis Jimenez suffered.

Oscar Alvarado [00:28:32]:
There are times when I'm working alone in my studio, and I think just one mistake. You know, I've got a hoist, and I've got a ton up in the air. One mistake, and it could fall on me. And there's no one around other than the dogs to, help me out. I'm really careful. I have lots of safety equipment, that I use. And when I have assistants and people that work with me, I insist that they wear safety equipment. I bore people sometimes when we're especially when I'm moving and transporting these big pieces.

Oscar Alvarado [00:29:02]:
I did a giant sculpture for the city of Odessa Police Department. And just to figure out I made it vertically, and I had to figure out, once it was this three, four ton piece was made, I had to lay it down on its side and then put it onto a trailer. So I had to create a giant horse, figure out the center of mass, and then balance it, lift it up with a pair of bobcats, and then drop it onto a frame that I'd made onto this steel trailer. And, you know, I figured all that stuff out, and that's kind of fun. That's kind of the fun part for me too is, you know, I know a lot of artists that don't do any of any of that. They just hire a mover.

Bob Rivard [00:29:36]:
That sounds like shade tree engineering to me, but Well,

Oscar Alvarado [00:29:39]:
you know what? It's behind the fence and Two bobcats. Well, one bobcat couldn't carry it. Didn't have the didn't have the capacity, so we had to get a pair.

Bob Rivard [00:29:48]:
I'd like to watch at a safe distance, one of your artworks upon completion leave the the studio. That must be quite an occasion in the neighborhood.

Oscar Alvarado [00:29:57]:
Even strapping it down to the trailers, all of that is is and and then driving it. It's kind of a harrowing drive. You know? All the way up to Odessa was tough, and you don't go fast with a trailer carrying a few tons.

Bob Rivard [00:30:08]:
Well, I I, was recently out in West Texas in Marathon and Alpine and and Marfa, but it was particularly in Marfa where, it's such a draw for artists and people that support the arts. And and, I thought to myself that the one thing outside of, Donald Judd's installations, Marfa doesn't have a lot of what I would call, really arresting public art, although it has this vastness of the West Texas Desert with the mountain backgrounds that in my mind make it ideal for some larger than life, works. And I I knew that at the time I was out there that you were coming on, and I made a note to myself, asked Oscar if he's ever done anything in Marfa or out in West Texas because his work is as big as Big Bend in a way and deserves to be out there.

Oscar Alvarado [00:30:53]:
Out there, you know, I think my work would would look smaller and smaller because, like, how you describe the background, you know? I don't know. Again, I didn't study art, so I don't think I quite get the minimalism. And so I don't either. It's okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All the the hype about Donald Judd, it's it's kind of cool that the Chinati Foundation and architects and artists have met there and discussed, you know, the integration of the two crafts. And but, no, I don't think my stuff belongs there.

Oscar Alvarado [00:31:24]:
You know? I think I think it needs to be in a in a setting, in a city, where more people can touch it, interact with it, talk about it. We're running short on time here, Oscar, but I would be remiss if I, didn't get personal for

Bob Rivard [00:31:38]:
a moment and ask how you're doing. I think for the first twenty five years that I knew you, I never once saw you without S. T. Shemey at your side. You were an inseparable couple in Southtown where my wife and I live, Monica and I live, and, you were just everywhere together. She was your life partner, and I think a lot of our people in our audience recognize the name. But for those that don't, she was a theater artist and arts educator, and she died tragically in 2020, only 49 years old after being fatally struck by a vehicle near her Blanco Road studio after she stepped off a via bus and was crossing the street. She was very well known in the theater and dance community, including her work with Jumpstart Performance Company and with Stars and Garter's Burlesque.

Bob Rivard [00:32:30]:
She choreographed and performed pole dance pieces and taught pole dancing. And, I know that obviously had a profound impact on you. And I just wonder as an artist and as an individual, how you've fared in the four years since since that that loss occurred.

Oscar Alvarado [00:32:50]:
You know, it's still a bit raw at times. I grieved heavily, and, after about a year years year and a half or so, I looked in the mirror, and I hadn't done that. I'd realized that I kinda was letting myself go, and I started, I had some skin tags develop on my face like you wouldn't believe. So I went to a dermatologist, and I had a a mole that was bleeding on my back. And I said, hey. Could you look at that? They removed it, and they they found out it was a tumor. It was cancerous. So, I didn't have insurance, but I had some money saved.

Oscar Alvarado [00:33:31]:
So I I opted for the, the operation, and then they explained to me that I would have to go through a chemotherapy or immunotherapy process. It was $52,000 a dose, and I and I couldn't afford it. So, you know, thank you, John McCain. You Thank you, Barack Obama for Obamacare because I was able to sign up with my very major preexisting condition. I'd been a vegan, a vegetarian. I never took pharmaceuticals my whole life. I didn't get sick. And then boom, stage three cancer.

Oscar Alvarado [00:34:04]:
When was that? I'm getting through that. That was that was about a year and a half ago when it was just when I discovered it. And I'm getting through I've already had 11 out of 12 immunotherapy sessions. So

Bob Rivard [00:34:14]:
So do you feel like you're, on the mend and in remission?

Oscar Alvarado [00:34:18]:
Yeah. I don't know about that remission thing. I don't I don't know how I've felt throughout the whole process. It is the the the chemicals do affect you. I don't know. My my last treatment is in a week, and I will know the oncologist will let me know if I have to go through another year or, you know, we can let it go. So

Bob Rivard [00:34:44]:
Well, we'll stay close in touch with you because we'd like to hear that. I just think you're, one of the most extraordinary artists I've had the privilege of getting to know in San Antonio, and I've gotten to know quite a few. The scale of your work means that we don't have it at our home, but, maybe someday out in our yard. I think the impact that you're having on the city is enormous. I'm really surprised to hear for the first time that you didn't get a commission for the tricentennial. I can't imagine why that decision was made, but that's probably another conversation. Wish you well in a week, and, congratulations on all your great work, and thanks for coming on to Big City, Small Town.

Oscar Alvarado [00:35:24]:
Great. It's been it's been fun chatting with you. Likewise.

Bob Rivard [00:35:30]:
Welcome to The Last Word, my weekly commentary on life and work in San Antonio and Texas. Remember the $32,700,000,000 surplus the Texas legislature had to spend in its eighty eighth session in 2023? It's worth looking backwards as we prepare for the eighty ninth legislative session that will start in January when legislators are expected to have at least another $20,000,000,000 in surplus funding to spend. That surplus doesn't take into account the nearly 25,000,000,000 that now sits in the state's economic stabilization fund, popularly known as the rainy day fund. In a cynical political move, governor Greg Abbott blocked even incremental improved funding for public schools and teachers in 2023 when lawmakers failed to deliver the school voucher legislation Abbott was demanding that would give Christian and other private schools access to public tax dollars. Families could pull their children out of public schools and use those state vouchers to pay tuition at the religious and private schools. The legislature was set to allocate an additional $5,000,000,000 to public school funding, far less than the $14,500,000,000 independent budget analysts said would be needed to stabilize the growing outflow of teachers and help make up for the reduced earnings they and other district employees have lost due to inflation. None of the nearly $33,000,000,000 surplus money, which is more money than half the states have for all annual expenditures, was invested in improving the lives of Texas teachers and students, and none of it was invested in addressing the worsening traffic congestion on I-thirty 5, especially the gridlock between Austin and San Antonio. The Texas Department of Transportation is spending billions of dollars constructing elevated ramps on I-thirty 5 in both Austin and San Antonio, but transportation experts outside TxDOT all agree the expanded highway system will only attract greater vehicle traffic.

Bob Rivard [00:37:32]:
Mass transit solutions are desperately needed, yet the Republican controlled state agencies and legislature show no interest in such solutions. Boosters love to brag about the rapid growth of the Austin San Antonio corridor, including all the other cities in and around that corridor. Taken as a whole, it's the fastest growing population center in the country, but it's also a ticking time bomb. Climate change, which is denied or ignored by Republican state officeholders, is producing increasingly frequent extreme weather episodes, threatening the water supply in extended droughts and placing the state's vulnerable energy grid at risk. Air quality grows worse with each passing year due to rising greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle traffic and construction of more and more buildings. Texas is doing nothing about these challenges while state leaders continue to brag about the pro business climate and growing job base that is attracting so many out of state residents to live here. Citizens can contact their state representatives and senator to register their support for greater attention to these looming challenges and the need for legislators to invest now in the state's future. That's my last word for the week.

Bob Rivard [00:38:50]:
Thank you for listening, and please share this episode with friends and colleagues at work. And please check out our new YouTube channel where we are starting to post videos of some of our events and episodes. A special thanks to our sponsor, Western Urban, building the city our children want to call home, and Geekdom where startups are born and nurtured into new businesses. Shouldn't you be a member? Special thanks to our production team, producers Ashley Bird and Maura Bobbitt with blooming with birdie, and Erica Rempel, videographer and content creator, and Alpi de la Garza of Sound Crane Audio. We'll see you next week.