Borderzine (https://borderzine.com/tag/border-arts/)
During 12 days in November, residents of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez will get a chance to bridge the border divide with search lights and sound technology for two-way conversation in an innovative, illuminated art installation called Border Tuner.
Arizona theater professor Mary Stephens was pleasantly surprised when a recent arts tour bus ride took less than 10 minutes to get from El Paso, Texas, to Juarez, Mexico,
“This is my first time to El Paso and Juarez and I’m just so delighted by realizing how close these cities are with each other,” she said. “Families are on both sides crossing all the time, and culture is crossing all the time. Stephens was visiting the borderland for La Frontera: Art+People+Place, a two-day convening on arts in border communities presented by the El Paso Museum of Art and the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juarez. The Sept. 7-8 event was part of the fifth Transborder Biennial 2018 exhibition, which featured the work of 32 contemporary artists that live across the U.S.-Mexico border.
EL PASO — In one photograph an old baby doll lays crippled on the harsh gray street, one eye-socket empty, one leg missing. In another photo a shoeshine man works fevershly on a cowboy’s boots. The reality of border life seen through the lenses of 12 El Paso area photographers is on exhibit at Fotos Septiembre: Through the Eyes of Borderland Photographers (originally titled Foto Septiembre – Visual Stills Along La Frontera) through October 23 at the La Fe Culture and Technology Center’s Galería Aztlan. All the works show and represent Chicano heritage. This is the exhibition’s second year showcasing professional and amateur photographers.
EL PASO – A little stubble on his face, a fedora hanging on an empty microphone to his right, Daniel Chacon is ready to record Words on a Wire, a KTEP-FM weekly radio show that showcases some of the best in creative writing. The show, in its fourth year, is attracting listeners throughout the borderlands and beyond. That’s no surprise to the creator of the show, Chacon, a University of Texas at El Paso associate professor of creating writing and novelist who has a reputation around campus as being somewhat eccentric. A lover of reading and books since childhood (his favorite book as a child was “Danny and the Dinosaur”), several years ago Chacon began thinking about doing thought-provoking radio interviews with accomplished writers. After discussing the idea with then chair of the UTEP creative writing department, Benjamin Alire Saenz, they agreed to approach El Paso’s public radio station KTEP-FMA with the idea.