RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 9.13.25 JUAN MIGUEL RAMOS

Latino Artist Juan Miguel Ramos Returns to Making Art

Juan Miguel Ramos, “Melisa Martinez.” Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

An enthusiastic crowd of San Antonio art lovers greeted Juan Miguel Ramos’s return to Artpace’s Hudson Showroom last week [August 28, 2025]. A few of the guests were present twenty-three years ago when Ramos participated in Artpace’s 2002 Texas Artists residency as part of the International Artist-in-Residence program. The Hudson Showroom Opening Reception, Sisyphus Strut by Juan Ramos, also offers a salon-style wall preview of the artist’s long-term project, San Anto Sentinels, a graphic novel currently in development.

Juan Miguel Ramos at Artpace next to “Southside Loteria,” Courtesy of Artpace. Photo by Ricardo Romo.

Culture Map San Antonio, a digital lifestyle news source, reviewed Ramos’s new Hudson Showroom exhibit, noting that the artist reflects on his career by connecting formative works with new directions. They explained, “Central to the show is Southside Loteria alongside a preview of his graphic novel-in-progress, ‘San Anto Sentinels,’ displayed salon-style with illustrations and text.” The exhibition also features a looping soundtrack of 12 songs from San Antonio bands that Ramos has played with or organized.

Juan Miguel Ramos, “Southside Loteria,” Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

Artpace greatly influenced Juan Ramos’ early career, and returning for a new Artpace show had deep meaning for him and his family. Founded by artist and philanthropist Linda Pace, Artpace opened to the public in 1995. Ms. Pace conceived Artpace as a “laboratory of dreams” for artistic experimentation and growth. The art organization, housed in a renovated 1920s Hudson automobile dealership building, is renowned for nurturing creativity, fostering dialogue, and driving artistic innovation both locally and globally. The highly creative Artpace CEO Riley Robinson was instrumental in inviting Ramos for his new show.

Ramos grew up in one of San Antonio’s Southwest blue-collar neighborhoods. He was an only child and went everywhere with his parents. When they visited friends or went shopping, he always had paper, pencils, and pens handy to engage in drawing. His parents, recognizing his love for art and budding talent, enrolled him in Saturday classes at the San Antonio Southwest School of Art. They also drove him to the Westside Guadalupe Cultural Center, where he learned watercolor painting. He also took classes at the McNay Art Institute and followed up with art classes throughout his middle school and high school years.

Juan Miguel Ramos, “Linda Pace,” Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

Ramos loved learning about art, and his enrollment during his teen years in various art programs demonstrated this commitment. A major advancement in the learning process occurred in 1989 when he met art teacher Jackie Von Honts. While he was a student at South San High School, Ramos took additional classes from Jackie Von Honts. A San Antonio native with a solid reputation as a muralist, Von Honts proved to be an important mentor to Ramos. Von Honts earned degrees from the University of the Americas in Mexico City and the Pratt Art Institute in New York City, and she completed a doctorate in creative arts from New York University. One of her notable artistic achievements was painting a 65-foot-long oil mural of the U.S. Olympic Pentathlon team engaged in the five sports of shooting, fencing, running, horseback riding, and swimming. Her mural was the only painting displayed at the US Olympic event in Los Angeles.

Juan Miguel Ramos, “Southside Loteria.” Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

When Ramos entered college in 1989, his years of taking art classes from numerous local art institutions more than prepared him to succeed as an art major. But the following year, music intervened. While in high school, Ramos had formed or joined several bands. The bands practiced constantly, and they always found gigs over the weekends. After a year of college, Ramos left to spend more time with his band.

Despite the time demands of his music performances during the early and mid-1990s, Ramos chose to remain active in painting. He teamed up with Cruz Ortiz and Manny Castillo to establish the San Anto Cultural Arts mural project associated with Inner City Development in San Antonio, Texas. Drawing from what he had learned from Dr. Jackie Von Honts, Ramos contributed to painting several iconic murals in San Antonio’s Westside. Over the years, San Anto Cultural Arts has completed numerous murals that have become classic symbols of local neighborhoods, and the organization has used arts education to contribute to the social and cultural vitality of San Antonio’s Westside. The Westside area experienced perennial challenges of gang violence and poverty during that era, and Manuel “Manny” Castillo was especially instrumental in motivating and guiding the San Anto vision of using art as a positive force for community development and youth empowerment.

In the late 1990s, Ramos relocated to Austin and attended Austin Community College. He became active in Austin’s famed music scene, which motivated him to form his band, Sexto Sol. He returned to San Antonio in 1999 and submitted his portfolio, the “Secret City” series, as part of his qualifying criteria for the Master’s program in Art at UT San Antonio.

Juan Miguel Ramos, preview, “San Anto Sentinels” [David Zamora Casas]. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

Ramos had just completed his Master’s program at UT San Antonio when Harriett and I met him at a small Blue Star exhibit. I was President of the UTSA campus at the time and bought several of his works for the Downtown Library. We stayed in touch and later bought more of his work for our personal collection.

In the Fall of 2002, Artpace, through its International Artist-in-Residence program in San Antonio, selected Ramos, marking a significant milestone in the young artist’s career. During his residency, Ramos created a two-screen video projection with a narrative soundtrack. In the short presentation, the video captures four scenes depicting individual characters, each with a monologue describing the everyday life of the Southside where Ramos grew up. Ramos described the series as trying to convey the entire culture he experienced in San Antonio, one of the largest cities in the US, “where there is a secret city –where people don’t really know who we are.”

In his 2023 solo exhibition “Secret City Series” at Un Grito Gallery, Ramos elaborated on this concept in art works centered on the themes of invisibility, cultural memory, and the dynamism of urban life. For example, one of the prints in this series superimposes a Latina woman admiring a friend’s new truck with a dialogue showing her thoughts about friends who left San Antonio to go to college.

Juan Miguel Ramos, preview, “San Anto Sentinels” [Eva Ybarra]. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

During his Artpace residency, Ramos also created the Southside Loteria, an installation that examines the fluidity of cultural identity and cultural icons, themes that resonate with Ramos, who frequently explores what he considers a continuous adaptation and redefinition of the sense of self among Latinos. The Artpace experience opened additional art residency doors for Ramos, and he was invited to residencies and exhibits in Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, and Puerto Rico. In 2004, however, he decided to tour with his band.

Juan Miguel Ramos, preview, “San Anto Sentinels” [Flaco Jimenez]. Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

During his break from painting, Ramos played drums regularly in various bands and loved attending musical events. He also established a brief connection as a writer covering musical events with the San Antonio Current (SA Current). In a 2007 story for the SA Current, Ramos wrote about the Salúte International Bar music scene where one could listen to the “jazzy Tex-Mex” sound of Esteban Jordan. He added that over the previous decade, he had visited the Salúte Bar more than a hundred times.

More recently, Ramos has worked as an adjunct art instructor for several colleges. I spent nearly fifty years in higher education, and I know that the life of an adjunct art professor is demanding and financially stressful. Ramos taught for an extended period at Our Lady of the Lake University and has had short teaching stints at Northwest Vista and Palo Alto College. He now has a more stable position at Southwest School of Art, which is a part of UT San Antonio. In each of these positions, Juan Miguel Ramos has inspired and mentored students to appreciate and create Chicano art.

Juan Miguel Ramos, video, “Southside Loteria.” Courtesy of Artpace and the artist.

Ramos’s upcoming graphic novel, The San Anto Sentinels, is currently in developmental stages, but, if the work he shared at the new Hudson Showroom is any indication, the upcoming project will be dazzling. Drawing upon regional cultural touchstones, including local music, the comic book art genre exhibition, which tells the legends of heroes and villains in a Latino style, is accompanied by an audio track featuring twelve songs from San Antonio bands.

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