Yvette Walker
With KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker. This is IE Latino Voices, where we invite representatives from Latino-led and Latino-serving organizations to share their stories and their impact in our region. Joining me today is Michael Segura, Executive Director of the Garcia Center for the Arts. Michael, thank you for being here with us today.
Michael Segura
Thank you for having us.
Yvette Walker
Walk us through how the Garcia Center became a community hub for arts and culture in the region.
Michael Segura
It's a part of the Chicano movement, actually, here in the region. Educators from Colton, Ernie Garcia, and then his wife Dottie, as well, and then his friends, Gloria Harrison and other folks who were the first board to really establish a center like this a decade ago. And they did it with the younger generation - us, you know, in our 20s, helping out, so it was a multicultural, multi-generational thing. And now we're at a point where we've been operating for a decade, and we've been able to incubate arts organizations and arts movements through providing subsidized space and facilities. We have our workforce development program, creating pathways for teachers. We have our creative entrepreneurship program, the Mercado 536 which helps incubate entrepreneurs, makers, and artists, and help them get their footing as a business. Have a physical retail store to sell out of together, and to also sell online. Mercado536.com, anybody interested in shopping. And then our facilities are very large, so we manage an arts library. We have a community garden, we have studios in glass, ceramics, printmaking. Plus we have a new makerspace with 3D printers, a laser cutter, computers, iPads, and all the other tools needed to really start building your career as an artist and getting involved in that creative economy.
Yvette Walker
Oh my goodness, how exciting. In light of the growth of Latino arts and culture in the Inland Empire, what are some of the major challenges you see?
Michael Segura
The biggest challenge, of course, in arts and culture is always funding, when you're able to have diverse people come together from different cultures, different social economic backgrounds and mingle and talk and story tell together, and doing that through all types of mediums, from dance to music to the fine arts. That's really how we build communities, and that's what history has taught us, cultures and studying art history, right, of what type of materials people use to create, whether that was their architecture or their pots or their temples, right? So I think we really need to invest back into that.
Yvette Walker
Certainly, and how are Latino communities or artists being received when it comes to arts and cultural investment? Have you experienced barriers? If so, where specifically?
Michael Segura
I think it's always access to space and resources, that's what I learned growing up, is me finding the Garcia Center in general, that was one of the only art spaces that I could go to. Before that nothing really existed in San Bernardino, the next one that came about was also the Little Gallery of San Bernardino, but growing up in the city we need access to spaces, access to resources to build our careers, really, and Ernie gave me that. Ernie Garcia gave me access to a studio for a year, so I could go off and get my MFA. I was able to build my portfolio and do that. And, how are we helping address that? We're trying to offer as much free space as we can, while still being able to pay our bills and move forward the center and do the infrastructure needs to keep it sustaining. Ernie was able to get this lease that is 100 years for $1 a year, and so we have 89 years left, and we want to make sure that that center stays there for at least that 100 years and hopefully past that.
Yvette Walker
When are the best days to visit the Garcia Center?
Michael Segura
The best days to visit the center would be during the weekdays. We're open 10am to 6pm and then we have Capoeira Monday and Wednesday evenings, 7-9. Tuesday, Thursdays we have Aztec dancing from 6-8, and then on the weekend, so Saturday we have our Mercado open. We usually have a food vendor pop up. If you just go online at thegarciacenter.org, you'll see our calendar start getting populated with more art workshops related to, you know, figure drawing, ceramics, printmaking, zine making, literary arts, so yeah, just follow us online. You can also follow us on social media, GCArts.link/connect. So, if you put that in, you'll go to our Linktree, and you'll find all our links to the newsletter, to the website, to our YouTube social media. And stay engaged.
Yvette Walker
Terrific, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today, Michael.
Michael Segura
Thank you for having us. It was a pleasure.
Yvette Walker
Michael Segura is Executive Director of the Garcia Center of the Arts. Join us again next week for IE Latino Voices. You can find this story and others on our website at kvcr.org/IELatinoVoices. IE Latino Voices is produced by KVCR Public Media, and is funded by generous support from the CIELO Fund at IECF, uplifting and investing in the IE's Latino community. For KVCR News, I'm Yvette Walker.
