Local Learning Artist Series with Verónica Castillo Salas and Norma Cantú at NAEA

Each year, Local Learning identifies a local traditional artist for the National Art Education Association conference. This year Local Learning is introducing Verónica Castillo Salas to NAEA members. Folklorist and poet Norma Cantú will serve her friend and colleague Verónica as interviewer and translator. The event will take place Saturday, April 15, 2:00 – 2:50 pm, Center/Lila Cockrell Theatre/Street Level.

Verónica Castillo Salas, NEA National Heritage Fellow

Verónica Castillo is an internationally acclaimed artist from Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla, México, and San Antonio. At a very young age, under the tutelage of her parents, renowned artists Don Alfonso Castillo Orta and Doña Soledad Martha Hernández Báez, she was exposed to working in polychromatic ceramics, a tradition passed on from generation to generation. She ca continues to build upon these traditions while focusing on contemporary issues of injustice and inequality. Her exhibits have achieved national and international recognition, from the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago to the Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico. In 2013, Verónica Castillo received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award. She is the owner of E.V.A. (Ecos y Voces de Arte), a gallery on the Southside of San Antonio. Together with an international network of artists, E.V.A. offers space and support for various forms of cultural art to thrive.

Find a profile, artwork examples, and interviews in the Masters of Traditional Arts website. 

“The Long March Toward a National Latino Museum,” by Graciela Mochkofsky, The New Yorker

Norma Cantú is Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University and recent Past President of the American Folklore Society. Teaching interests include Folklore, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Contemporary Literary Theory, Border Studies, Chicano/a and Latina/o Literatures. Her publications on border literature, the teaching of English, quinceañera celebrations and the matachines, a religious dance tradition, have earned her an international reputation. She has co-edited and edited over 20 books. She edits the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo Culture and Traditions book series at The Texas A&M University Press and the Literatures of the Americas at Palgrave/Macmillan. Her award-winning Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera chronicles her childhood experiences on the border. Her most recent publications include Cabañuelas, a novel, and Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor. In 2020 she published two co-edited anthologies meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction and Teaching Gloria E. Anzaldua: Pedagogy and Practice for our Classrooms and Communities.

Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education offers professional development, resources, and links to folk arts organizations https://locallearningnetwork.org, and publishes the Journal of Folklore and Education, a peer-reviewed, multimedia journal published annually by Local Learning. https://jfepublications.org.