Lisa Alvarado’s work is organic, musical, and vibrant. Her work is currently on exhibition in the Russell Hill Rogers Galleries at the Southwest Campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Alvarado was brought up in San Antonio, and she currently lives in Chicago. Trace Memory marks her first solo show in the city.
Entering the west room of the gallery space, brightly colored paintings on fabrics are suspended from the ceiling. Traditional Object 5 presents Alvarado’s signature free-hanging painting style, which can be contextualized as bold in color and rich in layered complexity.
Lisa Alvarado, “Traditional Object 5,” 2012, acrylic, fabric, wood. © Lisa Alvarado. Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
The painting itself is abstract, with various colors that expand the dimensions of modern and contemporary experimentation. The lime green, neon yellow, and salmon colors of this painting create a sense of vitality, like a kaleidoscope. These patterns reference Mexican American and Latin American cultures, which have strong textile traditions that span centuries into the past. For example, serape blankets in Mexico are often multicolored, featuring intricate patterns that capture the viewer’s eye.
In a conversation with Andy Beta, Alvarado cites her grandmother’s Southside San Antonio home and the city’s mural culture as key influences. Her grandmother was a seamstress, who stitched together fabrics for pillows, couches, and more. It is fitting, then, that Alvarado chooses to paint on fabrics. Just as her grandmother’s needle and thread moved rhythmically through textiles, Alvarado’s brush creates layers of color and pattern that pulse with vibrational energy. Her work extends across multiple dimensions, creating dynamic installations. The process of making these paintings is something that Alvarado calls “vibrational aesthetics,” a term that reflects how she interweaves visual, cultural, and musical influences into each piece.
Some of Alvarado’s paintings, like Traditional Object 6, have meticulous patterning, where Alvarado uses smaller brushes with layers of paint to capture movement and precision. A mostly white fabric frames a geometric explosion of dark red, neon green, dark green, salmon, bright yellow, and aqua blue.
Lisa Alvarado, “Traditional Object 6,” 2012, acrylic, fabric, wood. © Lisa Alvarado. Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
In other pieces, such as Traditional Object 13, Alvarado’s process yields a more spontaneous display of color. The salmon and black may seem random, but looking at the artwork, especially from the side, reveals layers of color that contain ebbs and flowers of thicker and thinner areas of paint. Whether geometric or more arbitrary in their arrangement of colors, each painting tells a story of Alvarado’s visual and musical stimuli.
Lisa Alvarado, “Traditional Object 13,” 2014, acrylic, fabric, aluminum, wood. © Lisa Alvarado. Courtesy of the artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC
Alvarado is a member of the Natural Information Society (NIS), founded by her husband, Joshua Abrams, who is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. NIS is a dynamic group of musicians who create psychedelic music using an eclectic mix of instruments, including, but not limited to, drums, cornets, flutes, bass clarinets, saxophones, cymbals, guitars, and accordions. A recording of NIS’s performance of descension (Out of Our Constrictions) for the 2022 Pitchfork Festival in Chicago’s Union Park is projected in the east gallery space. In this performance, Alvarado’s artwork acts as a backdrop for the group’s multicultural music, with hints of jazz, minimalism, and traditional music attributed to worldwide cultures.
Still of “descension (Out of Our Constrictions),” performed by the Natural Information Society Community Ensemble with Ari Brown, 2022, Pitchfork Music Festival. Courtesy of Beth Devillier and UTSA Arts
The various paintings in Trace Memory incorporate the many visual vocabularies that Lisa Alvarado pulls from. While her work is undeniably rooted in her San Antonio upbringing—shaped by her grandmother’s influence and the city’s rich artistic heritage — it transcends these origins to speak universally about memory and culture. I invite everyone in San Antonio to welcome home a product of this wonderful city.
Trace Memory is on view at the Russell Hill Rogers Galleries at the University of Texas at San Antonio Southwest Campus through February 28, 2025.
