PRESIDIO — Presidio’s cultural scene will celebrate a few firsts this week, marking the first opening show of the city’s first art gallery. All are welcome to join in the fun at Galería Raíces, a new exhibition space taking root in the site of a former clothing store, on Thursday, October 10 at 7 p.m.
The gallery project, spearheaded by local artist Yosdy Valdivia, is the product of a series of coincidences — or what some might even call fate.
Valdivia had been wanting to open a gallery space in Presidio for years. One afternoon, she noticed a “For Rent” sign in the window of what used to be Liz’s Clothing Store and called the number. She didn’t think a lot of it — other than how perfect the hundred-year-old space could be.
The building’s owner, Elizabeth Grado, asked to meet right away. “It was strange because I just wanted to know what the price was,” Valdivia said.
There was a reason she was so keen to meet up. It turned out that Grado grew up watching her mom, Olivia Rohana de Spencer, paint. She painted whenever she could, between the many tasks associated with running a family and a business.
Spencer got more serious about her work as she got older and traveled to Guanajuato for painting classes. Eventually she made a local connection with the late painter and cowboy Kelly Pruitt of La Junta Farms, who gave her private lessons. “She was always very eager to learn,” Valdivia said.
Spencer came from two very important families with centuries of history in the area but signed her paintings with her first name: Olivia. The work was special to her; it came from somewhere deep inside. She didn’t need the approval of others or the endorsement of her lineage to make them important.
She had always dreamed of opening a gallery in Presidio but felt that the town wasn’t ready for it. She passed away before her vision could come to life.
So when her daughter received a call from a young female artist hoping to start a gallery in the space she used to paint in, it felt too good to be true. “Everything just came together full circle,” Valdivia said.
Valdivia is a rising star in her own right, with paintings all over her conjoined hometowns of Presidio and Ojinaga. She’s wanted to run a gallery since high school — in a class project that required the students to dream up a small business, her gallery was the only of its kind in a sea of coffee shops and cafés.
Now with a family of her own, she’s made a conscious choice to put down roots in her hometown, slowly ticking off goals she’d set as a little girl. That’s where the idea for the gallery’s name came from — Raíces, or roots. “It’s me deciding to make that life for real now,” she said.
Valdivia hopes to eventually have the gallery open for a few days a week — a small effort towards growing the town’s cultural tourism. She would like to feature work from artists from the tri-county area and grow Galería Raíces’ reach inch by inch.
The opening show, Trazos de Alma (Brushstrokes of the Soul), dedicated to and featuring work by Olivia Rohana de Spencer, will open this Thursday, October 10, at 7 p.m. Galería Raíces is located at 800 West O’Reilly Street in Presidio.