Michael Menchaca: Vignettes from San Antonio

Vignettes from San Antonio is a new series of work that is inspired by the artist’s hometown. Large collage works speak to the cultural landscape of San Antonio and correspond with the city’s celebration of its tricentennial anniversary. Highlighting such iconic San Antonio scenes as Easter weekend at Brackenridge Park, the campus at San Antonio College, and the Battle of Flowers Parade, Menchaca expands his personal codex to include San Antonio specific iconography.

This series finds inspiration in the narrative works of Faith Ringgold and Carmen Lomas Garza. Menchaca creates original designs and motifs to explore personal memories with place. In his signature style, his works play with both repetition and scale with overlapping figures, patterns, and multiple windows of storyline and fable. Menchaca harks back to a long tradition of visual storytelling spanning many centuries and across many cultures.

Michael Menchaca earned his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 with a concentration in printmaking. A San Antonio native, Menchaca is known to juxtapose images from popular culture with Mesoamerican iconography. The artwork of Michael Menchaca can be found in the collections of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, and Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS.