Sarah Rafael Garcia & Crear Studio

17 Sep Sarah Rafael Garcia & Crear Studio

By Walpa D’Mark

Sarah Rafael Garcia has been advocating for the Santa Ana BIPOC community for 13 years. She’s the founder of Barrio Writers (2009), LibroMobile (2016), and Crear Studio (2017).  I had an opportunity to meet her during Crear Studio’s Meet and Greet opening held this summer. The opening was a celebration of the new Crear Studio space and its supporters. It was also an invitation for the rest of us to learn about the history and hard work that made it possible.

The space is 15×15 square feet, the large front windows invite looky-loos inside, it has high ceilings, and good lighting design, and has built in walls dividing the interior. The space is small, but the layout has art and community in mind, with plenty of room to exhibit art of all shapes and sizes, and host community programming. Sarah gave credit to a couple of collaborators that made the space possible.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: Andrea Harris designed the gallery, she helped us change the potential of what we could do with the space. My husband (Dr. Manuel G. Galaviz) and father-in-law came in and built the walls according to Andrea’s design.

I felt the love and attention put into the space, and asked Sarah about her concept for the future of Crear Studio.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: The concept was always to build sustainability. My first project was Barrio Writers in 2009, and sustainability has been the hardest challenge. We want to provide free arts programming, but be grassroots and not supported by institutions.”

Sustainability and programming are pragmatic concerns, so I knew right away that Sarah’s vision is grounded in reality, she gave me the impression of a veteran who has seen it all. I asked her about what programming they offer.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: Barrio Writers has been a free writing workshop for teens, they provide everything for the youth from writing supplies, free books, to visiting local writer’s presentations. It’s been hard to maintain without funding.

I asked how they do the funding, and that led her to elaborate on LibroMobile Arts Cooperative (LMAC).

Sarah Rafael Garcia: Through Libro mobile, I learned that money is what keeps these programs running, so how do we guarantee that we will be able to thrive at some point? The bookstore became a supplement to reinvest profits into the (gallery) space, into the community, and prioritize local (Orange County) BIPOC folks. I don’t make a profit off of this.

I was reminding myself that she had been doing this work for 13 years, and I was interested in moments in her path that taught her lessons or helped shape her approach with Crear Studio. A project that she talked about, and that I found myself really interested in was DIY MFA. Perhaps because it had aspirations of autonomy, as the name suggests, but found itself in the middle of dealing with an institution, the Grand Central Art Center.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: The DIY MFA was housed for free in the basement of the GCAC, and it was created because not everybody has access to go to art school, or have a studio, or can buy supplies. Our goal was to create a program that builds a bridge to the Arts by eliminating these barriers.

Sarah and DIY MFA ran into limitations. First off, they had to be open during GCAC business hours. This meant that they couldn’t have public programming after 5pm or weekends, hours in which youth are out of school. On top of challenges with operations, DIY MFA found itself in conflicts regarding aesthetics.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: We were in the basement, and it would be great to have our folks in the walls upstairs. GCAC wasn’t in agreement because they select the artists, and they thought DIY MFA art did not represent the Art Aesthetic. What does that mean? That’s when I started looking deeper into spaces in Orange County. Who decides what’s aesthetically pleasing in the Arts? Well, all the white led, white-centric spaces do. That creates a stereotype threat for artists who are teaching themselves. We wanted to elevate those voices and give them space to do more than what they can do on their own.

Institutions are inclusive by nature, and I understand how this could create tension between communities with different aesthetic sensibilities or goals. Sometimes the answer is to do it yourself, so I was happy to hear that Sarah received funding to continue to advocate for her community.

Sarah Rafael Garcia: With Crear studio, I was actively looking for funding, so we started applying for grants. Crear Studio, under Libro Mobile Arts Cooperative got a Cultural Pathways Grant from the California Arts Council, that gave us $28,000 to launch. That got me thinking that we need a space. The space became available and the goal is to see what we can do in a year to get more funding.

Her answer in the beginning of our conversation that “the concept was always to build sustainability” is acute.

After our conversation concluded, she addressed her guests and fellow community builders. I stuck around to hear her speech, and I was left with the feeling of the shared hope in the room. I also had the awareness of the scale and ambition of this project, and felt the weight of such a large undertaking. But I believe that the community she’s built with her collaborators is the right team to see this through. I am really excited to see what they accomplish, and encourage everyone to visit and support! Crear Studio’s inaugural opening will feature a timeline of work by Santa Ana’s own Albert Lopez Jr. that will run till Oct. 7th.

You can follow them on Instagram at @crearstudio and learn more about them on their website libromobile.com.