MUSED Houston

What happens when an everyday commute becomes part of an artist’s creative practice?

In this episode of MUSED Houston Live!, artist Rebecca Pugh joins producer and host Melissa Richardson Banks for a conversation about landscape, memory, movement, and color, and how years of looking at the world through the windows of a moving car have shaped her abstract paintings.

Pugh traces the evolution of her landscape practice from her graduate school years in Las Vegas, where the Mojave Desert influenced her use of line, shape, and color, to Texas, where regular drives between Houston and College Station became an unexpected source of inspiration.

She also discusses working from memory, recording audio notes during her travels, teaching color theory, the continuing influence of Josef Albers, and the story behind her monumental 18-foot painting installation, Fallen Drought Fence.

The conversation was recorded live before an audience on July 25, 2026, at Sabine Street Studios in Houston, Texas, surrounded by Pugh’s exhibition, To the Horizon.

READ MORE: Writer Jef Rouner takes another look at Rebecca’s practice in The Texas Artist Changing How We See Landscape, published by Texas Signal.

Learn more about Rebecca Pugh:

www.rebecca-pugh.com

Subscribe to MUSED Houston for Art Events + News:

www.musedhouston.com

“To the Horizon” and MUSED Houston Live! are funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

CREDITS

Director & Cinematography: Hunter Tamasese Strokin

Producer & Host: Melissa Richardson Banks

Editing, Lighting & Sound: TAMA Media

Special Thanks: Eris Wasserman • Justin Earl Grant • Jef Rouner

In this episode of the MUSED Houston podcast, photographer Luis C. Garza joins publisher and exhibition organizer Melissa Richardson Banks, filmmaker Alessandro Gentile, director of the award-winning short film Razón de Ser: Luis C. Garza, and author and literary activist Tony Diaz of Nuestra Palabra: Latinos Having Their Say for a lively conversation about photography, film, memory, and cultural identity.

Together, they discuss Garza’s decades-long career documenting the Chicano Movement and Latino communities, the making of Razón de Ser, and The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza—the award-winning book and nationally touring exhibition celebrating his life’s work.

In this episode:

* Luis C. Garza’s approach to documenting history through photography

* The making of Razón de Ser: Luis C. Garza

* The Other Side of Memory book and national exhibition tour

* Photography, film, and the preservation of cultural memory

* Why documenting community stories matters for future generations

MUSED Houston features conversations with artists, curators, writers, filmmakers, and cultural leaders exploring the ideas and stories shaping Houston’s creative community—and beyond.

Join acclaimed photographer Luis C. Garza and author, literary activist, and Nuestra Palabra: Latinos Having Their Say founder Tony Diaz for a live conversation recorded before an audience in Houston.

Together, they explore the power of photography to document history, preserve cultural memory, and amplify the voices of communities too often left out of the historical record. Garza reflects on more than five decades of documenting the Chicano Movement, labor organizing, political activism, and everyday life, while Diaz examines the role of storytelling and literature in shaping identity and inspiring future generations.

Recorded live, this engaging discussion offers personal stories, historical insight, and thoughtful reflections on art, activism, journalism, and the enduring importance of representation.

About Luis C. Garza

Luis C. Garza is an award-winning photographer whose images have chronicled the Chicano Movement and Latino communities for more than fifty years. His work is held in major museum and archival collections and continues to shape our understanding of American history.

About Tony Diaz

Tony Diaz is an author, literary activist, radio host, and founder of Nuestra Palabra: Latinos Having Their Say, a nationally recognized organization dedicated to promoting Latino literature, culture, and civic engagement.

MUSED Houston is a podcast featuring conversations with artists, curators, writers, collectors, and cultural leaders whose work is shaping the creative community in Houston and beyond.

Season 3 of MUSED Houston opens with Taylor Jackson, CEO of Houston Arts Alliance, for a conversation about the systems that support — or constrain — a city’s creative life.

Jackson steps into leadership at a moment when artists and cultural organizations are navigating urgent questions of sustainability, space, and public investment. In this episode, host Melissa Richardson Banks explores Jackson’s vision for Houston Arts Alliance and the three pillars guiding her tenure: advocacy, collaboration, and resilience. They also unpack the grantmaking process, the role of peer panels and community feedback, and how civic art operates through a distinct public ordinance and funding stream.

This interview was recorded a few months ago, so one event reference has since passed — but the conversation remains a timely look at how Houston can strengthen and protect the conditions that allow artists to do what they do best: create, innovate, and inspire.

In this special episode of the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast, host and producer Melissa Richardson Banks interviews photographer Luis C. Garza with Charlene Villaseñor Black, Ph.D. who is Chair and Professor of Art History in UCLA's César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies, the editor of "Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies" and the founding editor-in-chief of "Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture" (LALVC, UC Press). She publishes topics related to Chicanx studies, contemporary Latinx art, and the early modern Iberian world. 

What is decolonial love? Villaseñor Black shares that "decolonial love is a love for community and for ourselves that breaks free from coloniality, that is, the ways in which European social order, racial hierarchies, and imposed ways of knowing live on and structure our world today."

Villaseñor Black states that "decolonial love manifested in Garza’s photographs and, indeed, in the work of other Chicana/o/x artists and cultural workers from the beginning of the movement to the present day. By documenting the Mexican American experience of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, Garza’s images fought against biased media representation and oppressive policing tactics. By presenting the truth of the Chicano experience and by his dignified representations of our community, Garza’s photographs articulated decolonial love as they helped us visualize more just futures. This commitment to future action is central to activism and activist art."

Some of Garza's most famous photographs documented activism during the Chicano movement. However, for the exhibition, curator Armando Durón strategically paired Garza’s photographs to encourage viewers to make new connections with his more well-known images. While his couplings were often formal in nature, they fostered comparisons across differing subject matter. Scenes of protests, taking place in various locales -- from Los Angeles to New York to Uzbekistan and Budapest -- made clear the global nature of political unrest in the early 1970s

While the interview was recorded on January 21, 2023, it is a timeless conversation about Garza and the images that he took while documenting the Chicano civil rights movement, the World Peace Conference in Hungary, and the women’s movement in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza" is now touring nationally:

• Loveland Museum, Colorado Jun 22–Sep 1, 2024
• Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts at College of the Desert, Apr–May 3, 2023
• Riverside Art Museum, Oct 22, 2022–Mar 19, 2023

BUY THE EXHIBIT CATALOG HERE!

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!

In this special episode of the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast, photographer Luis C. Garza talks with collector and curator Armando Durón, museum director Megan Callewaert McAdow, and arts marketing specialist Melissa Richardson Banks.

This conversation was first presented as an online public program to coincide with the exhibition “Time Refocused: Photographs by Luis C. Garza" on view at the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum in University City, Michigan (September 11, 2021 to January 15, 2022). Check out the virtual tour of this exhibition at https://www.marshallfredericks.net/luisgarza.html.

While recorded on October 9, 2021, this timeless conversation shares much of the backstory of Garza’s work of how he became a photographer and the inspiration for many of the images that he took while documenting his view of the Chicano civil rights movement, the World Peace Conference in Hungary, and even the women’s movement in New York during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Garza's latest exhibition "The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza" is on view at Riverside Art Museum in California through Sunday, March 19, 2023. Details at https://riversideartmuseum.org/exhibits/the-other-side-of-memory-luis-garza/

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!

In this episode of the "Son Cuatro: In Conversation" podcast, artist Judithe Hernández talks with art advocate Cheech Marin; Todd Wingate, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Riverside Art Museum; Edward Hayes, Exhibitions Senior Manager, McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas; Charlene Villaseñor Black, Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; editor of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, and founding editor-in-chief of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture; and arts marketing specialist Melissa Richardson Banks of CauseConnect, the producer and moderator of this series who also manages Marin's notable Chicano art collection.

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!

CiCi Segura González is the featured artist in this episode of the “Son Cuatro: In Conversation” podcast co-hosted by art advocate Cheech Marin with Todd Wingate, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Riverside Art Museum; Cris Scorza, the Helena Rubinstein Chair of Education at the Whitney Museum of American Art; and arts marketing specialist Melissa Richardson Banks of CauseConnect, the producer and moderator of this series who also manages Marin's notable Chicano art collection.

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!

Sonya Fe is the featured artist in this episode of the inaugural “Son Cuatro: In Conversation” podcast series co-hosted by art advocate Cheech Marin with Todd Wingate, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Riverside Art Museum; Norma Chairez-Hartell, Curator at Las Cruces Museum of Art; and arts marketing specialist Melissa Richardson Banks of CauseConnect, the producer and moderator of this series who also manages Marin's notable Chicano art collection.

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!

Artist Margaret García says “her work provides a look at my community through the presence of the individual” and her desire is for her work “to be pertinent and meaningful.”  She is the featured artist in this episode of the inaugural “Son Cuatro: In Conversation” podcast series co-hosted by art advocate Cheech Marin with Todd Wingate, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Riverside Art Museum; Anna Bermudez of Museum of Ventura County; and and arts marketing specialist Melissa Richardson Banks of CauseConnect, the producer and moderator of this series who also manages Marin's notable Chicano art collection.

The post SON CUATRO: Cheech in Conversation with Margaret Garcia appeared first on CauseConnect.

Check out more in-depth articles, stories, and photographs by Melissa Richardson Banks at www.melissarichardsonbanks.com. Learn more about CauseConnect at www.causeconnect.net.

Follow Melissa Richardson Banks on Instagram as @DowntownMuse; @MUSEDhouston, and @causeconnect.

Subscribe and listen to the MUSED: LA 2 HOU podcast on your favorite streaming platforms, including Spotify, iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and more!