In our last post we talked about Central School Project, a Bisbee institution at the heart of the local arts and cultural scene. Its a place where established artists can continue and exhibit their work, and where children of all ages can roll up their sleeves and MAKE art.
Central School is also an incubator in which up-and-coming artists can practice their work to perfection, and today we take the opportunity to recognize the bright young talent of one of CSP’s newest members: Fernando Serrano.
Born in Tucson and raised just over the line in Naco, Sonora, Fernando is a man of the Borderlands. He moved to Bisbee at age 15 on his own and began a years-long stretch of working as many as three jobs just to make it on his own. The artist in him was desperate to be born but the grind made it all but impossible. In those days Fernando expressed himself instead through his impeccable personal fashion sense and style.
By 2020 Fernando had started a jewelry business and in 2024 introduced Monsoon Season, a line of perfumes inspired by and indeed, made from Southern Arizona botanicals. His jewelry and fragrances can be procured from Allen & Co Curio Shop on Subway Street.
These consumables, sold under his fashion brand Queen of the Rodeo were important early steps in Fernando’s art career, but as he tells it, “its great to make things that are beautiful and that make money, but its not the same as giving to the community and making art for the people. I wanted to make art that serves the people, lifts them up and makes them feel seen.”
It’s been a long road for Serrano. A lot of dues- paying and a good deal of rejection. But the man is driven, by his vision and sometimes even by his dreams. The idea for the Monsoon Season perfumes came to him in a dream, in fact, and he could hardly help but to listen to that inner voice pushing him forward.
Monsoon Season wasn’t the only endeavor his dreams demanded of him. In recent years they have also led him to take up loom weaving, a form of art that he has thrown himself into with evident passion. He enrolled in the Instituto de Allende trade school in San Miguel, Mexico last year where he practiced Mexican tapestry weaving, day in and day out. He returned to Bisbee proficient in this ancient craft. These tapestries are close to the ground and to the people: functional, accessible, useful, carrying beauty and artistry not only in their appearance but in the way they are made.
The old way.
Fernando is passionate in his desire to increase Mexican American and Indigenous representation in the arts, especially the fiber arts, and to ensure that these ancient techniques are preserved and celebrated. It wasn’t so long ago that loom weaving was not only common, but often the only way textiles, blankets and clothing were made in northern Mexico and the Borderlands. “It was so weird that I had to go all the way to central Mexico to find people to teach this,” he told me. Now, he gets to teach others and do his part to keep the tradition alive.
And so Serrano has found his path. Our conversation this week found him back in Bisbee, fresh from a trip to a California workshop held by Zapotec master weaver Porfirio Gutierrez. For Fernando, the experience was a profound validation of his vision and approach to practice. Gutierrez says that arts is craft and craft is art. ”In my culture, in my Zapotec language, we don’t have a word for artist. It doesn’t exist…I am, myself, a maker that sometimes is labeled as Mexican artist, an indigenous artist or a craftsman…In the society we live in, fine arts and crafts are separated, but that’s a complexity that someone else has created for us.”
Fernando’s days of working three jobs just to make it are behind him. A recent recipient of a Columbia University Assembling Voices Fellowship, he finally has the time–and thanks to his membership at Central School Project–the space to really become the artist that 15 year old Bisbee kid was destined to be.
And no matter what the future holds, Fernando Serrano is a successful artist, already. His partner and Central School have been tremendous sources of support and encouragement. The Columbia Fellowship and a recent residency through the Arizona Commission for the Arts certainly helped. These experiences have been transformational.
But above all else, Fernando owes his success to his will, his vision (and dreams), and a stubborn refusal to take no for an answer. That’s the biggest lesson of the last few years. You keep going, you don’t give up, you put yourself out there, and eventually that no becomes a yes.
CSP is holding a Member’s Show on Friday, February 6. You can see Fernando’s work as well as those of his fellow CSP artists on that evening.
But if you miss it, don’t worry. Fernando, now the full time working artist of his own dreams, is just getting started. Making art that is grounded in tradition, practical, functional, accessible and beautiful. For the people.
Keith Allen Dennis is a Bisbee writer, living the dream of becoming the songster he was meant to be. Find his music at http://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com.