SAN ANTONIO — MidNite Flortiz gets to pay it forward as an art programmer on San Antonio’s West Side at nonprofit San Anto Cultural Arts — but lately he’s been doing his free classes via zoom.
“So seeing that they have the ability to create something that is tangible, archivable. Something that could possibly outlive them and their children,” Flortiz says.
He wasn’t introduced to art in the traditional way.
“I used to be homeless, and it took someone believing and wanting to give me an opportunity to express that,” Flortiz says.
Flortiz adds it can get frustrating when the arts is the first thing cut from school budgets. Most recently, the House Bill 434 was introduced to legislature. It would no longer require a fine arts credit for high school students in order to graduate.
“What the decision makers are forgetting is that someone had to design their logo of the business that they are operating with,” Flortiz says. “All of that is art, who is going to continue to do that if you keep cutting the arts.”
His more advanced students, Aregentina, and her twin sister Solame, couldn’t agree more.
“If art was never here, the world would never be more beautiful like Tina said,” Solame says.
They are only seven minutes apart, but their skills are on par with each other. The two have sold art, helped restore murals, and even painted murals of their own. The sisters say that art has benefited them in the classroom.
“It can inspire different people, but like they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Argentina says.
Flortiz believes art can instill a confidence in a child that not many subjects can.
“Either idolizing another artist or another creation and they start building themselves in that light,” Flortiz says. “Or they find their own style, their own inner voice, and start expressing that.”