SAN ANTONIO — Many families travel to the Mexico-Texas border seeking a better life. The migrant experience hits close to home for a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“It allows me that opportunity to really put forward my experience to as many people as possible,” art professor Humberto Saenz said.

Humberto Saenz has been teaching aspiring artists at UTSA for six years.

“It’s a lot of hard work, not just for myself but also for the students,” Saenz said.

The art of printmaking is his specialty — a delicate process of transferring ink to stones, and then pressing that image onto paper.

“This is just a way for you to be able to make many editions of a specific piece of art,” senior fine arts major Daylyn Howe said.

As a child, Saenz immigrated to the United States from Mexico. Now as a first generation college grad, he’s using his art to tell migrants stories. 

“Acknowledge them and give a voice to my culture,” Saenz said. “And let other people experience or know about my experience as an immigrant Latino coming to the U.S.”

His new series focuses on the separation of families at the Mexico-Texas border. 

“There’s underlying layers of politics and oppression of the children,” Saenz said while describing his artwork.

Saenz chooses to showcase the struggles migrants experience at the border through his art, taking his views on the issue beyond UTSA’s campus.

“I hope that my art plays a part in changing the perspective that people have about the immigrant struggle,” Saenz said. “I think that’s one of the reasons I do it.”

His artwork has traveled internationally to China, Australia and Peru. 

For Saenz, representation matters— a principle he tries to share with his students, pushing them to use their art as their voice and sharing their perspective with others.

“Art plays an important part in communicating those experiences to the rest of the world,” Saenz said. ”Printmaking allows me to do that.”