SAN ANTONIO — Uvalde artist Abel Ortiz says the community quickly accepted him when he arrived in Coyote Country 17 years ago. 

“That’s what they all have in common is that huge heart that makes Uvalde what it is, and that’s why in the window I had to put amour there because that’s my experience with this community,” Ortiz says. “When I came here, I was welcomed with open arms. They embraced me.” 

They also accepted the iconography in his art that captures the events and issues that affect his people. The huge painting of a heart inside a sun, with two arms coming out of it with bags of food and drinks in each hand. It’s illustrating the influx of Haitian migrants crossing the border last year. He also has a giant portrait of his mother’s passport photo from when she came to the states. 

“How do I respond to these things going on in my culture, along the border with my own experience being an immigrant,” Ortiz says. “From failing the first grade to assimilating to the dominant culture and starting to feel like I belong.” 

Ortiz runs Art Lab Contemporary Art Space in downtown Uvalde and is also a professor at Southwest Texas Junior College. 

Art is his life, art has allowed him to heal. He hopes that his 21-mural project to honor to the 21 lives taken at Robb Elementary will allow Uvalde to heal. His kids once went to Robb, and his friends have kids that go there. That’s how small this community is. 

“My own student lost her daughter and so we are all connected in that sense. Once the media goes, the pain remains. We have to have those healing possibilities whether it’s the murals or mental health professionals coming in,” Ortiz says. “All that needs to be an ongoing process.” 

Ortiz says art has brought this community together before. He started a monthly art vending festival called Second Friday and has hosted blank canvas nights in his gallery for families. Essentially, he made art accessible to this community that never really had it. 

“That’s the reason why we need it, we need it to heal and that healings going to be long term, it’s not going to be short term,” Ortiz says. 

Ortiz says he has 20 artists from all over Texas who agreed to help him with this project, but he says he won’t start until he gets the blessing from all 21 families who were affected. 

“Again, wounds that will resurface. They are not going to heal easily, but knowing this community and their resilience,” Ortiz says. “That is the word I would use to describe this community is resilience, and that gives them strength overall.”