METRO PODCAST | Thorne Dreyer : Visionary artist & storyteller Luis Guerra on Rag Radio

‘As the Huicholes of northern Mexico have demonstrated to me, art is (or should be) a way of praying, of making an offering to the gods.’

luis guerra 2 small

Rag Radio guest Luis Guerra in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Friday, June 13. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | June 20, 2014

Our Rag Radio podcast features the amazing Luis Guerra, a painter, sculptor, writer, storyteller, and mystic who divides his time between between Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosí, and Austin, Texas..

Listen to or download the podcast of our June 13, 2014, Rag Radio interview with Luis Guerra here:

Rag Radio is a weekly hour-long syndicated radio program produced and hosted by long-time alternative journalist and Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer. The show is recorded at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas. It is broadcast live on KOOP every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) and streamed live on the web.

luis guerra koop smallArtist and writer Luis Guerra has narrated his stories on National Public Radio’s Latino USA for over two decades. His artwork has been featured in numerous publications, including the series on Chicano art published by Bilingual Review Press, and his short story, “Al otro lado,” appeared in Universo y asombro, a textbook published by Macmillan-McGraw-Hill in 1994.

Guerra’s paintings and sculptures are in public and private collections in the United States and Mexico — including the Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin, the Benson Latin American Collection at UT-Austin, and the Southwestern Writer’s Collection at Texas State University in San Marcos — and have won awards in major juried exhibitions. A mural he created with his students at Austin Community College is on permanent display at ACC’s Northridge Campus Library. He is also a recipient of the Siqueiros-Pollock Award of Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

As a conscientious objector in the Sixties, Guerra refused to take part in the War in Vietnam. He lived, worked, and taught in Austin in the seventies and eighties. He has been an activist artist in the Chicano Movement. He designed campaign posters for the Raza Unida Party’s Ramsey Muñiz in his Texas gubernatorial campaign and he participated in and visually documented the 1977 Texas Farmworker’s Union march on Washington.

Today, Luis is especially interested in the mystical aspects of life. He has written, “As the Huicholes of northern Mexico have demonstrated to me, art is (or should be) a way of praying, of making an offering to the gods.”

 
853px-Rag_radio2Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer who was a founding editor of the original Rag, published in Austin from 1966-1977. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer. And we are honored to have noted investigative journalist Ken Martin is our apprentice.

Rag Radio has aired more than 200 shows since September 2009, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP — and streamed live on the web — and is rebroadcast and streamed on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is also aired and streamed on KPFT-HD3 90.1 — Pacifica radio in Houston — on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. (CST).

After broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Please contact us at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
Friday, June 27, 2014: Jeff Sharlet, award-winning journalist and best-selling author of The Family with his father, scholar and author Robert Sharlet.

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