Marisol Picazo and Robert Lopez are the most unassuming power couple you’ll ever meet. From creating zines to curating art shows or featuring their own work in galleries, Marisol and Robert have been quietly establishing a young, ambitious, and deeply positive force in the San Jose art scene.

The pair met through a mutual friend in late 2009. After meeting up to take pictures together in Big Sur, they started hanging out every day. “We always chilled and took photos and fed off each other. I guess we just clicked,” Robert says. Their artistic collaborations began soon after they met, as both of them were bloggers and film documentarians.

As for how they got into art, the process definitely started early for each. “I’ve loved art all my life,” says Robert. “As a kid, I liked to look at pictures and either trace or copy them and make it in my own way.” This life-long infatuation led Robert to enroll in a four-year art program at his high school. It was during this time that he started getting into photography. From there, he went on to San Jose State University, graduating with a BA in design studies. Students could sign up for gallery time, and it was here that Robert got his first taste of curating.

Marisol has also been in touch with her artistic side from a young age. A photographer as well as a writer, Marisol graduated with a degree in creative writing from CSU Monterey Bay. Her personal writing and photography (which focus particularly on Chicano/a identities) have been published in various zines, literary journals, and online publications.

In recent years, they have found themselves becoming increasingly in demand as local curators. Though Robert already had some experience curating shows in the South Bay, it wasn’t until after managing a 52-person show in 2015 for the relatively cozy Chromatic Coffee that the couple’s curatorial work took off. That work caught the attention of the owners of Boba Bar in San Jose, who asked the couple to curate art in their own store. From this project they created Space B, a multimodal art exposition that puts on a show at least every two months. Their most recent show, “Tough Love,” was a blow-out success. For now the couple plans on taking a little breather, but Marisol and Robert will have another show up and running by April.

As for their more textual work, the idea of Paper Memory stemmed from an open-call zine that Marisol and Robert created and released in late 2015. They invited a group of photographers to share intimate portraits from their lives and titled the project Something Personal, a name derived from an old blog Robert and Marisol used to share called Memories on Paper. “When we first started doing it, it was only through our inner circle of friends,” says Robert of their newest project. “But we wanted to extend it and make a platform where we could reach out to a larger audience.”

Thanks to their artist connections and a little bit of networking on Instagram, Marisol and Robert received contributions from all over the world. One feature of Paper Memory included letting photographers primarily working in film take over Paper Memory’s social media account for four days each, as a sort of digital artist-in-residency program.

While they have been recently more focused on curating, the pair plans to revamp the site into a multimodal platform for photographic expression to include artist interviews, profiles, and photos of the day. “Attending art shows is cool and all, but they’re only once a month. You need to do stuff every day,” says Robert. “It’s good for artists to look forward to things that they’re a part of, not just events for other well-known artists.”

In terms of navigating and networking in the San Jose art scene, Marisol and Robert remain inspired by their local support. “There are separations in the local scene, but we have always been surrounded by really a positive art community,” says Robert.

Marisol echoes her partner’s sentiments. “I look forward to working with the San Jose community because I see the strong attachment in our own circle. I see a lot of support, which inspires me to work on my own art, as well as create zines or curate shows.”

Robert and Marisol joined Empire 7 Studio to curate and exhibit a celebration of the support Henry Change and Foto Express have provided to the San Jose Photography scene. Exhibition on display until Feb 28th.

 FOTO EXPRESS: A Film Foto Show.
Empire 7 Studios
525 N 7th St, Suite 10, San Jose
@fotoexpressfilm @empire7studios 

Blog artwork images by Robort Lopez and Marisol Picazo