Episode #151 | Carlos Velazquez
This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Vimeo, and YouTube.
Single-story homes, quiet cul-de-sacs, and wide residential streets made up the suburban grid of West San Jose, where Carlos Velazquez came up. Carlos was a shy kid who spent most of his time with family and weekends at his abuelita’s house on the East Side. Even then, he was fascinated by the pile of records at home and the sounds of rancheras and groups like Rigo Tovar, Los Rockin’ Devils, and Los Moonlights. His parents, from Mexico, grew up around Tijuana’s music scene in the 60s before eventually settling in San Jose, where they met.
In his early teens, new cultural discoveries began drawing Carlos outward to downtown and different parts of the Bay Area. In 1994, at 13, Carlos knew nothing about hockey until he tuned in to the San Jose Sharks’ improbable first-round playoff upset, an extraordinary run that instantly inspired a lifelong obsession with the local team. Around the same time, he discovered the Bay Area’s third-wave ska scene and began bringing his younger brother to all-ages shows, using live music to explore the local arts community.
Those cultural experiences shaped Carlos’ path. Ready for a change of scenery for college, Carlos headed south to San Diego State University, where he immersed himself in Chicano studies, MEChA, reggae sound systems, and the culture of Chicano Park in Barrio Logan. That time away strengthened his appreciation for his roots and his hometown. When he returned, he applied those experiences and his communications degree to a career in the arts—first at Teatro Visión inside the Mexican Heritage Plaza, then through the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute (MALI), where he learned community-building under mentors like Raúl Lozano, Roy Hirabayashi, and Tamara Alvarado.
That foundation eventually expanded through a fellowship with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC). The opportunity took him to Chicago, where Carlos embedded himself in Pilsen’s tight-knit Mexican arts scene, living at the National Museum of Mexican Art’s artist house under the guidance of Carlos Tortolero, serving on staff at the Illinois Humanities Council, and serving as board chair of a local Latino arts nonprofit. He also immersed himself in Chicago’s vinyl and DJ culture, broadening his perspective before bringing those skills home.
Carlos returned to San Jose with his partner, artist and educator Alca Usan, reconnecting with his old friend Dan Vado at Art Boutiki. When the venue’s weeknight Drink and Draw went on hiatus, Carlos and Alca stepped in to help host. Carlos curated vinyl-heavy soundtracks and brought in guest selectors. At the same time, Alca created hand-drawn posters and coloring sheets that became central to the event’s visual identity—rebuilding the gathering into a packed, community-centered staple until Art Boutiki closed its doors.
In the spirit of keeping Drink and Draw alive for the community, Carlos and Alca partnered with the Mexican Heritage Plaza to bring the event to the East Side, tweaking it into a family-friendly weekend gathering featuring familiar rows of paper-covered tables, supplied crafts, and vinyl selectors. It’s also where Carlos now brings his own young son, bringing a new generation into the kind of multigenerational arts space that once helped draw him out of his shell.
In this conversation, Velazquez talks about growing up in West San Jose, what drew him out and back to his city, and the origins of the Drink and Draw he and his partner host at Mexican Heritage Plaza.
The next Drink and Draw takes place Sunday, September 20, 2026, from 1 to 4p at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, featuring guest selector Cristal Chains spinning 1970s and ’80s cumbias.
Website: mhplaza.org/allevents
Instagram: mhplazasj | carlos_de_sj
Event Images provided by Carlos Velazquez
Episode #149 – Arabela Espinoza
This podcast is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Vimeo, and YouTube.
Arabela Espinoza got her start with a camera growing up on the Eastside of San Jose. She remembers family gatherings documented with disposables and the transition to digital when she would swipe the camera her mom used for work before receiving her own as a gift. With a mother who worked long hours, Espinoza spent her afternoons in elementary school waiting for a ride home, filling the time with after-school programs. Though she didn’t grow up in a family of “capital-A Artists”, a fourth-grade Polaroid manipulation workshop stood out—teaching her to scratch, burn, and pour liquids onto developing film, showing her early on the different ways humans can capture and manipulate images.
By high school, Espinoza was shooting constantly, initially using self-portraits to get comfortable behind the lens and learn her camera gear. When classmates misread her self-portraits as self-absorbed, she shifted her focus outward, taking portraits of the people around her to highlight their presence instead. After graduating, she enrolled at San José State University (SJSU) to study forensic science—a choice driven by her mother’s desire for a practical, stable career. Realizing science wasn’t her path, Espinoza eventually switched her major to advertising, finding a way to balance her creative interests with applicable business strategy.
It was during a studio lighting class at SJSU that Espinoza met her long-time creative partner, Elle Mott. After interning and shooting editorial features for Content Magazine, the duo co-founded Weekend Creative—a commercial creative agency specializing in art direction and product photography for national brands. Over eight years, they built a recognizable aesthetic around color, composition, and texture, while making a point to pull back the curtain on the industry by sharing behind-the-scenes processes and educational resources with emerging photographers.
Now, following the sunsetting of Weekend Creative, Espinoza’s creative practice is turning inward. Her latest project steps away from commercial sets to focus on family, memory, attachment, and loss—a body of work sparked in part by her brother’s incarceration. Rather than taking new photographs, Espinoza dug through her family’s archives to pull old snapshots of herself and her brother, using the physical prints as canvases for intricate hand-stitching.
The embroidery acts as a visual metaphor for perspective. Growing up in the same household, Espinoza and her brother experienced their childhood in vastly different ways. By printing the same archive photos twice and applying distinct stitching patterns to each, Espinoza explores how emotional inheritance, survival mechanisms, and memory shape the way we process trauma and familial relationships. What began as an exercise in confronting loss has become a meditative process of deconstruction and repair.
In this conversation, Espinoza talks about moving from high school portraiture to editorial work, running a commercial creative agency, and shifting into personal, conceptual art.
Espinoza is artist-in-residence for the August 2026 edition of The Haberdasher Shows, presenting mixed-media work in her first-ever art exhibition at Haberdasher in downtown San Jose as part of the official San José Jazz Summer Fest Pre-Party.
Website: arabelaespinoza.com | weekend-creative.com
Instagram: arabelaespinoza | weekendcreative
“If someone gives me ‘no’ as an answer, I find a different way.” -Josie Lepe
Whether it’s capturing the drama of a touchdown at a football game or the intimacy of a family at their dinner table, Josie Lepe is on a mission to tell stories through photos. An award-winning independent photojournalist, Lepe has worked in the newspaper industry for the past 22 years, with experience ranging from taking digital photos with the latest high-tech cameras to developing traditional film in labs and darkrooms.
While Lepe has deep roots in the Bay Area, her journey was not easy. She crossed the border from Mexico as an undocumented immigrant twice: first as an infant and then later at nine years old. The second time, she was with her cousin and sister and was later reunited with her mother in San Jose. Although she’s moved a few times, Lepe has always found her way back to San Jose. “I identify [San Jose] as my home, even though I’m from somewhere else. I feel like I’m a native of San Jose. It’s kind of like it’s my city. I’m proud of it,” she said. Initially, as an English learner with dyslexia, she struggled in school. Yet that’s where her career path started. “I was able to take an elective for photography, and there I found my passion through photography and the dark room,” said Lepe. “It opened my eyes to a different way to communicate, and it was also my escape.” In those early days, she went to Coyote Creek in San Jose to practice taking photos. She shared, “I would create images that were beautiful in black and white, and even though we were like, ‘It’s the creek, it’s the ghetto,’ it was a way to escape to this fantasy with creating images.”
While Lepe was told she could never go to college due to her dyslexia, she ended up graduating from San Jose State University with a BFA in photography. “I didn’t want to be a waitress, and I knew education was a path to change that,” said Lepe. “Being an immigrant, being poor, I knew that education was going to open the doors to something new.”
More recently, Lepe went back to school for her MFA and graduated in December 2022. “No matter what, I always try to keep moving. Even if there was something where they said ‘No, the door is shut,’ then I’ll try again. If someone gives me ‘no’ as an answer, I find a different way,” said Lepe.
Over the years, Lepe worked odd jobs to help contribute to the family income. At one point, she worked full-time at The Mercury News. Now she splits her time between freelance work— often for The Associated Press and covering sports pieces—and her own projects. She had work featured at the de Young Museum’s 2023 de Young Open and at the San Jose gallery Chopsticks Alley Art (through January 2024).
For her personal projects, La Cena (Supper) is one that is a series of portraits that capture the diversity within the modern-day “Latine” community’s families. “There’s that whole image of the brown people being in a dump, or your house is falling apart, or whatever it is, but not all of us are in that. There are different variations of us. It’s a spectrum,” described Lepe. “Also, we all come from different countries. There are Latin Americans, there are Afro Latinos, there’s indigenous people— everybody is part of that ‘Latines’ group.” Lepe uses the term “Latines” for her work instead of “Latinx,” as “Latinx” always sounded more like a label for an experiment rather than an inclusive term. “ ‘Es’ is basically ‘we.’ It makes us, us. So to me, ‘Latines’ became more of a proper use of the term,” explained Lepe.
Lepe has always found herself documenting subcultures that she sees have not historically been fairly represented. She specifically focuses on women’s empowerment and the story of the immigrant in a positive way. “We always see visual images like the famous images of the drunken guy in Mexico or the prostitute at a bar. But there’s two sides of the story there. There are positive people that are working that are part of society, and we should show that more. I’m more about the positive visual representation,” Lepe said. She previously did a story on women passionate about their cars. “It wasn’t about being the trophy wife or the trophy in the car. It was more about them and their passion about [car] culture,” explained Lepe.
Today, Lepe works with graduate students at Stanford with photography lab work. She hopes that this job will give her more flexibility to spend less time freelancing and more time on her own series and projects.
Santa Cruz-based artist Laamsha Young has worked across three primary artistic disciplines: jewelry design, painting, and sculpture. While receiving her MFA in painting from San Jose State University, she discovered her latest passion for foam sculpture, which built upon her earlier practice in jewelry and painting.
Young began making jewelry in the 1980s before founding BlankVerse Jewelry and receiving international recognition, with pieces featured in Vogue and sold through major retailers. When she recently returned to university with an academic focus on traditional painting, her primary medium shifted following an unexpected material discovery.
This shift in medium occurred during a mold-making class. Tasked with creating a simple stress ball, Young encountered the “nerf-like material” and recognized its potential for larger forms. For the past three years, this inexpensive, low-brow material has been the basis of her current practice: large-scale foam sculptures. These pieces often take on elaborate drippy and squishy Baroque forms that she shares, “make squeezy noises.” This juxtaposition between Baroque and playful exposes the void between conceptually high and low art.
A philosophical interest in ornamentation connects Young’s practice in jewelry, painting, and foam sculpture. Drawing inspiration from formal design elements like “wallpaper and silverware,” Young’s work examines: “Who gets to have ornament?” Her current foam pieces actively address the boundary between high art and low art by applying traditional structures, such as candelabras, to accessible, commercial materials.
Young will be featured along with over 340 Santa Cruz County artists in the 2025 40th annual Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour. She is concentrating on debuting a new collection of ornate foam candelabras, which serve as a material-based continuation of her inquiry into the role of ornament in contemporary sculpture.
Follow Laamsha on Instagram at younglaamsha
Explore her portfolio at laamshayoung.net
Learn more about the Santa Cruz County Open Studios art tour at openstudios.artscouncilsc.org