Estudio Loca #37 is the heart & brainchild of Joan Elena Goldberg, whose SMA roots began at the Instituto Allende in 2000 as a Master’s student in Ceramic Sculpture. The mission of this new arts’ space is to exhibit emerging, fringe, local artists, crafts people and musicians, those who have felt marginalized by the mainstream arts’ industry.

Included in this first “Inaugural Exhibition” will be some exquisite, world-class stained glass windows made by Craig Fenton Sautto.

Born and raised in San Miguel, Craig is the artist who created the massive and elegant “Pink Rose” series of stained glass windows that once graced the dining and garden areas of the Villa Jacaranda Hotel on Calle Aldama in Centro. His family owned the hotel from 1974 -2007. The Hotel Matilda opened its doors on the same site in 2010. Craig has never shown his work in a gallery setting before and is open-minded about the notion.

Joan Elena, the proprietor of “Estudio Local #37”, says: “This new building I’ve recently acquired will allow me to finally make the all-arts center, live-work-home-studio-rental-retail space of my dreams. There is still much construction to do, but we are starting out big with this inaugural exhibition of three tremendously talented, but relatively unknown local artists. It is also a pleasure to welcome Wade Ashley, a fine local musician, who will be entertaining guests with his acoustic repertoire.”

Joan Elena wants to support small, Mexican food businesses too and has invited “Katy Tamales” to set up a Tamales & Atole Café onsite. Katy sells her delicious tamales and atole out of the back of her pickup truck every night driving all around Colonia San Antonio with a loudspeaker. Come for the art, stay for the tamales!

“It is my vision to showcase local, fringe & emerging artists, crafts people and musicians so that they can get shown and get known! Artists will pay a percentage of the sale of their work to help keep the business going. Visual artists can rent studio space. And of course finally being ‘an owner’, I will have the comfort of knowing I never again have to move a 300 kilo gas ceramics kiln at the whim of a greedy landlord.”