Trailor House Mosca Con One Pink Chancla, 2007, Acrylic and Ink on Paper, 25" x 30", (Collection the Artist).

In works like Trailor House Mosca Con One Pink Chancla, Rolando Reyna creates a journey through the cultural core of art, as well as placing the individual in a fictitious territory, which he calls "Ranchoverse." In the heart of his Mexican American experience are concepts and conditions of rural living coupled with the desire to redefine the tongue and voice of Latinos in South Texas. The characters in Ranchoverse personify witty absurdities and political assertions, which have become meaningful reflections of the human condition as a whole. For example, In Trailor House Mosca..., a common housefly is satirically personified as a trailer home owner that has just been uprooted and has taken flight. Wiring, plumbing, and bits and pieces of house are still falling from the launch. With only a few items in hand, the mosca sets out in search of better days, and rides off into the sunset. The image is about an individual, who realizes his/her own failures, who in complete disregards for appropriate footwear, sets-out, in spite of stereotypical identifiers, and bravely selects to change its lineage. Such ironic imagery is part of a visual 'verse,' slyly transmitting an innuendo toward that space in the mind intended for recollection, along with the wide curiosity of one's center in the universe. The common housefly (aptly named) takes its escape for a focused intervention on the progression of the self. The title itself is a play on being fused to two cultures.

Rolando Reyna was born in George West, Texas in 1971. He received his BFA from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, and MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as a Holderness Fellow. Since the early '90s; his artistic influences have been Texas artists, who are identified as first or second generation Chicano artists; besides these influences, also significant is his study of critical thought in abstract processes with New York based artist Cora Cohen. Thus, in his iconology, Reyna has made a full circle back to Mexico and South Texas to work alongside "Pintores Oaxaquenos," and to practice formalistic theory with a fusion of Texas ecology and Oaxacan aesthetic. Moreover, Reyna has taught at University of Texas-Pan American, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, Coastal Bend College, La Universidad Autonoma "Benito Juarez" de Oaxaca La Escuela de Bellas Artes, Oaxaca, Mexico, and Alvin Community College. He currently resides in Houston, and is Program Director at City ArtWorks and teaches at Houston Community College. His work is included in the collections of the Art Museum of South Texas, and Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina. To view more information on Reyna, please