Meet Ruben Torres

Carlos : Hi, welcome to this second episode of this podcast called Cosecha Conversations. The idea of this little podcast is to give a space to voices here in our community, who are here and who have an influence and who have also seen transformation and are part of what's happening in our neighborhood. On this day we have a special guest that we would like to introduce. First of all, before we introduce him, I want to tell you that you can find us on the website Cosecha.Community. Here you will find information about our organization and what we are trying to do in the community. You can also find us on Facebook at Cosecha Community Development or on Instagram. That's where we're a little bit more active, showing everything that we're doing in the Woodbine neighborhood and everything that's in the Nolensville corridor. We also want to tell you that we are going to be broadcasting these podcasts during this month, trying to accentuate and give a little bit of a voice to our Latino voices and Hispanic migrant voices that are here in Nashville in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, and today we have a special guest and I would like Jael to give us a little introduction for our guest today.

Jael : Thank you Pastor Carlos. My name is Jael Fuentes and I'm part of the Cosecha team and today we have a very special guest. Nothing more and nothing less than my dear husband Rubén Torres, a true artist. Some of you know him and he has done a lot of work here in the community, doing murals and doing a lot of commercial work that even though he doesn't consider it art, it is art, right? What he does. And well, welcome, welcome. This is Ruben Torres, it sounds weird to call him that, doesn't it? Because he is my husband and I speak to him with more affection, but I am very happy to have him here. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Rubén, this morning.

Ruben: Well, thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to the Latino community here in Nashville. Well, I've always been an artist, I started drawing very, very young and my first paid job was when I was about 12 years old and my father's boss, who owned a bakery, asked me to paint some breads in the window and the name of the bakery and he paid me for that job. So, from there I think he started to make some money professionally with what I was doing and at that time I did not. I didn't do commercials, what I did was drawings, but he told me you can probably do this. These letters and this. And from there it's already a hardware store and so on and so forth.

Carlos : What we usually call the labels

Ruben: Signs

Carlos : Sign-painter

Ruben: But it's a bit of a specialty job. There are sign makers who only paint letters and when you ask them for a drawing they can't do it. And there are others that are more versatile and can do anything. There are artists who paint very nice drawings and everything, but when they are asked to paint letters, they can't do them or they don't come out so well.

Carlos : Well, I can imagine myself talking, for example, in those kinds of spaces. It is different painting on a canvas than painting on the wall which sometimes are not completely flat.

Ruben: It is only fashionable to paint on old walls, very old walls directly on the brick, where the grout is wide and deep. And here, right back here, at the place where I spoke, I think it was called that they sold restaurant equipment. Here in the corner, there I had to paint the two walls on the sides and the grout was very deep and it was a big job and a lot of little letters because it was the equipment that they sold.

Carlos : So you started making these signs and you started a bakery, a hardware store and then you continued on your journey.

Ruben: Well, yes, but before that I started painting art, landscapes and faces and things like that. So that's why this man, my dad's boss, asked me if I could do that job for him after that, because when I was a teenager, when I was young, I made a little money doing pencil portraits. From people, friends and acquaintances, word spread and they wanted their girlfriends' portraits. And they paid me for it. What if I focused? I have always been very meticulous when it comes to very, very perfectionist with my work and. And so yes, if I took them out I took them out the same, because they looked like a black and white photograph to me. Sure, so that's why he was popular there.

Carlos : With the neighborhood kids. Well, for us, who have been able to see your work, other than what makes that fact in the community, as Jael was saying, a little bit more in the area, in the commercial realm, maybe you do live here in the Woodbine neighborhood, in some way, at some time, even if you don't know him, you've seen some of his work, either in some of our restaurants that are here. But in your personal work, you, as you say, are also a painter and you do a bit more detailed paintings and other types of media that are not just signs. What is your greatest satisfaction or what is your best? What do you like to work on the most?

Ruben: Well, what fills me the most is painting art with classical techniques, traditional techniques. Why? Because it's very nice when you handle the materials and when you see the results, which are very similar to the ancient works, that's when the result fills you, when you see what you're seeing, that it looks like a classic work with its differences. Of course you can tell it's new because it's new. Classical works have the bonus or the pylon, the finish that they have, that's the one that looks vintage, that looks old, antique, that the color is more aged, plus the varnishes. Time gives you that finish. In the case of when you make it new, well it looks new, but if I want to make it look old with some patinas and stuff, but. But what is achieved is basically what the ancient painter achieved in his time. Because they are made following the steps of the original painters. So I've been doing that in the last couple of years more conscientiously to get to know the techniques and probably give workshops or teach classes about it. And also to see how I can incorporate it into my own work to make it, to make it my own, right?

Carlos : You use art as part of you. Is it something that fulfills you and what is it? It's something you were called with the gifts and talents that you were born with. But you're also talking about teaching and what is that experience of being able to share your knowledge, your techniques to another person and seeing them as they also begin their own journey.

Ruben: Well, it would be very important to start disseminating this idea of traditional techniques, because they are basically the knowledge of the materials, and only the procedures that have been followed for centuries. To make art. And that's very important, because in the last few years, in the last few decades, art universities have neglected that part, they have focused more on the conceptual, they have taken away a lot of importance from teaching techniques. The use of materials is used very superficially, even in the faculties of other disciplines that go a bit with what is plastic arts, which is graphic design or architecture, which before architects had to use watercolors and different art and drawing techniques to capture themselves, to make their plans and show clients how the building or the construction they are designing or the logo they were designing would look like. The graphic designers for the client had to do things manually. Now they are using a lot of modern techniques such as computers, design software and practically the traditional manual techniques are no longer being used. Then so many who want to paint like that, they have to research on their own and sometimes a YouTube video or something like that is not enough. You need mentoring from someone who has experience with it.

Carlos : We've had a lot, a lot of talent in the Hispanic community, with a lot of artists and I imagine you must know people here or in your home country where you grew up, but that's limiting what you're talking about. It will be limiting, not just limiting, there is a crisis in art, in our communities. There is one or now art has evolved in a different way. As you say, it's more digital or more, I don't know, more modern.

Ruben: Yes, well, the artist who is an artist or who has inclinations towards it, looks for ways to express himself and to get ahead with it. It is not something that can be stopped. Ah, but having tools, for example, I don't know much about the digital ones. Probably yes, if I knew, I would probably use those techniques too, because that's one of the things or characteristics of an artist. It's curiosity. One always has that inclination to know more, to investigate, for experimenting with things. And I assure you that if the great masters of classical art had lived in this era, they would still be youtubing or doing podcasts or something like that. Because it is something that an artist is always, always going to be investigating and looking to see and maybe you don't like it, but if you experiment with the new and that's precisely why the artists stood out, the artists that we now know as the classics in their moment were

Carlos : Avant-garde,

Ruben: At the time they were avant-garde, they were, they were breaking with the traditional and that's why they started a new era.

Carlos : Jael The question now is for you in relation to him, you've seen him work and what do you see in him, in him as an artist?

Jael : Yes, of course it is. Ah, well, it's my turn. I always say a blessing to other people. I can say that I have been fortunate to live the journey of life with him, as a husband, as an artist. And well, what I always tell people is the passion he has for art. That's a big difference. I have been his assistant on some projects and learned some painting and technical drawing, and I immediately always make it clear that I am not an artist and I make that big difference because I can see the passion that he has, he can be painting for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and he enjoys it and he gets stressed sometimes when he wants to accomplish something, but it's something that's part of his life. This and he has the knowledge and he's always on the quest. That is something else. We're going on almost 30 years of marriage, but I've never seen him stop learning. He is always, constantly, learning something, always experimenting with new techniques, with materials. He's always doing something and I think that's a very, very nice thing. People, artists who have that passion for creating new work is also something that I've seen him incorporate lately, because I think it's been a very important theme about social justice and I see that in some of his work he incorporates that social justice. Hopefully one day we will have the opportunity to see his collection of the 43 from Ayotzinapa, where he did the rest of the study and researched everything about the students and painted each one of them.

Jael : An individual painting as a way to honor their memory and also to claim justice through art. In this situation, then yes, it has touched me to see and if we are thinking that it would be a good project to share all that knowledge that he has acquired and cultivated through all these years, this with the Hispanic community, because it is very important. And well, I think this is a whole other podcast, but something that I admire a lot about Rubén is that he had a very difficult childhood and despite that he got ahead because he had good mentors in his life, art mentors, people who have always had people in his life. He always took refuge in them. We can say so with people who knew about art and who were much greater than he was. So that's why he's always continually learning or searching and working, right? That's another thing. A friend of ours who has passed away, who was a great artist, the teacher Pedro Banda. He always said don't wait for the muse to come, don't wait for inspiration to come to you. This is a discipline. And that is what I see in Rubén Torres. He has the discipline to be creating his work on a daily basis.

Carlos : And with that what you were commenting on Jael. I also have a friend who does wax sculpture and it's amazing the work that he does. But also seeing, I know that he also had a difficult childhood and one of the things that he told me is that sometimes it's those moments in which art helped as a way to survive in a certain way. And I think if we can look at the history of a lot of artists during that past, then of course we can't go too far into that. But how? What is the gift that art gives one to escape from the realities we live in today?

Ruben: Yes, that's something. It is something very common in artists that their traumas, their traumas and there are ideas that they have of complications in their life, to the empty it in their in their art.  A lot of difficult situations influence what you're going to do AND that way you have a kind of mental health. That is, instead of going to a psychologist or having psychological care, a cancellation. Art serves you. It does some psychological and sometimes spiritual cleansing as well.

Carlos : That's what I was going to ask you. Last week we had our friend Celia, who was telling us about her connection to sowing and she said that it was a spiritual experience and I imagine that this is a spiritual experience too.

Ruben: Good. Yes, yes. Sometimes, like you say, like this is my way of getting more spirituality. Because many people consider it a gift, a divine gift. But we are all born with gifts, different gifts, but we put emphasis on some of them. There are probably many who have the gift of art, but they focus more on soccer or baseball or other things or singing and that's where they focus and they never realized that they had the gift of art because they didn't put it into practice.

Carlos : For purposes of what we do. The purpose of Cosecha is to bring people together to foster community. And I believe that art is a means by which the community can come together. And I think one question I want to ask so that we can close this conversation is that there will be people in the Hispanic or non-Hispanic community who have the desire or who have that curiosity for art, but there's not or there's not that motivation or that mentorship like maybe you had. What would be your recommendation for someone who is curious and how? Because sometimes it takes courage, even if it's just putting something down, because you might think that people are going to laugh at what you're going to do or I don't know how you can break that barrier, because I think there are many young people and also adults, even seniors, who have never taken the risk and have never taken 

Ruben: The opportunity or have never been encouraged. Yes, that's very important because you never get over it, that fear of a blank canvas or a white wall where you have to paint something has improvised into something not so thought out. I'm more of a thinker, I think about things with time and I make sketches or designs and finally when I'm in front of the wall or the canvas on which I'm going to capture that, I have a clear idea. But when you're faced with improvising on a blank canvas, that's very difficult. Then it's just taking a chance. It's like when, well, in the case of those of us who are here, who arrive without knowing the language and without having many acquaintances, or rather no acquaintances, many people struggle to learn English because they are afraid to speak it, because they say they are going to laugh at me, because I know I don't speak it well. So, just to have the audacity to begin, to begin to say things, to begin in this case of art to put the color, to throw it and this with brushes or with the fingers of the hands or however, yes.

Carlos : Jael was talking about social justice and I started to meditate. I, in my experience, certainly in the years ago, in generations ago, when reading or access to education was not for everyone, art was the means of communication, especially religiously. The arts have been the teaching. And I think you believe that today art can be that medium to communicate or educate in relation to social justice.

Ruben: Yes, definitely what you say is totally true, back in the Renaissance the reform, the religious reform, arose, and it was precisely because art was, was eminently religious and it was deviating or many saints were being made and many, some humanists and religious of the time did not agree with that and began to start in the reform. And then also with the tools of art, the Counter-Reformation began, which was the Catholic Church's response to Protestantism, to recover what they had lost in terms of people. But I do believe that nowadays one of the most efficient tools for social justice, for demanding social justice, is art. You see in a lot of places, especially in urban areas, murals on public buildings where you see a lot of murals calling for social justice, and especially in underserved or minority communities. He is protesting against racism, mainly against the abuse of social classes against each other. So yes, I think it is a very efficient tool and one that can have the greatest impact on the community.

Carlos : I don't know if you have any questions you would like to ask or any other comments to close this our space on this day.

Jael : Well, I just want to add that the work of us Hispanics, Hispanics, immigrants in this country is very important and I believe that we should not get discouraged or stop. And this is the case of Rubén Torres, who, as he says when you arrive and I don't know if we said it at the beginning, but he was born in Mexico, in the state of Tamaulipas. Where you live, we have lived here for 15 years more or less and without fear or without fear of impacting the community in a positive way, creating these, these murals, these ads, these things. In other words, what I want to say to our people who listen to us, our Hispanic people. You have a talent, develop it, seek to connect with organizations, seek to connect with places, with people who can support you while you are here, while you are learning the language, well, look for something in your own language that you can, that you can get ahead, that you can learn. Of course.

Carlos : You have lived here for 15 years. I think this city has changed quite a bit in and around the city. You can find some of the drawings, paintings, murals that Ruben has done and that well, you can go to a Mexican restaurant, you can find, but I don't want you to limit your thinking to that art. So I would like to I don't know if you have a page or you have some place where you can. Where are some of your pieces? Or How can we contact you?

Jael : Well, in many of the social media you can find him as Ruben Torres, Ruben Torres. What is your Instagram? Instagram is like Ruben's Art?

Carlos : Yes, and

Ruben: There you can. And it's underscore.

Carlos : Ruben

Ruben: Ruben, Ruben'sart_. Okay, there, there I have quite a few replicas of traditional art.

Carlos : And also, if you want to hire him, you can also contact him through Instagram or Facebook. He does great work and is one of the voices that, although a lot of people don't know him, a lot of people have seen his work. Your work and also good, thanks for sharing your story and if there is anything else you want to add.

Ruben: Well, if I was thinking that precisely to the people that I talk to, that don't speak Spanish, that speak Arabic or speak English, I always tell them that My Kingdom is the Nolensville on Nolensville Road and Murfreesboro Road is my kingdom because that's where my work is. Well, now I'm doing it everywhere. In Downtown I have quite a bit of work done as well, but for many years, the first ten years, this is where I moved around quite a bit. I was always painting and a friend of mine that somebody came to visit him from outside and he was telling them about me, he was driving down Nolensville and talking about me, that I have a friend who does this and that and he paints everything here on this street and he has a lot of ads and I was pointing out one and another and all of a sudden he sees me on the scaffolding doing something right and he says look at him, there he is working. And it was very exciting for him and for me as well. More after I knew the history of that moment. But I do have a lot of work done here in the Nolensville and that was done now a tourist corridor or something like that, that they did a whole page and all a lot of hard work. And I realized, they invited me to participate for that and everything. But some time later I didn't know, but I found out. Someone mentioned that the project had been started precisely because of the advertisements that

Carlos : They were,

Ruben: The ads that I had done and that looked in a style, you could say Latin. It's not often that they see that kind of work and they said hey, but they are quite a few, look and here ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay ay! And a lady who is an American photographer. She contacted me and asked me if I could do this. And it was precisely on the same days that I had been interviewed for television

Carlos : On Nashville Public Television.

Ruben: I had been interviewed for television about the contribution of immigrants in the Nashville community and it focused precisely on my ads. So this lady said to me that if I agreed to come with her and show her my works and she would take a photograph of the works, and we started from there, from the fair and the bourgeois (guitars) in the air. So I painted some old cars in front of it and the ad, of course, and that's where we started. And that's not the end of it, over there in Old Hickory, over there. And then I realized that because of that, because of that project, the green corridor project started. Let's do something bigger and put it out there for tourists who come to visit Nashville.

Carlos : Ruben, thank you very much for your work. For the way you share your gift, your talent all along this corridor as it claims to be, that is your kingdom. But thank you also because you've added the color that represents the community that lives here and I think it's a unique part of the city. If we can see, as you say, from the Fair Grounds to Old Hickory, hundreds of places that have also carried that color and the message that they are not only Hispanic communities, but as you say, also of other nationalities, other regions, but that make this place culturally rich. So thank you for being with us on this one this morning. And well, we want to tell you that we thank you for listening and especially in this podcast that we're doing. You can find us on the Cosecha Punto Community page, also on Instagram as cosecha Development and also on Facebook for any activities or announcements we have. If you want to volunteer in this project we are doing, send us a message Jael, anything else you want to share?

Jael : No, I can't be more excited to be able to share these stories of our Hispanic people in this month that we celebrate Hispanic Heritage. So well, be ready for next week.

Carlos : Well, see you next week.

See you later