The Studio of Gladys Roldan-de-Moras

Magic can occur anywhere. Take, for instance, a busy street in San Antonio, Texas, with five lanes of traffic rushing past a bustling neighborhood of restaurants, doctors’ offices, and an upscale grocery store—where the businesses give way to residential blocks with a sleek, white, modern house that sits behind a cinderblock wall. Unlike the surrounding houses, this one doesn’t sit neatly parallel to the street; it’s at a noticeable slant, facing squarely north.

To step through the gates and into the foyer is to step into another world. The rear wall, composed of 15 five-by-seven-foot windowpanes, stretches up, embracing the Texas sun and bathing everything in the room in cool light. The space you find yourself in might contain, at any given time, larger-than-life murals in progress, models posing in glittering China Poblana costumes, and a wise and experienced mentor toggling fluently between English and Spanish as she instructs her protégés at their easels. Sometimes you’ll find even more improbable things: the corner of a building—and only the corner—on wheels, a staircase to nowhere on wheels, and an engineering professor composing music at a grand piano.

Read the full article in the January/February 2024 issue.