Tattoos, art meld at Casa Ortiz in West Texas; Day of the Dead celebration set

Painter and tattoo artist Pablo Hernandez is bringing new life to the historic Casa Ortiz adobe complex in Socorro, Texas.

Casa Ortiz had launched as an art gallery right before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the country. The gallery helped keep the art movement alive in El Paso County during that dark time with underground exhibitions, small get-togethers and a core group of artists who refused to see their dreams die even as hope faded for many.

Unfortunately, a change in management at the complex eventually sparked an exodus by all its artists. Casa Ortiz, which had become an artistic mecca in the Borderland and a community center for events, became, of all things, a haunted house before eventually shutting down.

Now, Hernandez has reclaimed it for art lovers, and a Day of the Dead-themed exhibition will help reintroduce the gallery, which now also is a tattoo shop, to the community.

A recent walk-through of Casa Ortiz showed calaveras nestled amid the adobe setting, with a wing of the building dedicated to tattoo artists.

Two rooms at the southern end of the building serve as the office for Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, whose district extends from San Antonio up to eastern El Paso County. Gonzales’ office survived the haunted house phase of the building and remains a part of the complex.

The Day of the Dead celebration will begin at 5 p.m. Nov. 1 at 10167 Socorro Road and have food, vendors, art and music.

Hernandez said, “So, the event is called ‘Calaveras y Diablitos,’ skulls and little devils. It’s a Day of the Dead celebration. Not really Halloween, more traditional Dia de los Muertos. We’re trying to celebrate it as traditionally as we can, although a lot of people don’t really celebrate it or don’t celebrate it in a traditional way.

“But we have a Day of the Dead altar here, open to the community. Usually you put photos of your deceased loved ones or deceased pets, and then on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 is traditionally when they come down and they visit you.”

He said, “The event is only Nov. 1, but on that day, people are welcome to put little ofrendas, bread and water and liquor, for their love.”

The celebration also will offer local artists and others the opportunity to highlight their creations with the Borderland community.

“We’re going to have an art show of over 50 artists, tattooers from around town, and fine artists, all on canvas or paper, all 9-by-12-(inch) pieces. So, they’re small. Hopefully people can come and purchase some and support local art,” Hernandez said. “We’re going to have a lot of vendors.

“Right now, it’s about 14 of them … might have more or less, depending on who shows up,” he said. “I’m trying to put more locally made, handmade crafts, you know, jewelry, soaps, little statues.”

He added: “We’re going to have live music. So, at 6, the music will start. We’re going to have Rodriga Rockmore as the DJ. At 8, we’re going to have an acoustic duo who’s going to perform some covers relevant to the celebration, relevant to Mexican tradition, or Day of the Dead.

“At 9, we’re going to have some mariachis, Mariachis Los Pasajeros. They’re going to play here for an hour. They usually take requests from people. And at 10, we’re going to have a cumbia band from Juárez, Radio Malilla. So, people are welcome to come by and listen to the music.”

The food at the event will be linked to the region.

“Local restaurants and food trucks are going to be here. Right now we have Koatli — it’s a taco truck. They’re a little more Mexican traditional, with some fusion in there.”

Hernandez said an important aspect of Koatli is “they make their own tortillas. They’re handmade with locally acquired corn. We’re going to have pastries. Proof and Press is going to be here serving cocktails and coffee. And the event itself is free of charge, so people are welcome to come by and check it out.”

He said: “The event starts at 5. The last band ends at midnight, but we’ll see how it goes. Usually celebrations like these last a couple more hours.”

Hernandez had a roundabout journey to leading the revamped art center. He first visited Casa Ortiz during an exhibition of his work while he was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before he eventually returned to El Paso. After returning to live in the city, he joined the artists working at Casa Ortiz.

He said returning to Casa Ortiz “feels great.”

“I was here when it was still a gallery back in 2021, up until 2022. I left in June (that year) when it came under new management. But coming back is amazing,” he said. “I’ve always loved this area. I’ve always loved this building. I love being able to create and show art in a historic place.”

Hernandez’s work has an almost mystical feel to it — both his paintings and his tattoos. Whether he is working on a canvas, wall or skin, his work brings the traditional masterfully into today’s world while honoring the region’s Indigenous past.

He said: “I try to revolve my art around more Mexican traditional stuff, pre-Colombian imagery. And just being part of this history here, you know, 200-year-old building that has stood here on Suma and Piro and Manso territory. You know, it feels, it feels good.”

He still is working on his vision for the building.

“We’ve only acquired the building for about five months now,” he said. “We moved in here in May 2024. It’s been a slow kind of process to settle in and rebuild what the building used to be, as far as a local art hub or a community space. But I think as more and more people realize that it’s a gallery again, that there’s artists here again, we’ll start building something great for the community.”

He added, “Something I’d like to share about the incarnation of Casa Ortiz that I’m trying to achieve here would probably be that I’m trying to kind of build this space off of the history that’s already here.

“A lot of my work, a lot of my tattoos revolve around pre-Hispanic cultures, Indigenous cultures and Indigenous imagery. And I think for years, I’ve kind of been trying to study that and rediscover that for myself,” he said.

“I’m a firstborn American citizen of Mexican immigrants from Michoacan, Mexico. And throughout my life, I’ve always felt that I kind of didn’t belong in both places. And it led me to this road as an artist, to kind of discover myself and discover my roots. And it’s just been kind of an obsession since then. But being here, what’s special about the space, about Casa Ortiz, is that it’s such a well-preserved part of history of this region — Socorro, of the Southwest, of Indigenous land and architecture and the Spanish conquest.

He adds, “But I never really imagined that we’d be returning here.”

A mural of Indigenous people by Hernandez fills a wall at Hacienda Apodaca, across the street from Casa Ortiz.

Hernandez said: “I’ve been back in El Paso now about three years. I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for almost three years. … returned in 2021. That’s when I started working here with the original crew, when it was Casa Ortiz gallery. It wasn’t ever really my intention to leave, but when there was new management, you know, I could see that we weren’t going to keep doing the things for the community that we were doing. So, I left and I opened up my own spot, and I tried to make a tattoo shop/art gallery called Tinta Sangre Tattoo and Art Gallery. It opened October of 2022.”

Tinta Sangre was in a modern building next to a bar in El Paso’s far East Side before finding its new home at Casa Ortiz.

During his time away from the welcoming adobe building, Hernandez never gave up the dream of returning.

“For the time that I was out, I kept emailing the owner,” he said, telling him every couple of months that if the building ever opened up, “I’m really interested in it. I would love to return, and it was just my luck that he allowed us to come back.”

But Santa Fe still has its allure.

“I do miss Santa Fe,” he said. “It’s a beautiful place. It’s a bit of a bubble. You know, it has its own kind of people, its own scene there. It is very touristy, so you get a lot of people from all over the place. And the money was good there. I think Santa Fe is good for artists and tattooers. They like to pay what the work is worth.”

He said, “It’s a little harder here in El Paso as an artist, but the goal with this, this project here, this shop, is kind of to elevate the standard of art and tattoo to more of an artistic expression, and hopefully something comes of it.”

Hernandez’s art is compelling in any form, but he does prefer one medium over the other.

“I love both tattooing and painting, but painting, for sure, is more fulfilling to me,” he said. “Painting, I’m in complete control of what I want to project, what I want to say, what I want people to see.”

But, he added: “I love tattooing. I love the collaborative process of tattooing with clients. It’s something very intimate and very dear to me, trying to do a faithful representation of a person’s idea, and it’s such a great honor, I think, for me to be able to have clients that want to wear my art on their skin.

“But painting has just always been, I think, my true love. I’ve always wanted to go back to it. I’ll tell people painting is my true love, but tattooing is my … sugar mama.”

Hernandez sees a community-tied future for Casa Ortiz.

He said: “My long-term plans right now, they mainly consist of the shop and the gallery. There’s a lot of potential roads that we can go down, you know, the tattoo shop. Thankfully, we’ve been able to build a team that’s sustainable, that’s able to hold up the shop. We’re kind of using the tattoo shop to subsidize this art gallery-community space. And right now, I’m just trying more to develop this gallery part.”

He hopes to “probably have more events, how we used to open it up to more artists, show more art, show more crafts, maybe more workshops. And one road that we’ve been kind of discussing is possibly … separating the art gallery from the shop and making it a nonprofit. That way, we can have more of a community aspect, a communal space here that’s supported by the whole community. But definitely right now, I’m just kind of trying to get back into painting more.”

He hopes Casa Ortiz’s revival helps bring more awareness to El Paso County’s Upper Valley.

“I think a lot of people here in El Paso and in Socorro don’t really realize what a gem this area is and how much history it holds,” he said. “You know, I feel like people constantly give space to just the Spanish and the Catholic part of it. But Socorro is a native land. You know, we have Manso, Piro, Tigua, Suma. There are so many cultures here that aren’t spoken of.

“And something I’m even working towards is this plaque that’s in front of Casa Ortiz that was written in the ‘70s. I think it could be edited a little bit to include those acknowledgments, of the land where this house is built.”

The plaque currently states that the house was built before 1800 by Jose Ortiz, who sold salt, knives, clothing and other items to places including Santa Fe. It also mentions that he traded with Comanches.

Hernandez said, “The events that I would like to have here and the kind of art that I would like to have here is stuff that would reflect that kind of history and that kind of tradition.”