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St. Dulce\u2019s Arthop pop\u2011up on Feb. 5 offered a free screen-printed design reading \u201cChinga la Migra,\u201d invited community members to bring their own tote bags, shirts, or use provided poster paper. Gisselle Medina | Fresnoland<\/p>\n
The pop\u2011up at St. Dulce, co\u2011owner Tony Carranza said, was meant to give multi\u2011dimensional artists a place to gather, create and respond openly to the issues shaping their communities, from immigration to LGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n
Artists are coming together at a time when people across the country, including in Fresno, are protesting<\/a> rising Immigration and Customs enforcement activity and the unlawful, violent arrests and killings of U.S. citizens, many artists are channeling their feelings into their work as a powerful form of protest.<\/p>\n How local artists are reckoning with today\u2019s political climate<\/p>\n Tony Carranza, along with his business partner Om\u00e9, created St. Dulce as the latest evolution of more than a decade of organizing, art-making and movement work rooted in the Central Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n The two are also the founders of Dulce UpFront<\/a>, a community organization established in 2013, building from the events, murals, and pop-ups, which offers local and visiting artists a home to make and show work, and a network ready to respond when urgent moments arise.<\/p>\n \u201cThese smaller community spaces are important,\u201d Carranza said. \u201cThe handcuffs are off. Artists can speak plainly about what\u2019s happening around them, immigration, policing, politics, without being told what to say.\u201d<\/p>\n The front of the space will host rotating vendors and pop-ups, the middle of the space will be home to monthly rotating exhibitions for both local and national artists, while a developing theater area is expected to accommodate performances, screenings and small shows.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carranza said the vision extends beyond the walls: partnering with neighbors on the block and helping turn the area into a creative corridor.<\/p>\n St. Dulce, Carranza added, is still taking shape \u2014 but that\u2019s the point. It\u2019s less a finished product than a living extension of the networks that made it possible.<\/p>\n St. Dulce\u2019s inaugural exhibition features 25-year-old Jose Soria<\/a>, whose identities as Mexican, and Queer, and Catholic, inform work that navigates both personal and collective experiences of love, grief, and pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n His solo exhibition, \u201cNopales y N\u00e9ctar,\u201d first shown in Visalia last October, brings 15 pieces to Fresno, where they will remain on view through March 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soria\u2019s work confronts ICE raids, family separations, and systemic violence, rooted in his own experience as the child of an immigrant family. He reflects on the contradictions of hope and harm. His family once voted for Trump to \u201cimprove the economy,\u201d only to face a rising tide of violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way my work is not political,\u201d Soria said. \u201cI talk about these things through art because they need to be talked about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n One standout piece, \u201cFalse Prophet<\/a>,\u201d blends oil on canvas, barbed wire, and found objects. A fox in sheep\u2019s clothing, glinting with gold, deceives the nopales, symbolizing Latino communities, while strands of barbed wire echo the pain inflicted by policies that separate families and target people of color. References to greed, gaudiness, and the American flag underscore the hypocrisy and cruelty he witnesses.<\/p>\n Since earning his MFA at Fresno State in 2024, Soria has balanced his practice with teaching at Fresno City College. Through \u201cNopales y N\u00e9ctar,\u201d he hopes to create a space where art becomes both witness and resistance \u2014 a place for stories, struggles and shared humanity to be seen.<\/p>\n Krista Aranda<\/a>, 31, was a featured vendor for the pop-up who sold art ranging from detailed black-and-white drawings to vibrant floral and cultural pieces, often reflecting her Mexican heritage.<\/p>\n Aranda has been drawing since childhood, inspired by her father\u2019s sketchbooks, and is largely self-taught, with only a few formal art classes in high school and college. She began painting in October 2024, experimenting with florals and colorful imagery after creating a haunting portrait of a nun for Halloween.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recently, Aranda discovered her late grandmother was also a painter, a connection that now inspires her work and helps her push through creative blocks.<\/p>\n At the end of 2025, Aranda began using her art to address urgent social issues, notably creating pieces calling to \u201cAbolish ICE.\u201d Motivated by both personal convictions and a desire to stand up for human rights, she channels frustration and grief into her work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s when it was getting really more in your face,\u201d Aranda said. \u201cI always was kind of scared to do that, scared to speak up. Then, I found the courage, and, pardon my French, but like, fuck that. I see what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s not taboo for me to speak out and to get a straight message across through my artwork. My way to stand up for my community is through my artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n One of her favorite recent pieces is a painting that\u2019s both a memorial and a protest. The painting has flowers as clouds, a dove to represent death, and splashes of red to symbolize bloodshed, paying homage to those targeted and executed by ICE and other systems of oppression. Words like \u201cpedophile\u201d and \u201closer\u201d are scrawled across the work, calling out the perpetrators while forcing viewers to confront the harsh realities behind the headlines.<\/p>\n Beyond painting, Aranda participates in Fresno\u2019s local art scene as a vendor at pop-ups and markets and plans to showcase her work in upcoming exhibitions, including a month-long show at the newly opened gallery called Arts Annex<\/a>. Her goal is to create art that not only resists injustice but also fosters community, representation, and conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cArt is important because if we\u2019re going to have art for happy stuff, we should also acknowledge all the bad shit that\u2019s going on too,\u201d Aranda said. \u201cIt\u2019s in your face: this is happening. The world would be bland if there were no artists capturing what\u2019s happening in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n At the intersection of justice and art<\/p>\n Over the past year, Cam, a 35-year-old textile artist in Fresno, has become a familiar presence at local protests, often carrying a towering, handmade banner that reads \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d The piece, roughly 15-feet tall and 5-feet wide, is stitched from a painter\u2019s canvas drop cloth and recycled fabric scraps, sewn by hand over months.<\/p>\n Cam requested to not use their full name out of concern about digital footprints due their involvement in international volunteer work.<\/p>\n Cam first hung the banner in June 2025 from a second-floor yoga room window at a climbing gym in Sacramento\u2019s Midtown neighborhood, facing a busy thoroughfare near the freeway. They knew it would likely cost them their job. Soon after, Cam\u2019s wife got a new job in Fresno, so the two relocated together. The move unexpectedly gave Cam space to lean fully into activism and art.<\/p>\n Cam, who got sober in early 2020, described the past few years as a period of intense unlearning and relearning after growing up in a conservative Southern environment. They said they didn\u2019t fully educate themselves on Palestine until 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the kind of person who does big, deep dives,\u201d Cam said. \u201cEverything\u2019s connected. Colonization, land theft, militarization, it\u2019s the same story over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n Since moving to Fresno, Cam has brought the banner to demonstrations, including protests against ICE.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Cam, art is more than a supplement to protest; it is a strategy. In a fast-moving media landscape where messages compete for attention, art creates pause, Cam said, giving people something to return to, sometimes multiple times before it resonates.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it\u2019s an immigrant that\u2019s been terrified driving by and they see the support for what they\u2019re going through,\u201d Cam said. \u201cThat\u2019s what art is for \u2014 to make you stop and think.\u201d<\/p>\n Cam emphasized that protest takes many forms: graphic designers creating shareable visuals, reporters documenting movements, organizers planning marches.\u00a0<\/p>\n But they said artists have a particular responsibility right now, not to step away from their work in moments of crisis, but to use it. Progress may be slow,\u00a0 sometimes measured in a single letter stitched per day, but, Cam said, the accumulation matters.<\/p>\n How Cayetano is helping cultivate community spaces through art<\/p>\n Cayetano, now 34, has been making art since she was 12 and considers herself largely self-taught. She took grade school art classes in Mexico but learned most techniques on her own, moving between watercolor, acrylic, papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 and eventually digital illustration.<\/p>\n Before coming to Fresno nearly five years ago, she showed her work at community art events in Los Angeles and San Diego, often centered on Mexican culture: D\u00eda de los Muertos, D\u00eda de la Raza and Frida Kahlo celebrations. At the time, she sold only original paintings and didn\u2019t see her art as a business.<\/p>\n That changed after she moved to Fresno as a new mother during the pandemic. Isolated at home and searching for herself again, Cayetano began teaching herself digital art after receiving an iPad from her husband. In 2024, she quietly launched her small art business, called Criptidart<\/a>.<\/p>\n As national immigration rhetoric hardened, her work followed suit. One recent piece, created around D\u00eda de los Muertos in 2025, shows a child\u2019s skeleton lying in the desert. She titled it \u201cThe End of a New Journey,\u201d a reference to the hope that drives migration, and the lives cut short along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cI crossed as a kid,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd a lot of children don\u2019t survive that journey.\u201d<\/p>\n Cayetano now uses her art not only to tell stories, but to create space. Through free community screen-printing events, she invites people to bring their own materials and print protest messages.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t always be out there, I have fear of being racially profiled and I have small children,\u201d Cayetano said. \u201cBut I can help people carry something with them.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_9417.jpg\")
A peak inside St. Dulce during their \u2018Abolish ICE\u2019 pop-up. Gisselle Medina | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_9395.jpg\")
Jose Soria, the artist behind the exhibition \u201cNopales y N\u00e9ctar,\u201d features 15 pieces on both personal and collective experiences of love, grief, and pain. Gisselle Medina | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_9397.jpg\")
One of Soria\u2019s featured pieces, \u201cFalse Prophet,\u201d blends oil on canvas, barbed wire, and found objects. Gisselle Medina | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_9380.jpg\")
Krista Aranda, who was a featured vendor for St. Dulce\u2019s pop-up, paid homage to those targeted and executed by ICE and other systems of oppression in her recent painting. Gisselle Medina | Fresnoland<\/p>\n