Armando Hinojosa

'''Armando Garcia Hinojosa''' (born c. 1944) is an artist and educator from Laredo, Texas, who sculpted the massive Tejano Monument on the south lawn of the state capitol in Austin. The 12-piece monument was unveiled in March 2012.<ref name=monument>{{cite web|url=http://www.mysanantonio.com/community/bulverde/article/Building-bronze-bulls-1385337.php|title=Randy Lankford, "Building bronze bulls"|publisher=mysanantonio.com, May 19, 2012|accessdate=July 27, 2012}}</ref>
 
The Tejano monument includes a Spanish explorer, a mustang-riding cowboy or vaquero, a mother and father with their newborn infant, a boy with a stubborn goat, a girl filling a water jug, and two longhorn cattle made of bronze. The statues are mounted on a granite base, which was quarried in Marble Falls, Texas. The significance of each character on the monument is described by a bronze plaque.<ref name=monument/>
 
In 2001, Hinojosa was chosen from among several Texas artists to create the monument.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tejanomonument.com/the-artist/|title=The Artist: Armando Hinojosa|publisher=tejanomonument.com|accessdate=July 27, 2012}}</ref> He earlier sculpted the life-size “Among Friends There Are No Borders” statue at Laredo International Airport, which depicts a South Texas vaquero and a Mexican charro sharing a campfire.<ref name=monument/>
 
The pieces were cast at the Larry Stevens foundry in Bulverde, near San Antonio, Texas. According to Stevens, ten steps are involved in the process: "The artist sculpts it in clay, then we make a mold and fill that with wax, then we cover it with slurry, then we burn out the wax and pour in the molten bronze. There are a lot more steps. It gets pretty complicated.”<ref name=monument/>
 
The largest on any state capitol grounds, the Tejano Monument honors native-born Hispanics since 1519, when Spaniards mapped the Texas Gulf Coast. The Texas State Legislature approved the monument in 2009. The Texas Preservation Board accepted the design without dissent in 2010. The state provided $1.087 million of the $2 million cost of the monument. The remainder was raised privately, with major contributions from the International Bank of Commerce, American Electric Power, and American Telephone and Telegraph.<ref name=monument/>
 
Stevens estimates that the two longhorns weigh six to eight hundred pounds each. According to Stevens, “You can't learn this in art school. I learned it from a friend at a foundry in Fort Worth, Texas. It's kind of an apprenticeship. There's lots of trial and error, lots of looking, measuring, looking some more, welding, pounding. I've had to remelt a lot of pieces over my career. We make the sculptor look good, He's the artist and we're the artisans."<ref name=monument/>
 
Stevens also worked on the entrance to the amusement park Sea World in San Antonio, which was also sculpted by Hinojosa, the Juan Seguin monument in Seguin, Texas, and the Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian statues on the Notre Dame University campus in South Bend, Indiana.<ref name=monument/>
 
Hinojosa, who has worked with Stevens for several decades,<ref name=monument/> is also a faculty member and the dean of visual arts at the Vidal M. Trevino School of Communications and Fine Arts in downtown Laredo. He is a direct descendant of Don Thomas Sanchez, who in 1755 founded Laredo. His father, Geronimo Hinojosa, was also a painter and sculptor. "I always knew that my life would revolve around the creation and the appreciation of the arts," said Hinojosa.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://armandohinojosa.com/|title=Armando Hinojosa: Painter and Sculptor|publisher=armandohinojosa.com|accessdate=July 27, 2012}}</ref>A Laredo street is named in Hinojosa's honor.
 

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