Two artists on a beach

Jose Vilchez and Cora Rose

Parked the Art We There Yet 

bus on the beach in Corpus 

Christi for three days in March.

This is about two artists heading south in a funky old school bus, to Mexico and beyond.

It sounds like another counterculture icon of the 60’s; the educated white middleclass western youth with sufficient leisure time to focus attention on social movements.

But visual artist Jose Luis Vilchez and musician, songwriter Cora Rose don’t exactly fit those stereotypes.

Rose is a country girl from rural Southwest Wisconsin. Vilchez is a Nicaraguan immigrate and recent U.S. Citizen. They’re both over 30, with college degrees and yes, this latest venture is a movement in the sense that they are moving southward to address conventional social norms of the 21^st century such as: increased poverty, lack of school funding, and economic inequality.

The venture christened, Art We There Yet Is a four-year, 30,000 mile journey through 23 countries of North, Central and South Americas which began August 2019.

The purpose of the venture is to unify people of the Americas through an appreciation for art, and to affirm the social theory that, “We are all more alike than we are different.”

This theory of being united in their differences is reflected in the artists’ own lives.

Rose spent her early childhood in rural Wisconsin at a Waldorf school learning through imagination and fantasy. Her father taught public school for 17 years and is a national expert in place-based and project-based learning. Her mother is a massage, polarity and craniosacral therapist.

Vilchez grew up in a small Nicaraguan village, the oldest of seven children. He learned from his dad to craft handmade saddles using leather from the local cattle. His mom runs a small convenience store attached to the family home.

Though they came from different cultures, grew up with different experiences and spoke different languages, Vilchez and Rose have been united through the universal language of art with a common goal of highlighting diversity, shared challenges and shared humanity of peoples across the Americas.

They’re doing all this from a 35-foot retired school bus painted some funky colors of orange and blue.

With help from friends and family this funky looking bus has a new lease on life. It serves as a sound-proof recording studio. A photography studio. A photo and video editing station. A multimedia space. And even has room to host four artists at one time. Art We There Yet travels fully equipped with an off-grid living space, solar power, a full kitchen, bathroom and an observation deck.

“We go where we’re needed the most,” Rose said. “Our aim is to bring valuable art programming to schools, shelters and organizations.”

When planning the route Vilchez assumed that the bus would head straight to Mexico with a short stay in the United States explaining that, "I always thought the U.S. was a rich country." 
But a severe lack of funding for arts education across the United States kept Art We There Yet stateside and busy for five months. They just recently reached the Mexican border and held their first central American workshop from March 19th through 13th.
 A workshop is usually a one-time event lasting two hours. But the March event was held with kids at the Asylum seeker's camp in Matamoros. Art We There Yet stayed the whole five days painting with the kids for at least three hours each day. 

The next four years will find, "Art We There Yet rolling down the road providing public concerts, public art and art programming to schools, shelters and organizations for free in an effort to bridge the arts funding gap experienced by so many communities.

Their work is made possible through small private donations from two crowdfund websites. The first site was Indiegogo but most recently they work through Patreon, a website where a group of patreons comes together around a project. Those patreons will sustain the artists’ work and receive that work in return.  

Patron donors, are the first to see what Vilchez and Rose are producing along the journey. Vilchez is doing a series of experimental films and photographic portraits that challenge stereotypes and highlight diversities of people they meet. He has also set a goal of finishing one painting a day inspired by communities and landscapes they pass through. Rose is recording a musical album with other musicians she meets on the journey. She’s also creating a public archive of soundscapes and street music recordings.

And “select patrons” are chosen to ride on the bus alongside Vilchez and Rose for up to a month. Their first patron, a photographer, stayed for a week on the bus in Brownsville helping paint a mural and photograph the condition of people across the border. (Art We There Yet)

At the end of four-years, Vilchez and Rose will put together a documentary and a book about the journey.

Online donations continue to filter in. But five-years is a long time. And 30,000 miles is a long trip. Every cent is allocated before it is even received. Unexpected expenses must be dealt with as they arise. So when the bus broke down in New Orleans, Rose and Vilchez took to the streets to pay for repairs.

Vilchez played the saxophone and amplified with a small battery-powered Cube Street amp, Rose sang and played guitar.

The music was well received judging by daily donations which were upwards from $150 in a couple of hours. There was one problem with this plan though.

It took all day just to get in two hours of street time because every single street in NO is already claimed by other musicians.

“We had to sit around and wait for our time to play,” said an obviously frustrated Vilchez. “Even then we often couldn’t be heard above the Clatter of the Bourbon Street bucket brigades.”

“But we were able to make enough money to pay for the bus parts,” Rose said.

“And there was no time for anything else,” exclaimed Vilchez, referring to his four-year-goal of finishing one painting a day. “It’s been a struggle just to keep moving.”

Meet Jose Luis Vilchez

For Jose Luis Vilchez, the struggle to keep moving started in Chicago.

While studying at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, it dawned on Vilchez that he could travel and finance himself through his art. This was round two of his original idea to travel which started at age 10, back in Nicaragua after getting in trouble in school.

Vilchez doesn’t remember why he was sent to the principal’s office, just that while waiting in that office he found a globe. Rotating that globe revealed to him a big wide world out there.

“I decided then and there that I wanted to see that world,” he said.

To accomplish round one of his world travel plan, Vilchez decided to become an architect. On high school graduation in 1976, a 17 year old Vilchez had already been accepted to Nicaragua’s UNI (Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería). He was well on his way to achieving his goal when all those plans suddenly dissolved into the carnage of Hurricane Mitch.

Mitch was the deadliest hurricane to hit the Western Hemisphere in more than 200 years. It left more than 11,000 people dead, destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes and caused more than $5-billion in damages leaving Jose’s, once solid middle-class family, struggling to survive.

College tuition in Nicaragua is free but students must pay for their room and board, food and other life essentials. Mitch left the Vilchez family business all but destroyed. There was no money for school because there was no work. The only ongoing lucrative commerce was graft and corruption, “at high levels,” Vilchez said

Donations coming in to help after the hurricane were being stolen. It was believed that Byron Jerez, the former minister of finance, was selling hospital beds donated by Spain. He and former president of Nicaragua, Arnoldo Aleman, were thought to have stolen more than $100-million during their terms in office between 1997 and 2001.

“For a poor country like Nicaragua that's a lot of money,” Vilchez said. “Most of the stolen money was from international donations aimed to aid the recovery of Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch. They used it to buy condos in the United States.”

All that graft trickles down. Businesses can’t make it. People can’t work. So they can’t buy products. Everybody fails except those selling and buying the condos.

Not giving up without a fight, Vilchez called his uncle in Miami asking for work. The uncle agreed to put him to work. But said the first thing Vilchez needed to do was to get a visa.

“If I didn’t get the visa I was just going to get into my car and head south,” Vilchez said. “I felt that through art I could finance my way to be free.”

The visa came through and on Christmas Day 1998 Vilchez arrived in Florida. In 2011 he became a full United States citizen, eventually graduating from the School of Chicago Art Institute.

A few years later when Vilchez met Rose in China, he had already photographed the landscapes and people in over 70 countries and co-founded the Lido Art Center in Guangzhow China, where he taught photography and tutored students on applying to some of world’s top art schools. His work is shown in galleries in the United States, China, India, Nicaragua and Romania.

In 2019, Vilchez set his sights on round two of his plan to travel and use his “music to be free.”

Only this time he had an accomplice.

Meet Cora Rose

Two years ago Rose was an independent musician, songwriter teaching English to public school children in China. After college she wanted to travel but needed money. Teaching in China gave her a way of doing both.

Within three months Rose had met Jose who was tutoring students in China and they collaborated to take to the road.

Five months on the road has so far seen the completion of six murals, 14 workshops, six concerts and 13 recording sessions across 10 states including Alabama. 
It’s there Rose discovered that a group of Kindergarten through fifth grade students were only receiving a half-hour of art every other week.

“These are just babies,” she said “And the art teacher is spread across four districts.”

Cora Rose is a singer, songwriter and producer. She graduated from the College of the Atlantic, studying trade and economic policies, concentrating on how global trade affects local communities.

Rose wrote her first song at age seven. Started performing at age 12 and recorded her first song at age 15. She has developed a songwriting and recording workshop program which is used in public K-12 schools throughout the United States. Her work has been used in film, theater and television, including NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Rose also wrote the musical score for the second season of the award winning documentary series Taming Wild.

Now Rose is teaching children how to write and record their own songs through 23 counties.

“Mainly I just want to keep the kids from being intimidated by the song writing process,” she said.

To achieve this goal Rose presents the process to them as a cake, in the following layers: Write chord progressions on a board; Play them on the piano to hear the progression; Ask how the different sounds make them feel; Have the children share ideas; Use shared ideas to build lyrics; Put those lyrics into a melody using the chord progressions that express how the children feel and what they want to say.

Upon completion, Rose and the children meet on the bus to record their original song in the sound studio.

“My job is to make sure it all comes together,” she said. “And to let them know that all their ideas are valued.”

“We receive so much from these kids,” said Vilchez. “They fuel us to keep going.”

Two artists unite

The artists are united in their quest to travel across the Americas; photographing, painting, singing, writing and teaching art. Everything they need is very carefully packed into the 35-foot solar powered bus, including Rose and Vilchez.

“And it’s ironic,” Rose said. “I’ve never lived in a space that’s more perfect for my needs. Never had a sound proof studio in all the time I worked and lived in Nashville or New York. Never had the full capacity to do what I’m good at.”

Through their art “layer upon layer,” Cora and Jose are determined to build one community of a diverse people across the Americas, because as Vilchez explains it, “Our diversity gives us our strength. We are all the same. We work. We eat. We sleep. We are all the same.”

Every one of us has our dreams. Sometimes life gets in the way and the dreams get lost. But when those dreams come together they take on lives of their own.