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Karla Sanchez Guzman Arquetopia Eulogy

FG

FRANCISCO GUEVARA
Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Programs Curator

Francisco Jose Guevara is a Mexican visual artist and curator specializing in Levinasian ethics applied to the design of transcultural artistic projects and the analysis of performativity in contemporary art practices. His experience spans more than 20 years of designing, curating, and managing art projects through visual arts education and historiography of art, facilitating Development, sustainability and social transformation. As a visual artist, Guevara investigates the historical construction of the differentiation process and its relationship with the performativity of identity, including gender, class, and race.

Francisco Guevara was recently interviewed
on the Latinos Who Lunch podcast.

Guevara studied painting at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) and continued at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana in Mexico City. He began his curating/arts management career with a year of law studies at the Escuela Libre de Derecho (ELD) in Mexico City following with a semester of International Relations at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He received a University Expert title in Management and Planning of Development Cooperation Projects in the Fields of Education, Science and Culture at the Universidad Nacional de Estudios a Distancia (UNED) at Madrid, Spain, in coordination with the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI). He has promoted numerous international artistic exchange programs with Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, and the USA.

As an artist, Guevara has had more than 20 solo shows and participated in multiple collective exhibits including the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and the 10th Mexican Festival in Australia. His work can be found in important private and public collections such as Colección Jumex, Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño in Mexico City, Lila Downs Collection Mexico, Ministry of Culture of Bolivia, Salma Hayek Collection USA, and the Margrethe II Collection Denmark, among others.

In 2007 and 2008, the project Expandido VIII which Guevara curated with Mexican artist Raymundo Sesma was awarded the AIA New Mexico Honor Award and the AIA Albuquerque Honor Award. Guevara was selected by The Mexico Report as one of the 2012 “Real Heroes of Mexico” and honored in its annual commemorative book by Susie Albin-Najera.

Chris Davis SP2019
 
CHRISTOPHER DAVIS
Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director
Director of Music Programs
 
As an international soloist and symphonic, chamber and opera musician, north-American clarinetist and conductor Christopher Davis has been active professionally for more than 30 years. He has performed as principal/solo clarinetist of the Kobe City Philharmonic, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Salt Lake Symphony, Utah Philharmonia, Utah Musical Theatre, Nevada Ballet Theatre, Nevada Opera Theatre, and the College Band Directors National Association Intercollegiate Band (of the USA and Canada), among others, and is also a respected music educator and arranger.

Davis has given solo, chamber music and symphony concerts coast-to-coast in the USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Mexico, having collaborated and performed with Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Joshua Bell, Rachel Barton, Zuill Bailey, Andre Watts, Leslie Howard, Frederick Fennell, Col. John Bourgeois, Takayoshi Tad Suzuki, Luciano Pavarotti, Frederica von Stade, Andrea Bocelli, Mandy Patinkin, Linda Eder, and Anne Murray. As a teenager, Davis performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as featured soloist in a nationally televised youth orchestra showcase concert for United States President George H.W. Bush. He was the soloist in the Nevada premiere of the Howard Blake Clarinet Concerto and has also premiered works of composers Eric Ewazen, Daron Hagen, Nolan Stolz, and Jiaming Chen.

Davis has performed on the soundtracks of 13 films. He is the past winner of numerous solo competitions and is a frequent guest soloist with orchestras and bands. He earned degrees in clarinet performance and in psychology on full orchestral scholarships from the University of Utah and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas while serving as the principal/solo clarinetist of each institutions premier concert ensembles. His principal clarinet teachers over the years were Kathy Pope (Ballet West Orchestra), Raphael Sanders (San Francisco Symphony), and Felix Viscuglia (Boston Symphony). Davis studied in Los Angeles intensively with Kalman Bloch (Los Angeles Philiharmonic) and Mitchell Lurie (USC), and he has performed for the master classes of Béla Kovács, Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr, David Shifrin, Jon Manasse (American Ballet and Metropolitan Opera), Mitchell Lurie, Kalman Bloch, Christie Lundquist (Utah Symphony), Seiki Shinohe (Berlin Symphony), Kohichi Hamanaka (NHK Symphony, Japan), and Michèle Gingras.

Davis has been teaching clarinet since 1987 and had one of the most prominent clarinet studios in the western USA for two decades. His students have been first-prize winners and finalists at state-level, national, and international competitions. For seven years, he was the director of The Davis Honors Clarinet Sinfonia (the acclaimed performing ensemble of his top students in the USA) and is now director of its Mexican counterpart, The Clarinet Camerata of Mexico, the internationally renowned chamber orchestra comprised of the top students of The Arquetopia Clarinet Institute which has become the most respected ensemble of its kind in Latin America. Davis has been a popular adjudicator of solo and chamber music competitions in California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona since 1993. He was the clarinet specialist/clinician for the Clark County School District for eight years, and for three years he served as the Nevada State Chair of the International Clarinet Association.

Originally from Los Angeles, California, Davis has made Kobe, Japan and Québec, Canada home during his performing career.

Davis is an Ambassador Artist of Rovner® Products, world-class manufacturer of handmade woodwind accessories.

NHR
 
NAYELI HERNÁNDEZ
Programs Director
 
Programs Director Nayeli Hernández was born in Puebla, Mexico. She received a BA in International Relations from the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) with a major in International Policy and a minor in Latin American Studies. She graduated from Università per Stranieri di Siena in Italy with the Certificate of Italian as a Foreign Language and has more than ten years of teaching experience. She joined the staff of Arquetopia in January 2010.

At Arquetopia, Hernández has developed her organizational and logistical skills with specialties in funding, resource research, and management. Her input with a wide perspective on international issues has broadened Arquetopia’s international involvement, partnerships and protocols. She currently oversees all of the Foundation’s programs and coordinates Arquetopia’s local art networks.
MainBoard2018
 
Arquetopia Foundation Board of Advisors 2021
Our Founding Supporters & Benefactors
Arquetopia is especially grateful to these individuals for their outstanding generosity and support:


MARÍA GUADALUPE ROBLES CABRAL
In Memoriam


JOSÉ FRANCISCO GUEVARA Y TORRES • GABRIELA ROBLES CABRAL • KAZUO & JEANETTE MATSUURA • DAN MIRON • FERNANDO & CHRIS SALINAS • QUETZALINA SÁNCHEZ MUÑOZ • JENNIFER WRIGHT-TOLEN

NICK & SUE ABDALLAH • AMELYNN ABELLA ALFORQUE • ANTHONY BRACKETT • ELIZABETH MUÑOZ BRUECKMANN FAMILY • JAY & BEVERLY DAVIS • JORGE DE LA TORRE • IOAN DOBRINESCU • ANN DUNBAR • MATT JOHNSTON • KIT & JODIE MATSUURA FAMILY • ANTHONY & VERA PSYK FAMILY • LYNN & GEORGE REEDER • ARNULFO & BLANCA VELÁZQUEZ FAMILY • ERWIN VENTURA


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