Mario Garcia

Mario Garcia was born and raised in the 1960 heat of Tucson, Arizona. The youngest of six, Mario spent his childhood in a dry cleaners.

Mario's murals and graphics have long permeated the Tucson scene, including a logo of a humanoid teapot for a beloved coffee shop and a tough pigtailed girl for the local junior roller derby team. Father of three daughters and too many cats to count, Mario has been known to repurpose graffiti curse words into fantastically innocent creatures by Sharpie.

A collector at heart, Mario has recycled ephemera from our consumerist world to tell a cultural narrative. One such project has included defacing beanie babies with new faces - very detailed and horrid humanoid faces complete with bruises, scratches, and facial expressions contorted in pain.

Mario has a BA of Art from the University of Arizona. He has taught first grade for 23 years. His classroom may be his longest hanging art show featuring his cute, silly, and often grotesque illustrations.

At Pidgin Palace we are honored to look backwards and forwards at the career of a true street artist. His series, "Clowns, Diseases, and You", converses with our experience of disease from Leprosy and TB, to COVID 19. Mario's black and white graphite illustrations tell dark, humorous stories of the human condition.

Artist Statement

"I have an adversarial relationship, where I end up hating most of what I do. But I continue to draw, when I can, which is mostly during work meetings. During one, I drew a dead clown, as a response to the prevailing mood of the meeting. I got to thinking about what might have killed the clown. I added pustules and swelling, and that became this series, Clowns, Diseases, and You. These clowns educate the public about the dangers of communicable diseases, like a public service." - Mario Garcia

Submitted by Pidgin Palace