Celeste De Luna’s work celebrates nature, mystery, and the unknown, and upholds the power of stories as a vital way to understand both self and environment. De Luna is a Tejana artist from South Texas and an assistant professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio. Her mixed media printmaking-centered on large-scale woodcut prints and fabric installations-has been collected by institutions such as the Alamo Colleges District, Blanton Museum of Art, and the City of San Antonio. De Luna’s work has also been exhibited in international exhibitions in Vancouver, Michoacan, Puerto Rico and Queretaro. She has received residencies, fellowships, and grants from organizations including the Vermont Studio Center, Artplace America, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Rooted in the unique cultural landscape of the Texas-Mexican frontera, De Luna’s practice explores themes of migration, ecology, and women’s stories—fusing personal narrative with collective memory. Recently, her work was featured in the anthology ¡Somos Tejanas!, (2025, edited by Norma E. Cantu and Jody A. Marin) which explores Tejana identity through contemporary art, essays, and personal narratives.
Statement
My vision is continuously expanding of the Texas landscape and the Southwest, the frontera, and people. My imagination and reverence for the natural world blend with environmental concern, creating an ebb and flow which shapes each piece. My work celebrates nature, mystery, and the unknown, and upholds the power of stories as a vital way to understand both myself and my surroundings.
My choices of materials, printmaking, multiples and fabric installation, are based on my cultural background, economic insecurity, and how these tools and processes make me feel. Printmaking gives me a feeling of abundance and allows me to make mistakes. The security that making multiples supplies of having a second chance to perfect something and problem solve continues to fascinate me. Prints that are imperfect can be transformed through collage and other multi-media processes. Printmaking tools and its connection to the trades reminds me of my father and the tool shed he built himself behind our home. Fabric pieces remind me of my mother’s creativity through her sewing and domestic work and connect my artwork to femininity and craft. The things that have influenced my visual aesthetic the most are my Tejana heritage, Mexican printmakers, and Xicana artists like Santa Barraza and Liliana Wilson. Barraza’s work for her deeply spiritual and familial subject matter and Wilson’s work for her illustrative and meditative style. Wilson handles political themes with subtlety-something I really aspire to. I also love African American artist Alison Saar’s work for her economic and powerful visual vocabulary. I love work that reminds me of meditative religious imagery of my youth. As a girl, most of our family time was spent going to church, and I attended youth retreats at Lamar in Rockport Texas. I spent summers with my aunt who was a nun there learning to pray, be still, and observe images of saints.
My work documents individual and collective experiences in the Texas landscape and U.S/Mexico borderlands. As a Tejana artist, I use family memories, folklore, politics, and futuristic imagery inspired by nature, cultural and embodied experiences. How physical environments affect the mind and body are something I think about a lot. My mother’s chronic illness and health care experiences significantly impacted me in my early life. Much of my earlier work shows the body and mind subject to the pre-pandemic South Texas borderland that I grew up in for over 40 years. Women who want to be heard, criminalized bodies, and the mind subject to relentless surveillance are all subjects that can be found in my work. Growing up, folklore and Catholicism were powerful ways for me to connect with my mother and family. Stories about the Devil, miracles, and the land itself made the supernatural feel as real as the natural world I saw every day. I sometimes saw my father capture lizards and hang them up on our clothesline when we needed rain. The lizards will bring the rain, he said. The stories I heard about lechuzas, la Llorona, local wildlife and the rural land we lived in inspired an organic love for American horror and science fiction. A Godzilla-like horned lizard battling industry, the Chupacabra sabotaging Space X, and turtles that blast off into space are just as plausible as the common blue jay or snake in my world. Welcome.