NEW ULM — Mexican American visual artist Nancy Ariza was raised in a creative family and always knew art was her path.
She works primarily in traditional and experimental printmaking, textiles and natural pigments. And she said she draws inspiration from her Mexican heritage, specifically traditions, crafts, memories and migration.
“I am a second-generation immigrant and my artistic practice serves as a way to revive, reclaim and reinterpret these aspects of my family history and heritage,” she said.
Ariza completed a two-week residency Friday at The Grand Center for Arts & Culture’s Cellar Press in New Ulm. The Grand, a nonprofit, has the largest collection of antique letterpress, printmaking and bookbinding equipment in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities.
The organization’s mission is to support local artists by offering them opportunities to develop and demonstrate their artistry.
Cellar Press, meanwhile, is a complete letterpress and printmaking studio in the basement of The Grand. Artists who do residencies there also have lodging in a one-bedroom apartment upstairs.
The artists’ residence has become a flagship program for The Grand, said Executive Director John Kellen. Last year 30 artists applied for eight openings.
“There’s a lot of talented people out there,” he said. “I’d love to be able to open that up to a few more. They have access to these resources outside the Twin Cities. We’re the only place that offers this type of breadth of equipment and type and so forth for the artists to be able to use.”
Ariza, 36, lives in Richfield and teaches printmaking and book arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. For her residency at The Grand, she created a series for letterpress and woodcut prints that reimagines the traditional Latin American game Lotería.
In her version, the board game includes 10 riddles featuring a mix of objects, animals and foods.
Example: “It leaves the living room, it enters the kitchen, wagging its tail like a hen.” Answer: a broom. Example: “I have leaves, but I’m not a tree. I speak to you, but I don’t have a voice. If you open me, I don’t mind. Guess who I am?” Answer: a book.
“I’ve had this series in mind for the past seven years,” Ariza said, “ever since I received the 40 riddles my grandmother documented. The Cellar Press residency felt like the right opportunity to realize my vision as it provided the necessary time, space and resources.”
She considers her game an ongoing project, so prints are not for sale at this time. Her work, and work from the other artists in residence at Cellar Press, will be on view at The Grand during the 2026 Resident Artist Showcase starting Dec. 4.
Ariza said her grandmother documented the riddles specifically with the intention of preservation because she felt that they were getting lost over generations. She was born in rural central Mexico in the 1920s so riddles and games were a large part of her upbringing.
“I hope to bring attention to the importance of oral traditions in Latin American heritage and create a tangible record for future generations by visually archiving these riddles as an extension of Lotería.”
She grew up in Los Angeles until the age of 9, when her family moved to Shakopee. In Minnesota, she said she experienced a distance from her Mexican culture because it wasn’t interwoven into life outside of her home in the same way as when she lived in Los Angeles.
She said her work is a way to stay connected to her culture and identity in response to experiencing distance, both physical and generational, from Mexico.
“Oral histories are also an important resource for the development of my work and this has allowed me to initiate more conversations with relatives about their lived experiences and our family histories,” she said.
Kellen describes Ariza as “amazing” and said he enjoyed that she was able to call upon her Latina ancestry in developing her game of riddles.
“I find it really beautiful to see that printed on letterpress,” he said. “We don’t see as much multi-cultural language on letterpress. To see that was really kind of unique.
“We all have really busy lives and to have dedicated, focused time to create is really a gift,” Kellen said, adding that during his exit interview with Ariza, she “brought that up several times. As a teaching artist, she spends a lot of time in the classroom and on administrative duties. She doesn’t have dedicated, focused time to do a project like this. She said this project was in the works for seven years and to actually do it now was really sort of cathartic for her.”
Applications are now open for The Grand’s 2027 Minnesota Artist-in Residence Program at Cellar Press. The call for artists runs through Aug. 14. To apply, go to thegrandnewulm.org.
Ariza’s work can be viewed at nancyariza.com.