- [Alessandra] The San Diego region is home to many artists who work in an assortment of media.

As a curator and educator, I want to know what inspires these creatives.

This is "Insights Into Art."

(gentle upbeat music) In this episode, we crossed the border to visit artist Hugo Crosthwaite in the beach town of Rosarito, just south of Tijuana.

His family owned a curio shop that he has converted into his studio.

We're going to visit and learn about his concepts and his process.

- Hey, Alessandra.

- Hola!

(both speaking Spanish) - This is my studio.

Welcome.

Well, and this is my painting studio.

For the last 20 years I've been working in black and white, so then here's like a little sample of works that I've been doing throughout almost like maybe 15 years.

- Is there a reason why you were sticking to the black and white?

- Well, it's because I never studied art formally, so then I don't know how to paint.

I know how to draw.

So all my work's always been black and white drawing because those were the materials that I always used.

It was a ink and pencil and a white piece of paper.

But recently, this year I made that huge transition of working in color, which is like I have a piece right here that's just a little sample, but I've been working on these huge large canvases, and basically what I'm doing is, because again, like I don't know how to paint, but I've been using like the drawing techniques that I've developed over the last 20 years and then just applying them to color.

- This is an interesting space.

Can you tell us a little bit about this?

- Well, basically my father had a curio shop when I was growing up back in the 1970s and 80s, so then a room like this was basically a warehouse where we would keep a lot of the iron wrought furniture.

- So these are now being transformed, right?

You are working on another media.

- Yes, well, like I mentioned earlier, all my drawing is always improvised, so then all the drawings, basically what I do is I create a detail and then that leads me to the next detail and to the next, so then at some point, this started becoming these animations where it was also kind of showing the drawing process where I'm improvising a drawing, but what you're seeing actually is the stop motion animation where you see a drawing develop throughout the page, so then it was another way of showing narrative of how a narrative is improvised through the drawing and I love the process of stop motion animation.

This is my drawing studio, my animation studio.

So here, what you're seeing here is samples of the actual drawings that are used in my animations, in the stop motion drawing animation, so then you're seeing segments from the, I've done like maybe about eight films, so then these are like little drawings that are left over from those eight films that I've done.

- [Alessandra] Hugo shows us how he made the film "Tia Juana Mi Amor," "Love Letter to Tijuana," which he made as a stop motion animation.

It's a film that grew out of Hugo's love for his city, the place where he lives and he was born.

In the film, the city emerges organically.

There's a sense of the chaotic and improvised aesthetic, the architecture both planned and made by the people who inhabit it.

"Mi Casa es Su Caza" with a Z.

- With a Z in cacería as in hunting.

So then the video plays, this animation plays with this idea of what is home.

The concept of home also deals with issues of gentrification in the city of Tijuana.

It also deals with the with the necessity for housing, for real housing, and the necessity for planning and the necessity for urban planning that is desperately needed in Tijuana, but then also on the other hand, it also plays with this idea of, it's a love letter to the city of Tijuana.

That's why I titled it "Tia Juana Mi Amor," kind of like a, well, a play on those films, for example, "New York, My Love" or "Paris, je t'aime."

They made these films that were about like a homage to this wonderful, great city, but in this case, while I'm doing this homage to the city I come from, which I find to be wonderful, the city of Tijuana.

- Take us through your process, how you start creating these animations.

- Well, this whole idea of me doing stop motion animations kind of grew out of my sketchbook.

Like all my life I've been working on my sketchbook where I just improvise drawings from the city of Tijuana, from people, you know, just developing ideas.

So then the way I do it is basically I just grab a page from my sketchbook and I just start drawing, so then with a little camera, with a camera like this, and then I just take the first shot and then I start doing the drawing, so then let's say I start drawing.

- How did you learn the actual process or what is something you like?

- It was just a way of how can I make a drawing come alive on a page, and basically also, how do I show the process in which a drawing is made, so then what you're seeing is actually how I'm improvising a face, you know, little by little, just with reading the lines and then taking a shot of each progression of a detail.

So then basically I create three minutes of footage by each picture that I'm taking.

I create a story that's being improvised in the drawing and in camera as I go along.

- Wow.

- Then from here, I take it to Teresa, my wife.

So then I give her all the photographs and then she just puts it together in Premiere and edits it and makes it into a flowing animation, into a flowing stop motion animation.

Some of my films have even gotten into film festivals like the festival (speaking Spanish), or even recently at the Guanajuato Film Festival.

I remember sitting there with other directors, and at some point a director asked me, "Hugo, you're doing a very interesting aspect ratio on your films, how did you come up with this?"

And I said, "Well, it's just a viewfinder in my little camera."

(both laughing) I don't really know anything about aspect ratios, other than I'm making the decisions according to the simple materials that I have because, of course, they come from film school and they know about super duper x camera, digital cameras, and here I'm just working with a little PowerPoint, a PowerShot Canon camera and then just creating these animations.

After a full day of drawing and photographing, and I have like a whole bunch, basically I have, I created the whole animation in camera through a series of photographs and usually it's like around 1,500 to maybe 2,000 photographs, then I dump it all here to Teresa.

I give it all to Teresa and then she, through Premier, starts editing the film.

She puts all the pictures together and creates this seamless animation with all the photographs, and she deals with the timing of the film, with the editing of the film in terms of making things stand out.

- Who composes your great soundtracks for your- - Yeah, that's Teresa and I. We both we take a long walks through the city of Tijuana through Rosarito and through our phone, suddenly we hear something, you know, we hear traffic or we hear a band playing.

- Field recordings.

- They're all field recordings.

So then suddenly we hear, like at some moment, for example, with "Tia Juana Mi Amor," we were walking and we stopped at a point where we could hear a Norteno band and a southern band from Oaxaca playing, so we stepped in a sweet spot where we could hear both musics kind of in conversation.

So then we took out our phones immediately and started just recording both sounds and that became like a wonderful soundtrack for "Tia Juana Mi Amor."

(lively music) - And Teresa, is your background in film?

- Not, at all.

(chuckles) - So you just jumped right in?

- Yeah, yeah.

He's like, "Here, try this."

I'm like, "Okay."

So like every single piece I feel is like unique, handmade.

I don't have a lot of like templates for things.

So I'm like, "No, this is Tijuana style."

(chuckling) - And I think that's also probably what makes the work really unique and stand out because we have formula, you know, when you teach, you teach certain formulas, but when you come to something, something on your own, you kind of develop maybe what it would be called the wrong way to do it, but it actually is what makes it fresh.

- In 2019, I did an exhibition at Luis de Jesus Los Angeles Gallery, and basically was me doing this whole installation of ceramic pieces, the first time I work in ceramics.

So then I grabbed these, I made these ceramic pieces and I hand drew faces from the people of Tijuana.

I decided to do this installation that was entitled "Caravan," which plays with this idea of how the word caravan was being politicized, as a negative in a way.

Usually the word caravan means safety.

It's the way you travel in the desert as a grouping to warn off evils or warn off dangers.

You work together in a group, so then it's a very positive word, but then during the elections that was happening in the United States, the word caravan became politicized.

So then the whole film is about this group of people in a caravan trying to get into United States and it deals with their hardship and their ordeals.

- Well, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of your precious time to share with us your work and your process, really appreciate it.

- Well, thank you so much, Alessandra.

I'm very happy that you were able to come here to Tijuana to venture into the maze of what it is this place.

And you get to see a little bit, know of where I grew up, where my artwork happens.

You can see a little bit of the aspect of how my improvisational work is kind of also reflected in how the house was built itself, so then, yeah, we are what we eat, we are where we live though.

- Well, and yeah, and driving through the city to get here too, I also get a big sense of your inspiration too, so I look forward to seeing your work in galleries and other spaces, and your films.

- Oh, thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you.

(gentle upbeat music) - [Alessandra] It was nice to spend the afternoon with Hugo and his wife, Teresa.

We thank both of them and we appreciate that they opened up the doors to their studio and showed us about their process and their ideas.

(gentle upbeat music continues)