Kin Man Hui /Staff photographerDavid Blancas didn’t set out to become San Antonio’s paleta artist — it just happened that way.
David Blancas, who works and shows art in his RePublic Art space on the West Side, has gained a following for a series of work based on paletas“Sabor del Mercado,” which he made in 2014, is now on display at the entrance of Centro de Artes in Market Square. “I made three of them, and I put them on the wall just for fun to see if I liked them,” he said. “And there was never a visitor thereafter that wasn’t touching them. They tried to lick on them — it’s resin; I wouldn’t advise that, guys. But something was happening organically — people were interacting with them so much that I thought, ‘There’s something there. Let me explore that some more.’”
“It connects it to your youth, when you were running behind the paleta man or the ice cream truck,” he said.