Pablo Picasso famously said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” Corazón Café co-owner Sara McGrath believes she has the answer in her group art shows, which she notes aren’t “to showcase the finest artists of the county, but rather to give people the opportunity to have something hanging in a public place, and a safe space.”
Friday, Feb. 7 (6 to 8 p.m.), during Art After Dark, the café is hosting an opening for Oh The Places You’ll Go, a collection of travel photographs from local folks of all ages and talent levels. She’s now looking for submissions for her next group show of portraits of women. How did McGrath come to be an advocate for art and community?
She took the long way around, having grown up on the Central Coast and attended SLO High before finishing high school in Santa Cruz. She was accepted to art school but put college “on pause” to travel. She eventually moved to San Francisco “because that’s what everybody was doing in the early to mid-’90s.”
Once there, she had a transformative experience.
“I was walking around my first week there, staying with a friend in the Mission District, and I came across a mural on the side of the Women’s Building, which housed a lot of nonprofits focusing on women.”
The mural had a “diverse array of women from every possible background, some well-known, some not, and I was just floored.”
An artist was still at work on the mural, and McGrath rushed over: “Who are you? What are you doing? How can I get involved?”
Soon she was volunteering with Precita Eyes Muralists, a community-based, inner-city mural arts organization “devoted to enriching and beautifying urban environments through community mural collaborations,” according to their mission statement. This led to teaching an after-school art program.
“I loved it,” McGrath said. “Then I ended up going to art school in New York, but I majored in arts education because I thought, ‘You know, I’m not interested in just being an artist.’ I love this idea of the accessibility of art on the street and art being for everybody.”
Her love of travel remained, and she decided that before embarking on a teaching career, she’d take a little more time to explore.
“I thought, I know all the basic Spanish. I grew up in California. I took the classes in high school, but I’d really like to be more fluent, and so I decided to go travel in Mexico for a while, just with my backpack.”
About halfway through her six-month adventure, she met her husband to be, Chiapas resident Pedro Arias López, in a bar with a reggae band, but she was just beginning her life and ended up moving to Brooklyn to teach art at a junior high. She discovered she didn’t like grading student work, reporting absences, and calling parents.
“I kept going back to this community idea.”
She also kept in contact with her eventual husband, and another serendipitous encounter with art on the street, this time a street fair in New York, led to a stint with Art Corps.
“It was like the Peace Corps but for artists,” she explained, and it led to a nine-month program in Guatemala. Right before that job started, she took work tutoring a junior high school-aged boy in Mexico.
“All the puzzle pieces started coming together to get me back to Latin America. I spent three or four months in Mexico, tutoring this kid and falling in love [with Pedro] again, and then nine months in Guatemala working for Save the Children.”
Now reunited with López, the two were married and spent four years in Mexico before deciding to move to the Central Coast to start their family, which is how she returned to SLO. During the day, McGrath is a service coordinator for Tri-Counties Regional Center working with children with developmental and intellectual disabilities. In the evenings and weekends, she focuses on making Corazón Café a welcoming place for everyone.
The café so far mounts thematic group shows that hang for a couple of months, like the travel show currently on the walls. She’s also working on the March and April show, Chingonas, which means “badass” in Spanish, and is looking to hang portraits of inspirational women.
“The subject can be famous or not, a family member, artist, teacher, leader, etc.,” the flyer explains. Any medium is acceptable: photos, paintings, drawings, crayons. Any and everyone can participate, regardless of age, gender, or ability.
“I want to give people opportunities, and I hope we have so many entries that we have to hang them like an awesome and amazing collage on the wall. That would make me so happy. I want people to be blown away by all that positive, inspiring energy coming off the walls.”
March is also Women’s History Month, and like last year, the café is working with women’s advocacy group At Her Table.
“I’ve always had this interest in art, not as an isolated thing. Nothing fancy or highfaluting, just something that you need to teach and share, something that needs to be accessible. I love art that tells a story. And cafés have this ability to bring people together for different types of events. Poetry readings or art shows or community gathering spots—they go hand in hand.” Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.
A remarkable woman and inspiring leader!