Henry G. Sanchez is the 2022 Inaugural Artist-in-Residence for the Buffalo Bayou Partnership. As an artist, Sanchez makes long-term, interdisciplinary and social practice projects based on the intersection of visual art with socio-political issues, natural sciences, the environment and political philosophy. His project for 2022 Artist-in-Residence, was the BioArt Bayou-torium at Yolanda Black Navarro Buffalo Bend Nature Park.
In 2018 Sanchez created the BioArt Bayou-torium, a free, bilingual and a socially engaged bio-art project that fosters stewardship of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou’s environment among the local East End Hispanic community. The Bayou-torium combines art with natural science to explore an aesthetic and ethical inquiry into Houston’s bayou systems. Its programming and iterations included a science laboratory/art studio inside a shipment container; digital microscope workshops; bio-art installations with live animals and plants from the bayou ecosystems; nature guided tours and explorations in public parks; sketch tours; public “convenios” with Houston’s bayou non-profits; and free pontoon boats tours on Buffalo Bayou East. Sanchez has an enduring relationship with the Partnership through their generous support for the BioArt Bayou-torium at Tony Maron Park in 2019, and Yolanda Black Navarro Nature Park in 2021.
Sanchez is a frequent contributor to the online art magazine, GLASSTIRE. He has lectured and participated in panels at universities, symposiums, and conferences across the United States. Sanchez is a founding Steering Committee member for the Houston Alliance for Latinx Arts.
Sanchez was awarded grants from the City of Houston’s Houston Arts Alliance through the “City Initiative” in 2023, the “Support for Artists and Creative Individual” in 2020, and “Let Creativity Happen” in 2019, as well as the Andy Warhol Foundation Idea Fund Grant in 2019 and 2021.
Born and raised in Houston, Sanchez is a 1990 B.F.A. graduate in Painting from the University of Houston; a 2000 Masters of International Relations from Rutgers University (N.J.); and a 2014 M.F.A. graduate of Art Practice in Interdisciplinary Arts, from the School of Visual Arts (N.Y.C.). Now living and working from his family home in the East End, Sanchez makes his art projects as a committed stakeholder who connects with and takes inspiration from his Mexican-American, Second Ward community and culture.