Cenizas remains an ongoing publication that includes over forty-five issues, with the last issue projected to be the forty-ninth. Each issue is handmade and self-published under the publishing name romax-arte y literature—a neologism of Rolando and Maxi—Castellon’s ex-wife Margot’s nickname. Much like a zine, Cenizas contains an eclectic collection of poems, manifestos, original artworks, and even small objects by various artists, poets, and cultural workers, featuring his colleagues and friends, as well as figures he encountered in his travels. Much of the source material was also drawn from manuscripts and solicitations that Castellón received during his time as a curator of SFMOMA, as well as his work coordinating performances and events for the museum. As he describes, a lot of what couldn’t be featured at the museum found its way into Cenizas. The publication also served as a space for Castellón to feature announcements and ads for local organizations, programs, and exhibitions. Within its pages, Castellón also included his own work, sometimes under one of his many pseudonyms. His work included writings, drawings, and playful small objects that are carefully hand stitched, glued, or affixed to the pages in precarious ways.
Standing apart from the rest of the collection, the ninth issue in 1980 steered away from the publications multifaceted content to feature advertisements and solicit subscriptions to sustain the publication’s production. Among the artists named are familiar Bay Area figures such as Raymond Saunders and Amalia Mesa-Bains, alongside Castellón himself, listed also as “Dionisio Alegría,” after his full name: Rolando Dionisio Castellón Alegría. Castellón started Cenizas during his time in the Bay Area, while working at SFMOMA, and continued to produce the publication after returning to Costa Rica.
Rolando Castellón (b.1937) is a Nicaraguan artist and curator who moved to San Francisco in 1956 at the age of nineteen. During his time living in the Bay Area, he was a prominent advocate for community arts programming and minority artists, working actively as a practicing artist, curator, gallerist, and cultural worker. In the late 1960s, he became involved with Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes, serving as the director of artistic programs in 1969. Coming out of this work, Castellón became a cofounder of Galería de la Raza in 1970 and was elected as the Galería’s first director before it became more established and moved away from a cooperative model. After two years, he left Galería to work at SFMOMA, first as the program coordinator and art director of M.I.X. (1972–75), and later as a full-time curator (1975–81). After his appointments at SFMOMA, he served as the director of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UC Santa Cruz (1982–92). During this time, he opened different iterations of Castellón Gallery, and curated exhibitions at various venues across San Francisco; among them, Drawings from the Fourth World at Meridian Gallery in 1989. In 1993, he moved back to Costa Rica, where he had briefly lived as a young boy, and was appointed the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in 1994. He continues to live and work in San José, Costa Rica.
