Art has always been a driving force in Del Mar College professor Gerardo “Jerry” Cobarruvias life. From his early years in Laredo with an artistic family to his eventual career, art in all forms has been present.

Cobarruvias was born in Laredo, Texas, but grew up in Corpus Christi where he attended Del Mar and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He has been employed at DMC since 1985. He has held various positions since, such as photographer, graphic designer, and media specialist. He officially joined the art faculty in 2004. He teaches painting, watercolor, printmaking, and graphic design. Printmaking and oil painting are his preferred media, but he also enjoys creating in watercolor and graphite.

“I was born [in Laredo], my dad was a graphic designer back then. They used to call him paste-up artists or graphic artists and he had a really tough time trying to find work and so he was bouncing between Lubbock and Fort Worth and different places in the Valley. And then finally he got an opening here in Corpus Christi when I was about four years old, five years old. The home base always was Laredo, because that’s where my mom’s mother was. But soon after I came to Corpus.”

“So, honestly where I grew up, it’s just a few blocks from Del Mar College it’s behind the neighborhood where the HEB Tennis Center is right there, Hawthorne St. Yeah, it’s just so interesting that I ended up living and spending most of my life just a mile or two from here, it’s bizarre. I’ve definitely been homebound. That’s for sure anyways.”

Cobarruvias talked about his plans for 2025, with hopes to retire soon. He would like to take some time out, spending more time with family and continuing his lifelong passion, art.

“What to do is to be able to get up and pick the clothes I want to wear. You know, do some watercolor, work on stuff. I’ll get to work on the monotype or the photography then, of course, there’s always house stuff, right? There probably won’t be enough time for me to do everything that I want because there’s just so much to do. But you know whether it’s Etchings to make paintings or housing, you know things to fix that are broken. Just living life in general without feeling that you got to be at work at 8.”

Cobarruvias showcases and sells his work at the Black Jade Studio website https://blackjadestudio.com/ and on Instagram @blackjadestudio. The work showcased includes oil, watercolor, intaglio, monotype and lithography. He explained that his artworks are “the result of the artist’s search for uniqueness and clarity on paper/canvas. Abstraction, figurative, and landscape works are used as vehicles for his art.”

As Cobarruvias thinks back over his career, growing up around art his whole life was the main factor in how he became a professor. In addition, teaching has helped him grow as an artist and as a person.

“Being a teacher has made me a much better artist, I know that. Before I started teaching my art was, as far as I thought, OK. But now that I look at it, it makes me hold my nose and go ‘Ohh man, that is really bad.’ But then when I look, and I realized that I had to step up my game and understand more. And in doing that it improved my skill set so that I could convey that to the students, so it’s interesting. I had seen a survey somewhere where they talked about tutors and how the tutors were doing better than the people who were being taught. And I think that same dynamic happens because I had the opportunity to teach, it’s made me a much, much better artist, but it would not have happened without teaching.”