Bloodlines: The Jiménez–Cardwell Legacy
November 15, 2025 - January 16, 2026
Three generations. One creative lineage. From Luis Jiménez’s monumental sculptures to Vicky Cardwell Balcou’s painterly vision and Elisa Jimenez’s avant-garde fashion, this exhibition honors a family shaped by art. Their story begins with Reeder School teacher Marguerite Knight Cardwell.
About The Exhibition
This exhibition honors a powerful creative lineage that spans three generations of artists. The story begins with Luis A. Jiménez (1940–2006), the celebrated Mexican American sculptor and printmaker from El Paso, whose vivid fiberglass monuments such as Vaquero, Man on Fire, and Blue Mustang redefined the visual language of the American Southwest. Fusing Pop Art energy with the spirit of Chicano culture, Jiménez gave working-class life heroic form and color, earning international recognition and cementing his role as one of Texas’s most influential artists.
In the early 1960s, Jiménez married Vicky Cardwell, a young Fort Worth artist raised in a household steeped in creativity. Her mother, Marguerite Knight Cardwell, taught at the Reeder Children’s School of Theater and Design alongside Dickson and Flora Reeder — central figures of the renowned Fort Worth Circle. Growing up among that circle’s modernist sensibilities, Vicky developed her own painterly language, studying under Bror Utter and others before earning her B.F.A. at the University of Texas at Austin. Her career has woven together fine art, design, and teaching, always with an appreciation for color, three-dimensional form, and Texas light.
From this pairing came Elisa Jimenez (born 1965), an artist who bridges the visual, the wearable, and the performative. Best known for her avant-garde fashion designs and her ongoing project The Hunger World™, Elisa’s art fuses drawing, sculpture, movement, and narrative. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Paper, and Elle, and on cultural stages from Sex and the City to museum exhibitions in London and New York. Elisa’s practice continues her family’s legacy of pushing artistic boundaries.
Finally, this exhibition pays homage to Vicky’s mother Marguerite Knight Cardwell, whose art and mentorship seeded the creativity that followed. As a teacher and designer, her connection to the Fort Worth Circle linked her family directly to one of Texas’s most influential art movements.
Bloodlines: The Jiménez–Cardwell Legacy invites viewers to trace this continuum — from Luis Jiménez’s monumental public art to Vicky Cardwell Balcou’s introspective paintings and Elisa Jimenez’s experimental art and couture. Together, they illustrate how vision evolves through generations, each artist transforming heritage into their own creative language.
From the studios of Fort Worth to the stages of the world, this is a family united by art through three generations and one enduring legacy.
About Luiz A. Jiménez
Luis A. Jiménez (1940–2006)
Luis Jiménez was a celebrated Mexican American sculptor and printmaker from El Paso, Texas, renowned for his bold, large-scale fiberglass sculptures that fused Pop Art with Chicano cultural themes. Trained as an architect and artist at the University of Texas at Austin, Jiménez drew inspiration from Mexican murals, lowrider culture, and the American Southwest. His dynamic works often depicted working-class figures, folkloric subjects, and iconic symbols of the borderlands, rendered in vivid color and expressive form. Among his most recognized pieces are Man on Fire (1969), Vaquero (1980), and the monumental Blue Mustang (1992–2006), installed posthumously at Denver International Airport. Over his career, Jiménez’s work was featured in major museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and he was honored for giving visibility to Mexican American identity in contemporary art. His fearless style and cultural commentary cemented his legacy as one of Texas’s most influential artists.
Photo by Adelilah Montoya
About Vicky Cardwell Balcou
Vicky Cardwell Balcou
Fort Worth native Vicky Cardwell Balcou was born into an artistic family. Both of her parents, Norman Douglas and Marguerite Knight Cardwell, were artists, designers, and teachers. She grew up surrounded by creativity at the Reeder Children’s School of Theater and Design, where her mother—classmate of Dickson Reeder—taught art. There, she absorbed the influences of the Fort Worth Circle, including Flora and Dickson Reeder, Olive Pemberton, Cynthia Brants, Bill Bomar, McKie Trotter, Reilly Nail, Jean Banks, Gwen Tandy, and Earnest Chilton.
While studying at the University of Texas at Austin, Vicky (then Victoria Ann Cardwell) met Luis Jiménez Jr., a fellow student and future sculptor of international renown. Their first encounter—an accidental collision on the steps of the UT Mall—sparked a romance grounded in shared artistic passion. At Vicky’s encouragement, Jiménez switched his major from architecture to art, setting him on the path that would define his career.
The two married in Fort Worth, and their daughter, Elisa Victoria Jimenez, was born in 1965. While Luis pursued his fine art career in New York City, Vicky established herself in Texas as a commercial artist—pioneering as a young woman in the “Mad Men” era, portfolio in hand, navigating advertising agencies door to door. Though their marriage ended in 1966 due to differing artistic goals, they remained close friends and devoted co-parents, sharing a lifelong respect for one another’s creative vision.
Vicky studied at the Fort Worth Art Center with Bror Utter, Dickson Reeder, and David Brownlow; at Paschal High School with watercolorist Beatrice Dunning; and earned her B.A. in Fine Arts at UT Austin, studying with Everett Spruce, Loren Mozley, William Lester, Charles Umlauf, and Ralph White. She later continued her art studies with Bill Komodore and Ellen Soderquist.
Today, Vicky lives in Bastrop, Texas, where she continues to paint, teach, and exhibit her work—her life and legacy deeply intertwined with generations of Texas artists.
About Elisa Jiménez
Elisa Jiménez (1965)
Elisa Jimenez (born 1965) is an interdisciplinary artist, primarily in fashion design but also including writing, drawing, painting, performance art, photography and art installation. Her main ongoing project is called “The Hunger World,” is a fantastical realm of marionettes ranging from two inches to thirty feet in height, reflecting her deep engagement with myth, form and storytelling.
Vogue first discovered Jimenez as “the scoop” recognizing her as a leading voice of the new avant-garde and one of the top ten independent American designers in the independent realm. Her creations have appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Dutch, Black Book, Paper Mag, Jane and Trace.
She appeared in Bravo’s Project Runway (Season 4) and again in Project Runway: All Stars (2012). She has designed for a number of actors, musicians, films and television programs, including Melissa Auf der Maur, Cher for her Believe album, Jennifer Connelly for her character in Requiem for a Dream, Marisa Tomei, Courtney Love, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sex and the City, Pink, Cameron Diaz, and art photographer Cindy Sherman. Jimenez was invited to be in the Barbican Gallery’s exhibit and book Rapture: Art and Fashion Since the 1970s, curated by Chris Townsend of London. She also is the mastermind behind the “Naked Dress” for Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City.
Raised in a family immersed in art, Jimenez is the daughter of sculptor Luis Jiménez and painter Vicky Cardwell Balcou, and granddaughter of educator and artist Marguerite Knight Cardwell. She spent her childhood between Texas and New York, surrounded by studios, galleries, and artists’ circles — learning to draw, sculpt, and create from an early age. That upbringing, steeped in creativity and culture, continues to shape the multidimensional nature of her work today.
Photo Courtesy Elisa Jimenez
Show Highlights
