Philly’s other Pulitzer Prize winner, artist Suave Gonzalez, earns the 2022 Audio Reporting Pulitzer for his podcast, “Suave”.
Last week, dosage MAGAZINE and I wrote about how Philadelphia playwright, actor, director and Wilma Theatre cohort co-honcho James Ijames won a 2022 Pultizer Prize for Drama for his virtual realm theater piece, “Fat Ham”, aired in 2021 (and to be staged, live, at New York City’s Public Theatre). A careful perusal of the Pulitzer Award winners list, however, and we find another, far less publicized Pulitzer victor in Philly’s midst: that of local artist and activist Suave Gonzalez, who, as part of the team who produced the Apple Podcasts’ “Suave”, won 2022’s Audio Reporting Pulitzer, one directed toward “audio journalism that serves the public interest, characterized by revelatory reporting and illuminating storytelling,” read a congratulatory note from the Philadelphia-based gallery that represents his work, Morton Contemporary.
Morton goes on to praise “Suave” as “a podcast that the judges called “a brutally honest and immersive profile of a man reentering society after serving more than 30 years in prison”, tells the true story of a teen sentenced to life without parole at a maximum-security prison and what happens when he gets a second shot at freedom many decades later.”
Suave Gonzalez, however, pares things down to a simple elegance in his art-making bio.
“I use art as a tool to break down the fear and chaos of my environment with the hope of creating a kinder world,” he wrote.
A street artist from the South Bronx whose confrontational paintings and murals embraced social dialogue, Gonzalez got his Philly area cred during his prison term, earning a BA from Villanova University and working as president of LACEO, a Latino organization devoted to giving out scholarships funded by inmates from their own wages. Gonzalez continued to stay a proud local, becoming a 2018 Philadelphia TEDx presenter, a 2018 Re-imagining Reentry Fellow through Mural Arts Philadelphia, teaching courses at the University of Pennsylvania, and coaching at CCP for its “I’m More” program.
Gonzalez’s most recent large scale famous face paintings touch on everything and everyone from political culture icons such as Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X and MLK to John Lennon, David Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Philly’s Questlove.
Beyond just knowing the guy has a Pulitzer to his credit, the work and life of Suave Gonzalez is worth investigating.
About Post Author
