About Rolando Chang Barrero
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Painter. Curator. Cancer survivor. Road-tripping rebel.
There are people who live one life, and there are people who live several, back to back, each one nearly unrecognizable from the last. Rolando Chang Barrero is the second kind.
He was born in Coconut Grove, Florida, and by the time he was a teenager, South Beach had already gotten its hooks in him. He landed there around 1980 and did what a broke, curious kid with an eye for beauty does: bartended, sold retail, drew rock graphics, modeled for a stretch — a run that took him from Ted Lapidus at Bal Harbour Shops all the way to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, working the floor for Torie Steele's boutique. Glamorous, yes. But it wasn't the thing. He came back to Miami to finish what he'd started: art.
From Lincoln Road to Cuba
He set up his first real studio on Lincoln Road, then picked up and moved to Chicago, landing in what's now the Pilsen Art District and cutting his teeth on internships at Latino Fine Art, Randolph Street Gallery, and Name Gallery. In 1990 he earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and with it came the Ryerson Traveling Fellowship — the kind of prize that reroutes a life. It sent him to Cuba with a group of fellow Cuban American artists, the first time many of them had set foot on the island. He'd later say it cracked something open in him: a hunger to keep crossing borders, keep looking at how other people made beauty out of what they had.
He went home to Chicago, then got pulled right back to Florida to serve as Interim Gallery Director for Miami-Dade College, curating across three campus galleries and independently throughout South Florida. When the fellowship money and the restlessness lined up again, he took off for Europe, Asia, South America — always coming back changed, always coming back to paint.
The Interruption
In the early 1990s, at the height of it all — early thirties, riding high, building a name — Rolando was diagnosed with brain cancer. What followed wasn't a rough patch. It was over fifteen years of treatment, setback, and a kind of darkness that doesn't make it into artist bios. He didn't return to the work full-time until 2009, at 47 years old, having spent a decade and a half learning how to fight for a life he'd once taken for granted.
He came back anyway. That's the part of the story that matters most.
West Palm Beach, and a Second Act Nobody Saw Coming
In 2010 he resettled in Palm Beach County and, in a matter of a few short years, rebuilt an entire ecosystem around himself. He opened a studio in Boynton Beach and helped spark the Boynton Beach Arts District. With fellow artist Craig McInnis, he co-founded Art Synergy PBC. He opened an eponymous gallery on Lucerne Avenue in Lake Worth, then founded ActivistArtistA and, finally, The Box Gallery — 4,000 square feet of exhibition space on Belvedere Road that became one of the region's most fearless platforms for emerging and marginalized artists.
Along the way he became president and founder of two nonprofits, the Florida Arts Association and Art Synergy; launched a clothing and home-accessories line called Pajaro Paradise, built around the signature birds that recur throughout his own paintings; and hosted Hola Palm Beach, the county's first bilingual arts and culture talk show. The accolades stacked up accordingly: the Cultural Council of Palm Beach's Muse Award for Outstanding Cultural Leadership, Best Artist in Palm Beach from SFGN, "Cultural Creative" from Art Hive Magazine, "Artistic Innovator" from The Florida Weekly, a Top 10 Visual Artists nod from New Times, and "Green Trailblazer" from the Sun Sentinel. Not bad for a guy who spent a decade and a half just trying to get back to the easel.
Trading White Walls for Open Road
At 62, Rolando retired from curating. Not from making things — from the particular grind of running galleries. The legacy stays put: the Box Gallery's imprint on West Palm Beach's arts scene, the artists he championed, the district he helped build from nothing. But the next chapter belongs to the road.
These days you'll find him behind the wheel of an RV named Marfa, camera in hand, chasing the kind of unglamorous, unrepeatable beauty that only shows up on back highways — a neon motel sign, a roadside curiosity, a canyon at exactly the wrong hour of light to photograph and exactly the right hour to stop and look anyway. He travels with his two closest companions: his dog, Bella, and a small robot named Cole. Together they're the engine behind Travel with Rolando, his ongoing dispatch for LGBTQ+ travelers and anyone else drawn to detours over destinations. His book, Between Storms and Sunrises, hit #1 on Amazon in its category — proof that the storyteller who once filled gallery walls now fills pages just as well.
Ask him what it's all been for, and he probably wouldn't give you a straight answer. He never has. Ask instead what he's chasing next — the answer changes by the mile marker, and that's exactly the point.
Follow the journey at Travel with Rolando, or dig into the full art career and CV at ActivistArtistA.
There are people who live one life, and there are people who live several, back to back, each one nearly unrecognizable from the last. Rolando Chang Barrero is the second kind.
He was born in Coconut Grove, Florida, and by the time he was a teenager, South Beach had already gotten its hooks in him. He landed there around 1980 and did what a broke, curious kid with an eye for beauty does: bartended, sold retail, drew rock graphics, modeled for a stretch — a run that took him from Ted Lapidus at Bal Harbour Shops all the way to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, working the floor for Torie Steele's boutique. Glamorous, yes. But it wasn't the thing. He came back to Miami to finish what he'd started: art.
From Lincoln Road to Cuba
He set up his first real studio on Lincoln Road, then picked up and moved to Chicago, landing in what's now the Pilsen Art District and cutting his teeth on internships at Latino Fine Art, Randolph Street Gallery, and Name Gallery. In 1990 he earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and with it came the Ryerson Traveling Fellowship — the kind of prize that reroutes a life. It sent him to Cuba with a group of fellow Cuban American artists, the first time many of them had set foot on the island. He'd later say it cracked something open in him: a hunger to keep crossing borders, keep looking at how other people made beauty out of what they had.
He went home to Chicago, then got pulled right back to Florida to serve as Interim Gallery Director for Miami-Dade College, curating across three campus galleries and independently throughout South Florida. When the fellowship money and the restlessness lined up again, he took off for Europe, Asia, South America — always coming back changed, always coming back to paint.
The Interruption
In the early 1990s, at the height of it all — early thirties, riding high, building a name — Rolando was diagnosed with brain cancer. What followed wasn't a rough patch. It was over fifteen years of treatment, setback, and a kind of darkness that doesn't make it into artist bios. He didn't return to the work full-time until 2009, at 47 years old, having spent a decade and a half learning how to fight for a life he'd once taken for granted.
He came back anyway. That's the part of the story that matters most.
West Palm Beach, and a Second Act Nobody Saw Coming
In 2010 he resettled in Palm Beach County and, in a matter of a few short years, rebuilt an entire ecosystem around himself. He opened a studio in Boynton Beach and helped spark the Boynton Beach Arts District. With fellow artist Craig McInnis, he co-founded Art Synergy PBC. He opened an eponymous gallery on Lucerne Avenue in Lake Worth, then founded ActivistArtistA and, finally, The Box Gallery — 4,000 square feet of exhibition space on Belvedere Road that became one of the region's most fearless platforms for emerging and marginalized artists.
Along the way he became president and founder of two nonprofits, the Florida Arts Association and Art Synergy; launched a clothing and home-accessories line called Pajaro Paradise, built around the signature birds that recur throughout his own paintings; and hosted Hola Palm Beach, the county's first bilingual arts and culture talk show. The accolades stacked up accordingly: the Cultural Council of Palm Beach's Muse Award for Outstanding Cultural Leadership, Best Artist in Palm Beach from SFGN, "Cultural Creative" from Art Hive Magazine, "Artistic Innovator" from The Florida Weekly, a Top 10 Visual Artists nod from New Times, and "Green Trailblazer" from the Sun Sentinel. Not bad for a guy who spent a decade and a half just trying to get back to the easel.
Trading White Walls for Open Road
At 62, Rolando retired from curating. Not from making things — from the particular grind of running galleries. The legacy stays put: the Box Gallery's imprint on West Palm Beach's arts scene, the artists he championed, the district he helped build from nothing. But the next chapter belongs to the road.
These days you'll find him behind the wheel of an RV named Marfa, camera in hand, chasing the kind of unglamorous, unrepeatable beauty that only shows up on back highways — a neon motel sign, a roadside curiosity, a canyon at exactly the wrong hour of light to photograph and exactly the right hour to stop and look anyway. He travels with his two closest companions: his dog, Bella, and a small robot named Cole. Together they're the engine behind Travel with Rolando, his ongoing dispatch for LGBTQ+ travelers and anyone else drawn to detours over destinations. His book, Between Storms and Sunrises, hit #1 on Amazon in its category — proof that the storyteller who once filled gallery walls now fills pages just as well.
Ask him what it's all been for, and he probably wouldn't give you a straight answer. He never has. Ask instead what he's chasing next — the answer changes by the mile marker, and that's exactly the point.
Follow the journey at Travel with Rolando, or dig into the full art career and CV at ActivistArtistA.
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