Isaias Hiram Urrabazo: Bringing the Spirits Home
From Las Vegas stages and theatrical costumes to hand-sculpted Halloween folk art and a spectacular Día de Muertos ofrenda, native Las Vegan Isaias Hiram Urrabazo has spent a lifetime turning imagination into art—and memories into characters who refuse to disappear.
Written and photography by Isabel M. Castro
What if an altar could become a stage—and the people we have lost could become the characters returning home?
For Las Vegas artist Isaias Hiram Urrabazo, that question is at the heart of The Return, his large-scale Día de Muertos installation now on view at Sahara West Library.
The Return continues through Nov. 30 in the library's Grotto, inviting visitors into an elaborate artistic interpretation of an ofrenda celebrating family, friends, and beloved pets. The public is also invited to attend “The Return" Meet & Greet with artist Isaias Urrabazo at the Sahara West Library lobby, free and open to the public, 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 1.
The Return is an exhibition creating a place to pause, remember, and perhaps encounter something that cannot easily be explained. Some visitors have told Urrabazo that the room feels peaceful. Others have described an unexplained spiritual energy.
"That is something I really think about,” he states.
Perhaps that is the mystery of The Return: it lives somewhere between theater and memory, between sculpture and storytelling, between what can be touched and what can only be felt. For Urrabazo, remembrance is not about dwelling on death. It is about celebrating life.
"This is really a celebration of life, not death,” he has explained, describing the installation as a way to connect people with their ancestors and those who remain close through memory. The idea for The Return itself came to him in a dream.
"And after that Ashley Blaine from the Sahara West Library called me, it all became a reality,” Urrabazo recalls. But beneath the dream is another story—one that makes the title The Return deeply personal.
Waiting for Her Return
Urrabazo grew up in a large family. “All together there were nine of us,” he says. His parents also welcomed two neighborhood children into the family. As the youngest, he found his own world through drawing and, surprisingly early, fashion.
His mother, Maria Urrabazo, encouraged his artistic interests.
She would also become one of the most important figures in The Return.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Urrabazo's mother was hospitalized. Because of restrictions, the family could not go inside to see her. They waited outside the hospital, looking toward the windows and wondering which room was hers.
"I would call her and leave messages for her telling her we couldn’t wait for her to come home,” he recalls.
She never did.
"So, I guess what I'm saying is we are still waiting for her return,” Urrabazo says. “And every year since we lost her, we have been able to make something beautiful for her Return.”
The words transform the exhibition's title. The Return is no longer simply about spirits coming back. It is about love continuing to wait. It is about what people do with grief when there is nowhere physical for that love to go. Urrabazo makes art.
The Boy Who Wouldn't Stop Singing
Long before he built theatrical worlds, sculpted ghosts, or constructed elaborate ofrendas, Urrabazo was an eight-year-old boy who wouldn't leave his sisters alone while they practiced singing.
His sisters finally handed him a cassette tape and sent him away to learn a song.
"Their nightmare became my big dream,” he remembers, laughing. “I couldn’t stop singing and singing and singing.”
Performing soon became part of his life—not only in church but at the nursing home where his mother worked in Boulder City.
Those experiences taught him something that would remain central to his creative life: art can connect people.
"I learned to sing with no fear,” he says. “It taught me about compassion when singing in the nursing home and how music could transform someone.”
The experience was sometimes painful. During the holidays, he encountered elderly people—and sometimes young people his own age—living in nursing homes.
But he also discovered something profound.
"I started to learn how singing could heal a soul; not only mine but theirs.”
That early lesson echoes through his work today. Whether he is creating a costume, sculpting a pumpkin, building a character, or constructing an ofrenda, Urrabazo seems less interested in making objects than in creating emotional connections.
One Artist, Many Mediums
Urrabazo's career has never fit comfortably inside a single category.
He is a singer, actor, public speaker, costume designer, sculptor, installation artist, and educator. His professional credits include Celine Dion: A New Day, Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular, Cirque du Soleil's Michael Jackson ONE, Rock of Ages, Azure: An Underwater Fantasy, and Magic Mike Live. His Magic Mike Live wardrobe also toured Australian and United States productions.
His costume design earned him the Las Vegas Valley Theatre Award for Best Costume Design for Cherry Orchard of the Living Dead.
Yet when asked whether he thinks of himself as several different artists, Urrabazo doesn't hesitate.
"I think of myself as one artist working in different mediums,” he says.
Sometimes, he admits, he is surprised by how many things he has done.
But he has never believed creativity needs permission.
"I am a firm believer that everything is possible, not impossible,” he says.
His definition of success is equally personal. He may not have achieved every dream on the grand scale he once imagined, but he has created a life filled with the things that bring him joy.
"I really have done things at a scale that makes me happy and brings me joy.”
That philosophy may be the secret connective tissue running through his remarkably varied career.
Building a Costume, Building a Sculpture
For Urrabazo, the distance between costume design and sculpture is short.
"You know, I look at costume design almost like building sculptures: adding layers, taking away layers,” he explains.
Both disciplines require construction. Both require imagination. Both involve solving problems and ultimately serve storytelling.
"They are connected in so many ways,” he says. “Both have their own way of telling a story and creating challenges that push me and my creativity.”
Theatrical sensibility is easy to see in The Return.
The “Ofrenda,” or installation, does not simply place objects on a table. It creates an environment. It has entrances, visual rhythms, characters, color, movement, and moments of discovery, ultimately paying reverence to the spirit that lives among us.
It feels staged. Perhaps that is because Urrabazo spent so much of his life behind the curtain. He understands that an audience may see only the finished performance while hundreds of decisions have already occurred backstage—costumes, wardrobe, props, performers, lighting, timing, and logistics. His art carries that same theatrical DNA. Sculptures have personalities-installations have drama, and his ofrendas have an insightful narrative.
The Spiritual Architecture of Memory
Urrabazo did not grow up celebrating Día de Muertos.
He was raised as an evangelical Christian, and although his grandfather participated in celebrations in Mexico, the tradition was not part of his childhood.
His relationship with Día de Muertos developed later, when he began exploring the art more than a decade ago. That distinction is important. Rather than presenting himself as someone who inherited the tradition unchanged, Urrabazo describes a personal artistic journey toward understanding it. He discovered a language for exploring memory, family, and love.
"I hope people understand that this is not Mexican Halloween,” he says. “It’s a very sacred and beautiful celebration of life, not death.”
That understanding has shaped his installations. Marigolds, butterflies, photographs, personal belongings, and handmade objects become elements in a larger visual story. His family helps him construct the installations, but he does not necessarily begin with a conventional blueprint. He carries the installation in his mind and imagines it before he builds it.
During an earlier presentation at Sahara West Library, thousands of paper butterflies helped transform the space into something resembling a passageway between memory and presence. The butterfly carries particular significance.
"We believe that the monarch butterfly brings the spirits of our loved ones back,” Urrabazo has said.
The image is simple and extraordinary at once: a tiny creature crossing enormous distances, returning season after season. A return.
When the Objects Begin to Speak
The people represented in The Return are not abstract figures. They are remembered through objects. This year, one of the stories belongs to Urrabazo's friend Max Gilmore.
The last time Urrabazo saw Max outside of work was at the previous Return installation.
Now Max's story has become part of this year's ofrenda. Visitors can read text messages Max sent Urrabazo after stopping by the installation. They can also encounter objects connected to his life. Among the most meaningful are a pair of dress shoes.
Urrabazo bought them for Max, and he wore them to the Magic Mike movie premiere. Urrabazo also transformed a flower box into an ofrenda bearing Max's name. One of the boxes carries another connection: it resembles the boxes used to deliver roses to the theater where Max worked each night. Moreover, there are pillowcases Max made for Urrabazo's birthday after Urrabazo taught him how to sew. Individually, these objects might seem ordinary. Together, they become evidence of a life.
"Everything has a special meaning to me because of the connection I have to each piece,” Urrabazo says. “It's a part of the story of my life and how I create something beautiful from the grief.”
That may be the most revealing description of his artistic process, as he does not erase grief, but transforms it.
Characters Waiting to Be Seen
Perhaps it is not surprising that Urrabazo's sculptures seem to have personalities.
His professional life has revolved around characters, actors, and costumes. His Halloween folk art includes ghosts, jack-o'-lanterns, owls, moons, candles, skulls and other curious creatures. Isaias's fascination with the spooky began in childhood, including memories of Mexican stories about “La Llorona,” the legendary Weeping Woman. Yet his Halloween creations rarely feel truly frightening. They are mischievous. Colorful. Eccentric-a little strange and often downright charming.
Working with materials such as paper clay and plaster, Urrabazo sculpts and paints each piece individually. The handmade process means that no two are exactly alike. His online shop, Bootiful Things, becomes another doorway into this peculiar and delightful universe.
The shop features “scary patch pumpkins,” whimsical candles, ghosts, spooky owls, blue moons, and Día de Muertos-inspired skulls. They may be folk-art objects, but they behave like theatrical characters. Urrabazo knows exactly what they are waiting to do.
When asked whether he sees his sculptures as objects or characters waiting to tell a story, he answers:
"I see a character telling a story, and often telling mine but also telling theirs—and hopefully those stories will live on within the hearts of the visitors that see and experience my art.”
Even Mom Had an Opinion
A wonderful family story stands behind those characters.
When Urrabazo began making altar dolls, his mother looked at them and told him, “That is so ugly, but what do I know?”
It is the kind of comment only a mother can deliver with complete honesty. But eventually, she embraced the dolls—and began making necklaces for them herself. The story is funny, but it also reveals something fundamental about Urrabazo's art. His creativity invites people to become part of the story. His mother, who had encouraged the boy who loved drawing and fashion, eventually became a collaborator in his imaginative world. That spirit of family participation continues in The Return.
From the Backstage to the Community
Urrabazo's career has moved from stages to studios, from costumes to clay and from professional productions to community spaces. His work has appeared beyond Las Vegas, including his solo exhibition Life, Death, Rebirth at Pioneer Theatre Loge Gallery in Salt Lake City and Día de Muertos events including All Hallow's Art Fest in Petaluma, California, and Hallowbaloo in Bothell, Washington. Other Las Vegas installations have also received recognition at the Springs Preserve and Winchester Cultural Center. His work has entered private collections, including those of actors Sally Struthers and Joey Fatone. But awards and collections tell only part of the story.
Another important part is teaching. Urrabazo has used his theatrical costume renderings and designs in presentations for young people interested in the arts. His work with the Gateway Arts Foundation has included concerts supporting scholarships for young people pursuing arts education.
For someone who began singing at eight, that commitment feels almost circular. The child who learned that music could reach another person's soul has become an adult artist trying to show young people that creative lives can take many forms.
Let the Art Speak
The Return holds a delicate balance. Día de Muertos carries joy, but it also carries remembrance. Laughter sits alongside loss, color alongside sorrow, celebration alongside absence. How does an artist hold all of those emotions in one room?
Urrabazo's answer is deceptively simple.
"You balance it by just letting the art, the room and the meaning speak for themselves.”
Not everyone will experience the installation in the same way.
"Some will feel it, some won't,” he says.
There is wisdom in that acceptance. He does not insist that visitors feel a particular emotion. Interestingly, the space allows them to bring their own memories into it. Perhaps that is why visitors have described The Return as peaceful and spiritually charged. The artist has left room for the viewer.
A Return That Never Really Ends
The title The Return suggests movement. Someone leaves. Someone returns. Memory fades and memory returns. A photograph becomes a doorway. A pair of shoes becomes a portrait. A flower box becomes an altar. A pillowcase becomes evidence of friendship. A butterfly becomes a messenger and an artist becomes a storyteller who gives all those things another life.
For Urrabazo, the work is deeply connected to his mother. It is connected to Max. It connects to his family, his childhood, his career backstage, and the many people he has met along the way. But the stories are not his alone. He invites people to keep coming into this world and engaging with his work. That may be why his next artistic dream is already taking shape.
Across from The Return is an art gallery that Urrabazo imagines bringing fully to life—a place for music, art, reflection and stories of the past.
"I would like the whole thing to come to life in a big celebration of music, art, reflection, and stories of our past,” he says.
He wants people to remember the importance of sharing history and understanding the roots we come from.
"The living and the dead all have stories,” he says, “some difficult to share, but other stories that celebrate life and its beautiful twists and turns.”
Ultimately, what Urrabazo has been doing since he was eight years old-singing, drawing, sewing, building, sculpting. Performing and remembering. He has spent his life making characters. Now some of those characters are people he loved. Some are whimsical creatures waiting for someone to take them home. Others are memories that refuse to disappear. In Urrabazo’s world, the past is never quite finished. It is waiting backstage. The lights come up, the curtain opens, and the spirits return.
Experience The Return
Isaias Hiram Urrabazo: The Return
Through Nov. 30
Sahara West Library Grotto
9600 W. Sahara Ave.
(702) 507-3630
Library hours are 10 a.m.–8 p.m., Monday–Thursday; 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Friday–Sunday.
Springs Preserve
Día de Muertos Ofrendas celebrations continue at the Springs Preserve (ticketed events).
Nov. 6-8
5 to 9 p.m.
Springs Preserve members get exclusive early entry beginning at 4 p.m.
Springs Preserve (Free parking at Springs Preserve, with overflow parking at Meadows Mall)
Admission: Non-members: $15 adults, $9 children (3-17). Members: $11 adults, $7 children (3-17). Gold & Platinum Donor Members receive free admission up to 8 guests. Free for children 2 and younger. All attendees must have a ticket for the selected event date.
RSVP: Reservations are required.
Purchase tickets online in advance for the selected date and time. No ticket rescheduling or refunds will be issued. All ticket sales are final.
For more information, visit https://www.springspreserve.org
For more info, call 702-822-7700 or email.
Visitors can also explore Urrabazo's handmade folk art through Bootiful Things, his online art shop featuring Halloween- and Día de Muertos-inspired sculptures.
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