Chemical engineering sophomore Daniel Juarez and nursing sophomore Karla Gonzalez dance the “Wobble” as part of the UTRGV Radio workshop held during the #Subculture: Urban Art Experience hosted Saturday in Downtown Brownsville. Also shown are Nancy Guevara (back row, from left), an Activating Vacancy Artists Incubator artist-in-residence; Victoria Brito, informational writer for University Marketing and Communications; Noel Rangel, a nursing sophomore; and Vicente Martinez, an accounting and marketing junior. ANDREA TORRES/THE RIDER PHOTOS
After a stormy night, Saturday morning’s weather cleared just in time for the #Subculture: Urban Art Experience, which kicked off early with a steam roller pressing a woodcut on Adams Street in Brownsville.
“Instead of just using a steam roller press to print my work only, I invited the community artists and professors and students to kind of press along with me,” said Celeste De Luna, a part-time art lecturer at UTRGV and artist-in-residence in the Activating Vacancy Arts Incubator.
About 40 of De Luna’s Art Appreciation students assisted her in creating 25 prints on paper and six on fabric.
Among the prints was one of Américo Paredes playing a guitar and a river flowing behind him. Paredes, a Brownsville native who died in 1999, was a musician, scholar, author, folklorist and English professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Printmaking with a steam roller was one of the workshops offered during the event hosted in downtown Brownsville.
“This year, [#Subculture] organically grew into this really cool, collaborative event,” said Jennifer McGehee-Valdez, UTRGV director of Public Relations.
The event was hosted in collaboration with the AVAI, the Kraken Lounge, Brownsville Artists and Musicians and Main Street District.
“What we’re doing is we’re having participants come through the entrance on Adams Street and 12th and get their little passport stamped at each of the workshops,” McGehee-Valdez said. The first 200 attendees who got their passport stamped at all of the workshops received a free T-shirt.
Nearly 400 people attended printmaking, photography, virtual reality, social media and music workshops. Dez BBQ sold brisket sandwiches and nachos, shaved iced and lemonade from a food truck parked on Adams Street.
More than 60 volunteers helped set up and conduct some of the workshops.
Art education senior Vivian Zapata helped host a silk screening and linoleum print workshop at BAM, located at 1045 E. Washington St.
“It’s basically relief printing,” Zapata said about the linoleum workshop. “I guess a concept of a stamp could be relatable. You can kind of pick which design we’ve already done for you and hopefully that will spark some interest to possibly do it on your own.”
Among the attendees in the BAM printmaking workshop was Itzel Vazquez, a biology freshman, who made a print of a skull with a Native American headdress.
“It’s so cool how printmaking works,” Vazquez said. “I actually had to get this roll thingy with ink and I had to put it on a paper on the surface of the, let’s say, the print and you just roll it and it comes out.”
More than 30 student prints were displayed in BAM as part of the workshop.
The other workshops included UTRGV Radio’s lip-sync and dance battles on Adams Street or in Market Square Transit Pedestrian Plaza.
Inside the Kraken Lounge, Humans of UTRGV also had a small workshop where attendees would get their picture taken by Mariana Garza Estrada, Public Relations program specialist, with a Polaroid camera.
“Our main theme today is ‘describe yourself in one word,’” Garza Estrada said. “It’s a live experience. They get to know what Humans of UTRGV is while being part of it.”
Students from the Edinburg campus also participated in the event.
“I’ve never been to Brownsville, except for coming to the beach and the zoo,” said Ulysses Lopez, a mass communication senior. “I think it’s really cool because you get to bring everyone together and you get to show a lot of people the artwork that a lot of students have.”
For next year, McGehee-Valdez said she hopes to make the event bigger and host a similar urban art experience event for the spring semester in Edinburg.
