Room for Creativity: Second in a Series: Space for studios

University officials talk new equipment, construction for School of Art and Design

With a budget of about $186,000, the School of Art and Design is in the process of acquiring new equipment and furniture. Meanwhile, a proposal for a new building is in the works.

Ed Pogue, director of the School of Art and Design, and Gina Palacios, associate director and an assistant professor, led a meeting Sept. 1 to announce the idea of new construction to house art classes on the Brownsville campus and update students on efforts to purchase furniture and equipment.

“Starting [Sept. 5], the office will be starting to order the equipment,” Pogue said during the meeting. “We’ve already been talking with the faculty about their needs.”

In an interview with The Rider last Wednesday, Pogue said the university is going to purchase everything through its procurement system, which means lower costs and faster purchases than through a vendor.

On the shopping list are new tables and chairs, easels for painting and drawing, a kiln for ceramics, storage equipment and a few new computers.

Pogue and Palacios also reminded students during the meeting of the new computer lab located in Cortez Hall Room 139, which the university leases from Texas Southmost College. 

Palacios told The Rider last Thursday that five classes are conducted in the lab: design communication, two digital photography, multimedia emerging design and a special topics course on digital painting and drawing.

The lab is home to 14 student computers, two photography scanners, a 3D printer and a large format printer. Palacios said that hours of operation will depend on the lab managers’ availability, adding that only one student is working in the lab, so far.

“Right now, what we really need is people in the morning, you know, 8 a.m. to [whenever] the first class in there is,” she said.

The Handshake application for lab manager positions is now closed, but Palacios said she hopes to have it reopen today. Interested students can also email gina.palacios@utrgv.edu for more information about the position.

“We’re excited to have the lab up and running,” Palacios said during the interview. “We just need more students. So, if they’re interested, you know, let me know.”

In an interview with The Rider last Thursday, art junior Kiona Brooks said she is happy there is a new computer lab in Cortez Hall.

“I don’t have any courses over there, but I did get a chance to go and look,” Brooks said. “And I was actually really happy to see that the director was helping to put together some of the computers for the course. He was actually under one of the tables, wiring everything together. So it was good. I got to see some of my other friends and my other classmates working together over there.”

The art junior said she is “looking forward” to better conditions for students in the School of Art and Design.

“Anything that’s going to help with getting better conditions is always going to be a plus,” Brooks said. “… Even if I graduate before [a new building] gets finished, I’ll still be happy about it, because at least the next few semesters of students will actually be able to work in better conditions.”

Art graduate student Kimberly Sandoval said she spends Tuesday through Friday in Rusteberg Hall, which UTRGV also leases from Texas Southmost College, and travels to the Visual Arts Building in Edinburg on Mondays for class.

“[The need for a new space] has been a thing that’s been going on for years and years now,” Sandoval said. “… I’m hoping that we’ll actually get the building by the 2024-2025 academic year, but I won’t get my hopes too far up.”

Pogue said during the meeting that the proposal is for a 48,840-square-foot building, roughly twice the size of the current home to visual art classes in Brownsville, Rusteberg Hall. He added that the proposed budget for the facility is about $30 million.

“[We would] be getting a building that is twice the size of the current facility that we’re leasing,” Pogue said during the interview while explaining the building might be shared with other schools if art and design classes do not fill the entire space. “Therefore, in order to maintain our presence solely within the new art building, over the next several years, we will need to increase our enrollment.”

Plans to increase enrollment in Brownsville include recruitment strategies that focus on “engagement with the area high schools,” he said.

 “It’s really exciting … this possibility,” Pogue said. “We believe and we hope that the [University of Texas System] Board of Regents will approve the request and then we can move forward in our planning at that point.”

He said Jeffrey Ward, dean of the College of Fine Arts, is working on the proposal. The Rider reached out to Ward for details and scheduled an interview for Tuesday.