More than 30 art pieces are being displayed for the first senior exhibition of the semester in the Art Gallery at Rusteberg Hall on the Brownsville campus.
Titled “Senior Show 1: Diferencias Colectivas,” it features the work of art seniors Jesse Burciaga, Leslie K. Yoste-Diaz and Eliana Araujo.
“It’s like four years of hard work and pain and tears, and so, I think it’s really a joy for me to see the work up on the walls,” Gallery Coordinator Alejandro Macias said. “It is rewarding for me as a professor to see them progress and mature, but I really want other students outside of the art program to see what they do.”
The exhibition reflects the different techniques, styles and media used by the students.
“My pieces all have the same imagery,” Burciaga said. “But what I did, I used different techniques for my pieces. I use figure, which is [of] a guy that I know. I use the carta Española, dos de bastos.”
Burciaga’s pieces are part of his series, “Chingonadas,” and they are colorful mixed-media portraits that portray a “macho” in different contemporary looks using passive colors.
“When I use macho figures, I always try to use passive colors to do contrast with the macho figure, pinks and light blues,” he said. “I just wanted to have my traditional person and give them like this contemporary look and background.”
For his series, Burciaga also portrayed a woman, “La Nora,” a mixed-media-on-wood panel, using bright colors such as purple, yellow and a turquoise background.
“It is just a series of local people from Brownsville, downtown,” he said. “It is more about creating their greater-than-life characters.”
Yoste-Diaz used linocut, digital photography and ceramic to create her works.
“My pieces are all about the campus, the trees and the nature that we see on campus,” she said. “The hummingbirds, the dragonflies and all the flora and the fauna of the campus.”
Her untitled linocuts and digital photographs portray a black-and-white flora and fauna, such as palm trees and a dead fish.
“My prints are black-and-white photographs,” Yoste-Diaz said. “My ceramics are handmade ceramics. Each piece was different, so what I did first was to take photographs and then I worked my ceramic pieces off the photographs and then I made a linocut.”
The pieces include a ceramic fish that has been ripped open and carries little fish in its belly.
“I just like nature. I love being outside,” she said.
Araujo created a mixed-media series titled, “Digital Desserts (1st Edition),” and it consists of drawings of floppy disks, a vintage watch, a telephone and a vintage television. All of them are portrayed as desserts with scoops of ice cream, syrup or colorful ice cubes.
“One thing that really kinda stands out to me is her consistency and how her digital work is extremely well-done,” Macias said. “I think she is actually tapping into something that is extremely contemporary in terms of what’s going on with modern devices and putting the fun twist, the pop twist, which is refreshing.”
Graphic design sophomore Jorge Abundiz’s favorite piece was the ceramic cactus Yoste-Diaz created.
“It brings out nature; it looks kinda realistic,” Abundiz said. “The details in the hummingbird and the flower itself brings a more Mexican look to it.”
Abundiz encourages students to attend the senior shows to see what students are doing on campus.
The exhibition will run until Friday. Admission is free.
