Jesmil M. Maldonado Rodriguez confronted her anxiety by creating art, which turned into her passion and profession.
“Shattering Taciturnity,” her MFA Final Exhibition, opened Sept. 5 at the Charles and Dorothy Clark Art Gallery.
Rodriguez is a graduate student pursuing a master’s in fine arts with a concentration in 2-D art. She is originally from Puerto Rico and shows it off. Some of her pieces have Puerto Rican Spanish slang in the artworks’ titles, such as “Tipa,” which means girl. Rodriguez handed out pens with the flag of Puerto Rico during the event.
Taciturn is an adjective describing when someone is reserved or uncommunicative in speech. The exhibition is her way of breaking it.
“‘Shattering Taciturnity’ is my way of breaking the silence that I’ve always kept throughout my life,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve always felt like my situations, my problems and my worries weren’t important enough, so I didn’t talk about them. Throughout my artwork is how I express it, how I let it go.”
Many insects, patterns, colors and designs are repeated in her artwork.
“I use insects because that is a way I give a physical form to my worries, my fears, to all of my emotions,” Rodiguez said. “I couldn’t express them throughout words or even talk about it, so I use insects.”
At first, the patterns were a way for her to control her anxiety, she said. It then turned into an obsession with repetition and patterns. These designs made their way into many of the show’s pieces.
Amaury Lopez, a visual arts senior who attended the exhibit, noticed many of the patterns.
“I like a lot of the patterns and a lot of the color,” Lopez said. “I think it’s pretty neat.”
His favorite art piece is “Los Freekis,” a linocut printed on marbled paper.
“I like the black lines over the colors, the contrast,” Lopez said. “There’s something about the whirly-ness of the colors mixing together.”
Rodriguez said picking her favorite art piece was a difficult choice to make. She believes all of her art pieces have some part of them that makes them her favorite. Rodriguez said her most favorite piece is “Anormal en potencia/Weirdo at Full Capacity” (ink, spray paint and watercolor on paper).
“So far, my favorite would be the ‘Weirdo,’ my self-portrait,” she said. ‘It’s the first time I do a self-portrait, and I put myself, and it’s just me embracing who I am, accepting who I am and that it’s OK to be a weirdo.”
Every artwork at the exhibition is a message that Rodriguez wants the viewer to interpret for themselves.
“Behind the color scheme you can find on a person or on a piece, there is always that little bit of darkness that we don’t know about,” she said. “I also want them to get their own interpretations of things.”
Rodriguez wants attendees to make a connection with the artwork and find some way to relate to it. That’s precisely how graphic design freshman Abril Zepeda felt toward the exhibition.
“I really like it because of the colors and how she represents all these problems in society,” Zepeda said. “It made me relate to the artist.”
“Shattering Taciturnity” will be on display until Oct. 9 at the Charles and Dorothy Clark Art Gallery in Liberal Arts Building South on the Edinburg campus. Admission is free.
“Come by and see it and enjoy it and see a little bit different because I’m not from the [Rio Grande] Valley, I’m from Puerto Rico,” Rodriguez said. “So, I feel it’s a little bit different from what we’re used to seeing.”
For more information, call the School of Art at 665-3480.
