The fourth annual Student Art Exhibit was unveiled on the third floor of the M.D. Anderson Library last Friday.
“It displays the incredible talent of our students across the disciplines. We have pieces from physics, biology, engineering and history, among others,” said Dean of Libraries Dana Rooks.
“It grows every year. It’s a way for the libraries to be engaged with our students on a different level of knowledge. We get a lot of credit for the diversity of our student population, but not enough for the diversity of our students’ talents, which can be seen here.”
Paintings of colors, people, ships, Herbie Hancock and drawings of knights and sugar skulls reveal that talent in the show grows each year.
Karesha Brown, the only digital artist and a senior in environmental design, showed visitors at the event the incredible imagery that can be created with the click of a button and a vivid imagination.
“I paint with my mouse. I’ve been doing it since the age of two,” Brown said. “I use Illustrator and Photoshop and no tablet. My piece is about mothers who smoke and how their babies are smoking cigarettes too.”
Not the most comforting image, but certainly one of the more interesting ones, Brown’s piece hands an enormous amount of bright color to depict the sad scene of a futuristic humanoid holding a cigarette in her stomach.
Also from the College of Architecture was Luis Pantilla. A more traditional artist, Pantilla used his brush strokes to create two unique paintings.
“It’s an exploration of how different mediums can be incorporated into architecture to move people,” Pantilla said. “It’s about learning how to do other things and find character in ordinary things.”
“It’s crazy,” said art major Kentra Gilbert, whose work is featured in the exhibit. “I’m doing this all day. I don’t know when computer science majors or engineers have time to make these pieces. It seems like they’d have the busiest schedule.”
“Everything is great,” said two of the jurors at the event, Katherine Veneman from the Blaffer museum and Lucinda Garces of Booker Lowe Gallery. They curated the event and gave juror choice awards to works with which everyone on the jury could connect.
It is very difficult to lay out pieces in a show in a way that makes sense, but at this event it’s actually very interesting how they all work together to create a collective voice, one that comes from individual points of view and works together to create an exhibit that showcases just how diverse UH really is.
The Student Art Exhibit will be on display through April 15 on the third floor of the library.
