The Visions + Echoes art thesis exhibition allowed art seniors to experience and understand their art and passions. It opens from Dec. 9-13 at the TXST Galleries.
According to Deandra Lee, photography senior, the exhibition emphasized the culmination of art they’ve completed and represented the dedication they’ve put forth while at Texas State.
“[This experience] is just [so] valuable,” Lee said. “What it’s like to be at an exhibition, have viewers and members and friends be a part of this community with you and to show and visualize your work is very important [and] heartfelt.”
When thinking of this process, Kamil Guerra, art senior, reflects on the importance of this opportunity for expression.
“It’s [one] of our last big pushes for self-discovery and just exploring our art and values before we go off and graduate,” Guerra said.
As stated by Lee, the beginning of the creative process of cultivating an exhibition like this consists of narrowing down what someone wants to focus on, researching it and then finally acting on the idea. Participants gather ideas to present in the gallery and reflect on how their art evolved.
“Two semesters ago, my style wasn’t even the same, [now for my photos] I like to use artificial lighting and [keep] my work very contemporary,” Guerra said. “I want [it] to reflect my growth and represent these spaces I experienced [as] I go into my twenties.”
Gurerra said the inspiration behind the artists’ work in the exposition could be new or something that stuck with them for a while. Zoe Mendoza, a photography senior, has been doing photography since middle school, focusing on capturing people.
“When I came up with my idea, I love the community we have [in San Marcos], especially the art community,” Mendoza said. “I started bringing my camera with me whenever I was at the markets in The Square, and I started taking pictures of people.”
Mendoza’s photography passion through her encounters influenced her theme for Visions + Echoes, titling her piece “Chance Encounters.” She derived the title from her take on street photography or people she’s encountered and caused her to “look twice.”
“The four [photos] I put up were the pictures that make you look twice,” Mendoza said. “If you’re walking by these people, you might never see them again, but you looked twice, you saw them and you can recognize the other human being around you living a totally different life that you would never know.”
Visions + Echoes holds great significance to its participants as they convey their excitement through the art they put forth. Preparing for the exhibition made them uncover a new way to see their art and their message, and like Lee, influenced a chosen theme for the exhibition.
Lee said she never realized how much she talked about the Black experience and felt disconnected from her work until she looked at her old work for her thesis and “everything clicked.”
“After learning much more about surrealism and Afrofuturism, I’m [looking] back over and [I think], ‘this is what I was doing the entire time,’” Lee said. “I guess you have those moments in your life where you don’t realize what you’ve actually been creating, and in the past, [my] work had more of a dream-like aspect [to it], but now it’s more surreal.”
Visions + Echoes’ process started during the last semester of the students’ junior year. The students come up with ideas and narrow them down, starting the curation of the thesis where a team pulls them together. The experience is open to many art forms such as sculpting, painting and photography.
The exhibition gave these artists ideas to think about as they think of themselves past their thesis. As Visions + Echoes closes this week, the participants hope viewers can experience the meaning of what it is to be an artist.
“I just want them to understand how hard we’ve worked and how far we’ve come, Mendoza said. “Because art is overlooked a lot, and as an art major, I get overlooked when people tell me [that] it’s not that hard.”
For more information on Visions + Echoes and the participating seniors, visit its Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/visionsandechoes/.
