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SAN ANTONIO 2012

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This book has been published in conjunction with the juried exhibiton, New Art/Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2012, UTSA Art Gallery, The University of Texas at San Antonio.

Department of Art and Art History, One UTSA Circle, San Antonio, Texas 78249http://art.utsa.edu

Juror: Kate BonansingaGallery Director: Scott A. Sherer, PhD

Photography: Courtesy of the artistsDesign: Cornelia W. Swann

© 2012 UTSA Art GalleryThe University of Texas at San AntonioAll rights reserved.

Copyright of all artwork depicted remains with the artists.

This exhibition is sponsored in part by Texas Commission on the Arts (Arts Create Grant); Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation of 1992; President Ricardo Romo and Dr. Harriett Romo; Dean Dan Gelo, College of Liberal and Fine Arts and Professor Gregory Elliott, Chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

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TABLE OF CONTENTSSTATEMENTS

Ricardo Romo, University President pg. 3

Kate Bonansinga, Juror pg.4

Gregory Elliott, Department Chair pg.5

Scott Sherer, Gallery Director pg.6

ARTISTS

Ricky Armendariz pg. 8, 28

Jill Bedgood pg. 9, 28

Angela Carbone pg. 10, 29

Sarah Castillo pg. 11, 29

Rodolfo Choperena pg. 12, 29

Madison Cowles pg. 13, 30

Francisco Delgado pg. 14, 30

Rebecca Dietz pg. 15, 30

Leslee Fraser pg. 16, 31

Michael Anthony García pg. 17, 31

Raul Gonzalez pg. 18, 31

Julia Barbosa Landois pg. 19, 32

Marilyn Lanfear pg. 20, 32

Benjamin H. McVey pg. 21, 32

Juan de Dios Mora pg. 22, 33

Lindsay Palmer pg. 23, 33

Efraín Salinas pg. 24, 34

Kasey Short pg. 25, 34

Lana Waldrep pg. 26, 34

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The arts possess enormous potential to bridge diverse aspects of human experience. Artists consider the relationships between cultural histories and personal stories, they reflect upon historic trajectories in present circumstances, and they connect local situations with global endeavors. Their works may offer new interpretations and criticism or suggest practical applications. In a climate that emphasizes continuous drive for excellence, artists transform concepts, situations, materials and technologies in their creative projects.

New Art/Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2012 brings together a range of emerging and established artists. Figurative imagery suggests the possibility of identification in and across locations. We may find familiar some objects and scenes from domestic interiors, and we may have our attention drawn to elements and experiences that shape public spaces. The detail of a scrap of fabric, a weathered piece of wood, or a fragment of an iconic element of pop culture, whether actual or in an artist’s rendering, suggests a full range of thoughts that bridge unique viewpoints to common grounds. Abstract and conceptual works challenge the viewer to consider a range of critical languages and aesthetic potential. The diversity in this exhibition is testament to the vitality of our region in contemporary global conversation.

RICARDO ROMO President, The University of Texas at San Antonio

PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT

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CURATOR’S STATEMENT

The juried art exhibition is centuries old, established in Europe in the eighteenth century, around the time when democracies unseated monarchies and royal patronage for art diminished. Today in the U.S. many visual art venues host annual or biennial juried exhibitions. They are more egalitarian than curated exhibitions: anyone can choose to compete. The only requirement to be considered for New Art/Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2012 is a relationship to South and West Texas. Ideally each artwork is judged for its quality, innovativeness and message, rather than for the artist’s reputation and connections. As I juried this exhibition I aspired to this standard.

But human judgment is subjective. I brought education, knowledge, and experience to the jurying process, but also personal taste. As I considered each image I contextualized it in my own mind with other historical and contemporary art. I took into account its execution. Was it excellent or only proficient? I thought about its style. Was it pioneering or merely novel or repetitive? Was its subject matter worthy? Were the ideas it conveyed compelling? The answers to these questions guided my decisions.

After I made my choices I considered the exhibition space. I did not eliminate an artwork deserving of exhibition because of large scale or complex format or demanding installation requirements. But I also did not want to disrespect or diminish the impact of a work because the space would not serve it well. In the end, the art that I was most committed to honoring is exhibited here. My thanks go to Gregory Elliott, Scott Sherer and Laura Crist for inviting me to serve as juror and for accommodating my recommendations for how and where to place each piece in the gallery. My goal was to create a positive and memorable experience for the viewer of this selection of artwork produced by a few of the many talented artists who live in this region.

KATE BONANSINGADirector, School of Art, College of Design, Art, Architecture and PlanningUniversity of Cincinnati

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CHAIR’S STATEMENT

It’s exciting to realize that we are in the third cycle of this biennial project and are able to attract unique entries from an impressive range of emerging and established artists.

Diverse submissions for juried exhibitions create a difficult but rewarding job, and I am especially pleased that Kate Bonansinga agreed to serve as juror. (From 2004-2012, Kate was Director, Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.) Always, her insights into both the histories and new directions of contemporary art bridge conceptual, critical, and aesthetic dimensions. With the vitality of artistic production in our region, Kate’s thoughtful decisions contribute directly to the production of a powerful exhibition for both artists and viewers.

I would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Scott Sherer, Art Historian and Director of the UTSA Art Gallery, who conceived of this exhibition and continues to remain committed to the project. Laura Crist, Gallery Coordinator for the UTSA Art Gallery, diligently organized all entries, managed details with all of the artists, contributed to the production of this catalogue and exhibition events. Cornelia Swann, Graphic Designer, brought great expertise to advertising, promotion, and catalogue design. John Hooper continues his excellent service as our Gallery Preparator, handling the installation details across all sorts of media.

GREGORY ELLIOTTChair and ProfessorDepartment of Art and Art History

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

New Art/Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2012 offers opportunity for artists to share their current work with a broad audience. They utilize the full breadth of traditional and contemporary materials and methods, and themes range from reflections upon social and cultural topics to investigations of the potential for abstract modes to generate new experiences and reflections. Kate Bonansinga’s work as juror is evidence of how thoroughly she combines the objectives of critic, curator, and educator. She is a dynamic professional and a model for others.

New Art/ Arte Nuevo: San Antonio 2012 is made possible with the generous support from Texas Commission on the Arts; Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation of 1992; President Ricardo Romo and Dr. Harriett Romo; Dean Dan Gelo of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts; and Professor Gregory Elliott, Chair of the Department of Art and Art History.

From careful and creative attention to the “big picture” as well as individual details, the hard work of Laura Crist, Cornelia Swann, and John Hooper have made this exhibition possible.

SCOTT SHERERGallery Director and Associate ProfessorDepartment of Art and Art History

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ARTISTS

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Curandera III Oil and acrylic on carvedbirch plywood24” x 32”2012

RICKY ARMENDARIZ

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Rocker & CradleSawdust drawing on floor,wood templates on wall48”x 30”, 28”x 31”2009

JILL BEDGOOD

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Stars and Stripes Slip cast earthenware ceramics7’x 5’x 3”2011

ANGELA CARBONE

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Self Portrait DuringDigital print16” x 20” 2012

SARAH CASTILLO

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Untitled, from the L & R SeriesPhotography C-print on metallic paper and plexi12” x 24”2012

RODOLFO CHOPERENA

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DefianceAcrylic on canvas48” x 60” 2012

MADISON COWLES

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Se encabronaron los lagartosColored pencil and oil on canvas4’ x 6’2011

FRANCISCO DELGADO

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Thrill SeekersSilver gelatin photograph15” x 15”2011

REBECCA DIETZ

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It’s Nothing Sculptural assemblage, found and procured glass objects24” x 8”x 10.5”2010

LESLEE FRASER

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RemoteMixed media3’x 4’x 7’2010

MICHAEL ANTHONY GARCÍA

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Pulparindo WrapperAcryilc on canvas32”x 48”x10”2011

RAUL GONZALEZ

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Leche de BurraAcrylic, silkscreen, collage on paper38”x 25”2010

JULIA BARBOSA LANDOIS

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The Chair in the Smoke HouseFound objects (wood)20”x 35”x 20”2011

MARILYN LANFEAR

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Trust to be Uncertain:Desire to be Content Oil on canvas and steel31”x 24”x 3.25” (paintings) 15.5”x 30.5”x 35” (chair)2012

BENJAMIN H. MCVEY

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De Brinquito a Brinquito Hago Me CaminitoLinocut38”x 24”2010

JUAN DE DIOS MORA

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De Brinquito a Brinquito Hago Me CaminitoLinocut38”x 24”2010

Mistaking Beauty for Truth: Mexico/USFabric and wood12’ x 6’x 1’2011

LINDSAY PALMER

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Generation 2000 Inkjet print18” x 10.69”2011

EFRAÍN SALINAS

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Shots I never bank on Part 2 Photograph36”x 24”2012

KASEY SHORT

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BallOil on canvas48”x 72”2011

LANA WALDREP

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ARTIST STATEMENTS

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RICKY ARMENDARIZ Armendariz was raised in El Paso, Texas, which borders Las Cruces, New Mexico and Juárez, Mexico. There he was surrounded by a mix of romanticism for the American landscape and the hybridization of Mexican, American, and indigenous cultures. Images that have cultural, biographical, and art historical references are carved and burned into the surface of the paintings and drawings.

Ricky Armendariz’s new work depicts narco-culture, faith healers and poisonous love set against a western sky. This is a continued exploration of forces shaping the landscape between the US and Mexico Border. Romanticism for the Western landscape, Hybridization of Mexican, American and Indigenous cultures have long been part of Armendariz’s work. Images that have cultural, biographical and art historical lineage are carved and burned into the surfaces of the paintings/drawings. Mysticism, as well as the nefarious aftermath of narco-activities, are explored in his work.

JILL BEDGOODRocker and Cradle reference our physicality, embodying the ephemeral nature of our existence.

”A flock of sheep near the airportor a high voltage generator beside the orchard:

these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it.That’s why my feelings always come in twos.”

–Yehuda Amichai, poet, translated by Chana Block & Stephen Mitchell

Unresolved issues continue to confront humankind. The ethical compass is not fixed but fluctuates due to society’s understanding or misinterpretation of information. Knowledge evolves; truth is unreliable; dichotomies persevere. Perspectives fluctuate due to media presentation, politics, race, economics, religion, culture, location, age, gender, and one’s life as it is lived through time and experience.

We share the cyclical nature of human experience and memory -- the emotional and the intellectual to provide a poetically whole expression of human life. Dualities persist. Austerity and excess, minimalism and obsession, reason and passion, renaissance and baroque, physicality and consciousness interconnect to create the mysterious enigmatic equilibrium of existence.

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ANGELA CARBONELife in the 21st century involves regular exposure to controversial cultural, social and economic issues. Every day we are bombarded with imagery of war, perspectives on finances, beliefs on religion and politics. These ideas are manipulated to be visually stimulating and compelling. They are juxtaposed with bright bold colors, different symbols and pop-culture imagery persisting to capture our attention. Processing this information can be overwhelming, masking the problems and creating a sense of disillusionment.

Currently, inspired by this disillusionment, my artwork focuses on a survey of American culture. The artwork originates when cultural symbols, fundamental design elements, and ceramic objects are fused together. The artwork is my response to cultural, social and economic issues we are facing. The striking, decorative quality of the work contrasts the awareness of the objects and symbols. Through the use of multiple ceramic objects a layered dialogue confronts these ideas. I hope to bring a sense of awareness to the viewer, pushing the disillusionment to the extreme.

SARAH CASTILLOSelf Portraits Before, During and After depict the challenges of adaptation and flexibility in the social environment.

I am an interdisciplinary artist. I occupy multiple practices to translate the intricate discoveries of identity as a third generation Mexican-American, Tejana, and Chicana. My interests lie in architecture, interior design, fashion, costume, holistic medicine, Feminist Theories and Cultural Studies; all extensions of my body that relate to mental health and self-actualization. These extensions replicate the layers of my story, accumulated in the mind and physical body.

R O D O L F O C H O P E R E N AMy work is “abstracted” photography: representational but complicated by the obscuring and absenting of the subject. By inducing movement and the manipulation of light sources, I provoke a figurative tableau towards transforming into abstraction. Every shot, every video is the evidence of a performance, with the acts of montage and manipulation performed in-camera. Movement is the primary performative act. By manipulating the camera’s placement, aperture and exposure settings in relation to color fields, landscapes, light sources, precipitation and seascapes, my work pushes the boundaries of perception to create organic and lyrical freeforms. Resulting images retain their pure chroma. Each is a reinterpretation of the original subject, containing striations that move in varying intervals and rhythms, alternately compressing and expanding positive and negative space. However abstracted a composition may be, a firm representational vantage points plays host to personal objects and scenario manipulations, making each image a direct reflection of my ever-changing environment.

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FRANCISCO DELGADOBorder Artist, Francisco Delgado, believes in making visible the struggles of Immigrant Communities in the United States and with the same passion also celebrates their successes. With his characteristic satire and black humor, his art works reflect the culture of the United Sates and Mexico Border. His message transcends race and social class perimeters and unites under-represented communities in a language of universal truth.

Francisco was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and resides in El Paso, Texas where he has been a long time resident. Francisco is part of a United States and Mexican subculture of “Bordeño” residents for whom everyday life often depends on relations in both countries. The daily round of interactions dictate the concepts rendered in his artwork.

REBECCA DIETZMy photographic work explores the carnival and mystical. I search for scenes where time is displaced, through strange juxtapositions, unnatural light or locations on the fringes of our society where the world breaks apart and dreaming begins anew. There is a sense of wonder and nostalgia in these works. The memories are and are not my own.

After six years in San Antonio, I returned to the East Coast to explore the boardwalk amusement parks along the Mid-Atlantic coast. These fairgrounds were a staple of my youth: family vacations and teen-age rites of passage. I have explored these areas in the past, in my work. But now, from my distant and land-locked new home, their location on the edge of the sea was intoxicating. As I witnessed the parks and rides, they seemed triumphant in their history and decay. They danced, vibrated, on the edge of the earth, where land yields to sea, the last area uncharted by roads and urban development. The proximity to the sea was dangerous and welcoming; a mother and a monster. The salt air charged the experience, even as it eroded the steel and structures.

This series, still in progress, was photographed with cameras as old as some of the rides, developed in the darkroom with technology of a similar age to the parks and my own history with them. My intention is to allow this series to develop over time, as my travels take me from the east coast to Texas hill country. In the process, the precious influence of water, from salt air to fresh water streams has permeated my vision.

MADISON COWLES My artwork explores the relationship between a figurative subject and their psychological state. This is often represented by repeating fragments of the individuals features, depicting the figure multiple times and creating a dialog between them, isolating them in a void, or sometimes by the addition of an out of place and meaningful object. The relationships depicted create themes such as defiance, sexuality, or the breaking down of one’s emotional or mental state. My art takes one’s personal, inner conflicts and gives them a physical presence. I explore these ideas through painting, printmaking, and drawing.

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LESLEE FRASERMy work is funny, often dark, and sometimes poignant. I like to use objects and imagery from the everyday in order to speak about, and find meaning in human (my own) existence beyond the everyday. Natural and political histories, stories from Christendom, and concepts in the field of ecology inform the content of my work. My iconography comes from the domestic, is sometimes kitsch, and seems particularly suburban. I collect, arrange, and/or alter familiar objects creating allegorical tableaus that illustrate emotional and moral ambiguities.

The way I work; mining junk stores and antique shops, scouring malls and the internet, lends an ever-present conceptual underpinning of American consumerism to my assemblages. A broad critique of consumption does not interest me. I believe however, the “ready made” quality of my work helps me sell my own personal propaganda; which is often some variation of how we spend our lives trying to find some absurd balance between evolution and entropy.

MICHAEL ANTHONY GARCÍAThis collection of images consists of recently created large works that quietly discuss the spaces between the physical and spiritual. They examine moments and relationships and the forces behind them. These pieces are larger in scale to my pervious work but are still deeply personal examinations of my connections to the people and the world around me. From where do we draw our essence, our memories and our drive? The works are sculptural and installation in form, often drawing from the architecture around them.

RAUL GONZALEZThe pieces I have submitted are part of my series called The Candy ShopThe idea behind this body of work is to comment on the effect of Latin American culture in our society as well as pay tribute to the Pop Art movement of the early 60s. My work takes notes from Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup paintings and Claes Oldenberg sculptures but takes another step towards nostalgia.

The candies represented depicted in my artwork bring back memories from my childhood. Growing up as a second generation Latino, a lot of my Mexican culture has been replaced by American ways of living. As I grew up, some of those memories or tendencies of indulging myself in Latin American culture were lost. Now that I’m older, I enjoy looking back and reminding myself where I came from. And as I move forward, I hope to instill ideas of Latin American culture onto those that surround me.

The Candy Shop is about being a child, going to Fiesta with my mom and wanting to try all the Mexican candies in the store. It’s about taking family road trips to Mexico and eating the candy that is sold at the border. It’s about putting the spotlight on Latino pop culture and reminding oneself to not lose touch with your roots.

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JULIA BARBOSA LANDOISI am a performance, installation, and video artist based in San Antonio, Texas. My work examines ritual, the body, unspoken violence, and the quest for literal and metaphorical cleanliness, all with a feminist subtext.

I was born and raised in San Antonio, left for graduate school and world travel, then fell in love with a Texas transplant and set roots once again in my home soil. The work I submitted to New Art/Arte Nuevo began with stories I heard about Nuevo Laredo’s Boy’s Town while growing up in South Texas. Several generations of men in my life had been there, and I turned accounts of their experiences into a multimedia performance and installation project called Culo de Oro/The Golden Ass. My submissions are part of this body of work.

MARILYN LANFEARI am a visual storyteller who translates personal family stories into a common mythology of family generational connections.

I use wood, stone, paper, buttons, paint – the concept determines the media. I use objects of material culture - cast iron beds, cook tables, cotton gin weights.I use words - embroidered on towels, burned into chairs, stenciled on window shades.

I use whatever is needed to tell my story.

Subtle elements like the pattern of wallpaper, the use of traditional milk paint, or folded clothes rendered in stone, load the images with irony and symbolism not repeated in the oral tradition. I am a visual storyteller.

Narrative is the moving force of my visual language with the history of my Texas family as the core.

BENJAMIN H. MCVEYMy work is a permutation of painting, writing, sculpture, and video, finding con-nections through the relationships that occur between the different mediums, and also between the viewer and how they relate to the work. Though the sculptural/text and video are separate bodies of work, they share a common thread of minimalistic structure and process. The videos, Three Views of Modern Movement and POV, are an exploration of mundane, everyday occurrences, and elevating them through simple changes in perspective. Influenced by traditional landscape paintings, I try to give them that same breadth that allows the viewer to enter the work. The sculptural/text work, Choose to be Indifferent : Determine to be Present and Trust to be Uncertain : Desire to be Content, explores structure and relation-ships through language and architectural elements to create an inner debate or conversation with the viewer. The “chair-like objects” act as three-dimensional drawings and stand-ins for the figure as they react and communicate with figurative gestures to the text.

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JUAN DE DIOS MORAI portray characters interacting with devices and vehicles that could hope to make their journey more pleasurable and accessible, using a surrealistic ap-proach. These devices are customized for a purpose, giving a sense that the de-vice will fall apart. The structure and mechanism of the devices are made from various objects, which are portrayed as fancy and useful. The customizations of these devices are composed of hybrid cultures of the Mexican-American border. The devices will be decorated with traditional imagery, food, objects, materials, banners with sayings, etc.

The customized devices’ structure will portray a perception of ramshackle, decked out or shabby appearance. These devices are created to facilitate the daily life, duties, responsibilities, obligations, and entertaining events of the operators. The devices show the ingenuity and capability of the characters and their will to survive. The intention is to make a social comment on a culture that frequently has to rely on their surroundings to survive. Furthermore, the goal is to portray the symbolism of these devices, which means a lot to each character. Above all, the devices portray the freedom, hope and style of the crafty owners, which will last forever.

LINDSAY PALMERMuch of what I have made recently is predicated on the idea of change, whether it be a push for change or a recoiling against it. I am fascinated with maps, landscapes, cityscapes and futurescapes for this reason. Our changing world can be most easily seen in the structures and environments that we surround our selves with. I am interested in world building and re-world building. When I am building I always seek to create a hybrid. Hybrid worlds, hybrid identities, and hybrid aesthetics. These hybrids represent the diversity of the world around us and how it is constantly shifting. As the world changes, we work with what we are given, finding ways to survive within a new narrative. It is inevitably about time, and the evolution of these systems, structures, and beliefs.

I see gender and identity as another organizational structure that is constantly evolving. The way we structure our understanding of our world is surprisingly similar to the way we have structured our understanding of ourselves. The configuration of maps, for example, mirrors the way that we have divided up our human bodies. The process of understanding is the main function of maps. Much as gender does to the human body, contemporary maps have taken what for centuries humans were only able to speculate over, and turned it into an easily accessible grid of knowable symbols and signifiers. This grid becomes sedimented into experience, assumed to be a map of reality rather than an arbitrary representation.

These structures and our changing belief in them point out the ways in which truth is merely what we agree it to be. Therefore truth as well evolves. The way we identify and classify our human bodies evolve, our modes of survival change and adapt, and plants now grow out of sidewalks and onto abandoned pay phones. The truth is always changing because it is a hybrid of what we see and what we believe.

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KASEY SHORTShots I never banked on is a series of work that developed because of my interest in how decayed surfaces and structures become integral in urban society. In effort to idealize the machine reproduction, this work shows the intrinsic value of urban decay.

For this piece, I used an aged basketball goal attached to a church in Johnson, Vermont. The goal no longer had a function so I de-installed it and decided to rebuild a new and functional basketball goal. After failing to reproduce the perfect reproduction of a basketball goal, I discovered that as long as the goal was utilitarian, than it would be a success.

LANA WALDREPI use painting to transform the ignorable into icons, monuments, and objects of wonder. Bicycle racks, empty signage, hunks of cement, and the orange balls used to detract pilots from flying into high tension wires are the stuff of peripheral vision. They blur into background as they are driven by or walked past. They are rendered invisible through their ubiquity. Viewers make encounters with the ordinary without the aid of context to assign it its ordinariness. The restraint and editing of contextual information creates compositions that are often ambiguous, thus demanding further investigation. Attention and priority are given to the formal aspects of the environments portrayed—their physicality, tactility, and color—over their functions. This diminished emphasis on essentiality leaves room for speculation. Subtle exaggerations of color serve to reinstate curiosity. A passage of highlighter green situates a haphazard stack of wooden palettes somewhere between the unreal and the hyper-real. Likewise, smooth gradations of color and moments of painterly experimentation exist on one canvas asking viewers to question early assumptions. Pulling objects from the periphery and placing them in the center functions as an act of confrontation. Objects that are typically seen only incidentally and rarely looked at actively are placed on a large scale and set against an infinite sky to question the familiarity of the familiar.

EFRAÍN SALINASMy inclination for social and political change began during my teenage years. During high school, I witnessed the student movements of 1968-1973 in México. Now, I am a witness of the present of the new millennium, the instant. There is a hunger for real democracy, justice, and human rights in developing countries, and here, in the United States of America. My work invites the viewer to reflect on social and political issues in the United States and its border with México. This street photography focuses on the generations of the new millennium, engaging an interrogation and a discourse regarding the issues they will face.

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SAN ANTONIO 2012