08/26/2014 Alejandro Almanza Pereda
Alejandro Almanza Pereda has developed an international reputation for the creation of large-scale artworks that often appear to defy the laws of physics. He uses sculptural and architectural techniques to create objects and installations that force the viewer to confront precarious situations, playing upon our reactions to danger and uncertainty.
09/18/2014 Gaspar Enriquez Airbrushing Studio Workshop
Gaspar Enriquez offered a studio workshop on the technique of airbrushing. Enriquez was born and raised in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio Neighborhood, as were many of the subjects reflected in his work. Enriquez has been included in numerous exhibitions, including the nationally touring CARA-Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation 1965-1985 and Chicano Visions, which was curated from Cheech Marin’s private collection. In describing one of his works, Enriquez said, “one is born a Mexican-American, but one chooses to be a Chicano,” which reflects a lifestyle that will continue to endure and reflect generations to come.
09/25/2014 Rachelle Theiwes Something Gleams: A Conversation with The Artist
Rachelle Thiewes is an internationally renowned metalsmith and jewelry artist who celebrates her work in the context of the beautiful desert landscape that has informed her decades-long study of light, movement, order and chaos. In this gallery talk, Thiewes walked the viewers through her exhibition, Something Gleams, and discussed her process in regard to her metalsmithing practices, showing the viewers the models, metals and the tools that inspire the pieces exhibited. In May of 2014, Thiewes completed 37 years of teaching in the UTEP Department of Art, where she has provided both artistic and educational leadership to a generation of artists while becoming an international leader in the field of metalsmithing. Thiewes’ art is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Museums of Scotland, Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museum of Arts & Design, among others.
10/14/2014 Trawick Bouscaren
Tra Bouscaren is a post-disciplinary artist, university lecturer, and freelance curator. Bouscaren’s studio is a mixed-media recycling factory where he creates and then destroys physical and digital artifacts down into abstracted fragments, only then to re-mix those remains into the next generation of artworks. This progressive, anti-precious, and auto-cannibalistic approach builds his own artistic history back into the found material with which he works towards a post-dialectical end-game. Featured in more than 60 exhibitions in Europe and America, his work has been shown at venues including the Lincoln Center in New York, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia,, Hallwalls in Buffalo, The Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, the Maud Piquion & Partner Galleries in Berlin and Weimar, Victor I Fils Gallery in Madrid, and the Centre Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona. Bouscaren is currently the Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Art at the University of Texas, El Paso.
10/23/2014 Fausto Fernandez on Risks, Rewards and the Artist’s Integrity
El Paso native Fausto Fernandez is a mixed media collage artist living and working in Los Angeles, California, whose works include a variety of paintings, public art, and community engagement projects, through which he explores the relationship of nature and technology as they intersect with human behavior. Fernandez’s work has been selected for exhibitions at the Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, California; McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio; Akron Museum in Ohio; Mesa Contemporary Arts at Arizona’s Mesa Arts Center; Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona; Smithsonian’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York; and Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Public art works produced by Fausto Fernandez include the production site-specific artwork at the Scottsdale waterfront in Arizona; the terrazzo floor design at the Sky Train Station in the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport; and a community arts project in San Pedro at the Center for the Main Gallery.Fausto Fernandez is currently the artist-in-residence at the Border Art Residency in La Union, New Mexico.
11/11/2014 Roya Mansourkhani
Roya Mansoukhani was born and raised in Iran. In 1979, when Mansoukhani was 12 years old, the Iranian Revolution began. Mansourkhani’s generation witnessed many tragic changes toward dictatorship, endured war against Iraq, and came to understand lack of freedom and many laws created against women. Due to these circumstances, her family immigrated to U.S in 2003. Finding herself myself in a different world with a lot of opportunities and freedom, she returned to school and earned my Master of Arts degree in painting from New Mexico State University in 2013, while also maintaining a part-time lecturer position at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her first paintings and drawings series were a collection of the beauty of her land, Iran. Then, she began to turn her attention to injustice, discrimination, and inequality against Iranians, especially Iranian women under control of Islamism, in Iran as well as other Islamist countires. Her work is intimately linked to her identity as a Muslim woman who has lived in Iran and is living in the United States now. Mansourkhani is currently the Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Art at the University of Texas, El Paso.