Chelsea Zhao
Staff Writer
O’Connor Art Gallery at DU exhibited art works and awarded prizes at the annual opening reception and awards ceremony on March 30.
The gallery features the work of 32 students and 13 art mediums including acrylic, etching, woodblock print, charcoal, photography, fashion garments, etc.
“This is amazing, the entire show; all the students are incredibly talented and each person has their own specific theme as well as their own artistic ability,” said Ezmeralda Lopez, who attended the ceremony.
A total of eight categories were selected for the exhibit with one winner each.
Gina Miraglia’s Untitled (2022) won the Ceramics category. Ximena Castillo’s Spirituality (2021) won the Design/Illustration category. Emily Reynoso Munoz’s 2 Women at Rest (2022) won the drawing and Best of Show category, Patyjazmin Ruiz’s Rocco Rebelle (2021) won the fashion category; Cesar Torres’ Beware Imminent Father (2022) won the Painting category; Celeste Morales’ Untitled No. 2 from the series Dressed in Noir (2021) won the Photography category and Salma Jimenez’s El Jarabe Tapatio (2021) won the printmaking category.
“I’ve always found it really hard to do laying poses, and it was especially a challenge because it’s one of my first times doing a big ink drawing, so it was a little bit tedious, but it was worth it in the end; I really like how it turned out,” Munoz commented on her work. She did the drawing for a DU art class and the process took around 30 minutes.
“My series is autobiographical, so I’m kind of talking about my experience of being a father, and being a laborer and at the same time being an artist,” Cesar Torres commented on Beware Imminent Father. “So I tried to convey those three things and combine them into one and try to use elements from my work.”
Torres found the metal fence from a job site and painted the portrait of a man with head of a gorilla with oil paint.
“I work labor, so labor usually work a long time, usually you get the sense of being dehumanized by the tough labor, that’s why, instead of being a man, it’s just going back into being a gorilla, being an ape, and the posture, I just referenced to some of the renaissance and religious paintings,” Torres said.
Jimenez’s woodblock piece El Jarabe Tapatio drew inspiration from the dance of the same name. She seeks to capture the spirit of Hispanic Heritage Month and her cultural identity. The whole carving process took her a month and she meticulously lined the paper and ink during her art class.
The Dean of Rosary College of Arts and Sciences Chad Rohman picked Jimenez’s El Jarabe Tapatio as his Purchas Purchase? Prize.
“It [the prize] still feels surreal to me, but at the same time I feel happy that I can share my artwork and it’s also part of my culture, so I’m glad everyone else can see it as well and contemplate it,” Jimenez said.
All the artworks submitted went through a two-tiered process: a panel of faculty from the department of Art and Design selected the entries and a guest juror judged the work.
Cydney M. Lewis, an artist, educator and co-director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago gallery, judged the works of 2022 submissions, according to Gallery Director Karen Azarnia. Lewis is the 2021 recipient of Make a Wave and had exhibits both nationally and internationally.
