Artwork by Mosaic students going West
S.A. teens’ art shown in California
Students in Blue Star Contemporary’s Mosaic teen art program have been working in their home studios because of the pandemic, but some of their creations are venturing out across the country.
Pieces by the young artists make up “Posterworks,” an exhibit at the Axis Gallery in Sacramento, Calif., exploring such contemporary issues as mask-wearing, racism, inequity and the destruction of the environment.
The exhibit opens Saturday and can be viewed online through Jan. 21 on the Blue Star Contemporary website, bluestarcontemporary.org, and on Axis’ site, axisgallery.org.
The students were invited to show their work in the California gallery after they took a virtual tour of artist Beth Consetta Rubel’s studio last summer. Rubel has tremendous regard for the Mosaic program, which she got to know well during her 2012 internship at Blue Star Contemporary while she was a student at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“I’m always blown away by that program,” Rubel said. “They’re in high school, and by the time they leave that program, their résumé usually looks more impressive than a college student’s — they’re doing exhibits, they’re selling their work.”
Rubel is a member of Axis Gallery, an artist-run space, and had an exhibition slot to show her own work or the work of others in January. She decided she wanted to showcase the Mosaic students’ work.
“It came at a time when our students needed that inspiration, they needed that challenge to motivate and to keep our students engaged in fine arts during a very difficult period of time in their lives,” said Alex Rubio, artist-in-residence for Mosaic who curated the show with Rubel. “They had to adapt to this new normal and adapt to a new situation in their home studios.”
This is the first time the students have shown their work so far from home, Rubio said.
“It’s an amazing opportunity for our students to experience their first exhibit away from San Antonio, our first exhibit out of state, through Mosaic,” he said. “This exhibition serves to build their portfolios as well as introduce them to new communities.”
Works in the show include
Savannah Plaza-flores’ “No Justice for All,” which depicts a tattered, scorched American flag with the words “No Justice for All” written on the stripes in black and scrawled across the front in yellow; Aiden Hobbs’ “Chatter in da Skull,” a poster about mental illness depicting a distressed skeleton with the top of its skull open; and Angelica Kercado Mojica’s “Why Is it Different?” that looks at differing expectations for men and women represented by side-by-side depictions of practical clothing for a schoolboy and a racier ensemble for a schoolgirl.
The pandemic factors into several pieces, including Rachel Kamata’s “It’s Patriotic,” in which an eagle holds a mask in its beak against words spoken by President Donald Trump about COVID-19; and Julian Moreno’s “Wear or Beware,” in which a batlike creature shaped like the virus bearing fangs and a long, green tongue bursts from a blood-red background that includes the poster’s title.
Katalina Rodriguez, a senior at Brackenridge High School, also focused on the pandemic. Her work places the word “PROTECT” in the center, with a mask standing in for the letter “O.” The text stretches across a green, bacterialike spray of images, including the familiar, spiky coronavirus.
“It took awhile for that idea to come to me,” said Rodriguez, 18. “I’d been unsure of what I wanted to do at first, but then the more I thought about what we’re going through, the more I realized that I should do that because it is very important to bring awareness to it even though we’ve been going through the pandemic for almost a year now.”
She’s glad the work can be seen online, even though that isn’t the same as seeing it in person.
“It’s much more personal when you see it in person because you get to see the techniques used and the textures, if there are any, and you can’t necessarily see all of that if it’s online — it’s just a picture of the artwork,” she said. “But I’m glad that online people get to view the artwork. It helps us out a lot.”