UTSA art showcase provides poignant look at pandemic’s toll
In a moving art showcase, students at the University of Texas at San Antonio articulated the inconceivable toll the pandemic has taken on their experience of young adulthood.
The academic and social lives of teens and 20-somethings have suffered as a result of mass school cancellations and closures. In many cases, campuses were deserted, extracurricular activities were suspended and classes took place on Zoom or Microsoft Teams rather than in a room fogged with chalk dust and lined with shelves of old textbooks.
“I think, academically, it’s really affected my life,” said Bleah Patterson, a UTSA senior creative writing major. “You know, I was just talking to a professor the other day, and I started crying. And I was like, ‘I’m not the same person I was before COVID.’ Like, I’m not the same kind of student. And everything feels so much harder and heavier than it did before.”
Titled “Defining Moments,” the showcase represented a collaboration between dozens of the school’s budding historians, writers, musicians, artists, dancers and architects.
It started with history majors writing reflections on the significance of the current moment. Then, English majors penned poems and essays based on the reflections.
After that, music composition majors composed music, and art majors created pieces inspired by the poems and essays. Dance majors developed choreography influenced by the reflections, poems, essays, musical compositions and artworks. Finally, architecture majors designed a physical exhibition space for all of the creations.
The fruits of their labor were revealed in an extended performance at the Buena Vista Theater downtown. Using words, images, sounds and movements, students gave voice to the grief that follows in the wake of foiled plans, missed chances and the enormous gulf between what could have been and what was.
Third in line to take the stage was Patterson. In her poem, “Persistent Hope,” which compared the pandemic to a traffic accident, Patterson revealed her
ex-boyfriend died of COVID-19 in the summer of 2020.
“This disease has stolen so much/from so many/ like a car crash while we’re looking at our phones/in the passenger seat/this disease is a drunk driver going 100 miles per hour/into oncoming traffic,/they were too young to die,” go the first two stanzas. She was so affected by his death, she left school for a while.
“It really didn’t hit me until I was halfway through fall semester (2020), and then I dropped out,” Patterson said. “So I actually was gone for a year, and I just came back this semester.”
Senior art major Itzel Vilches chose to express herself visually. She has a concentration in printmaking and minors in business and art history. Her multiblock print “Disinfect” of stark reds and blues depicts Covid-19-related objects
and concepts such as a face mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer.
Its centerpiece is a woman clutching a human heart and a cellphone in gloved hands, her expression as solemn as that of a medieval Madonna. In the background, a coronavirus particle, sides studded with the spike proteins that enable it to invade human cells, hovers like a menacing blimp.
The piece served as the cover of the event program.
“The color choice was
actually one of my most important focus(es) when making the piece because that medical blue was everywhere during 2020 … It’s in the gloves. It’s in the masks. It’s everywhere, and so I really, really wanted to get that blue down,” Vilches said. “And then, also, the red was very important because the pieces are really about a state of (alarm) and anxiety and a lot of tension.”
Like Patterson, Vilches also witnessed the virus infect her nearest and dearest. Both her sister and parents contracted COVID-19 around New Year’s, though all have recovered.
“They grew pretty ill. None of them had to go to the hospital, thankfully, but it was scary to see them struggle breathing,” Vilches said.
Still, the onslaught of deaths affected her life and work in other, peripheral ways.
Toward the end of the holiday season, Vilches takes commissions to make “a little extra money” on the side. This year, someone reached out with a weighty request: Could Vilches draw a portrait of a family member who died of COVID-19?
Vilches accepted, knowing she had been tasked with not only crafting an accurate visual representation of the deceased, but also “creating this memory” for the commissioner.
“I had never seen the power of my art before like that … It really made me
value the skill that I have and what I can use it for,” she said, adding, “It was a great reminder of why I do this.”
Fittingly, UTSA partnered with UT Health San Antonio to offer free COVID-19 vaccine shots at the College of Liberal and Fine Arts event.
Both Patterson and Vilches indicated the “Defining Moments” experience was positive and affirming. The cascade format represented an innovative way to develop and maintain connections even in the midst of the pandemic because it fostered a sense of solidarity. By engaging with one another’s innermost thoughts and feelings in the form of creative work, the students involved realized they were not alone in battling fear, sorrow, anxiety and everything in between.
“I think it’s a big deal because it creates a community. It creates a community of people who are affected,” Patterson said.
She often feels like she is expected to put on a brave face in professional settings. Suck it up. Tough it out.
“I work in the service industry, and they definitely don’t want you to be affected by it because business has to go on,” Patterson said. “So it’s nice to have a community of people who are saying, ‘No, this happened. It’s real. We’re all going to feel it together.’”
She hopes to continue her study of poetry by pursuing her master’s degree in fine arts this coming fall.