By Tabitha Redder/managing editor
Four NW student artists were given a massive canvas to create a piece of artwork in whichever form they chose.
The Lakeview Gallery’s current exhibition, Drawn to the Wall: Texas Style, is the gallery’s annual competition with a breath of new life. Students submitted models or sketches of their designs in hopes of winning one of the four gallery walls.
“I wanted people to think about what ‘Drawn to the Wall’ means. Does it mean I have to draw on the wall literally?” exhibit curator John Hartley said. “Just something more to think about.”
One of the walls yielded Laura Compton’s “Multiple Identity Order.” Her work was inspired by the Social Identity Complexity Theory, which tries to explain how people’s identities are made up of the social groups they’re a part of.
“Your race, your gender, your religion all overlap in your overall identity, and they all influence each other and change how you react to other people,” Compton said.
Her work is centered around a man’s and a woman’s plain silhouettes symbolizing the individual with colorful silhouettes on the edges of the piece symbolizing their multiple identities.
Compton, who is currently majoring in social work and is in a sociology class, said she enjoys learning different sociology theories.
“The theory is very interesting to me just based on all the social groups you’re a part of, how that changes you, and I think that if you look at it in other people, it could help how you connect with them,” she said. “It’s part of my piece because in the middle, the man and the woman meet and one of their color silhouettes is overlapping with each other.”
Ivan Castro’s “How’s Life” revolves around life’s complexities.
“In life, you don’t really know which direction you’re going toward. It’s undecided,” he said. “I wanted to make something people could relate to. I was really interested in this swirl ripple pattern because I guess I never really knew what I was going to do in the future.”
Though he is enrolled in Design Art right now, Castro said his history in art began long ago.
“I’ve been doing this since I was little,” he said. “I used to like drawing and started off with graffiti.”
Jan Rodgers won another wall creating her mixed media piece “No Bones About It” centered around the idea that life is quick and ends without warning.
“We are kind of raised in an age where we’re taught to be the very best so we can make the most money so we can get the most stuff and the goal is for what? We’re all going down the same path to the same end. Everybody is going to die,” she said.
She emphasizes the need to make life matter and to be less materialistic.
“We’re all going to get there, but what have you done along the way? Did you find a cure for cancer, did you help a blind man see, did you create art, did you fall in love?” she said. “You know, those things that really matter where you’ve made an impact on your life and hopefully the life of someone around you.”
All the paint used in her piece is mixed with black latex paint into shades of gray to create depth. The painting on the wall is actually of a crow’s skull Rodgers found at her home.
“That’s the part of how fleeting life is. You never know when it’s going to be over,” she said.
The work also features a raccoon, buck and beaver skull.
“Someone said to me the other day, ‘Wow, this is really time consuming, isn’t it?’ and it just made me laugh out loud because I thought to myself, ‘I’m painting this piece on a wall about don’t waste your time because you don’t know how little you have left, and 10 days of my life have been overly consumed with this project,’” she said. “It’s funny that I’m sacrificing my own ideals to get a message across to everyone else around me. That struck me as funny and ironic.”
The last wall is an installation by Amy Hatley titled “3 Square Miles.” The piece will be a composite of life and waste in the suburbs.
The exhibition will be displayed in the Lakeview Gallery until Dec. 2. Gallery hours are 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.
