OPULENT BONDS

ART & CULTURE

New exhibit on display at Art Center

SHANNON WEST STAFF REPORTER

The Texas State University School of Art and Design churns out many local artists. In celebration of this large subset of the local art community, the San Marcos Art Center held the exhibit, Opulent Bonds, which displayed art by TXST students, alumni, faculty and previous faculty. The opening reception was held on March 1, but the exhibit will be on display until March 29.

Joshua Farrell, San Marcos Art League president, had a couple of his metal pieces in the exhibit. One of the pieces was made using tack welding with various metal hardware pieces such as gears, nails, screws and washers that form a female torso, which he said required a lot of grinding to achieve a smooth appearance.

“I just started with the front of her from here forward, and it was actually [formed using] a metal sculpture I’d done. I always have like six or seven pieces going at the same time, and I hadn’t finished it. So it was all out of a flat piece of metal,” Farrell said, adding that you could see the dents from shaping and hammering the piece. “It was hanging on the wall. I took it down, and I just laid all these parts around her and started tacking them together.”

Syd Perkinson had a painting featured in the exhibit depicting six people with down-turned mouths that were larger than their faces using a blue, red and green color scheme. Perkinson had a traumatic brain injury at 13 years old, which led to hallucinations.

“When I first started seeing them, it was re- ally scary. And the doctors were like, ‘Whatever you’re seeing, you should describe it.’ And watercolor is what I turned to first, and then I just sort of kept at it. And I didn’t stop,” Perkinson said. “I still have hallucinations to this day, but now they’re not scary … It’s a really great source of inspiration, though it is an extremely interesting origin story. … The injury definitely changed the trajectory of my life.”

Theodore Clemons was a student artist who made a sculpture exhibited in the show that had a blank face and long hair made of different types of yarn and decorative ribbon. Clemons said when growing up, making friends was difficult.

“I thought, to make people like me, I needed to have long dresses and things [and be] hyper- feminine — one of the aspects was my hair — and then people [still] didn’t like me,” Clemons said. “Whenever I entered college, I was actually able to grow into myself, as you do whenever you leave the home, but one of the aspects was that I transitioned, and this is kind of a tribute to my past girl-self.”

Amerie Martinez was an artist featured in the exhibit who regularly works with Intaglio Photopolymer Plates, which is a way to make prints. According to the Boxcar Press website, Intaglio Photopolymer Plates are acid-free etching plates that are exposed with UV lights and washed out with water, leaving a raised image.

“I like to use photos in my work, but I combine it with my character Benny. … I like to merge the photos I take in my everyday [life], and I merge it with his world,” Martinez said, then pointed at an image of Benny riding the bus. “This photo was in a zine I made about the struggles of not owning a car. So every image with this is related to being on the bus or being on campus somewhere. … I like to have him as a simplified version [of myself ]. When something is simplified you can kind of see yourself in him too. So it is a reflection of me, but I think the audience can also see themselves in Benny.”

The San Marcos Art Center is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The pieces in the exhibit are available for viewing and purchase.