When words fail, art speaks

TAMUK seniors showcase their art

The Texas A&M University Kingsville (TAMUK) Art Department hosted its annual Senior Art Show on Nov. 27 at the Ben Bailey Art Gallery.   

This event is put together in order to allow graduating seniors to display their art for the community before graduation.  Artists who participated in the show spent months preparing their artwork for the showcase. 

“I finished it last week, and I had to have help for this,” TAMUK senior and art major Johnathan Marroquin said.  

Marroquin made a sculpture from chicken wire, pvc pipe, eva foam, landscape fabric, armature wire, and air dry foam clay, all material that Marroquin up until this project had never used.

Some artists used the Senior Art Show to tell an important story through their pieces as this was their final chance to show off their art to the TAMUK community they have spent years among.  

“The piece that I worked on here is to tell a story about part of who I am, and what my family and ancestors have gone through. My family is from Puerto Rico so in the rocks on my painting I incorporated sand from the beaches from Puerto Rico,” Senior Art major Jennifer Demoss said.  

Students work on their projects to get the opportunity to display them, but without their professors, none of it would be possible. Many students even credit their professors saying they take inspiration from them. 

“The last two weeks were busy and hectic so we’re all exhausted and I’m really proud of them, they did a great job,” Professor Fulden Wissinger said. 

Students mentioned how art is sometimes difficult to execute and requires a lot of creativity and commitment.   

“There is writer’s block but there is also artist block, what that is, is you can be working on a drawing or a painting or a sculpture or ceramic piece and you’ll just freeze and you won’t have that creative side come back to you,” Studio technician Homer Ramirez III said.

The exhibit remain on display in the gallery through the end of the semester and is open to the public.