2021 Women’s Exhibit

Mujeres De Colores

Powered by the City of Edinburg’s non-profit Arts Foundation, curated by Alexis Marie Ramos, presented at the Dustin Michael Sekula Memorial Library "Mujeres de Colores" an all-womens’ exhibition about women, for women, who are empowering women through color. This all-womens’ exhibition is about local women empowering other mujers in their community through their art.

Each of these amazing artists is at a different phase of their life as mujeres en arte. These women of color use colores to express themselves and their art. They are mujeres de colores working in color. Five amazing Latina artists impacting their community in different and engaging ways.

Guest Curator Alexis Ramos chose women who are at different points within their artistic carreras. One just finished her undergraduate degree, another has begun working towards her master’s degree, two have just graduated with their masters of fine arts degree, and the last of our artists has established herself as a professional artist with exhibitions locally and throughout Tejas. The mujeres she presents to you are neighbors, wives, mothers, daughters, teachers, activists, and in mourning for what has been lost. They are the realist, abstract expressionist, surrealist, contemporary illustrators, and muralists. They are the innovators, movement generators, they give mujeres a voice within their communities. They are vibrant women of color, working in color, making arte, they are “Mujeres de Colores”.

About the Artists 

CURATOR ALEXIS RAMOS

Texas Born Valley raised artist Alexis Marie Ramos currently attends the University of Texas Rio Grande valley College of Fine Arts Perusing Her MFA. Her art is centralized around La Cocina, and the many roles women play. Food plays an integral role in religion, folk medicine, folk healing, and curanderismo.

Drawing inspiration from growing up In the Rio Grande Valle many of her sculptures, installations, paintings, illustrate, the remedies used to treat these cultures bound syndromes. Ramos who completed her BFA at UTRGV with a focus on ceramics was one of the few students who learned the art of Lost wax bronze casting. Foundry work has often been considered mans work, she was drawn to the systematic order of the process. As a materials researcher her ranges from materials and techniques.

GABY RICO

Artist Gaby Rico presents new artwork to celebrate her spiritual views and invite the viewer to take a third eye kind of inner trip as well as at the same time, this is her own way to appreciate and be thankful to nature and the cosmos for life in every form. To promote and share the good vibes and to embrace ourselves, the planet and the universe. Accepting ourselves as how we are, how we think and how we feel is a priority in order to stay in harmony within ourselves, and where we belong, the universe.

This series of works it is a friendly reminder that we were perfectly made as one of a kind from the genuine diversity in humanity. It is a statement about accepting all of our qualities that we have been born with and that they belong to us and we belong to them as a whole, embracing both, the dark and the light as our own cycle of day and night and that we also perhaps are aligned with the stars.

Expect to see mixed media self portraits on canvas with rich texture, bold color, stars blinking 24/7 and even to find yourself reflected in the artwork, making you part of it. Thank you for that and for being yourself for yourself and  for the rest of us!

ALEXIS RIOS

Alexis Rios presents an intimate body of work memorializing both life before the pandemic struck, and the lives of her grandparents, Rodolfo and Socorro Garcia, and Elvia Rios. In an effort to commemorate her elders and heal, Rios applies her multi-disciplinary knowledge to create highly personal and emotionally driven pieces ranging from paintings, ceramics, and prints etched from glass.

2020 was an unforgiving year that impacted many, my family included. My grandmother on my father’s side relied on my heavily, and I the same. As she was bed ridden, it was I who cared for her, massaged her, and listened to her stories as I painted her nails and organized her precious jewelry for hours. As limited as she was, it was Mama Elvia that provided me with strength through her prayers and unconditional love. Even when Alzheimer’s began to chip and rip away at who she was, she always sent me off with a bendicion as I knelt by her by her side.

When Covid swept through the world, I had no idea she would be one of the hundreds of thousands that would fall victim to it. When it took my Papa Rodolfo and Mama Soco mere months later, both my family and I were plunged into a deep, dark, seemingly bottomless pit of inconsolable grief. As the matriarch and patriarch of our family, their love and story drove and inspired us all. Papa Rodolfo, despite having a 4th grade education and not owning a pair of shoes until he was fourteen, erected multiple successful meat markets, restaurants, and businesses. Married for over 50 years, they worked together and did so with utmost pride until their passing at eighty-four, on the same day, hours apart.

My process for this series was done based on instinct driven by my desperate need for closure. While the world slowly returns back to normalcy, mine has been forever and irrevocably changed. My days, which had previously been filled with Sunday carne asadas, morning cafecito, and pan dulce visits, had suddenly become quiet and stagnant. To not have been allowed to be with either of my elders as they each slipped away alone will forever stay with me.  As true as it may be that I may never forget this empty, stinging loss, so is such that I will never forget to celebrate their love and memory.

As an artist who focuses mostly on portraiture, I explored and utilized printmaking, ceramics and traditional painting to commemorate my grandparents and, specifically, the bond I shared with my grandmothers. This body of work explores loss, grief, and confronting memories that both haunt and bring comfort. Using a variety of media; such as soft pastel, watercolor, acrylic, and ink, I aim to preserve and immortalize my memories. In doing so, I celebrate and honor my elders while reflecting on my growth.

SAM RAWLS

A Latina artist, born and raised in Brownsville, Texas. In 2009, she enlisted in the Army, where she trained in photography and videography. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in 2016. In 2021 she earned her degree in Masters in Fine Arts with a concertation of two-dimensional work. Rawls creates a representational surrealistic artwork with diverse media such as watercolor, inks, markers, and oil. Through her work, Rawls illustrates different women in order to demonstrate the variety and uniqueness of each female figure to represent that everyone has the right to be comfortable in their own skin. Rawls has been part of much collaborative artwork in Brownsville, Texas. Her most recent collaboration with Monica Lugo was in "Lasso de Mi Ciudad," which represents a celebration of merging culture on the border of Brownsville, Texas. She is also the co-creator of the Mujer-eres exhibition, which brings women artists from different backgrounds to display their artwork in the Rio Grande Valley during March.

FOR HER explores the relationship between women and their bodies as they navigate today’s social forces of objectification and weight expectations. The artwork rejects the ideal feminine body standard by celebrating a cathartic awakening of self-appreciation of the fat that our bodies carry. Each piece illustrates an embracement of fat bodies represented through a contemporary figurative work by abstracted gestured dots and bold strokes pattern centering each woman in a boundless atmospheric euphoria.

This work seeks to find new insights and textures with brush techniques inspired by those found in abstract artists like Alma Thomas and the repeating patterns of conceptual artists such as Yayoi Kusama. This series uses those traditions as an emergence to discover and break new ground on unexplored line work, texturized patterns to express the emotional journey of the feminine body.

KARLA DE LA FUENTE

Karla Gabriela De La Fuente was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley. Her artistic endeavors initiated in La Joya High School’s Yearbook club where she served as the Editor In Chief. In this program, she experimented with graphic design and photography. Her undergraduate coursework continued at UT- Pan American and UT -San Antonio. She is currently part of UTRGV’s MFA program and serves as a high school American Literature teacher and Yearbook Sponsor.

My artwork challenges the experience of womanhood. In the society we live today, women often find themselves faced with greater obstacles towards working on a same goal as men, glass ceilings, and mass media that teach us to compare ourselves to others, and programs us to the idea that we should have a certain physical appearance. On top of that, women also face cultural ideals that add more pressure to the idea of being perfect. The perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, and of course you need the perfect body.

My work embodies the idea of shattering the pressures of society and instead owning and loving your persona. In my mixed-media collage compositions, I am to create portraits of women that emanate power and inspire to find the same effect in the viewer.

My current project “America Reborn” highlights the achievement of poet Amanda Gorman as a young woman who was sought to inspire hope and change in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ inauguration. This 3-Dimensional collage uses imagery to illustrate Gorman as Lady Liberty. My piece brings light to the idea that America is a country composed of, and build on the backs of people of different cultures, races, religion and identities.

In my compositions I use a variety of papers and materials to create juxtapositions with the subjects of my pieces. Papel Amate, the Mexican paper made of tree bark is a medium I have incorporated in my latest pieces that accentuates the pieces aesthetically and also adds part of my identity as a Mexican-American woman. Each of my pieces also incorporates two circles next to each other, these shapes serve as a signature in my pieces and represent two birthmarks beneath my right eye, that I also think of as “my vision.”

Monica lugo

Monica Lugo is a Texas-based graphic designer and illustrator whose work explores typographic design, illustrated letterforms, geometric abstraction. Her work is inspired by the relationship between established shapes and color utilized uniformly in various designed planes such as illustration, alphabets, and typefaces. Lugo’s career in design began with logo design and branding, but her growing love and interest for letterforms, and their possibilities in pictorial frames shifted her outlook on design and illustration. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in Graphic Design concentration from the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley in 2018, she went to work as a freelance designer and retail business owner. While she enjoyed working in a fashion business venture, her interest in typographic solutions grew stronger. She has since maneuvered motherhood, plus worked as a designer, illustrator, and muralist. She received her MFA in 2D design at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in 2021.

In creating the series “A-Z Star Studded Portrait Alphabet”, the twenty-six portraits of influential music artists illustrate the concept of music in popular culture as the subject matter in representational forms. The four selected pieces from the alphabet for this show are the iconic female music figures: Selena, Madonna and Whitney Houston, as well as the new inclusion of the portrait of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Although Frida is not a musician, she is cultural phenomenon and feminist powerhouse, whose work dealt with identity, the human body, and folk art.

The subject matter for the series illustrates popular culture icons ,artists and musicians as symbols of culture that we have and continue to consume and absorb consciously or unconsciously. Popular culture provides shared experiences and creates social bonds and exchanges amongst the participants and consumers; these exchanges have a tremendous effect in shaping a person’s interests and identity. Selena, Madonna, Whitney and Frida are icons whose impact in the music, art and fashion world continues to exist and inspire eternal cultural relevancy. Each female figure is illustrated in bright, bold, and contrasting hues wearing clothes composed of bold geometric forms and eccentric patterns inspired by the Memphis group.