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After decades, UNM’s art arena reopens to showcase student projects, and to vie against each other for prizes.
Paintings, photographs and other artworks were displayed in the John Sommers Gallery in the Art Building Friday night as part of a juried art exhibit. The exhibit was the first at UNM in about 20 years and featured 37 undergraduate student artists. The 37 exhibited students were selected from a pool of 100 — only three walked away with an award. The exhibit runs through Friday.
Rob Rix, a third-year MFA student in sculpture who organized the show, said he was excited to bring back a long-lost art tradition on campus.
“Nobody currently working here remembers it happening in the time that they’ve been working here … I decided that it was time to bring it back,” he said.
Rix said he decided to bring back the show because he believed no one would have done so otherwise.
“I decided to bring this back for the same reason that I wear a tie to work every day,” he said. “I believed that nobody else in the department was going to do it. During the time that UNM has eliminated its standard for juried show, almost every other university in the country adopted it as a standard.”
Rix said he contacted David Leigh, a UNM art alumnus, to serve as the judge for the show. Rix said 100 students participated in the event. Each was allowed to submit three art pieces, so Leigh had to choose from 300 pieces in total.
Planning the event single-handedly, Rix said he was even willing to pay for the event himself.
“Originally, I was actually using my paycheck from the department to finance the prize money and fund the food,” he said. “But the chair got back to me. (On Thursday), I received a phone call saying the department would be reimbursing me in full for the prize money of the show.”
Among the 37 individuals featured, three winners were selected in the show. The first-place winner received $300, the second-place winner $200, and the third-place winner $100.
Rix said the show represents the wide array of art programs offered by the University.
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“We have representatives from each area: sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking,” he said. “We also have individuals who are in their first semester as freshmen to individuals entering their final year in the program.”
Leigh said he based his decisions for winners on “craftsmanship, first and foremost, and beyond that, just trying to get somebody really engaged in contemporary issues and trying to visualize interesting ideas. I was just trying to find things I was excited about.”
Despite his schedule, Leigh said he found the time to jury the show because he believed in its essence.
“I was honored to be asked,” he said. “It was a question of whether I had the time. I made the time because it’s really important to try to capture the energy of undergraduate students and to sort of give them an opportunity to show themselves off to each other.”
And he expects that the juried show will become a campus tradition again, he said.
“I think that whenever something like this could gain traction, it creates a tradition that people could look forward to every year,” he said.
Raquee Rivera, a sophomore majoring in photography, said she participated in the show “on a whim,” and that she was shocked to see her pieces in it. She said that being featured in the gallery might help her in her career path.
“I think of it as a little mini-goal,” she said. “Maybe it will help me on the future. Maybe they would like that, maybe they won’t.”
Jeremy Wood, a senior majoring in art education, said he is proud of himself for winning a spot in the gallery.
“There’s a sense of accomplishment,” he said. “I’ve never really gotten myself to think that I’ll be in a gallery, and now I’m in a gallery.”
Rix said he believes the show will help young artists in their future.
“It gives them a real-life opportunity to apply to a show but in a more comfortable way,” he said. “There are a lot of juried shows that happen in the country, and it’s kind of a standard for artists to participate in a show, either getting rejected or accepted.”
And he is optimistic that there will be another juried art show next year, he said.
“There’s a gallery position here that they’re going to be attaching the responsibility to,” he said. “So it will continue every year for as long as it lasts, hopefully — hopefully forever.”
