Students present art at La Posada Hotel
By David Perez
Bridge contributing writer
Published Monday, Sept. 6, 2021
Mixed-media art students showed their works at La Posada Hotel in downtown Laredo during the “It Takes Two” exhibition.
Texas A&M International University Assistant Professors of art Emily Bayless, Josias Figueirido Rivas and Jesse Shaw collaborated with La Posada Hotel’s Creative Marketing Director Olivia Goren for the April 16 event. The purpose of the mixed media exhibition was to promote student art projects made with multiple media forms.
Assistant Professor of art Emily Bayless shows some of her pottery work in the Center for Fine and Performing Arts in this file photo taken on Sept. 7, 2020.
The event originated when representatives of La Posada Hotel reached out through an open call, looking to promote young artists. The idea behind the exhibition is to get students to work with multiple forms of art on a specific piece.
“We wanted to get a theme that would inspire and promote collaboration,” Bayless said in the spring. “It’s difficult right now to have collaboration because of [COVID-19] and restrictions in class and class sizes and working closely together. We encouraged students to work collaboratively with mixed materials. So ceramics students were also using found objects including sculptures with clay and other media.”
Art major Alejandro Carbajal, then a junior, presented his sculpture named S.P.A.D.-35 Mk. 1 built with the help of his grandfather.
“I applied [It Takes Two] with the use of sculpture and printmaking,” Carbajal said. “My grandfather [helped]; I couldn’t have done it without him. Now I actually have experience with woodworking. I have to give him credit. He helped me make it happen.”
“S.P.A.D.-35 Mk. 1,” a robot sculpture by student artist Alejandro Carbajal is part of the “It Takes Two” exhibition at La Posada Hotel in downtown Laredo.
Bayless encourages students who want to get involved in exhibitions to take a class. Bayless and her colleagues actively look for ways to present the art students create. She teaches a range of students from art majors to those whose focus on biology and math. It creates an environment in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts for different ideas to flourish. This is one of the opportunities where TAMIU students found a way to get their work into an exhibition.
Discussions about the exhibition began in Fall 2020. There were many plans for different exhibitions but the idea of collaboration was always at the forefront.
The It Takes Two: a mixed media exhibition displayed from April 16 to May 16 at La Posada Hotel, 1000 Zaragoza St.
