Color pencil and ink on paper by Lorena Romero Alberto
Lorena Romero Alberto is an artist living and working in El Paso, TX. Her work is a playful mix of line, color and hidden narratives. Overlapping layers distort and reveal, while molded shapes tease the imagination. Her favorite tools are pencil and paper.
The 14th Annual Artistic Celebration of our Mountains is a juried exhibition at Ardovino’s Desert Crossing which aims to show the beauty enclosed in our regional mountains with art and the participation of local artists. The show consists of 14 artists, exhibiting in various mediums, the landscape of the mountains the surrounds us. Artists were invited to participate since June and the pieces were juried in August.The juried selected the best 25 pieces and they choose First, Second, and Third place. This year’s winners are: 1st place Alex Briseno with the piece Framed, 2nd Place Susan Russell with the piece Rafting the Canyon and 3rd Place Candy Mayer with Desert Vegetation.
The show has various mediums such as photography, collage, oil acrylic, and more. One of Jurors invited to helps us select the pieces was Kerry Doyle Director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts. The pieces will remain on display in the Sunset Hall until the next year, which is one of Ardovino’s Desert Crossing’s facilities for events. Pieces will remain on sale until further notice.
By Kimberly Rene’ Vanecek
It’s about “strength, power and bravery” for Sara Macias’s Warriors & Soldiers, featured at this year’s El Paso Fashion Week held in October. Over the course of seven days the event is expected to draw thousands from the Boarderplex to view the latest styles from six designers, showcase the top local models and give back to local non-profit organizations that support children and the arts of El Paso and Juarez.
The Art Avenue had a moment to spend with Macias whose long-term goal is to one day mass produce her designs and make new jobs locally. She had this to say about her debut at EPFW, her new collection inclusive of dresses, skirts and pantswear and passing on the Mercedes-Benz of El Paso Fashion Week.
There are 6 designers contributing to El Paso Fashion Week, what are you hoping your designs reflect? I want them to reflect my vision on my concept of warriors and soldiers of past and current times—the strength, power, bravery and the anonymity of people who fight for their countries. Usually you hear of bravery but hardly ever see the face behind it.
What makes this collection unique for you? I will have 12 pieces in this collection and it will also include a few men’s pieces, but mostly women’s attire. All of the models will have their faces covered in a mask. I plan on using silks, suiting material and easy to wear textiles for comfort and functionality. There will be some fun stuff but mostly wearable pieces.
As a young designer, what does it feel like to be accepted into El Paso Fashion Week on your first try? Yes this was the first time I applied for the El Paso Fashion Week. I feel very honored to be accepted. I know what EPFW can do for my business and I’m very excited for what’s to come.
You mentioned you switched from Mercedes-Benz of El Paso Fashion Week to EPFW. Can you explain to us why? I was given a concrete opportunity from EPFW and I made a choice based on my needs.
Do you think El Paso is open to local designers? I would hope El Paso is open to local designers. There are quite a few of us and we all deserve a chance. I would like to reach out further beyond El Paso, because one can’t be successful in just one area. You need to always be thinking big.
How are you marketing yourself in the community? I use social media a lot to reach out to photographers, entertainment managers and potential customers that like my aesthetics. I constantly check castings on Model Mayhem, Craigslist and Facebook groups and apply anywhere to have a chance to show what I can do.
Macias’s clothes can be purchased through etsy shop www.eclecticvisions.etsy.com or you can contact FB fanpage www.facebook.com/eclecticvisionsdesigns
By Lisa Y. Garibay
Illustration by Julia Zamponi
It sounds like something out of science fiction: You have a lumpectomy or mastectomy due to breast cancer. Then you go into the operating room again to have fat removed from elsewhere in your body. It is placed inside a 3-D printer and printed into a new breast.
Thanks to years of work by Thomas Boland, Ph.D., director of biomedical engineering at The University of Texas at El Paso, technology capable of printing live human tissue is closer than you think. He’s just one of the many innovators on campus who are proving that UTEP is leading the way in 3-D printing on a global level. Boland also is the cofounder and chief science officer of TeVido BioDevices, a biomedical startup company that eagerly committed to connecting Boland’s technology with those battling breast cancer. The implications of this work are not only aesthetic; they are life changing.
In 2012, nearly 1.7 million people around the globe were told, “You have breast cancer.” In 2013, the American Cancer Society estimated that more than 296,000 women were given this sobering news in the U.S. alone. Women who are diagnosed with the disease usually are given two options: a lumpectomy, which only removes the tumor, or a mastectomy, the removal of the entire breast. As part of their cancer treatment, about half of these women opt for mastectomy, or full removal of the breast tissue. One quarter of those will have a double mastectomy, removing both breasts. Many mastectomy patients will decide to undergo breast reconstruction.
“About 150,000 women a year have lumpectomies due to breast cancer and they have no good option for reconstruction,” Boland said.
Those less-than-ideal options include spending months filling the space left by the lumpectomy with a series of fat injections, which then have the potential to be reabsorbed into the body; or do nothing, which can leave breasts disfigured and asymmetrical. Many women are dissatisfied with the physical outcome of the remaining breast tissue. More significantly, those women are far more likely to experience symptoms of depression and fear of cancer recurrence compared to women with minimal asymmetry. Women who opt for the removal of the entire breast may face a foreign body response to the silicone or saline-filled implants. Symptoms include pain, scarring and tissue contraction, where the breast begins to appear abnormal and is no longer symmetrical. Some saline-filled implants may even rupture.
All of this may be avoided with TeVido’s 3-D printed implants.
“What we’re going to do is take the patient’s very own cells and use them so that there won’t be a foreign body response,” Boland said. “We have decided the nipple will be our first product and we will work on lumpectomies and other breast contour issues after that,” said Laura Bosworth Bucher, co-founder and CEO of TeVido.
TeVido’s eventual markets also could include sports- or war-related injuries resulting in a tissue deficiency for patients, as well as people suffering from rare soft tissue sarcomas of the extremities. These conditions have significant quality of life impacts for millions of people around the world. While significant product development and pre-clinical research still needs to be done before the company’s technology enters clinical trials in humans, excitement for TeVido’s product is palatable. In the past few months alone, the team and their work have been featured on CNN’s Vital Signs program with Sanjay Gupta, M.D., and in The Economist.
The Austin Chamber of Commerce named TeVido to its A-List of Startups for 2014. The company also was named to the Venture Accelerator Phase of the LIVESTRONG Foundation’s Big C Competition, which aims to change the way the world lives with cancer.
The TeVido research team has applied for patents and will require several years and millions of dollars before the technology is available to patients, but there is hope. Boland said there’s even a possibility of printing organs like kidneys and hearts in the future. But first and foremost, the focus for Boland and TeVido is on helping breast cancer survivors not just make it through the disease, but thrive afterwards.
“In my opinion, TeVido is working in a critical area of women’s health,” Boland said. “The bioprinting technology is cutting-edge and will help cancer survivors restore their natural beauty and self-esteem.”
By Adair Margo
Pictures courtesy of the Tom Lea Institute
In 2003 as he was looking through art books in Poitiers, France where he teaches Italian Renaissance Art History, Luciano Cheles came across a book on WPA-era (1930s) Texas murals. He looked through it once—then flipped through it again, pausing on the pages where Tom Lea’s work was printed. There were giant figures of Comanche warriors, horses, Spanish conquistadors, vaqueros and Anglo settlers on the walls of public buildings across the state, telling the different histories of places named Seymour, Dallas, Odessa and El Paso.
Cheles found something familiar about Lea’s figures—something about their classicism and the weighty volumes of their forms. The professor recognized a quality in Lea’s scenes that were without turmoil or emotion, but rather intellectual and distilled. For years, Cheles had taught about the artist Piero della Francesca, who was born in Sansepolcro on the border of Umbria and Tuscany in 1415. Though recognized today as one of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance, his isolation from artistic centers like Florence and Rome had kept him from being better known. Yes, it was this Piero quality Cheles thought he recognized in Tom Lea, and he set about finding out if he were right.
It wasn’t hard for him to find somebody to ask. With a simple Google search of Tom Lea’s name, he found my e-mail address. When I received his note via my Outlook inbox during the fall of 2003, I’d owned Adair Margo Gallery for 18 years and had represented Tom Lea for 10. It took no time to respond to Luciano’s inquiry: “Is it possible that Tom Lea from El Paso was influenced by the Italian muralist Piero della Francesca?” I knew the answer right away, as I’d recorded Tom Lea’s oral history in 1993. He’d recollected one Saturday morning as we conversed, his first trip to Europe in 1930. Tom’s voice halted with emotion when he shared visiting Arezzo and entering the Church of San Francesco. “There it was,” he said to me, “the pictures I’d been looking for my whole life. We gave a tip to the old sacristano, and he let me touch the bottom of Piero’s work. It was lovely.”
My response to Luciano was clue enough for him to apply for a coveted fellowship to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. to study Piero della Francesca’s influence on American artists with a special focus on Tom Lea. At the time, I was serving President Bush as chairman of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and arranged for Luciano to see Tom Lea’s “Rio Grande” painting in the Oval Office of the White House once he arrived in D.C. I also invited him to El Paso to speak during Tom Lea Month and was amazed when he juxtaposed the majestic head of Piero’s risen Christ in “The Resurrection”(found in Sansepolcro’s town hall) with to Tom Lea’s portraits of his wife, Sarah, and the shell-shocked marine on Peleliu named “That 2,000 Yard Stare.” There could be no doubt about Tom’s inspiration!
Meeting Luciano Cheles led to my thinking about the time I spent in Florence, Italy as a Vanderbilt coed studying with Syracuse University’s program abroad in 1975. A favorite memory was traveling the Piero della Francesca Trail, tracing his frescoes in Arezzo, Monterchi, San Sepolcro and Urbino. Seeing Piero’s “The Legend of the True Cross,” “Madonna del Parto,” “The Resurrection” and “Flagellation of Christ” had such an impact that, whenever I returned to Italy, I hired a driver to retrace the journey. Each visit was fresh and experiencing Piero della Francesca’s masterful works never grew old.
If I drove hours outside of Florence to see Piero’s frescos, why wouldn’t people who love journeys travel throughout Texas, discovering regional histories through Tom Lea’s work, I began to wonder. They could discover the “Pass of the North,” “Stampede,” “Comanches,” “Cabeza de Vaca,” Texas Rangers and R.E.B. Baylor, the founder of Baylor University. They could also learn about the Texas Centennial, the Pacific War, the King Ranch, Operation Desert Storm, and an old horse ranch named Randado. They could even drive beyond Texas, going into Mexico and New Mexico, as well as other U.S. cities like Lee Summit, Missouri, Chicago and Washington, D.C. With the work of the great Tom Lea as a guide, there seemed no end to what could be experienced.
In 2013, Texas Highways and Texas Monthly announced the Tom Lea Trail during October’s Tom Lea Month. This year Luciano Cheles will travel that trail, again comparing Tom Lea’s murals to those of the Italian Renaissance. He’ll visit El Paso, Odessa, Seymour and Austin, making presentations on the schedule below. We invite anyone eager for a journey and opportunities to learn to join us in October.
“Tom Lea and the Italian Renaissance” with Luciano Cheles
Tuesday, October 7 El Paso, TX
The University of Texas at El Paso UTEP Library, Blumberg Auditorium, 4 – 6 p.m.
Panel Discussion with Dr. Mimi Gladstein, Professor of English Literature Ron Weber, Associate Professor of Ancient History/Director of the Humanities Program and the Masters of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies Program Max Grossman, Assistant Professor of Art History
Friday, October 10 Odessa, TX
Ellen Noel Art Museum of the Permian Basin Rodman Auditorium, 12 – 3 p.m.
Monday, October 13 Seymour, TX
Seymour Chamber of Commerce Seymour City Hall, The Whiteside Auditorium for Performing Arts
Reception 6 p.m.
Lecture 7 p.m. Wednesday,
October 15 Austin, TX
Bullock Texas State History Museum,
Texas Spirit Theatre, 7 p.m.
For information call Lauren Ruiz at the Tom Lea Institute, El Paso, Texas 915-533-0048 • lruiz@tomlea.net
By Lauren Pinson
On a bleached-white hospital pillowcase, a cluster of brittle brunette curls are left behind by a resilient cancer warrior. The deep purple under her eyes matches the bruises on the tops of her hands but they go virtually unnoticed; her smile steals the show. She grasps the hand of a fellow fighter saying, “Bald but bold baby, we got this.” She soaks in the surrealistic moment of her last round of chemo. The hot pink and lemony yellow sequined scarf wrapped around her head represents an outward manifestation of an inner vibrancy. Even though this woman may seem like one-in-a-million, the reality is, she is one in eight. That is, the one out of every eight women who will fight breast cancer in their lifetime, according to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. With statistics like this, one would think hope would be hard to come by; but they’d be wrong. Centers like The Rio Grande Cancer Foundation aim to instill hope in the cancer community by being a strong advocate, and by providing programs for patients and their families, education, support and medical services that a patients’ insurance may not be able to cover.
“Women are beautiful and they deserve to feel that way at all times,” says Mellodi Gaston, a 10-year cancer survivor and life-long El Paso resident. “Especially when fighting a disease like cancer that can rob you of outer beauty for a time.” The Four Seasons Beauty Program, supported by RGCF, which provides free wigs, hats, scarves and post-mastectomy garments to women going through a cancer diagnosis, understands that. The foundation saw a need and an opportunity in their Four Seasons program to reach out past the cancer community to educate El Paso’s young people. A partnership was created with the Ysleta, El Paso and Socorro School Districts for a program called FACCE, Fine Arts Creates Cancer Enlightenment. The project takes young artists in local schools and gives them a canvas on which to both create art and also give back to the community in a unique way. Art students are given a mannequin head to paint, decorate and design that will later be adorned with a wig sterilized and styled by local cosmetology students from all over El Paso. These wigs are then put on display at the Four Seasons Hair Salon where women fighting breast cancer can go for makeovers and to pick out a new hairstyle. Their website explains that the beauty program is there to provide “practical assistance for women experiencing hair loss due to chemotherapy.” Cindi Martinez, the program coordinator at RGCF explains, “We felt that through a program like this we could establish a platform whereby we could engage our teen population and influence their behavior and attitudes toward cancer and its side effects. The cooperation between our organization and the local school districts has paved the way for younger age groups to become more cognizant and responsive to community service.”
FACCE has been going strong since its inception in the fall of 2010. Since then, over 223 wigs have been given to women and put on display all around El Paso. Meanwhile, the students are gaining an awareness of cancer’s effects on the human body, family dynamics, and emotional side effects as well. “Our goal was two-fold, to add color to a white ‘expressionless’ wig head and inject a sense of warmth, color and hope for patrons who visit our offices, and to involve our youth in meaningful dialog and self-discovery,” says Martinez. One mannequin has a stunning sunflower draped across its face with a cloudy blue dusting, and another portrays a bold lioness with intricate noble features. To many, these mannequins can represent the active role of art in the healing process.
The staff at the RGCF know how important it is for a community to come together to support and encourage those fighting a cancer battle. “RGCF is continually considering the outcome of the patient their life beyond cancer,” says Martinez. Although their mission is simple, it is necessary: to ease the burden of a cancer diagnosis, and a strong commitment to care for and support El Paso’s cancer community. The Rio Grande Cancer Foundation, El Paso’s high school students, local cosmetology students, and all the volunteers and sponsors helping these one-in-a-million women are hitting cancer where it hurts…in the FACCE.
How Augment El Paso is encouraging 3D art, one pixel at a time
By Victoria G. Molinar
Images courtesy of Augment El Paso
Despite the substantial amount of time that goes into making three-dimensional pieces, Augment El Paso founder and CEO David Figueroa said many people don’t recognize computer-generated images as art, a misconception he aims to debunk. “Digital artwork still doesn’t get a lot of respect,” Figueroa said. “People don’t see digital artists as actual artists when a lot of them work just as hard as traditional artists, sometimes a little bit harder. ”Along with creating original work, his organization has collaborated with artists around the city to augment their 2-D paintings into moving 3-D images.
Through accessible devices such as smartphones and tablets, augmented reality is just a tap and download away. If you have either gadget near you, go to the iTunes or Amazon app store and look up and download the free Augment El Paso app. Once the app is installed, scan the images accompanying this article, and there you have a sample of augmented reality.
In her painting “Lovers Eternally Bound,” local painter and tattooist Francella Salgado was delighted to see the purple and red skeleton figures interact with a tap on the screen.
“I was completely thrilled,” said Salgado after seeing her augmented work. “It’s very exciting but it’s shocking in a way because you’re seeing something that you created come to life and it’s amazing.”
Augment El Paso formed in March of last year when Figueroa was looking for an outlet to display his 3-D pieces. After graduating from The Art Institute of Phoenix with a bachelor’s degree in game art and design and another bachelor’s in computer arts and animation, he hoped he would find work at a studio, but ultimately decided to move back to El Paso to initiate creative opportunities and build a team.
He reached out to former Art Institute friends Jacob Gray and Carlos Luevano and teamed up with 3-D and animation artists Ruth Zehntner, Robert Castañeda and Chelsea Kubesh. From there, they created the Augment El Paso app and held their first showcase at the Back In Black Creative Services studio in November of last year.
When children and adults huddled in front of posters with the tablets that were provided at the show, gasps and shrieks of delight left their mouths as they watched the images before them pop out, rotate and bounce.
“It’s awesome to be able to bring this experience to our community and get all the positive feedback we’ve been having,” said Zehntner, who worked as a texture artist in the Lo Coloco Films animated feature Ana y Bruno. “I think it’s a great way of getting people to appreciate art and get excited to interact with it, especially for the little ones. Hopefully we can see more of this forward thinking develop in El Paso.”
Zehntner’s piece, “Dash 7,” allowed her digital image of a van to drive passed various signs and a gas station.
“It’s based on my love for road trips and roadside Americana signs,” Zehntner said.
The show also featured augmented artwork of Salgado and her fellow tattoo artist Luis House, whose piece “Harmony” included sound as the skeleton musicians played their violin and accordion by a campfire.
As many may imagine, augmented pieces can take hours or weeks to do. Using various software such as Blender, 3DS Max and Maya, the artists create their three-dimensional images. They then make a seam in the model and unwrap it (“Kind of like an animal pelt,” Figueroa explained) and open the image in a 2-D application to paint it. To turn the figure into an animation, they create a skeleton for it, including joints so it can rotate. This process can also take hours to days. Once the digital models are complete, Castañeda engineers the software they need to allow the images to be tracked with the Augment El Paso app.
Figueroa said he doesn’t want people to feel too intimidated to learn a thing or two about 3-D technology. He plans to lead workshops, starting with an introduction to the use of free 3-D software and low-poly game modeling. The workshops will be held at the El Paso Fab Lab, a digital fabrication facility that allows the community to materialize their inventive ideas with workshops and innovative machinery.
Figueroa has many collaborative projects in the works with Fab Lab, where he will hold Augment El Paso’s next showcase this fall. He said two groups also might work together to create digital mapping projections, in which images are projected onto objects in order to create an augmented spatial reality.
“We’re kindred spirits because we’re pursuing technology that’s cutting edge and although our projects are really different, we envision our organizations to do the same thing, which is to give people exposure and access to new technologies like augmented reality and digital fabrication,” said Fab Lab co-owner Cathy Chen. “It’s really two sides of the same coin.”
Figueroa said he also wants Augment El Paso to increase its educational outreach through multiple collaborations. To help pursue this goal, the group is in the process of becoming a non-profit.
Some members of Augment El Paso were Career Day guests at Jane Hambric School, where they discussed their various degrees and careers and showed the children a few augmented pieces. They also teamed up with Fab Lab to introduce children to augmented reality and 3D modeling at the 3D Studio Art Lab at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center.
Outside of augmenting paintings on a canvas, Figueroa said the group also plans to augment various Downtown murals and even buildings, which he added would take quite some time. With such goals in mind, it might be safe to say that augmented reality will be a vital component in El Paso’s art scene.
For more information, visit AugmentEP.com and facebook.com/AugmentEP
We had a delightful evening in company of the Las Artistas members in yesterday’s Gala, a collaboration with the El Paso Museum of Art Store.
The event was held at the El Paso Museum of Art on Wednesday September 11. The event not only celebrated the work of Aleksander & Lyuba Titovets, but also promoted the upcoming Las Artistas event that will be held November 22 & 23 at 1340 Murchison Dr.
For more information about Las Artistas please visit lasartistas.org
Photos courtesy of Las Artistas
Story & photos by Victoria Molinar
Over 300 patrons came to support the El Paso Opera this past Sunday, Aug. 24, for their annual fundraiser, Encores & Overtures. Artistic Director David Grabarkewitz said he hoped the event would raise an excess of $50,000, which would help with the operation costs for the entire year of the company.
“I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of the persons of the City of El Paso and this region,” Grabarkewitz said. “It’s unbelievable to see so many people out to support the opera.”
The night was also a sneak peak of the talent for the company’s upcoming show, “Opera Bhutan”. Took place Saturday August 30, the show entailed a fully staged performance of George Frideric Handel’s “Acis and Galatea,” but with the incorporation of Bhutanese dance presented by the Kingdom of Bhutan’s Royal Academy of Performing Arts.
The Bhutanese twist also pays homage to the University of Texas at El Paso’s Bhutanese architecture, which was established several years after the university was founded.
The connection between the Bhutan and UTEP grew deeper when over 30 students, faculty and staff traveled to the Himalayan kingdom with the El Paso Opera last year to rehearse and perform “Acis and Galatea,” which was guided by Italian director Sefano Vizioli and conducted by Australia-born musician Aaron Carpenè.
“This is such a wonderful experience for Bhutanese people, to be a part of the Opera, because this is the first-ever [Western] opera in Bhutan,” Royal Academy of Performing Arts Director Goen Tshering said before he and several members performed at the fundraiser.
Along with members of the Royal Academy and UTEP ‘s Young Artists Program, the four international opera stars who play the principle roles in “Acis and Galatea” performed at the fundraiser. Attendees were in awe as they listened to the voices of Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, Brian Downen, Jacques-Greg Belobo and Thomas Macleay.
Watch this Saturday’s free performance of Acis and Galatea at the Don Haskins Center on 121 Glory road at 6 p.m. Upcoming El Paso Opera events include November’s New Opera Workshop of “How Green Was My Valley,” “Tosca” and “A Grand Night for Singing.”
Visit epopera.org for more info.
By Jenn Crawford Illustration by Mercedes Lopez
The most recent example of a partnership, and an important event in UTEP’s Centennial year celebration, is called Opera Bhutan.
Today, UTEP’s relationship with Bhutan is more than just a borrowed architecture. Bhutanese artifacts and artworks dot the campus. The relationship between the two countries has evolved into a mutually beneficial partnership in education, culture and friendship thanks in part to a British diplomat with a photography hobby.
The distinctive Bhutanese architectural style of UTEP’s buildings, with their deep-set windows, massive sloping walls and colorful tile mandalas, are the indirect result of a photo essay by John Claude White published in National Geographic Magazine in 1914, the year UTEP was founded as the Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy.
White was a British political officer in Sikkim, a small country between Bhutan and Tibet, for 20 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He traveled to neighboring Bhutan on official business, and to pursue his own explorations, becoming the first Westerner to visit many parts of the country. He carried his glass plate camera on his journeys, capturing the buildings, landscapes and people in images that were published in the National Geographic photo essay “Castles in the Air: Experiences and Journeys in Unknown Bhutan.”
Kathleen Worrell, wife of the University’s first dean, saw White’s photos of dzongs, or fortresses, in the mountainous country between India and China and thought the Bhutanese style would blend well in El Paso.
In October 2013, about 70 people from 10 different countries, including a large contingent of UTEP students, faculty and staff, traveled to Bhutan to produce the first Western opera ever performed in that country. In August, the international group will reconvene in El Paso for the United States premiere of the historic musical presentation. The Opera Bhutan group will present an evening of authentic Bhutanese music and dance for the whole family and the unprecedented staging of Handel’s Acis and Galatea that incorporates Bhutanese musical elements.
To read more, pick up a copy of The Art Avenue at Corralito Steakhouse
