Sculptures are scattered throughout the room, fibers are hung from the ceiling, screenprints and photographs are framed on the walls and an array of paintings line the adjacent room; in the corner, a majestic, painted jaguar peers into your soul.
Master in Fine Arts student Laura Lopez sits outside the student art galleries as visitors make their way from one exhibit to the next, stopping on their way out to meet her jaguar’s gaze.
“The jaguar is a very powerful animal of the jungle, it’s like this animal that balances the ecosystem in some way,” Lopez said. “For [some indigenous Amazonian tribes] animals in certain traditions are like deities. Some animals are really the reincarnation of a god for them.”
Lopez is one of several MFA students this week featured in the student galleries located next to the campus art store. The five gallery rooms have been divided into different focuses of study: photography, drawing and painting, printmaking, fibers and sculpting. These particular exhibits have been available since Aug. 28, and will remain open until Sept. 1.
Lopez moved to Long Beach from Medellín, Columbia two years ago, and is in her final year of her MFA. She worked for several years with her undergrad degree in architecture before deciding she wanted to continue her education abroad– specifically in the Southern California coast.
“I love the weather of California and the ocean,” Lopez said. “It was going to be a different experience because I live between mountains.”
Lopez has two paintings hanging in the Gatov East gallery: a 50 by 114 inch collage of painted or sketched-on cuts of paper called “Recycled,” and a 38 by 45 inch oil-on-canvas painting named “Yurari (Where the River Flowers)”.
“[Painting] is something I’ve done all my life. I’m 37, [and I’ve been painting] since I was a kid in some way,” she said. “I always liked to paint, so sometimes I change from acrylic to drawing. It depends on the moment — in this moment I am experimenting with oil.”
“Recycled” gets its title from the natural cycle of jungle. It represents the idea that though trees may wither away and die on a daily basis, they are fertilizing the soil and planting seeds for new life.
According to Lopez, “yurari” is a word used by indigenous Amazonian tribes referring to a portion of the river that gets very bubbly.
“For them it is special because when something is bubbling it is very related to the vitality of the river, it’s kind of flowering,” Lopez said. “Also there’s a metaphor that the pleasure of sex or joy has to do with this bubbling that they see in the river.”
Both paintings are very colorful depictions of the Amazon jungle, a place that has resonated with Lopez ever since she was able to travel there when she was 20.
“I like the vibrancy of the jungle,” Lopez said. “That’s why I think I selected all this color.”
However, amidst the colorful display of “Yurari” lays the white jaguar.
Lopez says these tribes she studied see jaguars as a kind of garden spirit, and the jaguars are often related to shamans.
“The [shamans are] ones that cure certain sicknesses that are like these bridges between two worlds – the spiritual world and the world of the social structures,” Lopez said. “[The tribes] say that [the shaman] turn into jaguars.”
Shamans are often referred to as medicine men or healers, and there is certainly a type of healing offered by visiting these serene exhibits in the middle of a hectic school day.