by Rachel Hill
Daily Lobo
Art patrons crowded to see vivid statements about animal abuse at Visiones Gallery on Friday.
The opening reception for "Quienes Son Los Animales: Altars to Lives Sacrificed for Human Greed" coincided with a Dia de los Muertos celebration at the gallery. The exhibit runs until Nov. 21. It was put on by members of Working Classroom, a nonprofit.
Middle and high school students spent about a month in the studio preparing the exhibit.
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"We wanted to make it like stepping into a painting," guest instructor Isaac AlaridPease said.
Assistant Director Anzia Bennett said Working Classroom hosts an event every year to honor victims of preventable deaths. This year, student artists chose animals as the victims.
"The kids come up with the ideas, argue over it, research it and bring it all into the studio,"
Bennett said.
Patricia Allaira said she visited the exhibit because she wanted to see what middle and high school students had to say about the abuse of animals.
"It seems like more of an issue university students would consider," Allaira said.
The student artists said the mistreatment of animals in American culture inspired the art.
"We depend on animals for a lot," student Stephanie Zarrasola said. "People should be more aware of it. I don't like animals getting abused."
Zarrasola worked with other student artists to build a horse's body covered in betting stubs. The horse's legs were encrusted with glass shards.
Zarrasola said the sculpture was inspired by the story of a thoroughbred whose legs were broken after it lost a race.
Students Bianca Benavidez and Lauren Martinez-Berr collaborated on a piece that illustrated how chickens, cows and pigs are treated in the corporate meat industry.
Martinez-Berr said the chickens are cooped up in the dark before they go to the processing area.
The animals are shown dead and in pieces. They are then shown being packaged for the grocery store. At the end of the diorama, a laptop inside a mini-fridge plays footage of what happens inside farms. The footage provides "a glimpse of what we don't usually see," Martinez-Berr said.
Student Eddie Sanchez created a sculpture of a life-sized food cart advertising illegal bushmeat. A beige-painted vendor offers fresh gorilla meat, shark-fin soup and antelope steak.
Sanchez said the vendor is portrayed in a
monochrome state because he is "no one, and there is no honor in what he's doing."
Student Margaret Manjares-Toledo made a sculpture of a starving dog cowering outside a house.
She said the dog was shaped from wire and newspaper and painted red - a color she said symbolizes hurt. She glued bits of dog food onto the sculpture and placed it on an AstroTurf lawn within a white picket fence.
AlaridPease said the projects encourage students to use art to make powerful, visceral statements about issues that are important to them.
"Just because a kid creates it, it's not automatically good art," he said of the Working Classroom approach. "We really push them - both their ideas and technique."
"Quienes Son Los Animales:
Altars to Lives Sacrificed
for Human Greed"
Working Classroom's Visiones Gallery
212 Gold Ave. S.W.
Monday-Friday
9 a.m.-5 p.m.
