Julio Fine Arts Gallery

As I have gotten older, I have started to see art as a medium to convey a message. Visual art has a way of saying everything without saying anything. René Treviño’s piece,  Ballplayers in Love , spoke to me immediately. No doubt,  Dropping Like Flies , the large pink wall embellished in over 1,000 hand gold-leafed and rhinestoned plastic flies definitely caught my eye. But,  Ballplayers in Love  told me everything about René Treviño without ever having met him. This piece combines Mayan rituals with humor, an interesting combination. I think this serves to give insight into the human experience and call on the viewers to explore their identities. Treviño’s work is alive; not only can it be seen but it can be felt. Through his work, Treviño expresses themes of identity and challenges traditional ideas of race and sexual orientation. He confronts societal assumptions and gives a voice to the underrepresented with just acrylic and paper. Simply put, it's beautiful.

Previously within my Freshman and Sophomore years at Loyola, I worked as a Desk Assistant at the Julio Fine Arts Gallery. There isn't a time I can recall in which an exhibition was as vibrantly colored as the gallery is through Stelae. Before the exhibition was finalized, I had the opportunity of assisting René Treviño in completing the pink wall where flies are scattered. In retrospect, my interaction with the artist allowed me to make parallels of his work to his personality. While it may seem cliche, I found that René's personality was quite colorful as well, despite me not previously meeting him. In a sense, that is the feeling his exhibition resembles-how the use of vibrant and unexpected colors allows visitors to feel welcome in an unknown place. Additionally, the pastel colors used which contrast to gold and black light up the gallery, proving a point that color can affect our mood. My favorite aspect of the Stelae exhibition is the pink wall, due to the way it highligh

Megan Rook-Koepsel here, Julio Fine Arts Gallery Director, welcoming everyone to a new year, and a new set of awesome exhibitions! This year we will experience work that engages us to think about things from historical representation, to identity, to loss and memory, to value and what gets valued in the world. In addition, we have the great privilege to show off plenty of work by our incredibly talented Fine Arts students AND faculty. Keep your eyes and ears open for news of awesome events to accompany these exhibitions--receptions, artist talks, panel discussions, and more! It's going to be a great year! I'm going to get out of the way now as we begin to get our student run blog underway--I just wanted to stop in and say hello while the gallery's stellar student gallery assistants get their feet under them and prepare a whole slew of new posts for your reading pleasure. Our blog is meant to be a resource for more information about each exhibition we present--a kind o