The Spanish and Latino Student Association commenced its Spice Up Your Life week Monday with a Latino Art Showcase.

The purpose of the showcase was to give Latino students at Kent State University an opportunity to demonstrate their talents. Five people participated in the showcase resulting in a total of eight pieces of art. Isabel Farnsworth, associate professor for the School of Art, started off the showcase by sharing her background in art and some of the pieces of art she recently created.

Although Farnsworth has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting, she said that her work is predominately sculpture. During her presentation, Farnsworth showed the audience examples of sculptures and drawings and briefly described the process of creating the piece of art.

“I feel like I’m not a master of one medium,” Farnsworth said. “I work in a range of materials, but I always come back to modeling and the image of the body. I mentioned layering meaning and layering materials and I feel like materials have a lot of meaning.”

Farnsworth was glad she was given the opportunity to come speak to the students.

“I was interested to meet this group of students,” Farnsworth said. “I’m privileged to do that. I’m happy I was invited.”

Hannah Weaver, treasurer of S.A.L.S.A., played an active role in the planning of the art showcase. She said that she invited Farnsworth to give attendees the opportunity to pose questions to an experienced artist.

“I’m not an artist or anything, so I wanted if people came here […] and I wasn’t able to answer their questions, they could ask her,” Weaver said.

David Garcia, associate vice president for enrollment management, was asked to be the judge of the showcase and choose the top two pieces of art. He said that his wife is an artist so he knew to look closely at the creativity and type of medium used in each piece. After much consideration, Garcia announced that Nicole Perry was the first place winner of the art showcase and Brittany Mendoza was the runner-up.

“I think it’s really good for S.A.L.S.A., and Kent State really, to have these type of art shows because we have some talented students here doing some talented work,” Garcia said. “It was really a tough decision.”

Perry, senior computer animation major at the Kent State Tuscarawas campus, was awarded a Chipotle gift card for winning first place for her wax painting “New Chair.” She said that it is one of her favorite pieces she’s created and thought that people would be able to relate to it.

“I know S.A.L.S.A. has to do with cultural differences, like Hispanic students,” Perry said. “And also because I have this level of almost like a male and female thing going on, I thought it’s also about almost like oppression within it [the painting], so I thought it was something all minorities could relate to,” Perry said. “I thought that would be something interesting to enter.”

Weaver is hopeful that the number of attendees will remain constant or rise as Spice Up Your Life continues this week.

“I hope that we have as good as a turnout as we did tonight at the rest of our events this week,” she said.

Contact Kelsey Leyva at [email protected].