Living & Arts

Senior art highlights charcoal drawing

In print | April 23, 2009

Sofia Lopez:

Sofia Lopez ’09 will be bringing a small taste of life on a Texas ranch to Swarthmore this week, when her senior art exhibition opens on Thursday. Calling herself a “transplant” to Swarthmore from Texas, Lopez has spent much of this past semester thinking about what she’s missing.

One image will dominate her exhibit, in various iterations: that of the family ranch. Unable to return to the ranch after its sale during her teen years, the place has maintained a hold on Lopez and her family which is clear in her work. As she explained it, “It’s interesting to me to think of this place where my father grew up, and he and my mother were there as they were courting and they took me there subsequently as a child. We’ve all had a very intimate connection to it at different points in our lives.”

What she puts forth, however, is not particularly sentimental. Her landscapes are broad and unpopulated and her drawing of the town nearest to the ranch is similarly focused on the simple lines and creating a sense of air. When drawing comparisons to her strongest artistic influence, William Kentridge, Lopez said, “[My work] is far more simple and personal. I don’t really have any grand political statement to make at this point; I just really like the images.”

One of the drawings in her collection is a dense scene, looking over a train junction in the closest town to the ranch, perhaps a perception of the intermingling of man and nature. However, Lopez believes that is reading too much into a relatively straightforward subject choice. “I don’t pretend that it’s the wilderness. It’s a ranch, so it’s completely cultivated. I’m not trying to put forth a myth of the beautiful untouched landscape.” She chooses her subjects according to visual appeal and a personal connection, instead of according to an artistic agenda.

Unfortunately, Lopez has faced challenges with her subject choice. A vast majority of her work for this exhibition has been created in Pennsylvania, instead of on location. The fact that her family sold the ranch several years ago is no great help, either. Instead, Lopez relies on a combination of memories and photos, some of which were taken by her father for her mother back when the two were dating. As a result, “[the work] becomes this sort of interplay between my memory, my own nostalgia and the photographs.”

Lopez has done a fine job of rendering the images in those terms, and her exhibition presents a cohesive artistic viewpoint. The juxtaposition of her works alongside Zebi Brown’s promises food for thought.

By Anne Coleman

Zebi Brown:

Zebi Brown ’09 is featuring her senior art exhibition in the List Gallery this Thursday. Regarding her exhibition, Brown said, “My work isn’t thematic. It’s not about the subject.” The content of Brown’s art runs the gamut from landscapes to still-life’s to self-portraits. But, for Brown, the manner in which the subject is drawn is more interesting than the subject itself. “You can draw anything in the same way. It’s not about what’s in it. It’s about how you make the marks, how you approach it, how you’re looking at it. It’s a lot about looking.”

Recently, Brown has been mostly concentrating on charcoal drawings after an eight-week summer program inspired her to delve into the medium more deeply. Although there are a few oil paintings and pencil drawings among the collection of mostly charcoal works, Brown said “Even the paintings are sort of done the way that drawings are. It’s pretty much a drawing show.”

Within drawing, Brown is interested in a wide range of styles. “It’s always a matter of what ideas occur to me or what I think is important,” Brown said. “There was a period of time where I really cared about light, so I was only drawing things in the highest contrast possible. Then I got really excited about mark-making, so then everything is scribbles, marks all over the paper, no space left untouched. Then, after looking at another artist, I suddenly just wanted to do line drawings, as simple as possible.”

Brown added, “It’s not like I move from one style to the next to the next and that I’m consistent. One day it’s pencil and it’s all over the paper. And then one day it’s four lines. And then one day it’s an ink drawing. It’s whatever’s in the picture or whatever I’m feeling that day. It’s not one consistent style.”
The opening reception for Lopez’s and Brown’s exhibitions is on Thursday, April 23 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the List Gallery. The exhibitions will be on display until Monday.

By Alex Ho