Margaret Vega speaking at the new exhibition’s reception – Photo by Joel Grimsley
By Joel Grimsley, Arts Editor
Grace Hauenstein Library Art Gallery and study space hosted an exhibition reception featuring the artist Margaret Vega on Jan.16 for the new collection on display.
Students visiting the library will have noticed the new collection positioned on the first floor in an area with lots of foot traffic from students, it is the 3rd exhibition displayed in the art gallery after its renovation led by the Arts Advisory Committee in 2023.
The exhibition was curated by Professor Dana Freeman, curator of both the Art and Music Center’s Art Exhibition and the Library Gallery, her contributions to the exhibition was acknowledged at the event. Professor Amy Dunham Strand of Women & Gender Studies hosted the reception, inviting Vega and providing complimentary refreshments of sparkling water, cheese and crackers.
A selection of paintings hang from wires in the gallery room in the library, ranging from surrealist landscapes to figures of stone angels.
Visitor admiring a painting of a stone angel – Photo by Joel Grimsley
Vega, an independent artist and former teacher at Kendall college, has a special connection to Aquinas. Her father, who recently passed away, was a student at AQ after fighting in World War 2. At the reception she noted how “things must come full circle.”
Vega, traditionally trained in painting, also ventures into mixed media, as her work is composed of a range of mediums such as oils, gold leaf, chalk and other more experimental pieces with strings, mosaics and collections of rocks.
At the reception, she discussed the work on display, which includes pieces from a range of series, some of which are landscapes, others more figure based.
A lot of the work is “inspired by place,” as Vega said, she believes that “travel strips back layers and allows you to be actively aware of where you are.”
The pieces shown are inspired by places across the globe, including New Zealand, Mexico, Australia, Italy and Argentina.
She pairs these places and things together with different ideas and contexts to make her pieces more than a pretty picture, but complicated nuanced discussions that are skilfully illustrated.
“I feel a lot more drawn to this art compared to the previous exhibition, even though it was also cool in its own right.” Sophomore Michaela Faith said, “the thematic elements and pure talent displayed in the painting… it is so pleasing to the eye and intricate.”
The highlight of the show for many is the Stone Angels paintings which for Vega are not religious depictions but reflect the human attempt to create something to last.
“I remember being drawn to Stone angels in the French cemetery of Mexico City, when I was visiting there with my father as a child,” Vega said. “They were so big and so grand. And I thought they were just incredible years later. I went back to look at them again. And they were lying on the ground broken… part of a wing over there, covered in moss and dirt. They had become stones of the earth, they were no longer those grand angels, that seemed so permanent to me.”
Vega’s work is also inspired by the theory of kintsugi which is a Japanese’s practice of taking broken pottery and mending it with gold. “The idea being that something beautiful is broken, but if you mend it with gold, it somehow means that your flaws or whatever happened is beautiful as well and it’s a very optimistic metaphor and philosophy.”
Vicissitudes – Photo by Joel Grimsley
Vicissitudes, a prominent painting on display depicts the shore of Lake Michigan with a cracked rock hovering over it, and imitates this practice of kintsugi. The rock shown, which has been broken and mended with gold, Vega found on the shore of Lake Michigan, and is intended to invoke a dream-like sequence. The piece echoes some of the surrealist work of Salvador Dali, but also has a more local connection to Michigan.
For many students who frequently make use of the library space, Vega’s series of paintings are a welcome contribution to the Library Gallery, and offer a range of artworks for students to appreciate while studying in the library. The reception was warmly received, and students are encouraged to check the gallery to see for themselves Vega’s work.
The Saint 