By Priscilla Wadlington ’20 News Reporter
At the entrance to the lobby of the Burgin Center for the Arts, the face of Blanca Estela greets onlookers with warm eyes and a hint of a smile. Using a color scheme of yellows, pinks, blues, and a touch of gold, artist Marta Sanchez depicts the stories of her past in the exhibit Unfolding the life of Blanca Estela. Sanchez works mainly in traditional Mexican and Chicana styles, using linocuts and monotypes and paints on metal instead of canvas. Her exhibit features painted pictures of her past, portraits of her grandmother, and colorful depictions of her grandmother’s house.
In this collection Sanchez tells her grandmother’s story. Accompanied by her fourteen year old son, Sanchez conducted interviews with family members, beginning to illustrate the colorful life Blanca Estella led. With each intimate picture, Sanchez uses black and gold paint to frame the people and places featured, guiding the viewer’s focus and creating a mystical impression of looking back through time.
Sanchez also includes several portraits of her grandmother painted on different backgrounds, portraying Estela as a kind and compassionate woman. In the smaller gallery, the Sanchez exhibit also extends to a collection of letters, poems, and childlike clay figures, allowing the viewer to have a closer look into her childhood growing up as a Latina woman in San Antonio, Texas.
Sanchez’s family originated from Spain, from which several ancestors immigrated to Mexico during colonization. Eventually, her great grandparents fled to San Antonio, Texas, during the Mexican Revolution with her grandmother, Blanca Estela, a child in tow. Estela grew up following her evangelist mother back and forth across town before being sent to a boarding school. There, she met her husband, settled down, and worked to provide for her family, including sons, daughters, and grandchildren like Marta.
Estela was always generous to friends and family, and loved her life until the very end. This collection touches on Sanchez’s relationship with Estela and her feelings about Estela’s death. It combines powerful emotions like grief, sadness, and anger at the expectations of society. Accompanying the exhibit is a written explanation of Sanchez’s research process and a video with additional information on her process and the pieces.
Overall, Sanchez’s collection combines to tell the powerful story of the struggles faced by immigrants and women in the US through the lens of her grandmother’s story. The exhibit will be in the Cofrin Gallery from October 18 through November 19.