Creative Imagery: Brownsville museum displays variety of work

Jocelyn plays with her building blocks, the energy of innocence powering the metallic heart where she sits within the painting of her father.

The man in the painting "The Wellspring" at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art looks sternly from the work, creased brows, a mouth cloaked by a mustache and drawn into a moment of deep reflection as he holds the viewer with a powerful statement: The artist's 2-year-old daughter provides him the life force to create. The artist is Noel Palmenez.

The oil, pencil and color pencil work so captivated the artist who judged the entry in the 38th International Art Show that he awarded the painting "Best of Show."

"I like everything in it," said the judge, Emilio Abugarade, a visiting artist from Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico.

"I like the colors, the technique, the drawing," said Abugarade, who also gave a painting workshop March 9-13. "You see a lot of human emotion," Abugarade said. "The concept is very unique, the technique is excellent, because he combined the drawing with the colors, and the man looks at the heart inside, and he has a young baby. That's his home. That's the wellspring. The heart is everything."

To some, the man in the painting may appear angry. Abugarade doesn't agree.

"When I concentrate on something," he said, "I do that expression."

Palmenez, 39, said he felt honored by the distinction.

"I'm so surprised by this," said Palmenez, who teaches drawing and PhotoShop at Hannah High School, and also drawing at University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

"It's a privilege to get an award like that," he said. "I feel really good, really positive about what happened. ... There were some really good people to meet (at the March 4 reception), so everything's great."

A broad range of colorful and intriguing images in a variety of media currently fill the museum's art show that will be on display until March 28. Red-crowned parrots cluster on tenuous branches, seagulls prance through the wind above Queen Isabella Memorial Causeway, boats linger against tranquil lake shores, toucans crowd leafy jungles and indigenous children bathed in indigo and lavender and scarlet stroll barefoot through a flowered meadow.

"This is fantastic," said Abugarade, referring to the piece "Town Life" that he awarded first place in the sculpture division. In this piece, a woman sleeps in a profound and deep-scented peace, marks of stern civility etched across her forehead and her chin, a smile sliding across her broad cheeks. Narrow, stalwart houses rise like comfortable chimneys above the thick hair rolling across her head. Jagged terracotta roofs jut from her swollen neck pierced with narrow window holes and darkened doorways leading to endless rooms.

"This has a lot of creative imagery," Abugarade said with grave adoration. "It's very well done, and the feature's expression, it has a very good quality."

Barry Horn, executive director, felt intrigued by the comments he overheard from visitors at the opening reception.

"It was so interesting to be standing over here looking at this, but overhearing what they are saying over here about this," he said, gesturing towards Palmenez's work "Sangre de la Tierra," depicting hands with pierced wounds reaching through luxuriant foliage toward a scaly snake slithering from oil pooling in parched earth.

"When I say everyone's a critic," Horn continued, "everyone has an opinion. It's delightful to listen to what people have to say about the art. I remember one of the comments was, ‘What were the artists thinking?' "

Palmenez said the theme of "Sangre de la Tierra" revolves around the idea of the oil crisis and its influence on people. Dollar bills shaped like flowers lay across a dry, cracked earth near the bottom of the picture.

"What appears to be life is artificial life," he said. "We give it value, but basically money is the root of evil. On the upper part you see natural beauty associated with the idea of Christ and the idea of harmony, ideas of sacrifice. At the bottom they seem alive, but they are just dollar bills."

Horn also appreciated Palmenez's "Best of Show" entry, "The Wellspring."

"It's just so well done," he said. "It's a self-portrait. It's almost a photo image of Noel. It's a wonderful representation of him."

He nodded toward the image of the little girl building a tower with blocks inside his heart made of metal pumps, chambers, gears and rivets.

"This is his child," Horn said. "That's who drives his heart. Imagine what kind of discipline and courage it took in creating this, to do a self-portrait. And then to be recognized by a juror, Emilio Abugarade, as being best of show."

Palmenez said he created the work to illustrate how he sees himself and the subtle changes in his life in the two years since his daughter was born.

"I try and incorporate a little bit about her and how she's affected me personally," said Palmenez. He and his wife are expecting another daughter, soon.

The painting includes images of juicy figs and pomegranates hanging from leafy stems.

"I have a background in agriculture," he said. "I try to include things like that because I do appreciate them, and also things of nature, and pretty much small details. I really love small details, and I try to mix that up with painting very painterly, very very loose, with a lot of color, and I try also to incorporate the ideas of machines, the ideas of things moving inside. Inside of the heart that's why I decided to paint my little girl because I feel like she gives me so much energy to do things and I feel like that's the spark. That's where everything comes from, the idea of youth and how she relates to me."