Art education students’ paintings go on display in GC Gallery


Melissa Carter's "Vizcaya Casino" will go on display in the GC Student Art Gallery from Sept. 12 to Sept. 26 as part of the Painting in the Gardens exhibition featuring works by students in the College of Education's art education program.

Melissa Carter’s “Vizcaya Casino” will go on display in the GC Student Art Gallery from Sept. 12 to Sept. 26 as part of the Painting in the Gardens exhibition featuring works by students in the College of Education’s art education program.

Students in the Art Education program at the College of Education are headlining an art exhibition in the Graham Center Student Art Gallery that debuted Sept. 12.

The exhibit, called Painting in the Gardens, features landscape and architectural paintings created by graduate and undergraduate students in the spring and summer art education painting ateliers. The students’ work will be on display through Sept. 26.

“It’s always exciting to have your work shown,” said Solangel Rodriguez, 24, who earned her bachelor’s degree in the spring and started her master’s degree in art education this fall.

Professor David Chang, who taught the atelier courses, said his students first learn about landscape painting and then conduct their own research to learn more about how master painters used different techniques to create landscape art.

After completing their research, students then dive into a weeklong painting session that runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“The course is intense,” Chang said. “but I paint along with them. We go from a blank canvas and I take them from abstraction to completion.”

Students also huddle together and share techniques that work for them.

“Everyone has a wide range of skill and experience and it’s really great because you learn so much from everyone around you,” said Melissa Carter.

Carter chose to paint scenes from trips to Italy and France that inspired her. She also painted a scene from Miami’s Vizcaya Museum and Gardens that recently was recognized in the annual Paint Me Miami competition.

At first, however, she didn’t know how her assignment would turn out.

“I didn’t start landscape painting till about three years ago,” Carter said. “l didn’t think I was going to like it because it seemed like it was so detailed but it was almost therapeutic. You can’t draw every single leaf or detail you have to suggest certain things.”

Solangel Rodriguez painted statues on Vizcaya's dock.

Solangel Rodriguez painted statues on Vizcaya’s dock.

Rodriguez agreed, adding she and her classmates had the freedom to choose whether they would present nature as it appears today or whether they should change the composition or the light to make the painting more dynamic.

She chose to focus her painting on the aged and architectural beauty of Vizcaya that may not be obvious to the casual visitor.

“I didn’t want to focus on the house or the gardens because that’s the first thing people see,” she said. “What grabbed my attention were statues over by the dock that were dramatized against the ocean backdrop.”