The Galleries of Contemporary Art is presenting Karla García’s art show, “Between the Land and Sky,” in collaboration with the UCCS Visual and Performing Arts Department as the seventh year of the Female Emerging Artists Residency Series.
García’s exhibition transforms the Ent Center’s Chapman Auditorium into a meditative desert landscape. With her hand-built pottery, based on the landscape of her childhood in El Paso, Texas and along the Mexico-U.S. border, García reflects deeply on the land, identity and human spirit through her ceramic sculptures.
The exhibition consists of several sculpted cacti placed on concrete blocks among ceramic grasses. The cacti are lightly coated with a blue-tinted glaze that creates depth and an exploration of the desert’s night colors. The cactus structure is built to be open from the top and bottom to signify a channel between the earth and the sky.
UCCS is García’s first time exhibiting at a university. García said she hopes this opportunity to exhibit her work on both sides of the border can help bring people together by creating conversations and connections through her art.
During her talk at the Visting Artist + Critics Series, García said, “I’m drawn to how plants adapt and thrive in such extreme conditions. And then there are infrastructures all throughout the land. All that alters how we move and experience a land.”
The use of concrete blocks beneath her cacti represents an intersection between nature and human-built environments.
“In my work, I use a physical transformation from clay to ceramics, and glaze surfaces to depict the cactus culture as an embodiment of the Nahua myth of the desert deity that you see today in my installation,” García said.
García first began experimenting with the shape and story of cacti in 2020. “Each piece became a kind of self-portrait,” she said. García says she explores cacti in her art as a symbol of her Mexican roots, myths of the desert deity Malinalxochitl and the plant’s resilience.
This installation is open for public viewing from Oct. 23 until Dec. 13 in the Ent Center’s Chapman Auditorium.
