IU grad shares art during residency

After spending Tuesday night eating Mexican food and catching up with friends, recent IU graduate Amber Zaragoza and featured artist in residence at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site, sat in the crowded Starbucks on Kirkwood Avenue raving about the summers she spent in Italy and France.

“It was a surreal experience – I feel like I grew up in Italy. It was where I learned to cook, and (learned) how much success there was in art,” said Zaragoza, who spent the summer after her freshman year at IU in Italy studying printmaking and bookmaking.

Zaragoza will be the third artist in residence at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site in Nashville, Ind. From Nov. 7 to Nov. 23, she will spend time painting, answering questions and teaching two workshops.

“It’s good for me as an artist to talk about what I do,” Zaragoza said. “It helps build identity.”

The artist in residence program is new at T.C. Steele and is aimed to promote the site and create an opportunity for exchange between artists and the community.

T.C. Steele Arts Program Developer Christine Atkinson said she hopes to have three to four artists stay each year. Visitors to the site can observe Zaragoza painting, talk to her and ask her questions.

Although Zaragoza planned to study chemistry, when she sat down at freshman orientation, the words “I want to study art” just came out of her mouth. She later added that she has been interested in art since she could hold a crayon and continued to color until a “shamefully mature age.”

“With art, you can explore all areas: science, politics, religion,” Zaragoza said. “It’s an intellectual journey. Art keeps you thinking in a way I hadn’t expected.”

Her painting fundamentals class at IU with assistant professor of painting Caleb Weintraub inspired Zaragoza and pushed her to work hard.

Weintraub said an important part of an artist’s career is to recognize that no one else is to blame for failures and anything is possible if a person works hard enough. After Weintraub’s class, Zaragoza never looked back.

During her residency, Zaragoza will use the site’s guest cottage as a studio. She said the rustic cottage has the “potential to be a very meditative experience.”

Atkinson said the 211-acre site is “quite a breathtaking place for an artist to be and is very inspirational.”

Zaragoza described her art as turning something abstract into something familiar, such as painting a random pile of objects to find patterns and colors. She said she hoped viewers are attracted to her work and can pick out objects with which they can identify.

“It’s a process of tinkering, a nervous habit I have,” Zaragoza said. She plans to work with oil, watercolor and collage during her residency.

In addition to painting and answering questions, Zaragoza will teach two workshops. The first is canvas stretching on Nov. 7, and the second is panel priming on Nov. 23.
Zaragoza said creating a canvas gives an artist the opportunity not only to paint, but to paint on an object they created, which gives them more ownership of their art.

After her residency, Zaragoza’s art will be displayed in the T.C. Steele Studio for about three months and will be available for purchase. Zaragoza plans to continue working as an artist, exploring the ideas of graduate school and possibly becoming an art professor later.

“I don’t see myself getting bored anytime soon,” Zaragoza said, “and that’s really important.”