Category Archives: Pecan Campus

Presentation: “Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande”

Author / Scholar Visit, Library Events, Mid-Valley Campus, Pecan Campus, Previous Events, Starr County Campus

Flyer-GeorgeDiaz-BorderContraband

Present-day smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border is a professional, often violent, criminal activity. However, it is only the latest chapter in a history of illicit business dealings that stretches back to 1848, when attempts by Mexico and the United States to tax commerce across the Rio Grande upset local trade and caused popular resentment.

This April, Dr. George Diaz will join the South Texas College Library to discuss the first history of smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border based on the research for his book Border Contraband: A History of Smuggling Across the Rio Grande.

Dr. Diaz will visit three of South Texas College’s campuses. On April 6th at 1:00 pm, he will visit the MidValley campus library, and at 6:00 pm, he will visit the Pecan campus library. To conclude his visit, Dr. Diaz will visit the Starr campus library on April 7th at 10:00 am. Following his discussion, there will be an opportunity to purchase his book and have the author sign it.

“The topic is very relevant to the news we hear every day, but it is fascinating to learn about how it happened historically for over 160 years,” said librarian Esther Garcia. “Dr. Diaz visit will help illuminate our border’s history.”

For more information on these events please contact Esther Garcia at (956) 872-6485 or egarcia10@southtexascollege.edu or visit http://library.southtexascollege.edu/libraryevents. All events are free and open to the community.

Nov. 24 – “Miss Representation” Screening at Pecan

Library Events, Movies, Pecan Campus, Previous Events

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On Nov. 24th at 1:00 pm and at 5:30 pm, there will be a screening of Miss Representation with a special introduction by Dr. Patricia Blaine.  The film will be shown at the Pecan campus at the D-Auditorium.

Like drawing back a curtain to let bright light stream in, Miss Representation (87 min; TV-14 DL) uncovers a glaring reality we live with every day but fail to see. Written and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the film exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

For more information call 872-6485.

Women’s Studies Film Festival – Fall 2014, at Pecan

Library Events, Movies, Pecan Campus, Previous Events

WomensStudiesFilmFestival2014

The STC Women’s Studies Group is hosting a series of documentary films.

On Nov. 13 at 6:00 pm they will be showing Sound of Torture (2013). The film is about a Swedish journalist named Meron Estefanos gets a disturbing tip. She’s given a phone number that supposedly belongs to a group of refugees being held hostage in the Sinai desert. She dials the number, and soon dozens of strangers are begging her to rescue them. How can she ignore them?

On Nov. 19 at 6:00 pm, they will show Maria in Nobody’s Land (2010). The film is an unprecedented look at the illegal and extremely dangerous journey of three Salvadoran women to the US. Doña Inés, a 60 year old woman, has been looking for her daughter for years and is following her to the US. Marta and Sandra, escaping domestic abuse and poverty, decide to leave their families behind to travel to America.

Movies will be held at Building D– Aud at the Pecan Campus.

For more information contact jclark@southtexascollege.edu.

 

 

Gesticulaciones de la Vida

Library Art Gallery, Pecan Campus, Previous Exhibits

3228591South Texas College’s Pecan Campus Library presents “Gesticulaciones de la Vida (Life’s Gesticulations),” an exhibit featuring artworks by Beatriz Guzman Velasquez. The exhibit opens Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014 with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and artist talks are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the library’s Rainbow Room. The exhibit will remain on display through Dec. 9. The gallery is located at 3201 W. Pecan Blvd. in McAllen. Admission is free and open to the public.

Through her brightly painted images of local cemeteries, Guzman Velasquez seeks to cherish and understand the role death plays along the Mexico-Texas border.

In her works, life and death co-exist in the same place, just like in the Mexican holiday, el Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This popular celebration holds many traditions including building private altars called ofrendas, and honoring the deceased by leaving gifts of sugar skulls, marigolds, favorite foods, beverages and possessions at their grave sites.

Guzman Velasquez earned a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the University of Texas Pan-American and participated in the San Miguel de Allende Study Abroad Program in Guanajuato, Mexico.

“Guzman Velasquez’s breathtaking use of color is what initially draws viewer’s in,” said STC Art Gallery Associate Dawn Haughey. “It is then the movement and play of the medium that holds our attention. We are so excited to be able to share her work with all of our students, faculty and community members during el Día de los Muertos.”

STC’s Library Art Gallery exhibits regional, national and international artwork, explores new visions and theories of creativity, and introduces innovative artistic expressions to the South Texas region.

For more information, contact Dawn Haughey at (956) 872-3488 or via email at dhaughey@southtexascollege.edu, or visit http://library.southtexascollege.edu/newsevents/libraryartgallery/.

WWI Centennial – Emilio Zamora “The WWI Diary of Jose de la Luz Saenz”

Author / Scholar Visit, Library Events, Pecan Campus, Previous Events

JDLS-VetDay-EmilioZamora2014

The year 2014 marks 100 years since the start of World War I.  Join us in commemorating the Mexican-American participation in the Great War.

Dr. Emilio Zamora will join us to discuss the WWI diary of José de la Luz Sáenz and help us commemorate the centennial of WWI. He is a Professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Published in Spanish in 1933 and now edited and translated by Dr. Zamora, the diary recounts the author’s war experiences and those of his fellow Mexican Americans. The book is the only WWI diary ever published by a Mexican American.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

6:00 PM –
Pecan Library
Build – F   Rainbow Room
3201 W. Pecan Blvd., McAllen, TX

For more information contact 872-6485 or egarcia10@southtexascollege.edu.

Tim Z. Hernandez to visit STC – Oct 2

Author / Scholar Visit, Library Events, Pecan Campus, Previous Events

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South Texas College’s Center for Mexican American Studies and Library will have a special visit from author Tim Z. Hernandez on October 2nd, 2014 at 4pm in the Pecan Campus Library Rainbow Room, which is located at 3201 W. Pecan Blvd in McAllen. There will also be a book signing immediately following the event. Admission to each event is free and open to the public.

Tim Z. Hernandez is an award winning author and performance artist.  He teaches at the University of Texas – El Paso and has been featured on NPR and other news outlets.

His novel Mañana Means Heaven is a love story of impossible odds. It tells the story of Bea Franco, the real woman behind famed American author Jack Kerouac’s “The Mexican Girl.” Set against the backdrop of California in the 1940s, deep in the agricultural heartland of the Great Central Valley, the book reveals the desperate circumstances that lead a woman to an affair with an aspiring young writer traveling across the United States.

“We are honored and fortunate to be able to host such a celebrated author as Tim Z. Hernandez at South Texas College,” says CMAS coordinator Victor Gomez.“His book is inspired by the Jack Kerouak story from On the Road however, it is also the sweeping story of sacrifice and love.”

For more information call 956-872-6485.

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Ceramic Showdown 2014

Library Art Gallery, Pecan Campus, Previous Exhibits,

lag-ceramicSouth Texas College’s Library Art Gallery, together with the college’s Visual Arts and Music Department, brings the Rio Grande Valley its annual ceramics exhibition and workshop, “Calculated Efforts: A South Texas Ceramic Showdown.” All activities are free and open to the public.

The event includes a full display of ceramic works by art students and professors from regional universities and community colleges. The exhibit will be on view from June 2 to Aug. 8 at the college’s Pecan Campus Art Building Art Gallery, located at 3201 West Pecan Blvd. in McAllen.

A two-day ceramics workshop will take place on June 13 from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. and 1:30 – 4:30 p.m., and June 14 at 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. at STC’s Pecan Campus Art Building (Bldg. B) Ceramics Lab, Room 113. Art talks will be held on Saturday, June 14 from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. at the same location. An exhibit reception will be held on June 12 in the Visual Arts and Music Gallery and the Pecan Campus Library Art Gallery from 6-8 p.m.

“We are back in action for another round of ceramic collaboration. There are a number of variables that we are putting in place,” said Chris Leonard, STC ceramics instructor and exhibit/workshop organizer. “Actually, people across the state and even nation are putting things in place and into kilns in order to make the show happen in the summer.”

Participants will see clay demonstrations by nationally recognized and distinguished ceramicists Fred Spaulding and Jennifer Quarles.

“We are continuing with a paired show format; the institutional invite will be back along with a pair of visiting artists, Jennifer Quarles from Austin and Fred Spaulding, who at one time taught at UTPA and will be rolling down from Arlington,” Leonard said. “Their work should harmonize well while also providing interesting levels of contrast. In their ceramic work, which isn’t the entirety of all that they produce, both artists use aspects of printmaking, photography, and graphic arts in creating work that both touches and transcends tradition.”

Spaulding earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut. He is currently associate professor of art at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth and has completed further study through residencies at Kohler’s Arts in iron casting and Penland’s Winter Residency in Printmaking. Spaulding continues to work, exploring the possibilities of constructed structures of brick.

Quarles earned her Master of Fine Arts from Texas Women’s University. Since 2002, her work has been featured in both regional and national exhibitions. In addition, Quarles works with the Texas Clay Arts Association (TCAA), a non-profit organization that promotes ceramics in Texas. Her work explores our constant drive to record and share information, as well as our inherent desire to connect to one another.

STC’s Library Art Gallery exhibits regional, national and international artwork, explores new visions and theories of creativity, and introduces innovative artistic expressions to the South Texas region.

For more information contact Dawn Haughey at (956) 872-3488, or via email at dhaughey@southtexascollege.edu or Chris Leonard at (956) 872-2668, or via email at cpleonar@southtexascollege.edu or visit http://library.southtexascollege.edu/newsevents/libraryartgallery/.

Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

Library Art Gallery, Pecan Campus, Previous Exhibits

humanities2STC to display Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy

South Texas College’s Pecan Campus Library will present “Vaquero: Genesis of the Texas Cowboy,” an exhibition created by the Wittliff Collections at the Texas State University-San Marcos Alkek Library and presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This exhibition is made possible in part by a We the People grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibit will be on display from June 16 to July 28, 2014 at the Pecan Campus Library Rainbow Room, located at 3201 W. Pecan Blvd. in McAllen. Admission is free and open to the public.

In the early 1970s, noted Texas historian Joe Frantz offered Bill Wittliff a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit a ranch in Northern Mexico where the vaqueros still worked cattle in traditional ways. Wittliff photographed the vaqueros as they went about daily chores that had changed little since the first Mexican cow herders learned to work cattle from a horse’s back. Wittliff captured a way of life that now exists only in memory and in the photographs included in this exhibition.

The exhibition features photographs with bilingual narrative text that reveal the muscle, sweat and drama that went into roping a calf in thick brush or breaking a wild horse in the saddle.

STC’s Library Art Gallery exhibits regional, national and international artwork, explores new visions and theories of creativity, and introduces innovative artistic expressions to the South Texas region.

For more information, contact Dawn Haughey at 956-872-3488, libraryart@southtexascollege.edu or visit http://lag.southtexascollege.edu.

Bit by Bit

Library Art Gallery, Pecan Campus, Previous Exhibits

lag-bitbybit South Texas College’s Library Art Gallery, together with the college’s Visual Arts and Music Department, is proud to present “Bit by Bit: A Student Digital Art Exhibition.” The exhibit will be on display from June 19 – August 8, 2014 at the Pecan Campus Library, located at 3201 W. Pecan Blvd. in McAllen. Admission is free and open to the public.

“This exhibition showcases a collection of digital prints made by South Texas College art students. These prints show the diverse possibilities when limits in digital art are pushed, said Phyllis Evans, STC Assistant Professor of Art and Pedro Perez, STC Art Instructor. “Works range from minimally edited digital photography, to basic photo-manipulation and photo-montages, to works created almost entirely on the computer. Most works were created and/or edited using one or a combination of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Lightroom.”

“Students enrolled in Digital Art and Digital Photography classes develop technical, visual, and conceptual skills that they may use as tools for creative problem solving,” continued Evans and Perez. “While some pieces in this show are considered graphic design and illustration and are thus intended for commercial uses, others were created purely for artistic and expressive means. Often traditional media such as drawing, painting, and film photography are combined with digital techniques to form unique images that would not have otherwise been possible.”

Evans and Perez add, “Although digital art and photography are fairly new genres in the realm of fine arts, they have gained popularity among artists and photographers because of the freedom and limitless possibilities they provide.”

STC’s Library Art Gallery exhibits regional, national and international artwork, explores new visions and theories of creativity, and introduces innovative artistic expressions to the South Texas region.

For more information, contact Dawn Haughey at 956-872-3488 or via email dhaughey@southtexascollege.edu, or visit http://library.southtexascollege.edu/newsevents/libraryartgallery/.