Stan State Bachelor of the Fine Arts (BFA) Graduate and Printmaker Maggie Gonzales exhibited her recent body of work in a solo show called “Homesick” at the MAH Epekel Gallery in Merced. The exhibition will be open and free to the public until October 5th.
 

Gonzales said, “I am beginning to combine printmaking and painting to create large pieces that focus on places and the relationships between other family members as my memories fluctuate.”
 

Gonzales’s printmaking and painting layers create new perspectives, evoking a sense of nostalgia and loss, some areas are obscured or concealed by her collage elements.
 

The effect of her work is like an old, faulty, and distorted lense looking back onto seemingly pleasant childhood moments and injecting them with a soft spoken passion which is demonstrated in her piece “You’ll Miss Me” but is more direct in the piece “I Wish He Would Just”.
 

There are few figural pieces in her show; her collages focus on the environment in which she grew and mostly the treated objects around her. Layers of pastel colored paints over graphic screenprints and inkwash soften the images and lend power to a nostalgic “aura”.
 

She says, “I want people to wonder why I choose to represent certain objects and maybe think about what things are important to their memories.”
 

The Artist’s Reception and opening was held on September 6th. Gonzales was supported by her family, fellow graduates, and locals who came out to the show to see her work.
 

“There was an overall forlorn feeling, like something important had been lost. I thought about a time and a place from my own past that will never be again,” Victoria Hardy (Graduate, BFA) said.
 

Paul Acevedo (Graduate, BFA) found her work to be “a subtle look at the past filled with emotions and cheerful memories.”
For more on Maggie Gonzales, you can follow her on Instagram, and check out the upcoming Stanislaus State Art Alumni Exhibition in October.