On Friday, March 23, people will have the opportunity to see multi-media artwork at the jazzy and colorful Biko House in Isla Vista, where City College art students are planning a showcase event to display their craftsmanship and event-planning skills.

The Biko House will display artwork made by the students in City College’s Portfolio Seminar class (ART 118), who have been preparing for this pop-up showcase for weeks. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to noon with free admission.

The theme of the pop-up is “visceral feelings.”

“Everyone is addressing the theme in their own manners,” said Camila Rodriguez, the event administrator. “Some people are dealing with their frustrations with life and themselves as artists. Others are dealing with fear, the earth and movement.”

Rodriguez, who will be submitting oil and acrylic paintings, was born and raised in Columbia and moved to California to attend City College. Rodriguez said the women, diverse cultures, and bright colors from home continue to inspire her art.

The ART 118 course gives students the opportunity to create, document, and edit their own works of visual art to incorporate them into a professional portfolio.  They also learn how to put together a portfolio for transfer and career development.

The point of the class is to not limit the students to any one medium, so the artwork ends up being be all over the spectrum.

“Sculpture, print, 2D paintings and drawings, 3D paintings and drawings, woodworks, plaster works and even more mediums have all been submitted already,” said Alejandro Martinez, the curator of the event. Each student will submit 3-5 pieces.

The students in ART 118 decided on the venue together, and chose the Biko House because the house is a student living home that has been supporting UCSB students and cultural diversity since 1997.

“There is art all over the walls, stacks of comic books around the house, and we thought that to intertwine our pieces with the house and the meaning that already exists with it would be awesome,” Martinez said. 

The instructors of the course, Christopher Ulivo and Armando Ramos, purposely designed the showcase assignment so that every element is put together entirely by the students to show them what it takes to organize a pop-up in the real world.

“The assignment is unique and challenging because we get to choose our own venue and theme and each of us have been assigned a particular business role to exercise in order to organize the event,” said Morgan Corbitt, the public relations representative of the event.

A great amount of effort has gone into every aspect of the showcase, but the students in ART 118 emphasized that the event’s intention is to make the viewer really experience the art.

“We want people to interact with the art and feel its colors,” Rodriguez said, “so we chose a theme we thought everyone could relate to.”