Exhibit features watercraft as art form
The gallery is located on the first floor of Roaden University Center and is open to the public 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Torres will lead a gallery talk 4:30-5:30 p.m. March 23. The session is free and refreshments are offered.
Torres currently resides in Hattiesburg, Miss., where she has a studio and teaches sculpture and ceramics as an associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. She is a native of Queens, N.Y., and lived for many years in Teaneck, N.J.
She did her first four years of studio training as a teenager at the Art Students League in New York City and then her undergraduate work at the Cooper Union. While at Cooper, she took a year off to travel solo in India and Nepal for a year. This trip was a turning point in her life and had a great influence in her later work. After graduating from Cooper, she trained as a fine cabinetmaker in New England. She later worked at a lumber mill in Oregon before going to graduate school at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., where she earned a master of fine arts in sculpture.
Torres says she has a deep love for all types of watercraft, and has spent much time studying their various forms. She has also learned about traditional kayaking and kayak building through Qajaq USA, an organization devoted to traditional Inuit kayaking, history and culture. Torres says this method of building, skin-on-frame, has changed her art in a major way and is evident in nearly all of her current work.
