Married artists open gallery today in downtown Harlingen

The young girl in the painting gazes peacefully from beneath a mane of light brown hair, embracing a group of children in a moment of timeless tranquility.

Aptly named "The Dreamer," the painting by Anna Varela is one of many that will hang in the Gallery 218 when it opens July 14 at 218 W. Jackson Street in Harlingen. The grand opening from 6 to 9 p.m. will be open to the public. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served.

"We encourage every guest to feel welcome and have the total art experience," said Varela, 48. "We’re gonna have a couple of other local artists joining us. We have contacted several people, so we will be picking up their work. But it’s basically Benjamin’s and my work together."

Anna and Ben Varela married in December. Varela’s work depicts abstract stippling pieces such as Death Mask of Allusion, in which a pair of eyes stare from the wings of a butterfly while a gaping skull hovers in the upper right side. More faces with differing expressions whirl about the work, invoking a stream of speculations.

"I guess it’s a crossing of borders being one of the problems in this area," said Ben Varela, 54. "So they take their risk crossing over. On the American side you see the house and the trees and there’s a mask on the bottom. That’s the allusion. You cross over, you get toward a better economic scenario, I believe. The job."

Anna and Ben decided to open the gallery, that has previously served as an antique shop and a pharmacy, to showcase the work of new local artists.

"It’s to promote the area because the arts usually help the economy," said Ben Varela. "Basically, the place that we’re using, we’re turning it into a gallery to act as another venue for the arts, and we’re inviting artists to exhibit their work."

How will it differ from other local art galleries?

"Our gallery will have artists who are working with the idea of doing something original with their work, and works that deal with themes that are from the area of South Texas, and not just that but other themes," said Ben Varela. "It’s opened up to other themes. And it could be abstract work, for those who fall in that realm."

His new wife Anna draws on a number of realms. "The Dreamer," is inspired by Gustav Klimt in his use of pattern and design; she also derives inspiration from her late husband, Humberto Salinas, who died five years ago. He had been a field laborer before earning his degree to become a special education teacher. Even after becoming a teacher, he still worked in the fields during the summer, serving as a boss who paid more than other employers and also working alongside his workers.

"He was the one that pushed me to go to school," she said. "He worked in the fields, but his ideas and his culture is what inspired me to paint the figures."

Those "figures" include an acrylic on canvas of a man dressed in blue playing a red accordion, the bold colors joyously grabbing the viewers’ attention.

“My favorite medium is acrylic,” she said. “That’s what I like. Because it dries faster and I can work on it very quickly, and so I’m able to set the image very very quickly. With oils, I have to mix and wait.” It kind of bothers me that I can’t get that image right there. And I think it’s because it has to do where I used to work at Haggar (clothing manufacturing plant) where we had to do production of things and we had to it constantly and rapidly. So I think that’s what’s instilling in me to create these things very quickly.”

However, she is exploring other mediums, with delightful results. A watercolor depicts she and her new husband embracing in a throng of flowers.

"Ben inspired me to go back to watercolors," she said. "I hadn’t done one since years ago. Now that I’m with Ben, we’ve been sharing ideas, so it’s kind of like bursting and glowing, both ideas together. he’s teaching right now. And I’m shadowing him, because I’ll be teaching an art appreciation class."

Ben Varela has been an artist of various mediums his entire life, including ceramics, metal sculpture, and printmaking. He began painting about four and a half years ago.

"My interest is basically trying to do something different with my work," Ben Varela said. "I do it stipple, and I create my forms that way, at least the illusions of form, and I put color over it, transparent colors over it, and that’s how I create my paintings. I give it a different look.”

While Ben Varela is stippling, he’s also using the grisaille. He quoted the book “Living with Art Appreciation” as saying, “The composition is generally worked out in advance down to the least detail, then built up methodically, layer after layer. A classic procedure is to complete the entire painting first in black and white. Colored glazes are then floated over the monochrome image, whose lights and darks show through as modeling.”

Varela said he doesn’t know of anyone else who has combined stippling and grisaille.

“When you have it finished up to that level and it’s in black and white, it looks like a stone sculpture,” he said. “I had one student, when I was exhibiting in McAllen, who said it looked like stone, that my images looked like little pebbles, and that was the visual effect of the image.”

Artists who wish to submit their work for showing at the new gallery should contact Ben and Anna Varela at gallery218@gmail.com.

Gallery 218 Grand Opening
WHEN: Tuesday, July 14, 2009
TIME: 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
WHERE: Gallery 218, 218 Jackson St., Harlingen
DRESS: Semi-casual attire