Sculpting with Soul: UTPA professor’s artwork on display at Valley gallery

Blue paint dripped askew, marring the decorative pattern the artist had dabbed on the 1-foot-tall vase.

Chris Leonard had already molded the piece with his hands and fired it in an oven at the University of Texas-Pan American, where he teaches ceramics. He hadn’t anticipated drippy paint.

“If I mess up and it drips like it did here,” said Leonard, pointing to the vase as he sat in the ceramics room at UTPA, “I usually just turn it into alien eyeballs or something.”

The piece is part of Leonard Loses Control, an exhibit running through Sept. 27 in the University of Texas at Brownsville’s Richardson Gallery. The show costs $3 and showcases 41 pieces by the Edinburg artist.

Works range from a 1991 painting to a ceramic pig with a red-light bulb nose, which he rounded off the day of the Sept. 17 opening.

He’s molded, fired and painted many of the clay pieces in UTPA’s art department — first becoming a fixture on the Edinburg campus in 2001, when he started his master’s degree in three dimensional arts with a special emphasis in ceramics.

Leonard stuck around UTPA’s Fine Arts Annex as a part-time instructor after completing his degree in 2003.

Now 54, he teaches a full class load and points out a recent swell in ceramics enrollment.

He credits Mack Liao, a graduate student in the program, for much of his success.

Liao has tallied more than a decade working with clay to Leonard’s six years, and he helps his teacher with technicalities in clay shaping. The veteran ceramicist says a solo showcase ranks among the top honors for an artist, and Leonard deserves the accolade.

“Knowing Chris, his work is very soulful, very personal,” Liao said. “It’s who he is.”

Leonard has emerged as an artist within a family of logical thinkers. His wife teaches high school math and his son studies computer science.

Eight years ago, Leonard only used his art to teach math classes at Weslaco East High School. He drew comics to explain the finer points of algebra.

“I was good at math, but I knew I wasn’t supremely gifted,” said Leonard, who studied art in college during the 1980s and taught math because demand abounded. “I always wanted to get back to art.”

Teresa Eckerman-Pfeil directs the art gallery in Brownsville, and she made the decision to display Leonard’s work. Her selection criteria look for pieces that defy conventional thinking, show superb craftsmanship and tweak her students thinking.

Eckerman-Pfeil has assigned students in her art appreciation class a paper on Leonard’s exhibit. She asked students to document reactions to the work, expecting a glut of interesting papers.

“You can lose control in a good way and in a bad way,” Leonard said. “I think I’ve done it in both.”

Zack Quaintance covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4447.