Ulbricht Finds His Art in the Written Word

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Egan Ulbricht with his piece "We Do Not Waste Time."

LOS LUNAS, NM (05/07/2013)(readMedia)-- Egan Ulbricht starts his artwork with an idea, but has no idea how each piece will conclude. Ulbricht, whose artwork is on display through May 14 at the UNM-Valencia Campus Fine Arts Gallery, likes the process.

"I have some concepts in mind," he said, "but not the complete idea. It evolves. It's like solving a math problem."

The comparison to math probably is not coincidental. Ulbricht attended UNM-Valencia for a year and half starting in 2000. At Valencia Campus, Ulbricht started tutoring math and science subjects in the Adult Basic Education program.

After he graduated from UNM with his bachelor's, he taught math for 10 years at Belen High School. He then transferred to the digital media program at BHS, which was a natural because his degree is in fine arts.

"I am anticipating going back to school to obtain my MFA," Ulbricht said. "Ultimately I would like to teach at the university level."

The title of Ulbricht's show is "We Waste Ourselves." It comes from a quote by author Alice Bloch that reads "We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves."

Ulbricht wrote in his artist's statement on display at the exhibit that the quote "struck a chord with me."

Several of his pen and ink and mixed media pieces in the show have a theme that focuses on time. Hourglasses are depicted in these pieces. Some characters drawn in the pieces have hourglass heads.

"The duration of one's life is a finite quantity of sand pouring out of an hourglass head," Ulbricht said.

In that piece, entitled "Wasted Life," has the main character sitting in front of a television and he is smoking and drinking. The character's arms have atrophied and he is perched on a pile of sand that Ulbricht described as "his life is nothing more than an ashtray."

But not all of the artist's pieces take a grim perspective. In another piece, "A Life Not Wasted," there are several people with hourglass heads and they are sharing their experiences, their lives with others.

"The time is shared, used as a medium from which to create," Ulbricht explained. "Even the time that slips away falls into books and comes out on the other side as adventures and ideas."

Each of Ulbricht's large drawings in the exhibit required some intensive time to complete. He said that each of those pieces required 80 to 100 hours each to complete.

Another large piece in the exhibit is a steel and acrylic sculpture, which is the title piece for the exhibit.

"The sculptural piece is frozen in the act of throwing herself away," he said.

There are several small figures that the large figure is in the act of throwing into a trash can. Ulbricht said these little figures represent her potential, but that the sculpture also represents all of us.

Her wasted life, according to Ulbricht, represents those times that any of us "pass up an opportunity to do something new, challenging, or meaningful."

Ulbricht said he is inspired by literature or things he reads. "It wells up visuals for me," he said. One piece in the exhibit, "Scuba-Knight," comes from a story that his students created and then he had to interpret.

"It was an assignment, a mad lib," he said. "My students created the story and I had to draw it."

Another math problem that became several dozens of hours of drawing.

The campus gallery is open 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, and the exhibit is free and open to the public. The gallery is located in the Business and Technology Building on the south end of the campus.