“Luz-Maria Lopez, a Honduran-born artist, has made her home in Louisiana for most of her life. After working for many years and raising a family, she went back to school and, at age 51, graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southeastern Louisiana University at Hammond, Louisiana. Her works are mixed media, primarily figurative in nature, and inspired by Latin American culture and the Mayan influence in her native country. She has participated in numerous group and solo shows nationally, including at the Meadows Museum at Centenary College, LA; Alexandria Museum of Art, LA; Imperial Calcasieu Museum, LA.; Museum of Latin American Art, CA; Mobile Museum of Art, AL.; Hunter Museum of American Art, TN.
After developing her talent and displaying her work, Lopez garnered praise from many, including noted art critic F. Lennox Campello, who describes her pieces as “rich with narrative interest and intelligent composition.” To create her pieces, which are collected both nationally and internationally, Lopez draws from her past, incorporating her background, culture, interests, and history, resulting in meaningful works.
Lopez was commissioned by Southeastern Louisiana University to design and execute a series of panels depicting the various creation myths of the native peoples of the Americas. Her work was also selected for a project hosted by Griffith University in Queensland, Australia and has been featured in exhibits in the Alexandria Museum of Art, the Masur Museum of Art, and the Hunter Museum of American Art, among others.”
Objects Notes
Inscription on the back reads as follows: "When a Maya god created the first birds, he made them with beautiful colors and decorated them with elaborate headdresses. After he had finished, he saw there were a few very small feathers left. Gods do not like to waste anything, so he used the feathers to make a very small bird. He called it a Hummingbird. The other birds did not want to play with Hummingbird, because they did not think he was beautiful. The god, who was watching all of this, decided to teach the other a lesson: that sometimes a small thing can become something very big. He called the sad little bird over and changed it into the Sun."
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