Nina Montejano sees upside down

University’s summer undergraduate research program sponsors student’s summer art project

Jenna Murphy / Contributor / The USD Vista

Eight hours, every day, drawing. For some, this might not sound like summer vacation. But for Nina Montejano, a senior double majoring in visual art and architecture here at USD, this is what her life has looked like for the past four months. Last semester, with the help of her visual arts professor John Halaka, Nina applied for the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Grant offered through USD’s Office of Undergraduate Research.  Students who apply for the SURE Grant pick a faculty mentor and formulate a proposal for a 10-week project in collaboration with that faculty mentor. With Professor Halaka, Nina proposed to draw three large scale graphite drawings, and was awarded $5,000 to forego a summer job and focus solely on her artwork. After many laborious days, she recently completed her “Made You Look” series, which features her completed drawings, all of which have been on display in the Camino art gallery here on campus.

If one goes to view her work, they may be taken aback by the complex and confusing nature of her compositions. Montejano explained that this was no accident.  “My idea started in a theology class that I took last semester, Art and Theological Imagination, with Dr. Babka,” Montejano said. “Her whole philosophy is about having faith in the unknown. That original idea made me want to create something that was confusing for the viewers.”

All three of her drawings depict familiar scenes such as a living room or a restaurant, yet the scenes appear upside down. Taking a closer look, the viewer will find pictures and signs right side up, as well as small instances when gravity is defied. For example, the people’s hair doesn’t fall down but sticks straight up, away from their heads.

In the restaurant scene, a waitress, pictured upside down, carries a plate which has a burger and fries on it. However, the food is floating away from the plate, towards the ceiling. Yet the ceiling is where the ground would normally be. All of these complexities and peculiarities completely disrupt the viewer’s perception of reality, forcing them to reconsider their own perspectives on things familiar to them.

“When I first started the project I made a list of things I’m interested in and two of the things were familiarity and disruption,” Montejano said. “I started thinking about Dr. Babka’s class, and realized it was a disruption of the familiar that I had been experiencing. So I asked myself, ‘What is familiar?’ And it’s my family and my living room, so that’s what I started with.”

Starting out, Montejano drew her living room back home with her family members in it, right side

up. She made one small part of the drawing upside down, a scene in which she is sitting with her brother at their dining room table. This part would act as the disruption to the familiarity of her family scene, and was the part she drew last. “The part with my brother at the dining room table was going to be the only upside down portion of the drawing. So I flipped the whole drawing upside down when I was almost done with it, just to draw all the details of my brother. But when I stepped back and was looking at the drawing upside down, I thought, ‘Wait a second. This looks really cool.’ I think having the majority of the drawing upside down went better with this idea of uncertainty that I wanted to portray.”

After finishing this 15-by-six foot drawing, Nina moved on to her two other compositions, sticking with the theme of the disruption of the familiar. She did this by choosing parts of her work to be upside down, as well as parts which would oppose gravity. She drew two more scenes, both depicting a restaurant that she and her family visit regularly in her hometown.

For Nina, her countless hours of hard work have been well worthwhile, as she has enjoyed sharing her artwork with the USD community. Nina’s work doesn’t only reveal her commitment to her art, but also gives viewers a glimpse into her personal life. Her countless hours provide viewers with three intriguing pieces that create an experience for her viewers, in which they step out of their own reality and into a world that is quite literally flipped upside down.