In June of 1971 José Betancourt’s life changed forever, literally in a matter of minutes. With his suitcase and a toy plane, Betancourt traveled with his parents from Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida. The flight was part of the Freedom Flights that carried over 250,000 Cubans to a new life in the United States between 1965 to 1973. Everything was left behind except what Betancourt and his family could carry. As a five-year-old he had no idea what this meant.

For this exhibition, Betancourt chose to assemble a group of photographs that are initiated by memory. Part of his method was to write down what he remembered and apply the photographic technique that best communicated his unclear image. The pictures are usually missing something or manipulated to a surreal state. Sometimes they seem as simple as the artist’s memories.

This exhibit presents an overview of the work executed by studio faculty of Seminole State College. Faculty of the Fine Arts Department will represent the wide variety of materials used by the artists, whose personal experience directly benefits their students.

Beatrice is a native of Hamburg, Germany, and studied art and foreign languages, French and English at the Helene-Lange-Lycee. Her artwork is a display of oils on canvas and oils on linen. For the past 20 years she has been sharing her art with the community with exhibits and outdoor art shows as well as giving workshops and teaching painting classes.

The artwork in the Eros and Thanatos series is elemental, like the first handprints on the cave walls. The images are beautiful: oval, floral, undersea, vulvar: evocative of birth, life and pleasure. This work is a consideration of beauty while still acknowledging vulnerability, pain and brokenness.

The season concludes with the 51^st Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition. The exhibit will feature the juried selection of artwork executed by the Seminole State College Fine Arts students during the past year. Media include photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, mixed media, ceramics and sculpture.