On October 7th, 2014, the Visual Arts Gallery at the Signal Peak campus featured Louis Mendoza, adjunct instructor of 2D and 3D art at Central Arizona College (CAC). The reception for “Methodical Disorder”—Recent Drawings by Louis Mendoza was a huge success and was enjoyed by students, faculty and guests.

In addition to viewing some amazing art, attendees were treated to yummy deserts like strawberry shortcake, blueberries with puff pastry and quenched their thirsts on lemonade with mint leaves all catered by first year CAC culinary students.

“Methodical Disorder “as kind of a contradiction, where everything is jumbled together, especially the larger images. He continues to state that in some pieces “the perspective is off, the whole space is surreal, looks like it maybe could exist, but something is off about it.” He continues to add “that there is a disorder, but the process of creating the pieces is very methodical and you have to be kind of obsessive about it, so all the images are done very precisely, but at the same time in a way kind of careless.” Mendoza states that he tends to stop and start certain pieces but the latest works of art he feels “can really go somewhere” and he hopes to continue this collection.

A passion that began with a love of comic books, Mendoza has always been captivated by the energy that occurred in every panel and he states that there were “so many things to visually draw the reader in.” He has carried this intense and organized chaos into his own work. He began his college career at Chandler-Gilbert Community College and then attended Arizona State University where he took more art classes. He began working with oil paints and pastels, but then his vision changed and he began working with the ballpoint pen after taking advice from a mentor to “step outside his comfort zone.”

Having been a student of Mendoza’s in the past, I would often see glimpses of his work, but never to the scale as presented in the show.

One of his most talked about pieces, “Assiduous”, was created using ball point pens and measures 60” x 48”. I asked Mendoza about his process. He explained he began the work as a landscape piece and then wanting to add more humor to it, created it as kind of funny and weird, but it’s like anytime you start something it starts to change on you and over time you think things through and eventually it evolved into concept art with design, value, light and most of all, texture. He states that people often ask him if the big pieces are started with pencil and he states no. He explains the process starts with pen and if you make mistakes you just have to live with them. He says “it’s not a very forgiving medium, but at the same time it makes you take chances and you end up going in a direction you didn’t realize you were attempting to.” This fascinating piece took Mendoza over 40 hours to complete.

This was Mendoza’s first showing at CAC and he very much enjoyed the evening. He felt it was a great turnout. The exhibition “Methodical Disorder” will be on display from October 8th-November 14th, 2014 in the Fine Arts Gallery located in the Student Services Building.