LEWISBURG, Pa. — Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the culture, history, and contributions of Hispanic Americans.
Eddy Lopez knew from a very young age that he was interested in art.
"Growing up in Nicaragua under the revolution, I was always picking up pencils, drawing on my parents' walls. I knew it was something I had to do," Lopez said.
Lopez was born in Nicaragua and moved to the United States when he was 9 years old. He's now an assistant professor of art at Bucknell University in Lewisburg.
Lopez loves teaching, but he really enjoys creating. Printmaking is his passion. Much of his work focuses on social justice issues.
"That comes from my background in Nicaragua, where artists, writers were tackling these really heavy social subjects like the war, the revolution, and calling for justice."
Recently, Lopez was chosen to display one of his works at the Art of the State exhibition in Harrisburg.
"There were 2,000 entries, and they chose about four percent of them, so I think there are 80 artists that will be there out of 2,000, which is a highly selective show."
The piece features nearly three dozen front pages of the New York Times newspaper. Each layer is a front-page cover from when the Black Lives Matter movement was in the newspaper. Lopez uses this technique in a lot of his work.
"I start kind of compositing them, blending them."
Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to celebrate and recognize Hispanic Americans. Lopez tells Newswatch 16 he does not really like the term "Hispanic heritage" and prefers to focus on his Latin American heritage.
"I'm a mestizo, which means I'm a mixed-race person. I'm 50 percent Native American and 30 percent Spanish. So I'm interested more in focusing on those aspects of my heritage that are more me than not."
The theme of this month's Hispanic Heritage Month is "Latinos: Driving prosperity, power, and progress in America." Lopez is doing that through his artwork.
"Finding kind of the duality of that existence, finding the fact that I have two homes, two places that I can call home. I think that's exciting, and it's something that feeds a lot into my artwork."
Since Newswatch 16 talked to Eddy Lopez, he placed first in the State Museum of Pennsylvania's competition in the category of Work on Paper for his piece utilizing New York Times newspapers covering the Black Lives Matter movement.
The competition winners will have their work displayed at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg through January.
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