Sunday’s heat didn’t keep Ames residents away from Joe Patrick’s reception-Parallels: The Architecture of Impermanence in Brunnier Art Museum. It was a great day to not only enjoy art, but also celebrate the 56^th anniversary of Patrick’s marriage by sharing the cake.  

According to Adrienne Gennett, assistant curator of collections and education of university museum, the exhibit has been here since January and will be closed at the end of July.

There were portraits of Patrick’s acquaintances, like portraits of David Dunlap and portraits of the Carmen family tree. Stories of subjects were read beside the portraits. Paintings of the Oaxacan marketplaces were showing a vivid and indigenous lifestyle of Mexico.

“These market places are made up of materials that are temporary, impermanent, flexible, movable and not gonna be there forever, that’s the way these folks are here on the wall. We are changing all the time, getting older, progressing toward that final painting over there,” Patrick explained.

Patrick said he noticed impermanence is just what life is. “Impermanence of life of human being, and impermanence of situation in life of architecture spaces that are made of impermanence materials,” Patrick said.

Carolyn Jarnagin, who attended with friends, said “The portraits are certainly different. Most portraits depict a person, just as a person is, oftentimes very flattering. These are variety of poses and not necessary all that flattering. It gives you a very good idea into the inside of the artist and how he interprets the people he has drawn.”

Diane Patton, enjoyed the paintings with her husband Jim Patton, said “One of the things that I have observed while looking at them is that they illustrate different moods the person seems to be in, different views of his or her head, different poses. Some of them are pensive, some of them are happy, some of them are thoughtful.”

Patton said it expresses a variety of ways of looking at that one individual. “It’s interesting to see how an artist looks at one subject and sees it in a multitudinal ways,” Patton said.

When talked about paintings of marketplaces, Patton said they look different from what she sees here in Iowa. She said these paintings raised her curiosity about the function of marketplaces in Mexico. She thought there are similarities and there are differences and people can learn from both.