On the second floor of Shannon Library, two massive mixed-media collages hanging side by side are catching the attention of passers-by. The art installation, titled “Free to Be, a Collective Virginia Landscape,” is the work of Maria Villanueva, an Assistant Professor of Art who arrived at UVA in August. Using layered transfers of photographs, gouache and watercolor paints, and colored pencils, Villanueva mixes Charlottesville’s urban spaces with the lush landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains, interspersing local birds, people, and texts into the visual narrative, all presented on giant scrolls.
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve known that I was an observer, and not so much the center of anything,” Villanueva said. “I’m always thinking about the landscapes around us and our place in them.” When she arrived in Charlottesville last summer, Villanueva immediately began documenting the area, taking photographs each day. In the fall, she saw a call for proposals from UVA Library’s Art in Library Spaces Committee for art to be displayed in Shannon’s second floor gallery. “I was really excited when I saw the opportunity to start something new after moving here,” she said. “I had all these images I had been collecting. The creative process happened quickly and the timing aligned perfectly.”
“The Art in Library Spaces Committee was drawn to Maria’s interesting vantage point and how she approached storytelling in her work,” said Meg Kennedy, Curator of Material Culture. “As soon as ‘Free to Be’ was installed by our partners in Facilities Management, it was a treat to watch passersby pause in the gallery to take in a new detail of Maria’s work. We’re grateful to support this installation through December 2025.”
Villanueva, who previously taught art in Maine and New York, has a one-year contract at UVA. “I think that the temporality of my own self makes me more aware of a place, in a sense,” she said. “I’m thankful for this opportunity, and I’m really trying to take advantage of my time here at UVA and in Virginia.” She hopes viewers might recognize certain landscapes depicted in “Free to Be.” “I hope that they can find a small piece to connect with or share,” she said.
On April 11, the UVA community is invited to an art reception celebrating Villanueva’s installation, to be held in the study courts on the second floor of Shannon from 2 to 3 p.m.
Ahead of the reception, we spoke with Villanueva about “Free to Be” and her creative process. Our discussion is below.
Q: Tell me about your background as an artist.
A: I’m originally from Mexico; I grew up in a very rural area where we grew our own food and things like that. But I’ve been in the U.S. longer than I lived in Mexico, and I’ve been moving around ever since I got to the U.S. I lived in Texas, I went to school in Ohio, and taught in New York and Maine before coming to Virginia. While moving around all this time, I have been observing the various mindsets inspired by the landscape — the relationship of the landscape with the people who live there. The different relationships people have with the land in a small town versus a large city, the Midwest versus the Northeast. It’s all been really interesting to me, especially in terms of trying to find where I belong.
I would say home is probably where my family is, which is in Texas and Mexico. But I don’t know if one can ever truly find “home.” In my search for it, I feel like I have taken on the role of an observer, closely watching my relationship with the land and how I adapt to wherever I go. And so, my artwork reflects that exploring of relationship with place and land, along with the people that I can observe while I’m there.
Q. You use a lot of different mediums in your art – painting, drawing, video. When and how did you pick up all of these different ways of doing art?
A. The works I create are not always a conscious thing, rather something that I need to do at the time; I feel like a lot of the work is experimental. I do a lot of multimedia work because it feels the subject, or the concept needs it. I am just a naturally curious person; if I don’t know how to create, let’s say video, I will make the effort to get to know the technological aspects of that thing.
There was a point where I was painting — it was my sort of my concentration — but there was more that I wanted from it. I wanted to be in the painting. So, then I started looking into virtual reality, because that lets you be in something, virtually. I had known nothing about virtual reality, but I knew certain things about the technology, and I said to myself, “Okay, I can do this.” And I began teaching myself.
Q. What’s the story behind “Free to Be”? I’d love to hear how it came to you, and how you went about finding the specific images of people and animals in installation.
I like working in layers, having that aspect of overlay in my paintings. You do one layer and another and another, and some details get lost, but that’s okay, because you still know that they’re there. With “Free to Be,” it is essentially multiple photographs that were transferred onto the canvas. And it is a process, not just in the moment of applying it physically, but also all of those layers happening, one by one. And so I didn’t plan the whole thing at once; it built on itself. Most of the images I took myself of things that I had encountered as a new person moving into the Virginia landscape. I like birds, for example, all of the birds in “Free to Be” are birds that I had seen myself.
When I first saw the call/proposal for the project, it was about belonging – how we interpret belonging and inclusivity. And I think for me, I connect the concept of belonging with sharing. This is what I feel when we say we belong: we share. We share a meal, we share a bus, we share this place. We go to the same places; we may have even been there at the same time. It is this unacknowledged sharing of being there, especially in nature, where we [can be] without expectations or judgments, and it doesn’t have any judgments back. Nature is where I feel we are most ourselves.
Q. Why did you choose to use a scroll format for your work?
A. I love to do works that are large. There is actually more imagery inside of the “Free to Be” scrolls. They’re rolled into the sizes needed to fit on the library walls, but there is more in there. Conceptually, I love the idea that there’s always the unfolding of more. And in terms of the technical aspects, the size of the scroll allows me to do large pieces. Then you can fold them back and take them with you. That is the thing with moving a lot. I’m always thinking: how do I make the things that I want to make, but portable?
Q. Where did the “Free to Be” title come from?
A. It goes back to, back to that feeling that I was saying about being in nature, being just out, having the ability, the freedom to go and do it, whatever that may be. That’s how I feel when I’m out at the park or just on a stroll, I feel like I am free to be however I want — you know, if it’s sad, if it’s worried, happy, whatever it is. I think there is a need for us to find a place where we are free to be, free to do, especially after the pandemic, with more of an attention to our mental health. Sometimes we need to be free to be sad, or whatever state that we are in that time; we don’t need to pretend that is not happening. Most of all, it’s about finding a place where we can be free.