The walls of UT’s Visual Art Center presented various artwork for the fall opening reception of “Another Green World” last week. The exhibit displayed multiple accounts of texture and color through a contrast of small and large canvases.

By addressing themes of immigration, time and the environment, the artwork is meant to display our relationship to the environment around us, exhibit curator Gilles Heno-Coe said. The five contributing artists to the exhibit bring a brave optimism with their work, Heno-Coe said.

“We tend to be really cynical these days about politics, about the social world, about our environment, and for a good reason perhaps,” said Heno-Coe, an art history graduate student. “But there’s a way in which one can be conscious and responsible to the world at large, yet also see some beauty in things that might be pretty harsh otherwise.”

Artwork by five female artists comprise the exhibit, and three of the five artists have connections to UT. Economics freshman Yu-Ming Liang attended the opening reception and said the Visual Arts Center gives young artists a unique chance to display their work.

“Not everyone can have their first exhibition in a big museum,” Liang said. “This is a great opportunity for those students to express themselves.”

And this expression, Heno-Coe said, is important for these artists to show in their work. He said despite current politics and environmental change, there is going to be a day after tomorrow for humanity to better themselves. These artists are important in communicating this to the world.

“These kinds of artists will be those kinds of people and leaders and teachers who will be there to help us all (get) back into learning how to be people again,” Heno-Coe said.

Logan Larsen, studio art and art history junior, is director of the Center Space Project, which is a student-run curatorial collective that sets up shows in the Visual Art Center. Larsen said the five artists who contributed to the exhibit all provided work that coincides with the thought-provoking and meaningful content that the Center Space Project hopes to show.

“These women all have very different and meaningful takes on landscapes and its modern interpretation,” Larsen said. “It’s important to acknowledge where the landscape is moving, especially through voices like these in the political and social dynamics of contemporary culture.”