(Above: Detail from Sacrificial Altar by Marine Hajek (Herrera), on display at the Don Dexter Gallery through April 20, 2024; photo by Don Dexter)

Edited by Randi Bjornstad

Guatemalan-American artist Marina Hajek (Herrera) has a show of her bronze sculptures on display through April 20, 2024, at the Don Dexter Gallery in north Eugene’s Crescent Village.

The exhibit is titled Duality, reflecting not only the two lives Hajek lives, one in her native Guatemala and the other in the United States, but also the two parts of women’s lives as they experience their own roles, which often include the collision they experience between culture and personal expectations.

Marina Hajek (Herrera) has a show of her sculpture at the Don Dexter Gallery through 4-20-24.

Hajek grew up in Guatemala, where she witnessed and experienced the unstable political environment of Guatemala. Once settled in the United States, she began creating sculptures that evoke, in abstract form, her political opinions and personal emotions in ways she feels she could not in Central America.

She pays homage to the significance of corn, a sacred crop to the Mayans, in her 2004 sculpture, Mother Corn, in the same way she examined the parallels of sacrifice expressed in a 1995 piece titled Sacrificial Altar.

Hajek was born in 1959 in New York to Guatemalan parents and moved to Guatemala as a toddler, returning to the U.S. at age 28. She studied ceramics under Prof. James Alexander at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, after which she began working with bronze, becoming an apprentice of sculptor Cordray Parker. Bronze became her preferred medium, a reflection of the metal’s character and longevity.

For more information about Hajek (Herrera), visit her Facebook page: @marinasartstudio1

About Don Dexter Gallery

Since 1997, Don Dexter has hosted established and emerging local artists in his practice. During this time, he represented the work of local photographers with quarterly shows. 26 years later, Don Dexter Gallery opened in its permanent location in Crescent Village. The mission of the gallery is to welcome, promote, and host fine art across various media in Eugene. Don Dexter Gallery is an Indigenous-owned gallery that also serves as a community space for health, wellness, art, and cultural events.

Duality, now showing at Don Dexter Gallery

When: Through April 20, 2024

Where: 2911 Tennyson Ave., No. 202, in Crescent Village off Crescent Ave. (Enter on the east side of The Inkwell building and go to the second floor.)

Gallery hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, except public holidays and while exhibits are being changed; free admission

Information: dondextergallery.com

Detail of Mother Corn, 2004 bronze sculpture by Guatemalan-American artist Marina Hajek (Herrera)