Two exhibits now on display at North Georgia College & State University show students today aren’t afraid to take on heavy subjects.

"Reflexión," a mixed-media exhibit of self portraits by graduating senior Angel I. Alonso Terrón, and "Woven into War," a textile exhibit by senior Hailey Fowler, will be on display through Saturday.

Terrón’s artwork, which is a collection of pieces he has been working on for about three years, all center around dark emotions. As an immigrant from Mexico, Terrón said a secondary theme of the exhibition shows the emotional journey of an immigrant in the United States.

"The theme is emotions, or specifically what we consider dark or unpleasant emotions, like suffering, shame and hate," said Terrón, a studio art major with a minor in Spanish.

"Those kind of emotions that people don’t really like to talk about or express but somehow help them to grow and, in the case of artists, give them their style or their way or working, so to speak."

Some of the pieces are paintings while others are clay, which is the main medium Terrón said he works in.

Many of the ceramic pieces, he said, are made from molds he took of his face.

He said it doesn’t bother him to walk into a room and have many versions of himself staring back at him.

"They all seem different," he said. "Every one of them is going to represent something different, so I don’t really think of them that way."

In "Woven into War," Fowler has woven newspaper headlines representing different points of view from the Iraq war.

They are offset with deep red string placed on the piece once the weaving was complete, and the white string was given a gray acrylic wash to represent newsprint.

And despite its somber subject, Fowler said she had no qualms about working on the exhibition for the past year.

"I felt like I was part of the general public that, if you didn’t have an immediate family member there, we were just kind of being desensitized by the media and it just got to a level of, you know, just not paying attention and not caring," said Fowler, who will graduate this spring with a degree in studio art with a concentration in weaving.

"And I said, 'Wow, we can’t not care about this. This is very important.' So I started the process for my own education and reawakening of my feelings on the situation."

Fowler said she was careful to include many different points of view, and hopes when people see the exhibit there is something there to reach anybody.

And the red strings, she said, add another layer of meaning to the pieces.

"I used a deep red yarn because red has so many different meanings, like love and passion and blood," she said. "So that then people look at the pieces, whatever people bring to the art, I thought the red would help them see whatever it is that they see in the pieces."