Artist and Holy Cross priest Martin Lam Nguyen combines both art and meditation in a new exhibit in the St. Edward’s University Fine Arts Gallery.

Nguyen was on campus to introduce his exhibit, “Time,” on Oct. 23 and it will be displayed in the Fine Arts Gallery until Nov. 12.

Nguyen, who is also a professor at the University of Notre Dame, began the evening with a lecture explaining his journey as an artist and some of the techniques and concepts he incorporates into his work.

“I loved how Nguyen linked his experience as a Holy Cross brother and faith experience with his career as an artist,” said junior Natalie Sizemore.

In 1979, at the age of 20, Nguyen escaped Vietnam on a small fishing boat, leaving behind the communist country that he called home. Nguyen’s experience of leaving Vietnam dramatically shaped his journey as an artist and began his exploration moving from culture to culture.

In his lecture, Nguyen discussed how the expression of time was one of the most challenging tests for him as he was learning English.

“Vietnamese language does not conjugate verbs quite the same way,” Nguyen said.

In Nguyen’s exhibition, he recreates real moments through more than 1,000 portraits for two bodies of work.

In one, Nguyen recreated photos of strangers, family and friends that sprawl across different decades. Before drawing, Nguyen said that he would look at each face for an uninterrupted two to three hours in order to really visualize the person and every detail, especially if that person had passed away.

“It is almost like that person is walking in front of you — alive,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen viewed this as a very “humbling” experience, because he believes that it is impossible to recreate the image.

“His emphasis on taking time out to experience something for what it really is and giving yourself time to reflect really stood out to me,” Sizemore said.

For the second body of work, Nguyen asked his friends to take a picture of their daughter, Lucy, every day for one year. He recreated each photograph with a drawing of the young girl, labeling the day that the photo was taken on every drawing.

Nguyen chose Lucy for this project with the goal of focusing on “the other”: a young girl with a much different upbringing from him.

However with time, Nguyen realized that Lucy was not much different than him.

“In many ways I was drawing myself,” said Nguyen.

Nguyen’s artwork was chosen for the art gallery, because it represents St. Edward’s in different ways.

“I … picked his work, firstly, because of his dedication to a long term, almost meditative artistic process, and in part because of his connection to St. Edward’s as a Holy Cross priest and faculty member of Notre Dame,” said Hollis Hammonds, chair of Visual Studies at SEU.

Although Nguyen’s work is not a direct statement about technology’s impact of society, he emphasized how people tend to only look at images on the surface. Through this exhibit, Nguyen captures the importance that photos hold in our lives.

“Images are extremely important, because they are the only thing we have to hold on to remember a person,” said Nguyen.