The latest art installation at Riverland Community College hits close to home for many Austin residents. “Migrations: Sculpture by Alonso Sierralta,” features 11 pieces by Sierralta, a professor at Concordia University in St. Paul whose work reflects the natural anxieties of how it feels to live through sudden change.

The sculptures use “the metaphors of organic growth and the spread of life in other realms,” said Tim Jones, the director of the James Wegner art gallery at Riverland.

Sierralta’s work was selected to show in time with Riverland’s upcoming Multicultural College Fair on Dec. 3, according to Jones. Sierralta will be giving several presentations during the fair to prospective Riverland students.

“We’re trying to reach out to the Hispanic community and I think Alonso provides an example to the students,” Jones said. “I was asked if I knew a Hispanic artist that would talk to (students) and would be a model in succeeding in the arts.”

Sierralta submitted a proposal for his artwork to be shown about a year ago, back when Jones was advertising for artists at www.mnartists.org. Sierralta, who moved to the U.S. from Chile when he was 14, jumped at the chance to come and speak with students as well as having his artwork shown at Riverland.

According to Sierralta, the effect that moving from Chile to the U.S. influences almost all of his art.

“The idea of migration … is very much who I am as a person,” Sierralta said.

His sculptures reflect that, albiet in different ways. He primarily uses wood as the base for his pieces, yet after using fabric, resin and other materials Sierralta will often add natural elements such as grass, seeds, roots, mushrooms, pods and other things he finds just from walking around.

His work, “suggests both a sense of harmony and discord simultaneously, which makes them interesting and thought provoking,” Jones said.

One of his prime spots for finding sculpture materials is along the Mississippi Riverbanks, but his students have found odds and ends over the years for him too.

“It’s a pretty wide range of material,” Sierralta said. “Every sculpture, every project is a little different.”

One of the pieces on display at the art gallery, “Telemonge,” is named after a Chilean slang word that essentially means the nuts and bolts, or the root, of something. It’s also a portmanteau of two Spanish verbs which mean to drive and to knit.

The piece, which resembles tree branches growing out of an overturned basket, essentially started from an oddly shaped tree trunk a former student of Sierralta’s gave him. The branch-like tendrils stemming from the basket are actually poured resin instead of wood, Sierralta said. The impression it gives is slightly unsettling as the tendrils, “oddly anthropomorphic sense to it, as though it were a figure bound up inside” the weave, Jones said.

“Migrations,” will be featured at Riverland until Dec. 10. Sierralta will visit the gallery on the last day of the exhibit for a public talk and closing reception as well. The James Wegner Art Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.