Brown Foundation Gallery
November 21, 2020 – February 28, 2021
*This exhibition will be temporarily closed January 4 - 19 while the building undergoes renovations.
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Steve Parker
Day is Done
Day is Done features sound sculptures by Austin-based artist Steve Parker. His work explores communal experiences that examine history, systems, and behavior. The exhibition features a new work inspired by Guy Taylor’s public performance of Taps each evening in downtown Galveston and the tradition being carried on by Constable Clint Wayne Brown. Parker’s site-responsive sculpture for Galveston is made from salvaged brass instrument bells that play a composition of collected recordings of the lyrics of the well-known Taps tune. This work reflects on its roots as a call to retire for the evening and metaphor for life and death. The exhibition also features Parker’s 2018 work Sirens in the second-floor vault, which reimagines the function of the contemporary civil defense siren. Rather than projecting conventional warning tones, Sirens plays intermittent recordings of songs of distress as a call to action.
Steve Parker is an artist, musician, and curator in Austin, TX. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Parker works with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets to investigate how communal listening can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. His projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles.
Parker has exhibited and performed at institutions, public spaces, and festivals internationally. Highlights include Art Basel Miami Beach, the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Fusebox Festival, Tanglewood, Los Angeles Philharmonic inSIGHT, SXSW, the Stone, Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin), the Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia), The Contemporary Austin, Bowerbird, and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago). As a soloist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works.
Parker has been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the Copland Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Mid America Arts Alliance. He is the Curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum of Art, Executive Director of Collide Arts, and a faculty member at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.
steveparkerartist.com
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
October 10, 2020 - January 3, 2021
Strand Gallery
October 10, 2020 – Janaury 3, 2021
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Going Through a Phrase
Alicia Eggert, Candace Hicks, Stephanie Patton, Andrea Tosten, and Rachelle Vasquez
Going Through a Phrase includes text-based works by artists Alicia Eggert, Candace Hicks, Stephanie Patton, Andrea Tosten, and Rachelle Vasquez. Through neon signage, calligraphy, and textiles, each artist employs familiar fonts and shapes to communicate ideas, warnings, personal reflections, and social commentary. By bringing words into physical form, these works disrupt the constant flow of information we receive in the modern world, inviting viewers into a visual conversation.
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist resumes.
Alicia Eggert (b. 1981) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work gives material form to language and time, the powerful but invisible forces that shape our perception of reality. Alicia's work has been exhibited at notable institutions nationally and internationally, including the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the Telfair Museums, and many more. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Galeria Fernando Santos (Porto, Portugal), The MAC (Dallas, TX), and T+H Gallery (Boston, MA). Alicia is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a TED Fellowship, a Washington Award from the S&R Foundation, a Direct Artist Grant from the Harpo Foundation, an Artist Microgrant from the Nasher Sculpture Center, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. She has been an artist in residence at Google Tilt Brush, Sculpture Space, True/False Film Festival, and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. In 2020, she was added to the Fulbright Specialist Roster by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Alicia earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Drexel University in 2004, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies from Alfred University in 2009. She is currently a Presidential Early Career Professor of Studio Art and the Sculpture Program Coordinator at the University of North Texas. Her work is represented by Galeria Fernando Santos in Porto, Portugal, and Liliana Bloch Gallery in Dallas. She lives with her son, Zephyr, in Denton, Texas.
aliciaeggert.com
Candace Hicks collects coincidences from the books she reads and gathers them in her embroidered artist books. Her compendiums of coincidence are records that show the world through a particular, specific, sometimes obsessive, point of view. She is an Associate Professor at Stephen F. Austin State University where she teaches foundational courses in two-dimensional media. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Austin College where she studied drawing, painting, and French. In 2009 she earned a Master of Fine Art degree in Printmaking from Texas Christian University. Her work consists of artist’s books, video, performance, printmaking and drawing. Books from her Common Threads series are in more than 80 collections around the world including, Boston Athenaeum, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Grolier Club, Harvard, Hungarian Multicultural Center, MIT, MoMA, Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, UCLA Biomedical Library, Stanford, and Yale.
www.candacehicks.com
Click here to view pages from Candace Hicks’ The Case of the Endless Yarn.
Stephanie Patton is a multimedia artist whose work comprises sculpture, painting, photography, video and performance. Humor plays an important role in her work and is often used as a device to bring attention to more critical issues and transform her personal experiences into something universal. Based in Lafayette, LA, Patton received her BFA in Painting from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1993 and her MFA in Photography from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. Stephanie has shown her work nationally and internationally including at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Elizabeth Houston Gallery and Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Louisiana ArtWorks, the Contemporary Art Center and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, LA; and Galerie Patricia Dorfmann in Paris, France. She is represented by Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans and Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York City. She is also a founding member of The Front, an artist’s collective, in New Orleans, LA. Her work has been published in The New York Times, New American Paintings and the New Art Examiner. Stephanie has received several grants including a Career Advancement Grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts in 2009 and 2012. She has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, the Santa Fe Art Institute and the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. In 2019 Stephanie was a South Arts Fellowship Recipient for the state of Louisiana and a Finalist for the 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art with The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. Stephanie is currently the producer and host (as the character Renella Rose Champagne) of Lost in Love on KRVS 88.7FM.
Andrea Tosten is a calligrapher and a bookbinder based in Dallas, TX. Her work explores social constructs, binary thinking, and the nature of existence. She received a Bachelor of Science in BioMedical Science from Texas A&M University and a Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from the University of Oklahoma. Tosten is a self-taught calligraphy artist and has worked in the medium for over 15 years. She teaches calligraphy at Oil and Cotton in Dallas and restores and conserves books at The Book Doctor. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area including an artist residency at Tarrant County College, South Campus in 2019-2020, along with exhibitions at Cedar Valley College, the Dallas Public Library’s Jillian Bradshaw Gallery, the South Dallas Cultural Center, the Bath House Cultural Center, the Oak Cliff Cultural Center, and Terrain Dallas.
a-scribe.squarespace.com
Rachelle Vasquez is a Houston-native and art educator, who received her BA in Art Education with a minor in Art History from the University of Houston. Vasquez is well known for her intricately crocheted works. She participated in artist residencies at DiverseWorks and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Her work has been included in exhibitions throughout Houston, including solo exhibitions at Lawndale Art Center and Box 13 ArtSpace. Vasquez was an original member of Knitta, a group of artists known for starting the “knit graffiti” movement in Houston, TX in 2005. Her work has been reviewed in the Houston Press, Arts Houston magazine and Glasstire. In 2016, she received and Individual Artist Grant from the City of Houston and the Houston Arts Alliance.
www.rachellevasquez.com
August 22 - November 15, 2020
1878 Gallery
August 22 - November 15, 2020
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Pat Johnson
Nervous Waters
Nervous Waters features the ceramic sculptures of Pat Johnson. Through humorous depictions of the artist as protagonist in a series of imagined scenes, Johnson’s works reveal personal narratives that often address political and social issues. Johnson describes her work as an attempt to unveil her fears and desires, revealing the fine line between humor and sadness, right and wrong, the seen and unseen. This exhibition includes recent coil and hand-built clay work made from terra cotta, along with hand-painted casein sculptures.
Pat Johnson is an artist based in Fayetteville, TX. Her career as a ceramic sculptor spans over 40 years. Johnson received her BFA from North Texas State University. Exhibition highlights include the 2004 juried CraftHouston traveling exhibit organized by the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and the 2013 NCECA conference exhibitions which took place throughout Houston. Her work has frequently been included in the Ceramic National Competition at the San Angelo Museum of Art. In 2014 she was selected to participate in The 35th Annual Contemporary Craft Exhibition at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, the 56th Annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Art Center and the Texas Craft Biennial at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Her work is included in the Lark Books publications, 500 Tiles and 500 Figures, Vol.II Johnson’s work was first featured at Galveston Arts Center in 1996 and she has taught summer classes for youth at GAC for the past five years.
patjohnsonartist.com
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
Brown Foundation Gallery
August 22 - November 15, 2020
Exhibit-Connect: Leslie Moody Castro in conversation with Francis Almendárez
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
4:30PM via Zoom and Facebook Live
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Francis Almendárez
rhythm and (p)leisure
Francis Almendárez’ exhibition, rhythm and (p)leisure, is part of his ongoing investigation into the fruit and labor of working-class people, specifically of Central American and Caribbean diasporas. Almendárez’ work attempts to confront and unpack the legacy and histories of exploitation, precarity, unemployment, homelessness, dislocation, and debt specific to these diasporas. Drawing on his unique personal history as the descendant of intergenerational migrant agricultural workers, Almendárez inverts and reclaims established dialogues and negative depictions of these communities. The work brings both physical labor and cultural production into the foreground, blurring the line between work and play/leisure.
Francis Almendárez is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and educator that traverses the intersections of history, (auto)ethnography, and the arts. Using them as tools to address memory and trauma, he attempts to unpack and reconstruct identity, specifically of im/migrant, queer, working-class bodies of Central America, the Caribbean, and their diasporas. Almendárez has participated in exhibitions, screenings, and performances in the US and abroad. Recent shows including rhythm and (p)leisure, Artpace, San Antonio, TX; The Potential Wanderer, The Reading Room, Dallas, TX; Sisyphus, Ver.20.18, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan; and Voices of Our Mothers: Transcending Time and Distance, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX. He is the recipient of a Houston Artadia Award, and the Carol Crow Memorial Fellowship from Houston Center for Photography. He has also been a participant of the Artpace International Artist-in-Residence program, and the Institute of Contemporary Art Moscow Summer School. Writing on his work has been featured in publications including D Magazine, spot Magazine, Artforum, ARTNEWS, Glasstire, Y.ES Contemporary, and The Dallas Morning News among others. Almendárez was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA and is currently living and working in Houston, TX where he is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Houston School of Art. He received his MFA in Fine Art (with Distinction) from Goldsmiths, University of London and BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.
francisalmendarez.com
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
This exhibition was originally commissioned and produced by Artpace, San Antonio with the support of Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue.
Composite view of rhythm and (p)leisure, 2014/2019, 36:33 TRT 8-Channel video installation: HD projectors, CRT monitors, media players, stereo sound, wooden pallets, wooden crates, discarded clothes, portable work lights; installation dimensions variable. Sound Design and Editing by Anthony Almendárez.
Artist Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to all the participants, performers, collaborators, and assistants involved in this project, without whom this work would not be possible.
Participants and Performers:
The Posada family of Cantón San Cristóbal, Ciudad Barrios, San Miguel, El Salvador
The Cantillano family of Barrio Sunseri, San Pedro Sula, Honduras
Luis Reyes and the Reyes-Amador family of San Agustín, Namasigue, Choluteca, Honduras
The Rivera-Reyes family of Chinandega, Nicaragua
The tortilla makers from Mercado Guamilito, San Pedro Sula, Honduras
The street vendors along the highways of Honduras and El Salvador
The Garifuna musicians at Chuletas y Asados Elvis, San Pedro Sula, Honduras
Ty’esha Lewis, Andrés Renteria and Jacqueline Posada
Collaborators and Assistants:
Anthony Almendárez, Rosa King, Jacqueline Posada, Francis Almendárez Sr., Omar Reyes, and Pablo Marimba
Thank you Maceo Spice and Import Company for donating wooden shipping pallets and to Denise Alexander, Elaine Bradford, Reyna Collura, Joshua Ojeda, Rachelle Vasquez, and others who donated clothing for the installation at Galveston Arts Center.
July 11 - October 4, 2020
Strand Gallery
July 11 – October 4, 2020
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Will Henry
Watching Paint Dry
Will Henry’s exhibition, Watching Paint Dry, features recent paintings that continue the artist’s exploration of the landscape, abstraction, and mark making. Henry’s work is rooted in the history of painting and features atmospheric landscapes with constellations of marks floating on their surface. His gestural swipes of color are the subject of Henry’s work and create a low-fi trompe l’oeil effect, with the cropped sections of the landscape serving as a backdrop for an unfolding narrative. Henry’s connection to these sparse vistas is uprooted by an overlay of lines, swipes, and scribbles, echoing the gestures made on the screens through which we often experience these spaces in contemporary life.
Will Henry is an artist based in Houston, TX. He received his BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. His work has been included in exhibitions throughout Texas over the past twenty years, including solo exhibitions at Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston; the Southwest School of Art, San Antonio; and the Old Jail Art Center, Albany. Henry was a finalist for the Texas Prize in 2012 at the Austin Museum of Art. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Old Jail Art Center, Albany. He is represented by Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston, TX.
willhenryartist.com
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
May 30 - August 16, 2020
1878 Gallery & Vault
May 30 - August 16, 2020
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Katy Heinlein
Soft Skills
Soft Skills features the sculptural works of Katy Heinlein that utilize color, gravity, and tension to explore a kind of absurd geometry, balancing awkward symmetries and humor through an interplay of soft and hard materials. The work incorporates fabric that is elegantly draped, tailored, and tucked to conceal their rigid substrates. Heinlein embraces an abject droopiness found in these sensual works as a sort of awkward disruption to the order of their minimal forms.
Katy Heinlein was born in Baytown, TX in 1973. She received a BFA from University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in 1995 and MFA in Sculpture from Texas Tech University in 1999. Heinlein was an intern at Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX in 1999. In 2000, she relocated to Houston, TX, where she has lived and worked for 20 years. Heinlein has exhibited her work in Japan, Mexico, New York, Chicago, New Haven, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. She collaborated with the Dominic Walsh Dance Theatre in 2005 to create the set and costumes for Spectre de la Rose, performed at Miller Outdoor Theater, and Zilkha Hall at the Hobby Center in Houston. She has completed artist residencies in Montauk, NY, Shigaraki, Japan, and Houston, TX and received grants from the Houston Arts Alliance.
katy-heinlein.net
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
Brown Foundation Gallery
May 30 - August 16, 2020
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Xochi Solis
Rooted by invisible means
Xochi Solis’ exhibition, Rooted by invisible means, includes collage-based works that reveal underlying layers of the artist’s environment and influences. Constructed in two dimensions from layers of paint, paper, and plastics, Solis’ abstract forms play with dimensional space and the circular shape of portals or ellipses. This exhibition includes monoprints, works on paper, and large-scale wall works created specifically for the Galveston Arts Center Brown Foundation Gallery.
Xochi Solis is an Austin, TX based artist sharing her studio time between Texas and Mexico. She has participated in residencies at Object Limited, Bisbee, AZ (2018) and Pele Prints, St. Louis, MO (2016), as well as collaborations with Shoestring Press in Brooklyn, NY (2017, 2018). Her work is featured in publications including, Collage: Contemporary Artists Hunt and Gather, Cut and Paste, Mash Up and Transform (Chronicle Books, 2014) and A BIG IMPORTANT ART BOOK (NOW WITH WOMEN): Profiles of Unstoppable Female Artists--and Projects to Help You Become One (Running Press, 2018). Solis’ works has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at WRONG Gallery, Marfa, TX; The Union HTX, Houston, TX; Reyes Project, Birmingham, MI; BOX 13 Artspace, Houston, TX; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; South Texas College Library Gallery, McAllen, TX; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; and the Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX. In addition to her studio practice, she is a board member at Boss Babes ATX and manages and spins records with the Austin chapter of Chulita Vinyl Club.
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
March 7 - July 5, 2020
Strand Gallery
March 7 – July 5, 2020
*Extended to July 5, 2020 due to COVID-19 closure.
Opening Reception Saturday, March 7, 2020
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Adam Crosson
Haptic Recordings: The Body Eyes
Adam Crosson's exhibition, Haptic Recordings: The Body Eyes, emerges from the artist's practice of exploring the Mississippi River and examines the results of intractable relationships with littoral spaces. While produced within the extents of the river’s alluvial plain, the work constellates both from within and beyond this territory—akin to the river’s own supplying tributaries and flows of distribution. Included in the exhibition are video works, along with two kinds of photographic processes. One involves the fabrication of pinhole-type cameras constructed in response to analyzing physical properties of waterways that were once the Mississippi River’s mainstream. The other sources anthropogenic detritus gathered from the river’s banks toward the production of photograms, a photographic process involving the arrangement of objects directly onto light sensitive paper. The work looks to reveal hydrological functions and human incursions over courses of both geologic and human timescales.
“Residing in the ruin or even the construction site triggers affective associations, leading to a crisis of memory as one realizes that everything is always already being lost. The reliance on photography, then, is an effort to capture not that transition, but the experience of being present in the flow of time.”
-Joanna Zylinska, “Nonhuman Photography”
Adam Crosson received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from The University of Texas at Austin where he was a Jack G. Taylor and Virginia R. Allen Presidential Scholar and was awarded the College of Fine Arts Fellowship and the Umlauf Prize. He also holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Fay Jones School of Architecture. In 2016-17, Crosson was a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2018, he received a Tulane University COR Research Grant, a Monroe Fellowship Grant from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, and he was awarded a scholarly retreat. Crosson has been awarded additional fellowships to study at the Royal College of Art, London, and to attend the Vermont Studio Center. He has been included in recent group exhibitions in Berlin at the Humboldt University Nord Branch Library and the Erwin-Schrödinger-Zentrum Science Branch Library, The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum, Biloxi, MS, and The Carrol Gallery at Tulane University. Crosson has organized exhibitions in London, Texas, and Vermont. He is currently Assistant Professor and Sculpture Area Head at Tulane University.
Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.
January 18 - April 12, 2020
1878 Gallery & Vault
January 18 – April 12, 2020
Opening Reception Saturday, January 18, 2020
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Amada Miller
But then (again)
But then (again) is an exhibition of photographic and video work focusing on the celestial bodies that make seasonal appearances near our planet. Astronomers and scientists have spent centuries probing these mysterious portents, claiming everything from life-bearing origins to humanity’s destruction. Focusing on comets and meteor showers, the works in this exhibition are comprised of a record made of ice that plays the sound of a comet flying through space (recording acquired by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission) and photographs of the night sky during meteor showers. These images are viewed through the lens of tektite glass, a type of glass that is formed from the heat of a meteor impact.
Amada Miller is a multi-disciplinary artist based in San Antonio, TX. She recently completed a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien via Blue Star Contemporary’s Berlin Residency Program, where she worked closely with curators and research staff at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Future exhibitions include Porcino (Berlin) and Grayduck Gallery (Austin, TX). Her work has been exhibited at Agora Gallery, AP Art Lab, Artpace San Antonio, Blue Star Contemporary, Capsule Gallery, David Shelton Gallery, Flight Gallery, French & Michigan, MASS Gallery, the McNay Art Museum, Palmetto Center for the Arts at Northwest Vista College, Sala Diaz, Serious Topics, Sweet Pass Sculpture Park, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and Usable Space Milwaukee.
Brown Foundation Gallery
January 18 – April 12, 2020
Opening Reception Saturday, January 18, 2020
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Artist talk at 6:30 PM
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Britt Thomas
Indian Spirit
Indian Spirit documents the Port Neches-Groves Indians high school football traditions and the community who keeps those traditions alive. The photographs take an observational approach to PN-G’s unique fusion of Texas football customs and Native American cultural appropriation that has existed in this community since 1925. The title, Indian Spirit, emerges from the name of PN-G's mascot and reflects the community's intense commitment to their motto of "Honor, Pride, Tradition.”
Britt Thomas is a multidisciplinary lens-based artist residing in Houston, TX. She engages in a concept-driven studio practice that frequently utilizes photography and video due to their uncanny ability to simultaneously reflect and manipulate reality. At the center of her art exploration is the shared experience, seeking simple yet complex ways to analyze her relationship to others and to culture at large.
Born and raised in Southeast Texas, Thomas earned her B.F.A. in Studio Art with minors in dance and art history from Lamar University and a M.F.A. in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston. She is a 2018 recipient of Houston Arts Alliance’s SACI artist grant and has art permanently on view at the George R. Brown Convention Center through Houston’s public art collection. Her art has been exhibited in group shows nationally and internationally, recently at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland, CA Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and the CICA Museum in Gimpo, South Korea.
2019
November 23, 2019 - February 23, 2020
Corey Ackelmire
As a metalsmith, Corey Ackelmire is interested in how people make, keep, alter, and use objects for emotional, superstitious, and practical purposes. Metal objects, from common currency to silver spoons, tend to be both durable and malleable, common and sacred, sentimental, and mundane. Exploring their place in material culture is the focus of her work.
Ackelmire earned her BFA in jewelry and metalsmithing from Missouri State University in 2003 and her MFA in jewelry/metals/enameling from Kent State University in 2007. She has been an educator since 2005, is a published author, and has exhibited her work in numerous national and international exhibitions. Currently, she is a full-time instructor and the Visual Art Program coordinator at Houston Community College in Houston, Texas.
Image: Corey Ackelmire, #betterangelsproject, 2019, Wood and copper pennies
Mike Beradino
Mike Beradino is an artist and educator based in Houston, TX. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Art Palace, Houston; Postmasters Gallery, New York; the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA; the EMERGEncy Room at Rice University; and Lawndale Art Center, Houston. He has taught higher education courses including digital art and physical computing for the last decade. Currently he instructs Computer Science at The Post Oak High School. He has worked with the teen digital culture program at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston called hang@MFAH since the program’s inception in 2012. In his work, Beradino combines the successes and failures of technological advancement to manipulate the history of consumer technology prompting questions about digital mediation, the functional obsolete, and our collective notion of progress. Beradino holds a BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago & MFA from Parsons, The New School of Design.
Rene Cruz
Rene Cruz is an artist, illustrator, and graphic designer based in Houston, TX. In his work he frequently employs blind-contour drawing processes, recreating well known illustrations of popular culture figures. His work has been included in exhibitions at Art Palace, Houston; Rudolf Blume Fine Art / Art Scan Gallery; The Joanna, Houston; Domy Books, Houston; and Flight Gallery, San Antonio. The exhibition will include a series of “blind-drawn” coins that are included in a public art installation by artist Elaine Bradford at the H-E-B Heights Houston grocery store.
Image: Rene Cruz, PENNY, 2018, Ink and bronze spray paint on wood
Kevin Curry
Kevin Curry received his BFA in Graphic Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, and after working as an Art Director in New York and Philadelphia, started his own design & Illustration business before receiving his MFA in Sculpture from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois in 2008. Curry has completed multiple artist residencies, including residencies at Grand Canyon National Park; Redline, Denver, CO; Platteforum, Denver; Art342, Ft. Collins, CO; and Lawndale Arts Center, Houston, TX. His work has been included in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US, as well as public art commissions for the city of Denver. Curry has held teaching positions at the University of Denver, Regis University, and Baylor University. He is currently a professor at Florida State University.
Image: Kevin Curry, Value Added (Abraham Lincoln – detail), 2011, US Currency
Kathy Hall
Kathy Hall is an artist based in Houston, TX. She received her BFA and MFA from the University of Houston. Her works have been included in group and solo exhibitions throughout Texas, including exhibitions at the Art Car Museum, Art League Houston, DiverseWorks, Marfa Studio Art, Lawndale Art Center, and Galveston Arts Center. Hall is well known for the installations she creates in her front yard in the West University neighborhood of Houston in collaboration with her neighbors. Her works are in numerous collections including works commissioned by the Federal Reserve Bank, Houston Branch.
Image: Kathy Hall, Anonymous Interior (detail), Paper currency and glue
Mary Jeys
Mary Jeys is a multi-media artist and activist. She has worked to promote social change in non-fiction media settings including a non-profit documentary production company, Aubin Pictures, Inc.; Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA program; and the School of Visual Arts with CUNY Graduate Center that respectively sponsored and hosted Where the Truth Lies, a conference on propaganda. She has participated in creative research opportunities including The Laundromat Project’s Create Change Professional Development Fellowship and LMCC’s Swing Space in New York. She has received grants from FEAST in Brooklyn and Macktez. As a guest speaker, she has been invited to talk at Parsons The New School for Design’s MFA program in Transdisciplinary Design and The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program’s Fix It Yourself Lectures. She received her BFA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Jeys’ notable projects include founding a local currency for north Brooklyn, NY called The Brooklyn Torch. A local currency is a method of trading goods and services meant to supplement other means of trade while improving the community wealth. Local currencies circulate in a defined region. Money does not leave the area because trade is restricted by the currency boundaries.
www.maryjeys.com
www.brooklyntorch.org
Virginia Lee Montgomery
Virginia Lee Montgomery (b. 1986; Houston, TX, USA) is a filmmaker, sculptor, and facilitator. She received her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and her MFA from Yale University in Sculpture in 2016. Working across video, performance, sound, and sculpture, her artwork is a material research practice of philosophical metaphysics. Its content is surreal, latently autobiographical, and often with a feminist impulse. The work is paradoxically cryptic and literal, conceptual and hand-built, digital and physical. VLM deploys an idiosyncratic visual vocabulary of repeating gestures like drilling, dousing, puncturing, or reaching and recursive symbols like circles, holes, spirals, or spheres. Her movements interrogate the complex relationship between physical and psychic structures. VLM also works as a professional mind-map scribe, a Graphic Facilitator.
Image: Virginia Lee Montgomery, BEYOND MEANS (video still), 2017, HD video, 02:17
Ken Little
Ken Little was born in 1947 in Canyon Texas. He was a graduate in the first Bachelor of Fine Arts class at Texas Tech University in 1970. He went on to earn a Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Utah in 1972. Since 1972 he has held tenured positions at major universities, including The University of Montana at Missoula, The University of Oklahoma in Norman. Since 1988 he has been a professor of Art in Sculpture at The University of Texas at San Antonio.
Ken Little is a nationally recognized artist who has been granted two Visual Arts Fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts in1982 and 1989. Since 1993, he has maintained a working studio and Rrose Amarillo, an alternative exhibition space in downtown San Antonio. His work in various media has been shown extensively both nationally and internationally. In south Texas he has exhibited at such venues as ArtPace, Finesilver Gallery, The Southwest School of Art and Craft, and the Blue Star Art Space where he was a board member from1989 to 1995. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at Artpace, San Antonio.
Little’s work has been featured in over 40 soloe exhibitions in national and international venues such as: The Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC; The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan Wisconsin; The Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis; Diverse Works, Houston; and The Honolulu Academy of the Arts. His work has also been featured in over 200 group exhibitions at institutions like: The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston; The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC; and The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Little is also a songwriter and a performer. He plays guitar and sings in two bands, Rodeo Ho Ho and the Swingbillies. He has one CD out titled, “Simple America” which contains his original material.
Image: Ken Little, Soar, 2002, $1 bills on steel, frame, Collection of Tom and Laura Bacon, Houston, TX
Deborah Mersky
Deborah Mersky is an artist based in Johnson City, TX. She received her MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. Mersky has been exhibiting her work since 1980 in exhibitions throughout Texas and Washington. Mersky has created numerous public art works throughout the US including projects in Phoenix, AZ, San Antonio, TX, Redmond, WA, Portland, OR, and Minneapolis, MN to name a few.