Mary Mikel Stump

September 1 - October 30, 2016
The Russell Hill Rogers Gallery I
The Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX

Exhibition administration/oversight, procurement, contracts, installation supervision, public programming.

COMPLEX 2 extends an earlier iteration of the COMPLEX exhibition series through constructed architectural interventions, figurative imagery, and an approach to art viewing that removes the metaphorical fourth plane. The exhibition requires the viewer's circulation through the sequential spaces to fully activate the works contained therein. Through this circular experience, rooted in conceptual continuity, the exhibition facilitates an awareness of how the viewer constructs meaning for themselves as it draws upon recall and memory, both immediate and nostalgic. Several of the works on exhibition unfold in one way when first viewed, but are given a new vantage point as the viewer travels deeper into the installation and the second experience of the object or image informs the first. As such, engagement of the viewer becomes emotional as the feedback loop closes and the relationships to the objects shift in meaning.

[photography by Colin Doyle and courtesy of the artist]

September 1 - October 30, 2016
The Russell Hill Rogers Gallery II
Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX

Curation, exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text.

Although Will Henry’s exhibition, Remote Viewing, is filled with what may be considered landscapes—in terms of genre—Henry asserts that he is not a landscape painter. Instead, Henry’s work should be looked at within the history of landscape painting as it is that tradition that provides the framework for the works’ consideration; these are paintings that brush up against the discipline of nature-based imagery and our relationship to it.  Co-opting the term remote viewing from a pseudo-scientific government program wherein the viewer would project themselves into future events for defense purposes, Henry uses the paintings to compare the viewer’s experience in the exhibition to his experience in his studio practice. Rather than working from sources or plein air painting, Henry paints landscapes that are recalled and imagined, therefore practicing remote viewing.

February 11 - April 24, 2016
The Russell Hill Rogers Galleries I & II
The Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, Texas

Curation, exhibition design/layout, exhibition administration, installation supervision, procurement, contracts, public programming.

A biannual exhibition series at the Southwest School of Art, Texas Draws IV featured artists from around the state who extend the traditional definition of drawing and apply both traditional and non-traditional approaches to this time-honored discipline. Texas Draws IV took the larger idea of drawing and explored it via several areas of consideration: materiality/medium, scale, documentation/environment, abstraction, and dimensional form. The range of ideas represented in the exhibition both asserted and illustrated that Texas artists working within the medium of drawing as a final means of expression are deep within the conversation of line and mark making in contemporary art.

Texas Draws IV featured the work of Fernando Andrade (San Antonio), Michael Bise (Houston), Kent Dorn (Houston), Adrian Esparza (El Paso), Mack Gingles (Waco), Hollis Hammonds (Austin), Timothy Harding (Fort Worth), Martha Hughes (Marfa), Robert Jackson Harrington (Austin), Soomin Jung (San Antonio), Kathleen McShane (Fayetteville), Benjamin McVey (San Antonio), Lee Michael Peterson (San Antonio), Rusty Scruby (Dallas), Randy Twaddle (Houston), Terri Thornton (Fort Worth), David Willburn (Dallas), and Hsiu Ching Yu (Commerce).

Nov. 9, 2015 - March 12, 2016
Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, Oklahoma

Curation, exhibition design/layout, curator's essay, and wall text.

Luxury. Accumulation. Alienation from nature. These topics, considered from a gendered perspective, are what Angela Piehl invites us to explore through paintings and drawings featured in this exhibition. Using a wide range of sources, Piehl employs images and photographs of both designed and natural beauty as a starting point for abstracting and re-combining elaborately decorative, even at times grotesque, elements. References to organic matter such as flesh, hair, tentacles, eggs, fat, bone, muscle, crystalline structures, and wood appear alongside her choices of color, pattern, and textural artifice to produce what Piehl calls "feral bouquets." Engaging and seductive, while also repellent and abject, these biomorphic abstractions address multiple layers of the human condition through their allegorical and narrative allusions. 

September 10 - November 8, 2015
The Russell Hill Rogers Gallery I
The Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, Texas

Exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, public programming, exhibition text.

Raised in North Carolina, Stephanie Liner (New York) applies the methods and materials traditional to the furniture and textile industries to her sculptures to explore the connections between the human body and architecture. With external shells over a hard skeleton, Liner's works are inhabited and activated by young women who recall archetypes of feminine beauty. Simultaneously, the sculptures convey internal spaces of intellect and emotion. Offering cropped views of the figures within, the works conjure notions of the gaze and question whether it is the viewer or the viewed who maintains control.

A biannual exhibition and ongoing installation within the Atrium Gallery of the University Galleries.
The University Galleries, Texas State University.

Curation, exhibition design, installation supervision, exhibition administration, registrarial duties, exhibition text.

Art is the residue of a performance—the tangible remains of the dance between an artist and his or her medium—and as long as there has been art, there have been collectors. Collectors and their donations serve an important function as a conduit between the artist and the collecting institution. It is not unusual for an institution’s mission to include the collection and exhibition of works of art.

However, the University Galleries’ Permanent Collection is more than just a gathering of individual works; it is a reflection of not only collectors’ passion for art, but also their commitment and willingness to share it. Within the last decade, The University Galleries’ Permanent Collection has grown, due to the ongoing generosity of its patrons who are passionate about collecting and a dedicated to stewardship in the visual arts.

Although in its purest definition, collecting connotes the act of bringing together, amassing, gathering and accumulating, in reality it’s much more than that. Collecting is about the resulting relationships between artist and artworks; artworks and collector; collector and institution; institution and visitor; visitor and artist. As such, thanks to the ongoing support of donors, the relationship between artist and viewer is brought full circle.

To date, the University Galleries’ Permanent Collection focuses on two categories, reflecting the interests of its two main donors: contemporary Texas artists and Works on Paper. This includes paintings by notable Texas artists such as Julie Speed, David Bates and Dennis Blagg, as well as Works on Paper by artists such as Richard Tuttle, Terry Winters, Annabel Daou, Viviane Rombaldi Seppey, Sol LeWitt and Thomas Hart Benton. Works from the Permanent Collection rotate into formal exhibition on a biannual basis and, in addition, are available to the School of Art & Design’s Art History majors for use in their final Thesis projects. It is by this use and that of exhibition that the works can support and augment the students’ academic experience, encouraging interaction, dialogue, and aesthetic engagement.

August 25 - September 20, 2014
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curated from The Studio Museum in Harlem's The Bearden Project.
Exhibition design/layout, curatorial selections, installation supervision, exhibition administration, interpretive text/panels, loan compliance.
 

“I am a man…who shares a dual culture…unwilling to deny the Harlem where I grew up or the Haarlem of the Dutch Masters that contribute its element to my understanding of art.” – Romare Bearden, 1963

1963 was an important year. It was the year that artist Romare Bearden, along with fellow artist Hale Woodruff, founded the Harlem-based art group known as the Spiral Group—formed to discuss the responsibility of the African-American artist in the struggle for civil rights. This led to an art practice that defined how the group could contribute both to the civil rights movement and also to what author Ralph Ellison called a “new visual order.” 1963 was also important in the life of Texas State University, as it was the year that [then] Southwest Texas State College was integrated, paving the way for the education of all qualified students, regardless of race. The intersection of these significant events was celebrated through this exhibition of artworks, which recalled the legacy of Romare Bearden while also bringing his influence into a contemporary context.

On loan from the Studio Museum in Harlem, Selections from The Bearden Project presented works that were created for The Bearden Project (2011-2012), an exhibition initiative at the museum honoring the centennial of Romare Bearden’s birth. The exhibition brought together works by contemporary artists who have each been influenced by this 20th-century master. Bearden, who was deeply involved with the founding of The Studio Museum in Harlem, was, for many of the artists whose works are featured, one of the first black artists they ever encountered. The works in the exhibition are by artists who are at different stages in their careers, but each was given the task of creating a work of art inspired by Bearden’s life and legacy. Working in a wide range of media, the artists mined a varied range of ideas and themes associated with Bearden’s career, including Modernism, urbanism, jazz, and of course, the medium of collage. Selections From The Bearden Project appeared courtesy of The Studio Museum in Harlem.

September 23 - October 21, 2014
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text.

For her exhibition Again Once More, Francesca Fuchs shows paintings that sublimate the ordinary and regulate the sublime. These works—paintings of paintings, drawing, prints, and photos from her personal collection—result in a unique ode to the things that line the artist’s own walls or those of her loved ones. The sources for these paintings call to mind the love affair that we all have with the objects in our lives. By making paintings of intentional artworks or incidental mementos, Fuchs provides for the viewer her visual observations and representational memories of the originals, right down to the frames. Through this revisiting, the paintings address the stories that our amassed possessions tell about us, in ways that we cannot convey ourselves.

March 17 - April 11, 2014
Gallery 1 & 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text panels, Musing app content [images, video, web links, text].

Drawing from many sources—Baroque sensibilities in Mexican and earlier European art & architecture, marine painting, and Modernist work from the 1950s and 60s—the works of Richard Martinez are visual hybrids that are at once personal as well as art historical while acting as references that seek to re-contextualize familiar elements to introduce new ways of looking at and considering painting. The resulting forms are visual statements that are unusual and ambiguous and also hold a certain familiarity.

Says Martinez, “I’m interested in how, when combined, these unlikely and often oppositional elements bump up against each other, often in awkward ways, to create a new visual language.” Martinez works with shaped stretched canvases complete with curvilinear edges that pit ornate sensuality against a modernist austerity of color fields and flat silhouettes; the canvas shapes are informed by references to ornate Rococo mirrors, decoration, and architecture. Subsequently, Martinez creates a statement on how the canvases are at once objects and windows that create optical space, while never fully giving in to or becoming either.

October 8 - November 14, 2013
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text.

Modifications and Adaptations—a collection of recent projects by Colorado based artist, Yumi Janairo Roth—explores immigration, hybridity, and displacement through a number of reimagined objects. Roth matches fine workmanship and labor-intensive processes such as mother-of-pearl inlay and silversmithing with mundane objects such as pallets, fencing, and trailer beds. In so doing, Roth aims to suppress normally foregrounded attributes associated with these processes, and by extension, perhaps the trappings of conventional “beauty.” Faced with this work, the viewer is forced to reconcile disparate visual languages found in the same object. The works in Modifications and Adaptations function as both natives and interlopers to their environments, simultaneously recognizable and unfamiliar to their users.

October 8 November 13, 2013
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, exhibition oversight, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text.

Eric Zimmerman’s work is focused on the search for and creation of objects, symbols, and images that intersect with one another and when taken together, act as a form of visual evidence. Through drawings, sculptural objects, publications, diagrams, writing, and collage, Zimmerman reaches multiple points where empirical data is displaced and the viewer is instead met with a series of fragmented narratives and overlapping meanings. At the core of this investigation lie questions revolving around the nature of evidence, the process though which meaning is created, and the systems of knowledge upon which each is built. Longing for the unknown, and crafting objects that embody it, while striving to come to terms with our place and actions within this world are distinctly human qualities, which the work hopes to address.

For his exhibition at The University Galleries, Eric Zimmerman utilizes the Native American myth of the bobcat (fog) and the coyote (wind) as his specific point of departure. Within this narrative framework is the theme of duality, opposites, contradiction and his interest in establishing a series of open meanings, rather than closed propositions. As such, Zimmerman also references in a variety of ways something from another time—something potentially romantic—and a specific point in North American history, which precedes industrialization and Western Capitalism.

February 11 - March 8, 2013
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Co-curated with Michel Conroy. Exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition travel documentation/organization, public programming, exhibition text

Focusing on how the tenets of modernism are still alive and well in contemporary ceramics, New Century Modern brought together the ceramic works of ten North American artists whose work brings a contemporary vitality and validity to modernism, proving the "ism" to have persistent longevity and a timeless cultural currency.

New Century Modern featured the ceramic works of: Peter Beasecker, Sally Brogden, Sam Chung, Heather Mae Erickson, Steven Heinemann, Maren Kloppmann, Jim Lawton, Mark Pharis, Tim Rowan, and Munemitsu Taguchi

February 11 - March 18, 2013
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curatorial oversight, installation supervision, exhibition administration exhibition text.

Beili Liu’s time and process based installations explore subjects of cultural specificity and overlaps, transient or persistent energy, and conflicting and confluent forces. The simple materials of wood, thread, and graphite are the vehicles by which Beili Liu hand crafts microcosms of fragility and poignancy. By working with these everyday materials, Liu manipulates their intrinsic and bare qualities to extrapolate much more complex cultural narratives. In her work, AMASS, Liu uses geometry, gravity, and value contrast to create a site-specific sculptural installation that creates tension and resolution as the viewer interacts physically with it.

September 24 - October 20, 2012
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition administration, installation supervision, exhibition text.

In addition to discreet works exhibited, Austin-based artist w. tucker resided within the gallery space for the week prior to the exhibition’s opening to create a site-specific narrative drawing – made directly on the wall – which evolved throughout the artist’s time there. In a unique opportunity to see the artist at work in situ, viewers were allowed to watch the installation progress throughout the week through small deliberate openings cut into a translucent barrier to the gallery.

Exhibition text:
“As a space to place images, a wall to me seems to be yet another version of a found object – which is what I often paint on: drawer fronts – reclaimed, old slatted wood blinds, book covers stripped of their pages.” – w. tucker

Drawing on whatever surface seems appropriate – so goes the practice of Austin based artist W. Tucker. The richness of Tucker’s work is found in the relationship between his chosen “found” surfaces and the idiosyncratic cast of characters he draws on these materials. The patina of the materials contrasted with the fluidity and earnestness of the drawings upon them results in works that explore and exploit the relationship between a surface changed by time and the immediacy of a freshly made drawing. The end result illustrates an artist that straddles the artful line between the formal world of materiality and the looseness found in the unconscious action of a simple mark.

September 24 - October 20, 2012
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, exhibition text, public programming.

Trained as a photographer, Colby Bird has a natural sensitivity to light and light sources. The presence and absence of light is an integral element of both his photographic and sculptural works. He considers his photographs to be not just prints, but rather the combination of light, paper, wood (frames), glass, camera, artist, and viewer. As such, in the exhibition, House Lamps, Bird used light as a primary medium.

In a fetishistic gesture towards artificial light, Bird assumed an alter-ego and delved into the daily practice of constructing 100 handmade electric lamps from the detritus of the streets in the Brooklyn community in which he lived and worked. Within the exhibition gallery, the dull glow of the bulbs, and the awareness of the power and labor required to illuminate them, sought to serve as a comforting reminder of the functioning of the world outside while simultaneously recalling a fictional and fantastic narrative within.

[photography by Colin Doyle and Carin Rodenborn]

February 9 - March 8, 2012
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, installation supervision, exhibition administration, procurement, exhibition text.

Del Harrow's conceptual works consist of site-specific installations, sculptures, and limited edition objects. These works explore themes of the historical practice and mythologies of individual “Modern” artists, verbal and visual systems of abstraction, and the visual experience of images in relation to the physical experience of objects.

August 24 - September 22, 2011
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition design/layout, exhibition administration, installation supervision, procurement, contracts, public programming, exhibition text.

Flora and fauna through a contemporary lens was the focus of Wild Kingdom, a survey of works by artists who use animal and landscape references to convey ideas of our relationship to nature and the wilderness. The exhibition included work by Helen Altman, Kate Breakey, Candace M. Briceño, Debra Broz, Malcolm Bucknall, Mark Calderon, Claire Cowie, Chad Curtis, Chris Engman, Claudia Fitch, Sol Hashemi, Victoria Haven, Roxanne Jackson, Jules Buck Jones, Lori Kella, MyeongBeom Kim, Ted Kincaid, Tania Kitchell, Charles Krafft, Leigh Anne Lester, Beauvais Lyons, Lisa Ludwig, Sherry Markovitz, Paul McMullan, Steven Miller, Leslie Mutchler, Robyn O’Neil, Joseph Phillips, Michael Roch, Francis Schanberger, Isaac Smith, Shawn Smith, Adam Sorensen, Erick Swenson, Maki Tamura, Darren Waterson, Paula Winokur, Alice Wheeler, Wayne White, Susan Whyne, Blade Wynne, and Claude Zervas.

Some works appeared courtesy of the following: Betty Moody Gallery (Houston), Conduit Gallery (Dallas), D. Berman Gallery (Austin), Greg Kucera Gallery (Seattle), James Harris Gallery (Seattle), Talley Dunn Contemporary (Dallas), and Western Project (Culver City).

January 20 - March 1, 2011
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Co-curated with Dr. Andy Campbell
Exhibition design/layout, installation administration, procurement, contracts, public programming.
 

Overview:
As part of Texas State University’s Common Experience topic, Sustainability: Science, Policy & Opportunity, this exhibition sought to take a more expansive approach to the word, so as to subvert and complicate the dominant deployments of (environmental) sustainability, while also exploring the larger undercurrents of the word, thus the neologism SUBstainability. Emotional, mental, and physical/bodily sustainability are the true foci of this exhibition.

Bodily disappearance was part of the narrative, but so was growth, regeneration and vulnerability, as it is from loss and depression (emotive and physical states) that new ways of understanding the world are produced. Many of the works in the exhibition pointed to these lineaments of emotive life, history, and production, and, in so doing, worked to complicate larger conversations about the original notion of sustainability.

Comprised of works by a wide range of artists, the exhibition filled over 3,000 square feet of gallery space and includes artwork by William Betts, Ian Bogost, Louise Bourgeois, Anthony Campuzano, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Alex DaCorte, Loren Erdrich, Jane Irish, Wendy Kawabata, Eve Andrée Laramée, Ivan Lozano, David Maisel, Mark Mumford, Mark Newport, Dario Robleto, Chris Sauter, Andrew Sendor, Anne Siems, Susan Skilling, Sarah Sudhoff, Kiki Smith, Whiting Tennis, Jonathan VanDyke, Chris Ware, Darren Waterston, and Marie Watt—all of which were centered around two sculptural installations—“Untitled” (Placebo),1991, by Felix Gonzalez-Torres (courtesy of MoMA) and A Thousand Tiny Deaths by Jeanne Quinn. Each of these large-scale works served to anchor their respective galleries. Just as Gonzalez-Torres' work occupied the floor plane and moved the sculptural material upward via the visitors' actions, Quinn's installation was suspended from the ceiling and, over time, fell to the floor plane in individual components, thereby creating an overlaid circle of action that spanned the two galleries, as well as the visitors' experience.

Curated and organized by Mary Mikel Stump with Dr. Andy Campbell, this exhibition offered a survey of works that reflect the number of ways in which artists can address the notion of personal sustenance, addressing the delicate balance of what we need to sustain ourselves, as well as the consequences that result from our failure to do so.

October 24 - November 20, 2011
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition design, exhibition layout, exhibition administration, installation oversight, exhibition wall text.

In this exhibition, the sculptural works of Hana Hillerova and the paintings of Susie Rosmarin formed a reciprocal relationship that could find their roots in Euclidian geometry. The parallel nature of these optically linear works informed and provided a context for each other in which line is fully expressed, explored and exploited.

October 4 - November 20, 2011
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition administration/oversight, installation/construction supervision, procurement, public programming.

William Lamson’s, A Line Describing the Sun is a 2-channel video, shot mostly in the Mojave Desert, which documents a daylong performance in which Lamson follows the path of the sun with a Fresnel lens mounted on a rolling apparatus. As the lens focuses the sun’s energy into a 1,600 degree point of light, the lake bed floor melts, leaving a black glassy substance in his wake. By the end of the performance captured on the videos, Lamson had imprinted a 366-foot arc across the barren landscape.

For this two-channel video installation, two 11 foot by 14 foot special screens were constructed and erected inside the gallery and an additional wall was constructed to completely darken the exhibition space. Custom shelves were made and installed on the wall to give the necessary aspect ratio for the synchronized videos.

September 11 - October 15, 2010
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curated by Kate Bonansinga and Rachelle Thiewes.
Traveling exhibition organized by the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center at the University of Texas – El Paso.

Exhibition design/layout, loan compliance, exhibition administration, installation oversight/supervision.

Art that engages the body as site and alters sensorial experience is the focus of Equilibrium: Body As Site. The genesis of the exhibition comes from Metalsmith’s Exhibition In Print 2008 published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths [SNAG].

The exhibition will both address the concepts behind each of the works, as well as focus on how the art alters its (human) site by impacting one or more of the five senses and, by extension, our perceptions and actions. Equilibrium privileges the sensorial over the intellectual, bucking the tide of the past several decades of art interpretation, which has favored the intellectualization of art practice and experience.

October 26 - November 21, 2010
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development/design, installation supervision, exhibition administration/oversight, public programming.

Using commonly available, as well as found and reclaimed materials such as cardboard, wood, and Styrofoam, sculptor Mark Schatz exhibits work that explores ideas around the impact of urban sprawl and our ever-expanding suburban worlds. The Signs of Life installation includes works that create a smaller “universe” of the artist's own making within the larger gallery space.

October 21 - November 26, 2010
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition development and design, exhibition administration, installation supervision, exhibition text.

spi-node [spahy – nohd] –noun. a point, as in the tip of a crescent, where two independent arcs meet, end and become tangent.

As individual creative arcs meet at a point of visual tangency, this exhibition explores the areas of visual intersection, commonalities and contrasts between the works of painter Vincent Falsetta and sculptor/painter Jessica Halonen.

January 21 - February 26, 2010
The University Galleries [Gallery 1], Texas State University

For their exhibition, Big Strange Mystery, the artists' collective okay mountain appropriates and refers to natural history museum display and presentation. Also borrowing from documentary filmmaking and the speculative field of Cryptozoology, the site-specific and large-scale installation presents a set of hand-made discreet objects, videos, and a all-encompassing mural which reflects the river culture environment of the city in which the galleries are located. 

As a narrative structure for the installation objects, the proposition of a mythic water creature was constructed and introduced. Interviews featuring university biologists, coupled with shaky-cam footage of the local environment, give an air of credibility and authority to the fictional structure. In addition, local grade-school children were asked to make interpretive drawings of the improbable creature, responding to a vague set of descriptions. These sketches, included in the exhibition, served as the basis for the central sculptural element constructed by the collective—an oversized wood and cardboard skeletal reconstruction hanging from the gallery’s ceiling that again references the museological practices employed by authoritative institutions.

[photography by okay mountain]

August 20 - September 28, 2009
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Co-curated with Dr. Timothy Woolsey
 

For this survey exhibition, over 50 individual works that are on, of, or about paper by artists from across the United States were installed in the 1600 square foot gallery.

August 18 - September 25, 2008
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration/loan compliance, exhibition text, public programming.

Comprised of the photographs of Lyndon B. Johnson by famed photographer Yoichi Okamoto and his staff, LBJ: The Whitehouse Years focuses on photographs taken during Johnson's historic administration, offering a rare glimpse into the everyday life of our country’s 36th president and his cabinet during the White House years. Along with supplemental video footage of some of Johnson's most significant speeches, the exhibition celebrated not only the centennial of LBJ's birth, but also the University's Common Experience topic for the year, Civic Responsibility and the Legacy of LBJ. The traveling exhibition was on loan from the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. 

September 18 - October 20, 2007
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition design, curation, installation supervision, exhibition administration, wall text, public programming.

This exhibition features paintings, prints, and objects by California artist, Squeak Carnwath. Carnwath has developed a visual vocabulary of icons that function as pictographs and hieroglyphs and with them, she creates an index through which she communicates in each work. As these icons, words, colors, and shapes are repeated within the compositions, the viewer is acclimated to the constructs and looking becomes more active as the deciphering of imagery begins to come into focus.  Carnwath’s paintings were the focus of a major exhibition surveying the past 15 years of her career at the Oakland Museum of California in the summer of 2009 and her work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, among others. 

March 26 - April 25, 2007
The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition design/layout, exhibition administration, installation supervision, exhibition text/panels.

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."  - Edward R. Murrow

Murrow's quote provides the conceptual armature for LOYAL OPPOSITION, which is comprised of forty works of photography, prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures by 21 emerging and mid-career artist from across the United States. Each work in the exhibition represents a social issue relative to the University's Common Experience topic of “Protest and Dissent" and illustrates the span of concerns and ways in which artists use their mediums as vehicles that give voice to social commentary and concerns.

Among the artists exhibited are works by: Mel Chin, William Kentridge, Kerry James Marshall, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, David Wojnarowicz, Erica Rothenberg, Mark Newport, Chris Jordan, Peat Duggins, Jack Daws, and Roger Shimomura.

February 14 - March 24, 2006
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, exhibition design, exhibition administration, exhibition text.

You have to understand where you come from to know where you are going.
-Mildred Howard, artist's statement

By revisiting the stories of her ancestor's, Mildred Howard reminds us that the fabric our lives are woven into begins with the threads of generations before us. In Crossings, Howard returns to chapters in the history of black America of the African slave trade. The installation is layered with symbolism, reminders of the past, future and, most importantly, the present.

Indigo blue walls generate the sensation of stepping into a void. Hanging on one wall is a collection of gilded mirrors; across the floor, in a parallelogram formation, are just a little over three thousand small ceramic eggs glowing with halos of pink and blue light. While the eggs represent a portion of lives lost in passage between Africa and the New World, they also become abstract population maps, a reflection of the possibilities that can prevail when cultural seeds blend.

The loss of 3,200 lives, the number of eggs meticulously adhered to the floor is, under normal circumstances, difficult to visualize, but seeing this in a tangible form certainly puts the word thousands into context. As a room of reflection and again, silence, Crossings draws connections outside the literal history the work was inspired by.

Mirrors reflect the eggs, multiplying an already immense number of bulbs into an ocean of ivory forms undivided by race, gender or religion. Yet also captured in the reflection is the viewer's figure walking through the space. With the visitor's image reflected in this way, the viewer is placed into Howard's meditative space. As an ancient symbol of fertility, the eggs signify the beginning of life, as well as the opportunity to continue to progress beyond the weight of historical scars.

September 19 - October 19, 2006
Gallery 1 & Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, curation, exhibition layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration, procurement, contractual compliance, shipping.

Drew Daly (Seattle) uses everyday objects such as chairs, tables, and chests that are not only imbued with domestic meaning but also relate to the body. In this work, Daly alters the furniture objects into fascinating sculptural pieces in an “attempt to create a sense of wonder and provoke a moment of recognition of the everyday environment which is often more assumed than experienced.”

Like Daly, Tim Roda takes the recognizable and deconstructs it in a way that recontextualizes the initial emotional content. Roda's black & white motifs play with personal memories of childhood.

September 20 - November 22, 2006
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, installation supervision, exhibition administration.

Tea is more than a beverage. Serving and receiving tea is an artform deeply rooted in the customs and traditions of many world cultures.

For almost a decade, Japanese-born artist Mari Omori collected hundreds of used teabags to construct sculptural forms and create large-scale room installations. The use of tea stain as a medium and the use of teabags as raw material provided endless possibilities for the artist as she explored her identity, memory, and the notion of time.

Artist Statement:
"Drinking tea is a centuries-old daily ritual that plays many roles in daily life: to start a day, to greet guests, and in my culture its purpose is also to cleanse one's soul and body. Tea has been given as a gift to celebrate and bestow a healthy long life. My interest surrounding tea is the time-shared, mutual respect between host and guest, and memories of the moment as an event. I am interested in how these moments are prepared; how each person comes together to connect with one another. I have begun recording these events that have taken place at my home, at restaurants, artist studios, or at airports-wherever and whenever I have been a witness to tea-centered events.

Although I am from Japan, I have lived in America long enough that my identity and my notion of home have been obscured. Since 'home' is something of an imaginary place for me, it has become a significant force in my work as I explore its shape with manipulation of materials. I work here with hundreds of brewed and then dried teabags. Each opened teabag, devoid of tea, has a distinguishing stain, an imprint that evokes multiple images; at times it appears to be a distant forest, and another time it resembles the shroud of Turin. As my hands quilt the bags, my mind moves in a journey through time and space. Gradually, a shape silently emerges from the thousands of layered and stitched teabags--an image, perhaps, of a house existing neither in real time nor space, or of a ship leaving one place to return to another.

Lately, I have been intrigued by the process, which involves not only collecting tea bags but also cleaning, pressing, developing patterns, and quilting them, and repeating the entire cycle over and over and over again. These constructions often provoke an exchange of questions and answers within my mind. "Where does the shape come from? Is this a shape of my Japan? If so, it must have been born within me."

Hundreds of used tea bags are required for large projects, and in the past, these have engaged a wide community-based effort. The greater the numbers of tea bags, the more hands are needed. I have found such collaborative projects empowering. As bees build their nest and ant colonies construct a complex large community, so the idea of constructing a form from the singular tea bag contribution to the multiple end result is fascinating. The core of the collaboration is an idea so fundamental yet profound: one teabag at a time. One teabag transforms into hundreds, and ultimately grows to become thousands--as the number increases the scope and nature of the collaboration expands. Each participant experiences being a part of something incredibly large--so large and powerful that its entire nature is almost impossible to comprehend. In other words, the whole 'Tea Culture' is within us."

May 25 - July 20, 2006
Galleries 1 & 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Exhibition development, installation supervision, exhibition administration/oversight.

Austin-based artist collective, Ars Ipsa, exhibits sculpture, paintings, drawings, and prints. Ars Ipsa is comprised of artists, Logan Hill, Laura Latimer, Michael O'Brien, Ted Ollier, Clifton Riley, Stephanie Strange, and Emilio Villarruel.

October 21 - November 22, 2005
Gallery 2, The University Galleries, Texas State University

Curation, exhibition design/layout, installation supervision, exhibition administration.

As the poet turns to word, rhythm and meter to write poetry, Cig Harvey and Tom Sale turn to objects, spatial relationships and visual rhythms to construct poetic narratives. Harvey photographs herself in exotic environments, while Sale builds tiny worlds inside worn suitcases and other contraptions. Shown together, they bring visual storytelling into focus. Employing entirely different styles and media, both tell whimsical tales through open-ended metaphors and the strong presence of figures, both human and otherwise.

March 10 - April 15, 2005
Gallery 1, The University Galleries, Texas State University

In Livefeed, creative duo Jeff Shore (Houston) and Jon Fisher (Austin) present a large-scale sculptural video/sound installation that focuses on what Shore calls “the dialogue between motion, light and sound.”

Each sculpture in the exhibition is comprised of a miniature diorama or scene in which small embedded video cameras are activated one at a time, and in sequence, to move through the miniature spaces and produce real-time video clips in a live feed. The videos are then projected on monitors next to each work and simultaneously on a large wall in a coordinated sequence that creates a constructed narrative, complete with soundtrack. In an installation where each component is choreographed the singular parts serve the whole wherein a large multimedia composition unfolds over the course of time.