Watch the virtual artist talk: Avery Williamson’s painted sculptural cubes emerged in response to this long season of isolation. More time at home led Williamson to look at every object in her house and ask if it served the intention of the space as a site to build, work, lounge, imagine, store, collaborate, and mourn. She wanted to bring her artwork into the rhythms and flows of domestic life, and wondered why the objects storing books and holding plants couldn’t have the same energy and excitement of the work that she was making on paper, wood panel and canvas. The anticipation of spring 2021 felt unlike the anticipation of any previous spring. It is a season of hope, rebirth and possibility. The cubes are about embracing domestic space and also yearning for the outdoors and for change. Analise Minjarez attempts to understand her past, present, and future through memory, landscape, and a converted Magic 8 Ball. Her childhood experiences playing in/around her home in El Paso, TX, studio solace during the pandemic, and work completed in her 2020 Rio Grande field research, inform her newest work. In Minjarez’s field research, she visited TX HWY 178/Artcraft Road, a highway built over the Rio Grande in the 1990’s. Minjarez grew up observing the construction and imminent changes in the riverbed, a place that “holds some of her core memories of play and sand drawings”. In an action that examined these early memories and her physical presence in the Rio Grande, Minjarez wrapped the overpass columns of TX HWY 178 with orange flagging tape, mapping out her physical relationship with the riverbed and recalling the early construction of the highway. A Magic 8 Rock becomes a guide, rocks become contemplative devices, and wrapped flagging tape serves as a reminder of movement, home, and change. Sarita Westrup creates sculptural kitchen tools that can be found in Mexican homes to refer to her upbringing in The Rio Grande Valley South Texas-Mexico borderlands. While placing an emphasis on both containment and permeability, Westrup intuitively weaves around a molcajete, tortilla press and tortillera using black reed and wire, capturing the memory of the form. Layers of cement and paint are built up on the walls and lips of the sculptures recalling the defining textures of international border crossings. Westrup’s work acts as wishes and questions while contemplating the liminality of the US-Mexico borderlands. Artist Bios: Avery Williamson graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies. There she was awarded the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for extraordinary undergraduate work. Williamson has since shown work in New York, Philadelphia, Nashville and Ann Arbor. Her work has been featured by the Instagram Design Team, the American Craft Council, Oprah Magazine, Martha Stewart Magazine, The Strategist, Bustle and Etsy. Williamson currently lives and works in Southeast Michigan. Analise Minjarez is an interdisciplinary artist and arts educator from El Paso, TX. Minjarez received her B.F.A. in Fibers from the University of North Texas in 2013. She is currently an M.F.A. 2021 candidate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. Minjarez has taught classes at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Dallas Contemporary, Latino Cultural Center, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Oil and Cotton, SAY Sí, and the Southwest School of Arts. Most recently, Minjarez has exhibited work at the Xolo Gallery in El Paso, TX and the Nasher Sculpture Museum in Dallas, TX as part of the 2020 Nasher Windows Series. Sarita Westrup is an artist living and working in Dallas, TX. Rooted in basketry techniques and bricolage her sculptural basketry works are inspired by where she was born and raised, the Rio Grande Valley of South on the Texas – Mexico border. She received her MFA in Fibers from the University of North Texas in 2016. Her work has been exhibited widely including recent exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Museum in Dallas,TX as part of the Nasher Windows Series, the Wayne Art Center in Wayne,Pennsylvania, Kentucky Museum in Bowling Green Kentucky, the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas, and form and concept in Sante Fe, New Mexico.
Exhibition photographs by Leah Trznadel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
October 2024
|