For more information go to their website here.
Contemporary Art
What’s Hanging (part 4)
Lorraine Tady may seem a bit shy or reserved in person, but her work is not. I am not very good about using words to describe why I love a work of art, but I will try. This piece for its small size is packed with rich energy. The details and use of structural elements, which I have dealt with while restoring the inside and outside of my little home, speak to me. It may seem chaotic, but there’s a plan, there are layers, it’s going to work and why not have fun while we’re at it.
In Tady’s own words: In my work mechanical-like systems are subjected to or are participants in an indirect and formal examination of structure; or a subverted diagrammatic, engineering process. Parts are extracted, analyzed, and re-translated, using both digital and analog tools. I propose questions in the investigation and set up specific games, parameters and rules to respond to in the work’s progression. The language of line propels the work, and I use it to help make visible the parts, and to find the answer to ‘what connects to this, how is this connected to that, etc.
I own two more pieces by Tady which I blogged about in a previous post. They were part of a larger group, but I could only afford the two. They were created in 1995 and have a different sensibility from the one shown above.
All three of Tady’s pieces were purchased through Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas, Texas. To find out more visit the gallery’s website and the artist’s website.
At Wast! Wabbit Season!
Let me introduce you to the newest household ornament. It was a happy accident when I found this seven-inch-tall sculpture by John Gordon Gauld. A friend of mine sent me a link to a very cool website called Grey Area. Grey Area is the undefined space between art and design where art is made functional and the functional is made art, and this site’s mission is to present the best of what doesn’t quite fit within the traditional gallery experience.
Getting to Know You
Terri Thornton’s Getting To Know You opens tonight at The Reading Room. This exhibition of drawings and related material will explore the idea of how we acquire knowledge and the diverse sources, visual and textual, that we learn from. The title is taken from the musical The King and I. Tonight’s opening reception is from 6 to 9 pm, and the show will extend through April 14, 2013. There will be an artist talk Saturday, April 6 at 5 pm.
Thornton lives and works in Fort Worth where she is Curator of Education at the Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth. Thornton recently curated where is the power at TCU’s Fort Worth Contemporary Arts. Her own work has recently been shown in November House, Modern Ruin, at Brand 10 and The Old Jail Art Center/Albany. Other past exhibitions include Ether at testsite/Austin (a project of Fluent~Collaborative) and things held and never understood at Free Museum of Dallas.
Saturday at The Reading Room
Photographer and performance artist Maury Gortemiller will present All-Time Lotion at The Reading Room February 9 through Feburary 23, 2013. The opening reception will be Saturday, February 9 from 6 to 9 pm and the closing/performance will be on Saturday, Feburary 23 at 5 pm. The exhibition is guest curated by Danielle Avram Morgan and photographer Kevin Todora.
Gortemiller lives and works in Atlanta. His practice includes photography, performance and artist books. He “mines the Janus faced elements of photography”, including alleged objectivity, context, and staged versus spontaneous events which leads to some very provocative and sometimes delightfully confusing images. The Feburary 23 performance/talk will focus on his Competitive Apnea series.
Gortemiller’s work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Atlanta), Black Mountain Art Center (North Carolina) and Appalachian Photographers Project at the Reece Museum at ETSU (Tennessee) and Flash Forward Festival (Boston). Fall Line Press has published three books of his work. He received an MFA in photography from the University of Georgia.
Don’t Call, Just Come
Tonight at The Reading Room, Kris Pierce’s Missed Calls will open with a reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The Reading Room is located at 3715 Parry Avenue.
Using three separate phone numbers which will be posted in diverse geographic locations of the city, Pierce will output the data from the calls into one continuous scrolling printout in the gallery. The data will then be compiled into a book. The exhibition, which continues his investigation of technology and information and its influence on human behavior and quotidian activities, continues through February 2.
Kris Pierce is an artist, designer and animator who lives and works in Fort Worth where he is co-founder of the experimental art collective Homecoming! He has recently shown at Conduit Gallery‘s Project Room, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts‘ where is the power and Eastfield College. He is a graduate of the University of North Texas and is currently Art Director of video content for Funimation Entertainment.
Saturday’s Visual Moments (part 2 of 2)
Co- Re-Creating Spaces, a group exhibition curated by Carolyn Sortor and Michael A. Morris, will survey how artists are questioning and subverting existing contexts or spaces and contributing to their re-imagining and re-creation. The exhibit recognizes that “reality” itself can be both art medium and art object, and speculates how developments in the virtual and the actual might affect one another.
The opening reception is Saturday, November 17, 8-10 pm, at CentralTrak: The UT Dallas Artists Residency, 800 Exposition Avenue. The exhibition will run from November 17, 2012 to January 5, 2013.
The exhibition will feature videos, performances, installations, and other works by: Morehshin Allahyari; Nadav Assor; Amy Balkin; Aram Bartholl; Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler; Linda Bilda; Irina Botea; Martha Colburn; Michael Corris; eteam; Cao Fei; Yevgeniy Fiks, Olga Kopenkina, & Alexandra Lerman; Institute for Wishful Thinking; Greg Metz, Kristin Cochran, & Cassandra Emswiler; Martha Rosler; Dread Scott; Yes Lab/Steve Lambert; Karen Weiner/Celia & Frank Eberle; The Yankee Doodles and more.
Saturday’s Visual Moments (part 1 of 2)
At The Reading Room, Saturday, November 17 from 7pm to 9pm, is the opening of Brandon Kennedy’s Exit For Sale. This exhibition will include slightly absurd sculpture and confused signage and will continue through December 22. A conversation between Kennedy and Peter Simek, Arts Editor for D Magazine will take place on Sunday, December 9 at 3pm.
Kennedy received an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University and a BFA from the University of North Texas and is a DeGolyer/Kimbrough Award recipient from the Dallas Museum of Art. His work has been featured in The Art Foundation’s Fountainhead exhibition this spring, at And/Or Gallery, Plush, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, University of Texas at Dallas as well as PAWNSHOP, an e-flux exhibition in New York City. He lives and works in Dallas with his wife and son.
For more reading, visit Peter Simek’s post on FrontRow.
The Reading Room is located at 3715 Parry Avenue between Exposition and Commerce.
Off the Grid in Texas
Janeil Engelstad at The Reading Room. For over a century the State Fair of Texas, the largest state fair in the country, has been a mainstream showcase for agriculture, crafts and livestock that is sponsored, in part, by big agri-business. On Saturday, September 22 from 7 to 9 pm—during the 2012 State Fair of Texas—Janeil Engelstad is producing an exhibition at The Reading Room, which is located across the street from the fairgrounds that will be a parallel universe to the official state fair.
Titled, Y’UTOPIAS: An Almanac (of sorts) of Sustainable and Off-the-Grid Living in Texas, the project investigates and documents sustainable and off-the-grid living, farming and ranching throughout the state. The installation includes photographs, video and text from her interviews with people who are, in many ways, contemporary Texan pioneers. Like any good state fair, Y’UTOPIAS includes demonstrations and other events. Engelstad has built a functioning worm farm that will demonstrate how worm castings can be used to make worm wine and naturally fertilize a garden.
Engelstad is director of two multi-disciplined and multi-faceted art projects, Voices from the Center and MAP (Make Art With Purpose). Her practice is advocacy oriented, addressing social, political, historical and environmental concerns, and is international in scope. Engelstad has lectured and taught at universities throughout North American and Europe and was a 2006 Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. She received an MFA in Photography from New York University/International Center for Photography.
The opening reception is Saturday, Sept 22 from 7 to 9 pm, and you can look forward to some Shiner Bock and Wanda Dye’s infamous BBQ! This exhibition will be open during the State Fair of Texas on Thursdays through Sundays 1:00 to 5:00 pm through October 21.
There will be special demonstrations in conjunction with the exhibition:
Sunday, September 23, 3:00 pm, Raw & Vegan Chef and Cook Book Author, Haylee Otto will demonstrate how to make milk from nuts and seeds.
Sunday, Oct. 7, 3:00 pm, Lisa Staffelbach, Chef and Owner of 24 Carrot Health, will teach fermenting. Come learn how to make sauerkraut and take your own jar home!
Sunday, Oct 14, 3:00 pm, Raw Food Chef Phebe Phiilips will demonstrate how to start a sprout farm and grow your vegetables indoors in your kitchen.
Tonight at The Reading Room
Eric Zimmerman’s Telltale Ashes and Endless Disharmony will open at The Reading Room on Friday, August 31 from 7 to 10 pm with a performance at 8 pm. The exhibition will include collage, drawings, a publication, and website and will continue through September 15.
Zimmerman’s work deals with the problematics and complexities of representation and the creative process. He will approach these issues by having concurrent exhibitions at TRR in Dallas and Art Palace in Houston and by establishing relationships/harmonies and dis-harmonies between the two sites.
Telltale Ashes is the name of one of Houdini’s card tricks that appears to impart the magician with mystical and telepathic abilities to communicate with the “other” side. Endless Disharmony derives from Zimmerman’s interest in the idea of infinity and refers, among other things, to the looping cassette tapes his work has incorporated for several years.
Zimmerman’s work has shown in Texas at Art Palace, Old Jail Center, Grace Museum, Austin Museum of Art, 2009 Texas Biennial, Fort Worth Contemporary Art and in New York at Horton Gallery and The Re Institute. He received a MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Zimmerman was in residence at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in spring 2012 and will be a visiting artist at the Wassaic Project this month. He is currently editor of … might be good journal.