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FOREWORD: Out of the Shadow – An Unending Quest for Excellence and Experimentation

by Patricia B. Meadows INTRODUCTION: Pulling Slag and Refining It – Persistence in Karl Umlauf’s Art

by Katie Robinson Edwards, Ph.D. CAREER AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Karl Umlauf – Natural Evolution

by Karl Umlauf An exhibition organized by Gallery 2 David Dike Fine Art & Estates Natural Evolution June 6 - June 28, 2008 Fort Worth Community Arts Center Elaine Taylor, Gallery Manager Fort Worth, Texas CURATED BY: Russell Tether

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FOR SHIRLEY

Out of the Shadow – An Unending Quest for Excellence and Experimentation

by Patricia B. Meadows

Sometimes it is more difficult to establish your own style or gain recognition when you are “in the shadow” of a parent’s reputation. Umlauf’s father, Charles Umlauf, was a well-known and respected sculptor.

Karl Umlauf spent his entire life surrounded by art and making art. Abandoning a promising career in music for art, he perfected his craft by studying with great artists. From his college professors to his current colleagues, Umlauf is constantly learning and seeking new ideas.

His work – paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings – traces a continuance of subject matter and themes. During his student days, he learned perspective, color, contrast and form from his drawings of steel factories. Other early drawings and paintings reveal his fascination with the movement of water and the effects of light on water.

Another frequent subject has been geological formations interpreted in cast paper, fiberglass, wood, metal and paint. He has looked at themes of regeneration and salvage from both a human and an industrial standpoint, and he has explored such difficult subjects as war and death. He has approached all of his subjects with respect and has presented them as objects of dignity and elegance.

Never content to stop learning and experimenting, Karl Umlauf has “pushed” sculpture, drawing, painting, printmaking and mixed media to express his art. While he continually learns, he also continually teaches. From his own university days until now, Umlauf has taught at the college level throughout the country. He has had a distinguished career as a professor, as a guest lecturer, as an esteemed artist-in-residence and as a mentor to students and colleagues.

He leads by example by continuing to explore, to question, to enter competitive shows and to try new approaches. This never-ending quest for excellence and experimentation is what life and art should be.

Patricia Meadows is the Senior Curator and Collections Manager of the Texas Sculpture Garden and the Hall Collection, Frisco, Texas.

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Catalogue No. 8, Slag Pullers, 1959

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Pulling Slag and Refining It – Persistence in Karl Umlauf’s Art

by Katie Robinson Edwards, Ph.D.

Karl Umlauf’s 1959 painting, Slag Pullers, is quintessentially American: two Pittsburgh steel workers skim bubbling slag from a vast cauldron of molten metal, splashing the detritus on the factory floor. The men and the fiery furnace are symbolically intertwined through the artist’s vivid, expressionistic brushstrokes. Umlauf’s dramatic brushwork shows a firm mastery of the human figure as well as his attentiveness to late 1950s styles. By 1959, he had already studied at the University of Texas at Austin with William Lester and Everett Spruce, whose influences are palpable in Slag Pullers and other works of the period.1 The painting shows a distinctive blend of regionalism (in this case, steel workers sketched while on a road trip through Pittsburgh) and abstract expressionism. The artist painted it when he was barely twenty.

Slag Pullers forecasts themes in Umlauf’s artistic trajectory for the next fifty years. It points to his abiding interest in everything related to the geophysical world, to technology, craft and the artistic process. As an undergraduate, Umlauf studied anthropology and geology, both of which figure prominently throughout his oeuvre. Much of his art deals with the relationship of human beings to nature’s raw materials. He has been particularly interested in burial sites, which symbolically represent the earth reclaiming its inhabitants. Umlauf often deals with the charged interaction between two poles (e.g. human or animal and nature). Those poles frequently relate to the formal foundations of art making, such as abstraction versus figuration or high relief versus low relief. These are modes he has explored throughout his career.

Slag Pullers offers a prescient metaphor for Umlauf and his art. “Slag,” a byproduct of the smelting process, is created when molten, impure substances rise to the surface. But slag serves an important function by protecting the molten metal from oxidation while it smelts.

Lightweight (like volcanic ash, another type of slag), the cooled slag can be put to new uses in concrete, in building roads or simply as ballast.

Karl Umlauf is the slag puller: his art reveals the purer metal beneath the surface detritus. But as the consummate artist, he also utilizes the slag itself, transforming the seemingly impure into a revitalized form. He has been refining slag for fifty years and counting.2 The 1950s and 1960s featured other seminal works relating to human production on

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various levels. In addition to the steel industry pictured in Slag Pullers and the wondrously abstracted Steel Mill (1959), Umlauf also sketched, painted and studied railroads and oil refineries in works like Dallas Rail Yard (1958), the futuristic Refinery and Pipe Fitters (both 1959). In the elegant and delicately colored Chili Factory (1959), Umlauf maintains the look and feel of his industrial production series, but here he quietly hails the unsung blue-collar heroes of the Austex chili factory. (Located then at 310 San Antonio Street in Austin, it was once the largest chili and tamale canning factory in the country.) Chili peppers for Austex

Catalogue No. 9, Steel Mill, 1959

were grown locally, just south of Austin. Umlauf masterfully navigates the style and subject matter of a specific regionalism within an abstracted architectural framework.

Moving more directly into the landscape in the 1960s offered Umlauf the chance to explore pure abstraction. Morning Fog, Storm Clouds and Midnight Over West Texas Plains (all 1960) are putatively landscape scenes, painted with a confident and relaxed brush. The 1960s works were made after a transforming fellowship at the Yale-Norfolk Summer School in Connecticut. The fresh influence of teachers such as Jon Schueler and Jack Tworkov is felt in Umlauf’s most freely expressionist paintings, such as Evening Field and Autumn (both 1961).

Umlauf had long realized that a truly close observation of nature yields abstraction; these

Catalogue No. 3, Dallas Rail Yard, 1958

teachers and others brought him closer in touch with that awareness. Yet despite their nonrepresentational gestures, works such as these still remain firmly grounded in a landscape motif. Sometimes the only indication of the originating subject matter is in the works’ titles, such as The Cave (1962) and Incline (1963).

Umlauf has always relied on drawing as the backbone of his craft. He uses drawing to record scenes and test out new ideas. His drawings can be meticulously worked out, or they can be like shorthand notes. Drawings from the late 1960s, Incline IV (1966) and Cliff Face (1967), show Umlauf’s economy of line as he explored pure, reductive abstraction. The ostensible subject matter is a hyper focused detail within the landscape, but these drawings show Umlauf working in a minimalist vein.

In 1969 and into the 1970s, Umlauf made what seemed like a radical shift: he temporarily abandoned canvases to create bas-reliefs and cast forms. But rather than being a departure from his earlier work, the relief forms marked a logical perceptual step for the artist. Once he made that leap, he found it tremendously rewarding and pursued it for nearly a decade.

Formation III #2 (1969) exemplifies that perceptual shift. By the late 1960s, Umlauf had

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Catalogue No. 1, Chili Factory, 1959

explored virtually every possible variation of creating topographical space out of two dimensions. In 1969, he cast it into three dimensions. A work from this period, Formation III #2 (cast in fiberglass and painted with a blue metallic lacquer) is the abstract landscape made tangible.

For an artist so focused on tactility and technology, the relief works were a natural progression.

They led to the vacuum-formed plastic series, Umlauf’s most pristine and advanced works to date. For inspiration, he again looked to American industrial ingenuity, this time taking a cue from the automotive industry. (In 1956, he built a 1932 Ford Coupe from the frame up. He has it today in Waco.) “The final reward,” Umlauf recalled in 2002, “came into my life when I found Catalogue No. 12, Storm Clouds, 1960

that vacuum-forming took my work to a new plateau of technological sophistication, procedural predictability, and an overall profoundly new aesthetic.”3 Two exemplary works represent the sophisticated glamour of this long-running series. Formation Series VI #4 (1973) is like a pearlized chocolate topography – with gills. The glossiness of the series can be deceiving, seeming perhaps too commercial in appearance. But they remain mysteriously indefinable and elusive. The pearl and lacquer finishes reflect light, making it hard to pin down these elegant hybrid forms. Formation XXXXIV (1979), one of the later works in the series, is more adamantly like a mountainscape, complete with irregular channels.

Catalogue No. 11, Midnight Over West Texas Plains, 1960

As rewarding as the vacuum-formed series was, it was time consuming and laborious.

Umlauf had mastered it, and began to yearn for a more direct process again. The Legend Series of the 1980s came after he discovered cast paper as a support. Originally working with clay, he could spontaneously shape the supports and texturize them directly. In short, he returned to experimentation. He carved and shaped the wet clay into the form he desired, then put a fiberglass mold over it. Finally he compressed the one hundred per cent cotton paper pulp into the mold, creating a cast. Once he pulled the cast, he mixed colors and applied sands and gels to it in ways not possible with the vacuum-formed series. (See Legend Series XVI #3 [1985], and Legend Series V, Legend Series XVIII and Legend Series XXIII [all 1986].) One senses Umlauf’s delight in returning to a malleable surface that retained his mark. The Legend Series is thus far more expressive, retaining the feel of the artist’s hand in the finished object.

The return of Umlauf’s physical touch to the works create a vaguely anthropomorphic feeling to some of the 1980s work. Their surfaces are rough, their edges jagged. These evolved

Catalogue No. 26, Formation III #2, 1969

into series such as the weapon-shaped Ancient Warriors (1989). The rugged Ancient Warriors are conceptually and visually the polar opposites to the vacuum-formed works. In that sense,

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they complete Umlauf’s aesthetic circuit.

In 1989, Umlauf began working at Baylor University in Waco as the artist-in-residence.

He was in his fifties and at the top of his game. Soon after he began working in Waco, a curator at the Strecker Museum (now the Mayborn Museum) introduced him to a group of 30,000 year old bison bones, even permitting him to borrow bones and a skull. The bison complemented his interests, as he had already been working with Indian burial sites and making emotionally charged works based on death camps. Umlauf’s 1990 Pleistocene Memorial incorporated fiberglass, wood and real animal bones. The relief work feels like a cenotaph for an ancient mammal society.

The next key defining experience seemed like a natural extension of the theme: the Waco

Catalogue No. 32, Legend XVIII, 1986

Catalogue No. 33, Legend XVI #3, 1985

mammoth site excavation. Historically, it was a relatively new find. The protruding bone of a mammoth was first discovered along an eroded hill in 1978. By 1990 when Umlauf visited, the bones of fifteen mammoth elephants – estimated to be 68,000 years old – had been uncovered. (Eventually the site included twenty-nine mammoths.) The site was the scene of a late Pleistocene tragedy in which a herd of mammoths were drowned by what was probably a flash flood. The remains indicate that the mammoths attempted to form a defensive circle against the oncoming threat of water. In addition to numerous drawings, Umlauf managed to make a series of depression casts directly from the site, a remarkable and unrepeatable opportunity. The bones offer a heartrending twist: adult mammoths attempted to lift the

Ancient Warrior, 1996

younger mammoths out of the water’s reach. Umlauf made many works based on the mammoth excavation; the original depression casts he made still generate inspiration and new work.

His drawings of the 1990s (see, for example, The Mammoth Site [1993], in charcoal) and assemblages reveal an especially refined grace. He revisited themes of archaeological and architectural exploration, but with a newly infused darkness. For example, the 1995 and 1996 drawings, both titled Blast Furnace, are reminiscent of Piranesi’s sinister imaginary prisons of the eighteenth century. (Those etchings were a response to Enlightenment era philosophy, just as much of Umlauf’s work responds to the current status of culture and technology.) But unlike Piranesi’s inventions, Umlauf’s furnace in the small 1996 drawing is all too real, anchoring the center of the image with an ominous glow. The drawing is like a reliquary. And where have the factory’s slag pullers gone?

Umlauf made countless trips to animal and human burial sites. These bones are not

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Catalogue No. 36, Pleistocene Memorial, 1990

molten impurities floating to the surface, productively put to use again. These are the tragic products of natural and cultural events. Yet in the larger context of billions of years of geologic history, they are an allegorical slag that has “risen” to the surface of the earth’s crust. Umlauf sketched constantly, made casts and turned many of these sites into three-dimensional shrines.

Thus the slag reemerged metaphorically in the 1990s in unexpected and unsettling forms. Later in the decade he developed a series based on salvage yards, which are essentially graveyards of industrial artifacts. The products so gloriously created by the once-booming steel factories have now become slag themselves. Umlauf transformed the detritus of salvage yard metal into masterful drawings, such as Heavy Metal II (1993) and Industrial Waste (1994).

Catalogue No. 44, Blast Furnace, 1996

He fleshed them out in relief with mixed media compounds in works like Retrieval IV (1995).

To see how Umlauf has maintained his concerns while refining his process, consider one of his most recent series, the Cross References.4 Here Umlauf deftly mines his own visual archives, integrating the themes that have occupied him for decades. Just as he explored industrial technology derived from geology in Slag Pullers, the Cross References involve a far more sophisticated, twenty-first century geological technology. They also display the remarkable refinement and evolution of Umlauf’s media. Cross References are multi-paneled works that generally include three media: photographic images with archival ink on vinyl, Formica Catalogue No. 38, Heavy Metal II (detail), 1993

laminate, and mixed media compounds – all on wood and canvas. Dr. Shane Prochnow, a research scientist at Baylor University’s Center for Spatial Research and Department of Geology, provided the photographic images.5 The Cross References feature two types of Prochnow’s Geographical Information Systems images: a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) showing topographical land formations, and seismographic images based on subterranean acoustic surveys. In other words, Umlauf alternates between using images taken high above and deep within the earth. Such play in perspective is key to the entire series. And, as in Slag Pullers, Umlauf is interested in all aspects of the process: the surface as well as what is beneath it. In the Cross References, he adds in the bird’s eye satellite view.

A prime example, Cross Reference II (2007), is a large diptych in shades of rust and black.

The left panel features a DEM with an Aspect layer to highlight a New Mexico mountain range. Although it depicts a topographical view of mountains and valleys (note the enhanced dark shadows), the vinyl surface is completely planographic. In contrast, the right panel of

Catalogue No. 40, Retrieval IV, 1995

Cross Reference II is a highly textured physical relief of a cliff face (also in New Mexico),

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painted by Umlauf. The left panel maps dozens of square surface miles on a horizontal plane (the earth’s surface); the right panel depicts a few feet of the vertical cliff face (an alternate view of the earth’s surface).

The distinctions between the panels can be further mined. The left panel represents a geophysical record of a specific location: it appears factual, trustworthy. But the DEM image has been enlarged to the point of appearing slightly rasterized, a visual effect the artist likes. It is also a marker of the advanced state of visual domination in the world. Consider today’s ubiquitous GPS devices and the layperson’s ready access to Mapquest and even Google Earth. The enlarged maps in the Cross References remind us that, despite stunning scientific advances, current technology will one day be outmoded. In the same way, the industrial landscape has shifted over the decades: the open-hearth furnace seen in Slag Pullers is a thing of the past. And in the twenty-first century, China far surpasses the United States as the leading producer of steel. The world is changing dramatically, and Umlauf is there to poetically record it.

In contrast to the left panel, the right panel of Cross Reference II was not created from computerized technology. Instead, it was painted entirely from human recall. It can be thought of, then, as a metaphorical map of a section of Umlauf’s visual and creative memory. The surface is heavily textured and layered, as vivid memories tend to be. Yet even though the painting ostensibly represents a vertical slice of landscape, it could just as easily depict a horizontal surface, perhaps a region of countless square miles seen from a bird’s eye perspective. Or it could be seen as a powerfully magnified microscopic view. The extreme realism of the memory is portrayed as an extreme abstract relief. Umlauf is the authority in oscillating between these realms.

Throughout the Cross Reference series, narrow strips of black Formica provide formal and figurative counterpoints to the photographic and painted panels. The black Formica partially frames the geological explorations within, picking up on the dark regions within the colored panels. Black, considered achromatic in color theory, is sometimes thought of as the absence of light. In the Cross Reference paintings, the black strips are the only visually impenetrable regions, signaling the limitations of physical vision. They are also perhaps defiant, a private retreat into the unmappable depths of human memory and human creativity.

There is a profundity to Karl Umlauf’s art that makes it hard to apprehend quickly. His entire oeuvre is like a geological pie-shaped slice running from the middle of the earth up through the architecture of cities both real and imagined. Like this imaginary wedge of the

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Catalogue No. 63, Cross Reference II, 2007

earth, his work incorporates past, present and future. It encapsulates all aspects of the terrestrial. Umlauf functions on so many levels simultaneously, yet with a persistently subtle hand.

Grasping his fifty years of art takes patience – the same kind of patience the artist has dedicated to his investigations for decades. But Umlauf is also a rare breed of artist in that virtually all of his series are interrelated, fitting together like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. Or like an unimaginably deep slice into the earth. Consider, as a final example, one of Umlauf’s most recent works: Pleistocene Memorial (2008). The work is iconic in form: a vertical diptych, balanced by symmetrically placed black Formica. (The same Formica anchors his Cross References, tipping the viewer off to the interrelatedness of the various works.) It features a compression cast of the mammoth site made in 2000. Above the image is a high-resolution digital ink-jet print of the site. This latest work is a natural outgrowth of his 2007 Cross References, which charted the interior and exterior of the earth from various vantage points.

Now, in Pleistocene Memorial (2008), Umlauf travels upward from the seismographic depths of the Cross References to paleontologic depths, to today’s digitized techniques of recording images. Umlauf performs a kind of autobiographical mining as he returns to his own history of image making to create new interpretations of the earth and what it contains. He deftly navigates the terrain: putting the geographical part in relation to the whole, positioning his own current practice in relation to his entire artistic career. Like the slag pullers, Karl Umlauf is quintessentially American.

Catalogue No. 69, Pleistocene Memorial, 2008

1Slag

Pullers is arguably one of Karl Umlauf’s finest early works. Thanks to the generosity of a donor, it will join the permanent collection of the Tyler Museum of Art.

2The

superb monographic catalogue that accompanied Karl Umlauf’s retrospective in 2002 provides a rich variety of essays and chronology that trace his artistic career. (See Karl Umlauf: The Journey, foreword by Patricia B. Meadows, introduction by Vincent Mariani and primary essay by David Deming, Iron Bridge Press, 2002.)

The visitor to the current exhibition should consult that catalogue for the most comprehensive record of Umlauf’s activity. In this essay, published on the occasion of his updated major retrospective at the Fort Worth Art Center (curated by Russell Tether), I only intend to pick out certain themes and trace continuity in Umlauf’s style. His work has become ever more refined and his determination remains undaunted into 2008.

3Karl

Umlauf, quoted in Karl Umlauf: The Journey, Iron Bridge Press, 2002, p.43.

4An

earlier version of my discussion of Cross References appeared in the brochure for the Wichita Falls Museum of Art exhibition, “Karl Umlauf: Retrospective” (curated by Cohn Drennan) in January 2008.

5Recently

Umlauf has also been working with Baylor geologist Dr. Stacy Atchley, who has provided him with fossil images from layers of earth millions of years old.

Katie Robinson Edwards, Ph.D. is the Assistant Professor of Art History at the Allbritton Art Institute, Baylor University.

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Karl Umlauf – Natural Evolution

by Karl Umlauf

“At a very young age I was looking for arrowheads and artifacts and climbing cliffs to explore caves.

The land offered many secrets and I spent many years exploring.”

1939 I was born to Angeline and Charles Umlauf in Chicago, Illinois, where both attended the Chicago Art Institute. My father was a sculptor and taught at the Chicago School of Sculpture.

The Forties

Left: Catalogue No. 1 Chili Factory, 1959 Oil on Linen 30 x 40 inches Above: Catalogue No. 2 Owl, 1958 Oil on Linen 24 x 18 inches

1940s We moved to Austin, Texas in 1941, when my father accepted a teaching position at the University of Texas in the art department.

The beautiful old stone house where I grew up was located on a hill at the edge of the Colorado River where the Tonkawa Indians once lived. At a very young age I was looking for arrowheads and artifacts and climbing cliffs to explore caves.

The land offered many secrets and I spent many years exploring.

I have vivid memories of a period through the late 40s of my fathers’ creative activity as a sculptor, with trips to commissioned sites in San Antonio, Dallas and Houston, as well as areas where special support work was accomplished such as Harding Black’s (walk-in) firing kilns located in San Antonio.

My father often took me with him on these trips and at these times, a special friendship and admiration was formed from the many visits to Marion K. McNay’s residence in San Antonio. Seeing her new acquisitions of impressionism, post cubism and the modernists, as well as (at her request) harvesting her oranges from the courtyard trees were always on the agenda. My father had been commissioned to create a gravesite memorial for Mrs. McNay, to be installed before her death.

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Catalogue No. 3 Dallas Rail Yard, 1958 Oil on Linen 26 x 20 inches

The Fifties 1952 In 1952 I became handicapped by the Polio epidemic, which confined me to the hospital for three months and left me handicapped for the rest of my life. Without my mother’s persistent exercise routines and encouragement, as well as the assistance of my life-long friend, Dr. Jim Elliott, I might never have walked again.

Mid 1950s After a year of rehabilitation I returned to serious music studies, which since 1947 had prepared me for a career in music with the Viola as my primary instrument. Also trips to the Aspen, Colorado Music Festival and being selected for the University of Texas Junior String Program and Orchestra as well as the All State Orchestra reinforced these goals.

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“Because I worked in lumber yards and related factories, my subject matter at first consisted of industrial landscapes, water fronts, interiors of steel mills and factory machine shops, cotton gins, brick factories, cams, petroleum refineries, etc.�

Left: Catalogue No. 4 Pipe Fitters, 1959 Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches

Above: Catalogue No. 5 Refinery, 1959 Oil on Linen 22 x 28 inches

Below: Catalogue No. 6 City, 1959 Oil on Linen 40 x 50 inches

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Late 1950s However, upon entering the Graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1951, I finally realized I had serious doubts about the unending disciplines a musician must follow. I decided to major in painting and drawing – an area where I had also studied with Kelly Fearing and others at the University’s Saturday art classes for high school students. This program was created by Kelly Fearing and proved to be a strong learning center for many serious students in the Austin area.

My undergraduate years were a very formative period for me. The University of Texas at Austin had, at that time, one of the most highly ranked art programs of all the art institutes and colleges in the country. With a studio faculty of 14, and an art history faculty of six, this was a very formative program. There were many choices a student could make and the quality of work in painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture and art history were outstanding.

I primarily studied with Everett Spruce, John Guerin, Loren Mozley and William Lester. Spruce had a strong influence on my work since our families were very close. He was an inspiration to me throughout my childhood. My work gravitated toward Spruce’s portrayal of big solid cliff formations and the structural elements of the landscape.

The other faculty of artists also provided strong visual influences of their works, which as students we witnessed in local and faculty exhibitions.

Because I worked in lumber yards and related factories, my subject matter at first consisted of industrial landscapes, water fronts, interiors of steel mills and factory machine shops, cotton gins, brick factories, cams, petroleum refineries, etc. These mechanized spaces offered an intriguing linear relationship that allowed me to create unique compositions in charcoal/pastel drawings and oil on canvas paintings. Many of these works went into corporate collections thanks to Kela and Dick Bourdon, who loved the work and gave me annual solo exhibitions in their gallery in Longview, Texas.

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Upper Left: Catalogue No. 7 Tyler Refinery, 1959 Oil on Linen 16 x 20 inches

Above: Catalogue No. 9 Steel Mill, 1959 Oil on Linen 18 x 24 inches

Left: Catalogue No. 8 Slag Pullers, 1959 Oil on Linen 34 x 42 inches

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“So in a matter of minutes I realized I was going to completely change my painting emphasis in image, palette, composition, etc. This was a total creative shock to me, but probably the best thing that could have happened.�

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The Sixties 1960 In 1960, my junior year of college, I was a Fellowship Recipient to the Yale Norfolk Program in upstate Connecticut. I boarded a Greyhound bus for a journey through the eastern half of the United States, spending one week on the road with stops in St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York City. I traveled by bus at night and spent the days in the cities, which provided numerous opportunities to create many drawings of industrial waterfronts, steel mills, cityscapes and industrial centers. Visits to major museums in each city were also very inspiring and was one of my first confrontations with some major artists work. When I arrived in Norfolk, Connecticut a few days early for summer school, Bernard Chaet was there. We talked in my Studio space and I showed him the numerous drawings of industrial sites I had completed on my trip through some of the industrial cities. When I told him I was planning to use these ideas for my paintings while at Norfolk, he promptly informed me that “with the beautiful landscapes at our disposal in the foothills of the Berkshires, that would be the subject material.� So in a matter of minutes I realized I was going to completely change my painting emphasis in image, palette, composition, etc.

This was a total creative shock to me, but probably the best thing that could have happened. It brought about a new emphasis on pure landscape and major influences by nationally recognized artists such as Jack Tworlcov, Charles Cajori, Jon Schueler, Gabor Perdi, Richard Lytle, Richard Bermilen and Bernard Chaet, and changed my entire outlook on art and life as an artist.

Upper Left: Catalogue No. 10 Morning Fog, 1960 Oil on Linen 36 x 46 inches

Lower Left: Catalogue No. 11 Midnight Over West Texas Plains, 1960 Oil on Linen 30 x 40 inches

Above: Catalogue No. 12 Storm Clouds, 1960 Oil on Canvas 64 x 52 inches

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Far Left: Catalogue No. 13 McNeil Lime Company, 1960 Gouache on Paper 14 x 8 inches Left: Catalogue No. 14 Newell Salvage, 1960 Oil on Linen 36 x 46 inches

Trips to New York, Boston and New Haven opened doors to new plateaus, challenges, artistic techniques, styles, metropolitan environs and the emotion and energy of the inner city. New relationships with students from all over the country – from major art schools and institutes – were formed. This was another opportunity to view outstanding student work and hear ideas, attitudes and the family of work habits. I began to form opinions and interests from which potential

graduate schools would be considered. Upon my return to Texas and the University art department, I found I looked at my sources for subject matter with a different focus, emphasis and change of priorities. The finished product, whether a drawing, painting or print, had a much different purpose and presence, surface, image and compositional structure.

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1961 The spring of 1961 was a major turning point in my life. I graduated with a BFA, was asked to be an instructor of life drawing and painting at the Laguna Gloria Museum of Art, married my high school sweetheart, Shirley Ann Franks, and won three fellowships for graduate study. The Heinz Graduate Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Washington Graduate Assistant Professorship and a Cornell University Graduate Assistantship were all very compelling offers with outstanding programs. I decided to accept Cornell’s offer and upon arriving I had my hopes completely realized. The school, its landscape, program and faculty were exceptional.

I primarily studied with John Hartel, but there was also a well endowed visiting artist program.

I was instrumental in getting Charles Cajori and John Schueler to come as visiting artists. They continued to impress me with their concepts and works. George Morrison was also brought in during my program of study, as was Milton Resnick, Stephen Greene, Stuart Brisley, Jason Sealy and Jacques Lipchitz.

Left: Catalogue No. 15 Autumn, 1961 Oil on Linen 34 x 32 inches

Above: Catalogue No. 16 Evening Field, 1961 Oil on Linen 44 x 40 inches

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Left: Catalogue No. 17 The Cave, 1962 Oil on Canvas 70 x 62 inches

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Right: Catalogue No. 18 Incline, 1963 Oil on Canvas 68 x 62 inches

The deep gorges and rock formations in upstate New York are numerous, but of paramount intensity around Ithaca. I was very motivated in capturing their abstract majesty, their sheer vertical format and presence, especially the way the ice and frozen waterfalls interacted with the formations. The on-going Abstract Expressionist Movement in New York where I met artists such as Tworkov, deKooning, Mitchell, Marca Relli and Cajori made lasting impressions on me. While at Cornell, I showed work at Frank Roth’s American Gallery in New York City and the Everson Museum in Syracuse. As a graduate assistant I taught drawing to architecture students. I showed them the beauty of the landscape regions by taking them down to the gorges for drawing and design assignments.

1963 After graduating from Cornell in 1963, my wife and I moved to Philadelphia where I began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. The Art History Chairman, Frederick Hartt, was internationally known as a renaissance scholar who, with the assistance of Eugene Markowski, had established a new undergraduate program at Penn. The following year our first son, Stuart Allen, was born. I enjoyed historical Philadelphia and appreciated its proximity to New York and Washington, D.C. We lived between Whitemarsh and Conshohocken on a historical stagecoach road to Valley Forge. Our house was an old fourstory frame and I had plenty of studio space. I continued working on paintings and drawings that concentrated on the ground and rock formations of the area and expressed an intense interest in geological structures found in eroded surfaces on shifted igneous plano-graphic structures. Many trips were made to the Bethlehem limestone quarry, which had an 800-foot pit. When in the pit of the quarry, I was told not to wander too far from the exit road and to listen for the flood warning siren. When the siren sounded a person had 10 minutes to get to the road to avoid drowning because the pit filled very quickly with water.

These frontal and profiled formations created abstract opportunities for me, which after my studies in geology, gave my work an authenticity or deep personal awareness of what my structural concepts were about.

It was at this time I was informed by an adversary of Fred Hartt, while he was on sabbatical, that our BFA undergraduate program would be “phased out.” This was devastating to our entire department.

1966 In 1966, I relocated my wife and young son from Pennsylvania to Iowa where I accepted a teaching position at the University of Northern Iowa. I continued my landscape studies on the tributaries which ran into the Mississippi River. Some were cascading and turbulent streams or river formations. The paintings maintained the abstract structure of the earlier work as a result of my interest in

Right: Catalogue No. 19 Incline IV, 1966 Ink on Paper 32 x 18 inches Far Right: Catalogue No. 20 Northern Rim, 1966 Ink on Paper 30 x 26 inches

the accelerated movement of the water in opposition to the immobile rock formations it collided with. An overriding theory I placed on this natural phenomenon was the “soft versus hard” element and all the variables that followed.

After living on the east coast for six years, and a year and a half in the Northern Midwest, I decided to relocate. After interviewing with five universities, I accepted a teaching position with East Texas State University, and their vibrant and innovative studio art department. The director had a vision of how good this department could be and placed an emphasis on studio art. The faculty was young, representing major art schools throughout the country and producing very profound creative work. I also found the students were culturally hungry, energetic and capable of producing outstanding work. It was a very positive environment and my work continued to grow to new levels of personal identity through technical surface qualities and highly selective subject matter. The images still carried an emphasis on abstract geological structures, streambeds, jetties and cliff formations.

Catalogue No. 21 Cliff Face, 1967 Ink on Paper 30 x 24 inches

After winning awards in the midwest and east coast it was reassuring to still find my work being accepted throughout the Southwest and in national exhibitions.

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Catalogue No. 22 Incline I, 1968 Acrylic on Board 10 x 14 inches

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Far Left: Catalogue No. 23 Stream Bed, 1967 Oil on Canvas 44 x 32 inches Left: Catalogue No. 24 Rapids, 1968 Oil on Canvas 78 x 62 inches Below: Catalogue No. 25 River VIII, 1968 Oil on Canvas 60 x 44 inches

“...as a result of my interest in the accelerated movement of the water in opposition to the immobile rock formations it collided with…I placed on this natural phenomenon the “soft versus hard” element and all the variables that followed.”

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Late 1960s Many things happened in the late 60s, not only was our second son, Kurt Aaron born, but I also found a loft studio downtown in the small city of Commerce, Texas. The studio was on the town square and provided me a new reality and energy to work within. Prior to this move I had worked for three years in a 2-car garage.

As a painter I began to look for more challenging features in my work. I became disenchanted with painting techniques I had digested through historical traditions and wanted to reach for more unique visual solutions. As the 60s drew to a close my work focused on a more pure abstracted displacement of the landscape form.

“I worked for several months in a sign factory as an apprentice in Houston for the primary purpose of learning how to thermo heat plastic and vacuum form it over molds that I created for this purpose.�

Right: Catalogue No. 26 Formation III #2, 1969 Cast Fiberglass and Lacquer on Wood 58 x 48 x 5 inches Far Right: Catalogue No. 27 Formation XXXXIV, 1979 Vacuum-form Plastic 28 x 26 x 4 inches

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1969 By 1969, with material assistance from a research grant in plastics from BTSU’s Organized Research Program, I was experimenting in raw textural relief surfaces and collage patterns of metal and fabric. This quickly proceeded toward fiberglass layers and aluminum inlays over predesigned foam reliefs. I was also using acrylic lacquer with a Murano topcoat, giving the work a multicolored pearl glow over the underlying layer of color.

These works were a highly innovative support to the technological shift in the world of art. I received a lot of praise and attention and the work was included in many curatorial and competitive

exhibitions. As the work developed, it became more technically unique and formally captivating.

I worked for several months in a sign factory as an apprentice in Houston for the primary purpose of learning how to thermo heat plastic and vacuum form it over molds that I created for this purpose.

The sign-factory manufactured signs for Wal-Mart, Exxon, etc. and also buoys for the United States Coast Guard. This subsequent work was a major turning point for me. I built the molds for these vacuum forms with masonite and wood laminates over a reinforced ribbed surface adhered to plywood. After using dental plaster to fill in the

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The Seventies

cavities, these molds were extremely heavy and difficult to move. My assistants and I had to take them down a long narrow staircase from my loft studio in the downtown area. We transported them to an abandoned furnace building on the University campus where I had built a vacuum former. The finished sheet of formed plastic was then returned to the loft studio where I proceeded with the extremely detailed spray coats of lacquer and Murano pigments. Many of these molds were made over the next eight years and they changed from a format of geometric interaction to having a very organic contour inside, both in the depth of relief and along the edge.

During the eight years I was involved with the medium of thermo-heated plastics, I was very fortunate to have several outstanding studio apprentices. They assisted in fabricating the vacuum forming machine which rolled on tracks into a large electrical 50,000 watt oven where the Plex and Uvex was heated for forming. They were also instrumental in helping me cut the patterns for the surface formations along with reinforcing the ribs for the surface structure on the molds. These molds had to be strong enough to sustain 25,000 pounds of vacuum or suction pressure.

After the sheet plastic was formed, a liquid rubber skin was applied to the reverse side. When the rubber skin was completely dry it was cut with a single or double bladed knife to create the lines and separate color patterns of the work. Then the work was trimmed, mounted and framed. All of these steps were very time consuming and required unimaginable skills and devotion to quality.

Without the research grant support from East Texas State University and the student labor available to me, I could not have accomplished such a vast amount of work. I owe a large debt of grati-

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Throughout the 70s, numerous vacuum forms and airbrush drawings were produced, completed, exhibited and placed in numerous museums and collections throughout the country. Among them were Shaindy Fenton (Ft. Worth, TX), Donald Vogel (Valley House Gallery, Dallas, TX) and Dave Hickey (A Clean, Well Lighted Place, Austin, TX) and Henry Hopkins (Ft. Worth, TX).

tude to E.T.S.U.’s Organized Research Program headed by the colorful H.M. (Jim) Lafferty and to each of my devoted assistants.

My work from this period carried a new refined and formal quality with an image of mechanical and a somewhat automotive body rhythm within the surface configurations. These relief forms redefined the compositions of my earlier landscapes. The once “hard to soft” theory remained a catalyst and an organic dynamic of the landscape.

Its rhythms and contours still motivated these unique designs. The fact that I once built a couple of’ “hot rods” and still love the cars of the classic 40s and 50s probably had a subconscious influence on the so called “automobile” appearance.

Many other factors led to my interest in this new technique. I had to remedy the many technical headaches of the fiberglass process from fabrication and painting dilemmas to health hazards during the construction and multiple layered painting phases.

The initial drawings for these formal structures had a very spontaneous origin from the landscape, they would slowly be edited and modified to find the common denominators of their suggestive, pure aesthetic design. Many of these working sketches were also taken to a formal, finished, airbrushed drawing.

Mid 1970s In the mid 70s, I was invited to Indiana University as a Visiting Artist. My wife, Shirley, and our two sons came along for the year of my contract. We had purchased a Siberian Husky puppy in 1962 while at Cornell University and he loved playing in the snow again. My teaching job was minimal so I was able to work long hours in the studio. I pushed my ideas away from vacuum formed plastic as a medium and began to pursue large hypothetical sheet steel sculptural floor and wall forms.

They were to be environmental in size and extremely provocative in a space age era. I created over ten proposed macquettes while at Indiana and then began to totally reconsider my direction upon returning to east Texas.

While at Indiana University, fond memories and important friends and associations were formed with artists Rudy Pozatti, Marvin Lowe, James McGarrell, Richard Johnson, Gary LaRue, John Muer, Patty Whitty, Julius Tobias and Bob Barnes.

I was invited to return to Indiana University in 1980 and at that time I was moving aggressively into another creative mode.

Late 1970s The environmental proposals and macquettes completed at Indiana University led to work of larger interests in the late 70s which placed me in Conquista and Panna Maria, where projects in south Texas – headed by the Conoco Oil Corporation – invited me to address issues of reclamation.

In mining for uranium, they found they had terribly large accumulations of overburden mounds. I had originally become interested in land reclama-

tion in east Texas at the Winfield coal-mining site on Hwy I-30 and the Fairfield site on Hwy I-45.

After receiving a research grant in 1978 from East Texas State University, I proceeded to connect with the mining director, Dan Harper, at the Conquista project near Karnes City, Texas and Panna Maria, Texas. Over a period of two years, I made many drawings using topographic maps. Site drawings, legends and proposal layouts were documents, but also very creative. I received several awards for these drawings from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Arkansas Art Center.

Catalogue No. 28 Formation Series VI #4, 1973 Vacuum-form Plastic 68 x 50 x 10 inches

The project that finally focused on a recreation and geology museum near Panna Maria was going to become reality. However, within a month after the town of Panna Maria and Conoco Oil Company had approved construction of this challenging community project, the Three Mile Island incident occurred and totally put the stroke of death on our plans. Fears of uranium and nuclear contamination were widespread.

By the end of the 70s, I felt I had exhausted most of the ideas I wished to pursue with fiberglass and vacuum formed plastic as well as reclamation and environmental sculptural concepts. The decade had been quite successful and I enjoyed being in the forefront of an artistic/expressive mode of work. I had also wanted to do some studio work, which didn’t depend on so many political, corporate and multiple individuals for resolution. I can only imagine how Cristo dealt with it all.

Also another major change had taken place in my studio location.

In 1977-78 I moved my entire studio complex, supplies, hardware and inventory of work to a new studio I built in the country. It was a new experience not to have the energy and downtown noise with which I was familiar. The peace and solitude of the country brought about a new mindset and motivated strategy within my work.

The rolling valleys of my farm were an influence in itself. Again I began looking at a new topography, more rugged, raw and real in its physical appearance. It offered both an abstract, and real, identity.

By this time I had been successful in many competitive shows, winning awards from such jurors as Harold Joachim, curator at the Chicago Art Institute; Alfred Frankenstein, art critic/author; Martin Friedman, Walker Art Center; John Baur, Whitney Museum; Henry Hopkins, Fort Worth Art Center; Ebria Feinblatt, Los Angeles County Art Museum; Agnes Mongan, Fogg Art Museum; Ray Parker, artist, N.Y.C.; Brien O’Doherty, National Endowment for the Arts; Gudmund Vigtel, High Museum; Julian Levi, Art Students League; E1ke Solomon, Whitney Museum; Garo Antreasian, artist, New Mexico; Maurice Tuchman, Los Angeles County Museum; John Bullard, New Or-

leans Museum; Dorothy Miller, Museum of Modern Art; Will Barnett, painter, New York; Janet Kutner, art critic and author, Dallas; Susie Kalil, art critic, Houston; Jane Livingston, Corcoran Gallery of Art, to name only a few of the highly qualified jurors for these regional and national shows at that time.

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Right: Catalogue No. 29 Delta VIII, 1984 Acrylic and Sand on Canvas 82 x 66 inches Far Right: Catalogue No. 30 Legend Series XXXIV (detail), 1985 Mixed Media on Paper 72 x 48 x 4 inches

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The Eighties Early 1980s The break from the vacuum-formed period was not clean and instantaneous. It required experimenting with some painting and drawing ideas which, though rewarding in many ways, were only transitions into what would become a decade of new surface experiences and innovation with cast paper as the continual bas-relief medium.

When the collaged surfaces of the paintings didn’t fulfill my expressive interests, I moved on to a more physical and sculptural bas-relief surface.

In this new direction, I wanted to eliminate the complexity and technical steps of the earlier vacuum-formed period. However, to find artistic satisfaction, I found the spontaneity of clay provided the kind of energy I wanted to find in my work.

I had used this medium in the late 60s and early 70s in preparation for the fiberglass work. Now it would be the initial surface preparation for cast paper, a medium I decided to use because of its multiple potentials with liquid colors and paint/power pigments, etc.

The result was astonishingly rewarding as visual expressions and unique statements of a new and intrinsic surface. I had always enjoyed studies of the river formations shaping the Mississippi, the Columbia and the Rio Grande. There were basins, alluvial fan formations and recreated boundaries, as well as cliff erosion patterns that were very motivating. As challenging and exciting as the decade before had been, the 80s was a terrific period for me. With numerous invitations to have exhibitions and workshops on the innovations in which I was involved, I was beginning to enjoy and have a renewed confidence in my studio endeavors. Numerous prizes were awarded to this new work and it was acquired for many public and private collections.

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Catalogue No. 31 Legend Series V, 1986 Acrylic on Paper 28 x 25 inches

Mid 1980s During the mid 80s I was represented by over 12 galleries; two in Chicago, two in California, one in Atlanta, three in Texas, two in New York, one in Philadelphia and one in Louisiana. There was widespread interest in the previous vacuum forms as well as the new cast paper and sand/gel paintings on canvas; so much so that I was able to take a leave of absence from my teaching position for several semesters and work without interruption in my studio. I was also invited to return to Indiana University in 1980 as a visiting artist and found the short change of location for a semester to be refreshing and challenging to my work. The early work originally began with a general informal rectangular format. Eventually, in the mid 80s, after I modified the edges to a radically uneven or shaped format, it began to express a more figural and sometimes mythical structure.

During this period I found support by many galleries such as Bill and Pam Campbell’s “Gallery One,” soon to become William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery in Fort Worth, where I received over eight solo exhibitions. Also the Delahunty and June Mattingly Baker’s Gallery in Dallas were very supportive through the era of “New Texas Art” that was being created, as well as the Watson deNagy (Watson Gallery) in Houston from1973-83. Several other galleries provided income and solo exhibitions through this period such as Meriam Perlman, Chicago; The Ericson Gallery, New York; Mac Gilliam Gallery in Chicago; Barbara Gilman, Atlanta and Miami and Nimbus in Dallas.

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“When the collaged surfaces of the paintings didn’t fulfill my expressive interests, I moved on to a more physical and sculptural bas-relief surface...cast paper, a medium I decided to use because of its multiple potentials with liquid colors and paint/power pigments, etc.”

Catalogue No. 32 Legend XVIII, 1986 Acrylic on Cast Paper 30 x 26 inches

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Catalogue No. 33 Legend XVI #3, 1985 Acrylic on Cast Paper 70 x 45 x 3 inches Below: Catalogue No. 34 Legend XXIII, 1986 Acrylic on Cast Paper 28 x 25 inches

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Late 1980s In the late 80s 1was invited to become “Artist in Residence” at the Baylor University Art Department. It was to be a permanent move and an emotional one.

I had taught at East Texas State University for 23 years and with only several years away as a visiting artist, it had become a home – the only real home my family and I had known. I had also created the most motivating studio environment any artist could wish for. The farm I purchased in the early 70s and where I built my studio was situated on 55 acres, with a beautiful rolling landscape, many trees, five ponds and original blue stem prairie grass. It was a location my wife, Shirley, and I, and our two sons had planned to build a new home. With the offer from Baylor, I was torn between holding on to what we had created in the small college town of Commerce. We had raised our sons there, had so many good friends and I had invested so much of my life into the Foundations, B.F.A. and M.F.A programs of the art department. Contrasted to this, Baylor was a larger, growing university, and had a better support system for its faculty, departmental budgets, research opportunities and sabbatical leave. Baylor’s Art Department Chair, John McClanahan, had new goals and an enthusiastic approach toward making the program a leading example in

the field of art. With over 20 years left in my teaching career, I felt I had to make the painful step toward this new opportunity. We kept the farm for four years after the move and our youngest son, Kurt and his wife, Andrea, converted the studio into a lovely home. Therefore, we spent many enjoyable weekends there before deciding to sell the farm and say goodbye to a beautiful part of the past.

For the next 9 months as my plans progressed, the studio work progressed also, to a much more provocative visual form with interacting application of drawing, wood and metal parts. Because of my former interest in machinery, both in the distant past and on the farm, the mechanical element became the more dominant force in my work. Appendages and metallic combinations began to suggest a mechanical complexity in the shaped relief.

The linear energy I found in the mechanics of my drawings and sculptural reliefs flashed back to the vacuum forms, and also the steel mills and petroleum plants of the late 50s, when I was a student at the University of Texas. The geological rhythms and organic deposits that could be found in the early paintings, fiberglass, vacuum forms and cast

paper works were replaced with the organic linear arrangements of the machine. There was a new intrigue and it wasn’t in the sciences or topographic meanderings of the earth. It was instead the influence of industrial technology and the energetic raw beauty of the dynamic machine. The way I expressed my imaginative interpretations of this new visual phenomenon was with a frontal façade of overlapping metal planes and appendages.

Having worked on tractors and harvesting machines on the farm, and still building custom and antique cars, I had inadvertently learned much more about mechanical operations than I had known in the past. There was a new mechanical anatomy that had been brought to life for me.

It was like a discovery of unique form – a new iconography and visual language. The colors were of an aged surface origin with low, atonal qualities. They could be interwoven with the cranks and cams of the metallic anatomy. It was a new technical landscape with its own life. From the first phase of this new vocabulary, images were combined with carved wood and metal cutouts representing a new physical façade. I was confronted with new territorial boundaries and I wanted to explore it all.

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The Nineties Early 1990s After several years of the icons of mechanization, my work psychologically began to move toward figurative relationships, with a complex reference toward angst, agony and human turmoil. The mechanized anatomy was replaced with real human anatomy, primarily in the form of skeletal structures. I feel I was finding personal agendas, emotions and conviction through my work. I began to create images of confrontational and tragic events of historical magnitude such as the Indian massacres, the holocaust and battlefields of ancient wars. Trips to North Dakota, New Mexico, Illinois, Germany, Italy and Poland, where many atrocities had occurred, assisted in providing the sanctions and the incentive to create large drawings and shrines of these tragedies.

After several years, these assemblages and drawings for shrines encapsulated many emotions and a distant guild for humanity. Several galleries said that while they found the new work emotionally moving and provocative, they would not be able to show it, and dropped me from the stable of artists.

However, many art centers, museums and university art galleries wanted to show the work instantly.

It was a time of soul searching and cleansing.

The work had references to excavations, both from prehistoric to present events. My former studies in archeology and anthropology guided me toward many of the early inquiries into the underground secrets. These imaginative and expressive drawings began to change to a more present time. Having felt emotionally obligated, as well as motivated from a humanitarian/humanistic calling, the weight of the imagery and the demands of expressing such emotionally charged psycho-dramas for almost three years became very depressing.

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Far Left: Catalogue No. 35 Nautical Burial, 1992 Charcoal on Paper 44 x 33 inches Left: Catalogue No. 36 Pleistocene Memorial, 1990 Fiberglass, Bone and Wood 80 x 72 x 12 inches

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Left: Catalogue No. 37 Blocks and Casings, 1996 Oil on Canvas 70 x 50 inches Right: Catalogue No. 38 Heavy Metal II (detail), 1993 Pastel on Paper 30 x 40 inches

Mid 1990s The excesses of human energy and waste with all that moves through our private, commercial and industrial endeavors, offered untapped, expressive potential for me. This work primarily took the form of drawings both large and small. There were also mental constructions which were an assemblage of forms representing waste sites with an interest in urban retrieval. They related to my earlier paintings and drawings of the landscape in that they provided the density of accumulated parts and rhythm of the natural deposits, or shift, of these assembled forms. These assemblages also allowed me not just to represent the interesting relationships and mass of salvage, but also to resurrect the parts I could appropriate or fabricate into an aesthetic and enticing interaction.

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“The excesses of human energy and waste with all that moves through our private, commercial and industrial endeavors, offered untapped, expressive potential for me.�

Above: Catalogue No. 39 Industrial Waste, 1994 Pastel on Paper 44 x 32 inches Right: Catalogue No. 40 Retrieval IV, 1995 Acrylic, Metal and Compounds on Wood 36 x 30 x 3 inches

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These sites collect products of our civilization which are not yet buried and are too current to be labeled archeological. However they present a process, not just because of their former transformed identity, but because of the unusual relationships which occur in the crushed, twisted and stacked arrangements. They motivated me to create a variety of motifs of opposite realities thus producing a dialogue between my two and three dimensional work. I felt I could not produce the drawing phase of the Salvage Series without paying homage to the resurrected relief assemblages. Therefore, I created drawings that deal with the enormity and density of industrial waste, while at the same time I fabricated some unique forms of this waste into resurrected metallic reliefs.

With these assemblages also came other sculptural wall reliefs including cross section cuts into masses of copper, brass and aluminum, which I assembled and had blocked or crushed at the processing plant. Combining these dense compressed patterns with other caged/boxed compartments of metal fragments allowed the work to document the history and metallurgical sources of various industrial components. It was an intriguing period of creative study, something I had never imagined undertaking. The metallic and compressed reliefs had a unique appearance because of the painted patine over a galvanized surface, contrasting significantly with raw compressed and boxed ferrous metals.

personally fabricated machine parts, which I made of wood and metal. These industrial façades often had deep surfaces of only their history and decay.

The works also began to generate color and layered painting demands, which were welcomed by me since my background had originally been in painting.

The work from this period brought many rewards in the form of awards, solo exhibitions, purchases and new acquaintances. During this period, I gained several galleries back from the past. One was my wonderful gallery, “The Rosenfeld� in Philadelphia, directed by Richard and Barbara, who in the late 80s and early 90s, were very instrumental in introducing my work to the art centers and collectors of the area.

As the assemblages progressed with contained and boxed elements, a transition began to occur to the format of an industrial wall with special assignments with control panels, plumbing routs and basically junctions of complex appendages and Following Page: Left: Catalogue No. 41 North Highlands Wall, 1996 Mixed Media 36 x 40 inches Right: Catalogue No. 42 Study for Sleeping Giant, 1996 Charcoal on Paper 30 x 30 inches

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Left: Catalogue No. 43 Warehouse, 1995 Ink on Paper 28 x 20 inches Below: Catalogue No. 44 Blast Furnace, 1996 Charcoal on Paper 14 x 14 inches

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Right: Catalogue No. 45 Tyler Pipe Co., 1998 Pastel on Paper 34 x 30 inches

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Right: Catalogue No. 46 Catalytic Junction (detail), 2000 Wood, Steel and Acrylic 84 x 78 x 12 inches

Far Right: Catalogue No. 47 Iron Wall (detail), 2000 Wood, Steel, Acrylic 48 x 40 x 12 inches Upper Far Right: Catalogue No. 48 Intake II, 2003 Mixed Media on Wood 52 x 48 inches Lower Far Right: Catalogue No. 49 Industrial Wall, 2005 Mixed Media on Wood 44 x 40 inches

The Two Thousands 1996 – 2003 In the period of the late 1990s and early 2000s, I addressed my attraction to walls of all forms – ancient, industrial, reconstruction – as well as the walls of nature. As this adventure moved forward, building contours and valleys, gears, inductions, exhausts and ports into my surfaces, I began to realize I was no longer creating an environment of salvage and corrosion, instead I was consciously recreating forms of personal interest and icons to the labors of mans inventions with machines.

These icons were not just created to suit a threedimensional thirst for form. Drawings of imaginative machines became just as motivating to invent and build as an illusion of three dimensions within the two dimensional surface. Also, these icons were the beginning of a new direction that over a four-year period, took me back to painting a dimensional image on a flat canvas or wood surface. They gave me a new identity to explore.

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“As this adventure moved forward, I began to realize I was no longer creating an environment of salvage and corrosion.�

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Catalogue No. 50 River Wall (detail), 2003 Acrylic on Canvas 70 x 66 inches

The new surface of illusions was also beginning to reawaken an interest in the mechanical structures found in the formations of geology. Hence, the landscape was reappearing as I remembered it back in the 60s, with oil or acrylic on canvas, the cast paper “Legends� of the 80s, and the sand and gel canvases of that same period.

2003 – 2006 In 2003 I was invited to be a visiting artist in the Roswell Residency Program for one month. Studio and living quarters were provided and I was able to finish several paintings and pastel drawings.

This location in New Mexico provided the advantage that it allowed me to travel to the 4-corners and make drawings in preparation for my studio work in Roswell. For the next three years I was producing many paintings, all representing close views of the walls of nature including large wave patterns from storms seen in the Gulf of Mexico.

Forty-five years of creative experience provided new mandates that I imposed on each work. I no longer sought the same resolutions in the surface, brush strokes or overall density of the layered impasto. The surface now was not about the rust coated machine parts. Instead, it was about the erosion of ancient walls of nature or architecture.

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Right: Catalogue No. 51 Canyon Wall, 2003 Acrylic on Canvas 80 x 60 inches Below: Catalogue No. 52 Canyon, 2005 Acrylic on Canvas 78 x 38 inches

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Left: Catalogue No. 53 Glacial Melt, 2004 Mixed Media on Paper 78 x 40 inches Right: Catalogue No. 54 The Discovery, 2005 Acrylic on Canvas 54 x 50 inches

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Above: Catalogue No. 55 Pier 57, 2005 Mixed Media on Wood 18 x 18 inches

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Right: Catalogue No. 56 Mission Window, 2006 Mixed Media on Wood 14 x 14 inches

Catalogue No. 57 Chelsea Wall, 2006 Mixed Media on Wood 16 x 16 inches

The Chelsea work allowed me to re-visit the wall series in a new, more painterly style. I always loved these old walls of the original Chelsea warehouse district and Pier 57. I spent several summers in New York and from my studio on

23rd street, I witnessed the destruction of these historic warehouses. I decided to do these walls as a monument to the old warehouses, artists and studios that created the original Chelsea district.

Capturing these walls in various states of decay,

the substructures provided a landscape of exposed pipe, mortar and brick. It became a vibrant surface allowing me to express the spontaneity and freedom found in my ongoing landscape series.

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“I found the landscape becoming a viable option for this expressive form of painting…brush strokes became broad, heavy and sweeping across the canvas, giving the image both the abstract surface from the speed in which it was painted, yet a realistic appearance upon closer observation.”

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Far Left: Catalogue No. 58 Falls, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 38 inches Left: Catalogue No. 59 Mountain Stream, 2005 Acrylic on Board 30 x 26 inches Right: Catalogue No. 60 Rapids, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 38 inches Far Right: Catalogue No. 61 Rush, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 36 inches

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Catalogue No. 62 At the Mammoth Site, 2006 Mixed Media on Paper 50 x 40 inches

After numerous studies and major paintings, I began studying the science and physics of these forms in the earth and water. After several months, I began cross referencing the scientific research with the created image and was on course with the challenge of my life.

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Catalogue No. 63 Cross Reference II, 2007 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl 70 x 75 x 3 inches

2007 In 2007, I began looking into ways of extending this information in my paintings. I made a few small studies using black cardboard and small paintings on board. The suggestive nature of this format with several images placed at various relationships with the black being used as shaped dividers was quite inviting.

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Right: Catalogue No. 64 Fault Zone, 2008 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl 60 x 60 x 4 inches Below: Catalogue No. 65 Cross References I, 2007 Mixed Media on Wood 62 x 154 x 4 inches

I began working on the “Cross Reference Series” and I’ve enjoyed this endeavor immensely because I can use my creative interest in geology and scientific digital imaging as they relate to same site locations with contrasting flat to heavy textured surfaces. “Dualities” offer fresh points of view, initiating questions, intriguing observations and adding to the information and depth in my creative works.

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Far Left: Catalogue No. 66 Mudslide on the Western Slope, 2008 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl

2007 – Present One of the major steps that occurred was when I visited the geology department at Baylor University and had an opportunity to discuss my new direction and ideas with one of the geophysicists, Shane Prochnow. He conducts research all over the country and had made some major seismographic investigations in the areas I had studied in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. Shane was very generous and provided material from his research studies that could relate to my cliff forms on canvas and wood. Substrata digital images generated from seismographic echo patterns provided a scientific, yet amazing, visual image that provided a dynamic duality.

Above: Catalogue No. 67 Industrial Wall, 2007 Mixed Media 80 x 48 x 4 inches Center: Catalogue No. 68 Mission Wall I, 2008 Mixed Media on Wood and Ink on Vinyl 61 x 40 x 4 inches

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Right: Catalogue No. 69 Pleistocene Memorial, 2008 Mixed Media on Vinyl 64 x 44 inches Far Right: Catalogue No. 70 Door of the Blast Furnace, 2008 Mixed Media on Wood and Ink on Vinyl 41 x 56 inches

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Selected Bibliography IBM Corporation, Austin, TX

BORN 1939

Indiana University Foundation, Bloomington, IN

Chicago, Illinois

Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE Longview Art Museum, Longview, TX

E D U C AT I O N M.F.A., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1963

Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, TX

B.F.A., University of Texas, Austin, TX, 1961

Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA

Summer School of Music and Art, Yale University, Norfolk, CT, 1960

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, NY Modem Museum of Art, New York City, NY Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

Artist-in-Residence, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 1989-Present

Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma City, OK

Artist-in-Residence, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, Spring 1980 and 1974-75

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK

Professor of Art, East Texas State University, Commerce, TX, 1967-89

Prudential Insurance Company, Boston, MA

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

Assistant Professor of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, 1966-67

Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM

Instructor of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1963-66

Southland Corporation, Dallas, TX

Silvermine Guild of Artists, New Canaan, CT State University at Pottsdam, Pottsdam, NY Texas A&M University, Commerce, TX

SELECTED MUSEUM AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Tulsa City Art Center, Tulsa, OK

American Airlines, DFW Airport, TX

Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX

Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX

Barnwell Art Center, Shreveport, LA

University of Texas, Austin, TX

Bradley University, Peoria, IL

University of Texas, Permian Basin

Buford Television Corporation, Dallas, TX

U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

City of Waco, TX

Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

S E L E C T E D AWA R D S A N D H O N O R S

Eppink Memorial Art Gallery, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS

2008

2nd place cash award, Texas Art Celebration, Houston, Texas

2007

Awarded a Faculty Research leave for the spring of 2008

Evansville Museum of Art and Science, Evansville, IN

Awarded an Allbritton Grant for Creative Research

Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY

Invited to be juror for the Annual Student Exhibition, Houston Baptist University

Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA Goldermann, Inc., Chicago, IL

Awarded a Baylor University Faculty Development Grant

GTE Corporation, Dallas, TX Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AR

2006

Recommended for Purchase, 22nd Annual Exhibition, Meadows Gallery, University of Texas, Tyler, TX

Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Dallas, TX

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Allbritton Grant from Allbritton Institute, Baylor University, Waco, TX

1998

Faculty Research Grant, Baylor University, Waco, TX

University Research Grant for Creative Leave Summer Sabbatical for Research, Baylor University, Waco, TX Awarded commission from Midwestern State University to create a large painting for the new Dillard building on campus plus four vacuum formed reliefs 2005

Invited to be Juror and Curator for the 38th Visual Arts Exhibition, Denton, TX

Cash Award, The Assemblage Art Awards 1998, Dallas Public Library, Dallas, TX 1997

1996

Faculty Research Grant, Baylor University, Waco, TX, Spring-Summer 1996

1995

Full Sabbatical, Baylor University, Waco, TX, Spring-Summer 1996

Faculty Development Award for Research, Baylor University, Waco, TX

Purchase Prize, 23rd Annual Drawing, Print and Photography Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Nominated for the Cornelia Marshall Smith Professor of the Year Award

Outstanding Creative Artist, Baylor University, Waco, TX 1994

2004

2003

2002

Cash Award and Honorable Mention, Texas Art Celebration, The Williams Tower Center, Houston, TX

Cash Award, Texas Sculpture Association Exhibition, Plaza of the Americas, Dallas, TX

Invited to be a visiting artist for the Wilderness Studio Program, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK

Honorable Mention, Works on Paper 35th Invitational Competition, Longview,TX

Centennial Professorship Award Baylor University Research Grant

Merit Award, 24th National Print and Drawing Exhibit, Bradley University, Peoria, IL

Guest Artist, Roswell Residence Program for Artists, Roswell, NM

First Prize and Solo Exhibit, 49th Annual Competition, Museum of Abilene, Abilene, TX

Honorable Mention, Visions International Competition, Art Center Waco, Waco, TX

1993

Artist Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Arts, Sweetbriar, VA 1992

Artist’s Grant, Horsfull Foundation,Waco, TX Third Prize, Texas Arts Celebration ’91, Cullen Center, Houston, TX

1989

University Candidate for the National Case Teaching Award, Washington, DC, (nominated by ETSU)

Bas Relief Sculpture Lecture/Workshop, Art Department, Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX

1988

University Candidate for the National Case Teaching Award, Washington, DC, (nominated by ETSU)

Presidents Award Purchase Prize, 28th Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition, Bradley University, Peoria, IL

1987

University Candidate for the National Case Teaching Award, Washington, DC, (nominated by ETSU)

Recommended for Purchase, Americas 2000, Northwest Art Center, Minot State University, Minot, ND Purchase Prize, 25th Print, Drawing & Photography Competitive Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, AR

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Artist’s Grant, Bolton Foundation, Waco, TX

1991

Karl Umlauf: The Journey, a two-hundred-six page illustrated hardbound book published on personal career, in conjunction with Retrospective Exhibition, Martin Museum of Art and Art Center, Waco, TX

1999

Who’s Who Among American Teachers (nominated by students)

Awarded Full Sabbatical, Allbritton Art Institute Grant

University Research Grant, Allbritton Art Institute Grant for Faculty Research

2001

Merit Award, 23rd Dakotas International Works on Paper Competition, University of South Dakota, SD Who’s Who in America

Allbritton Art Institute Scholarship Grant The Provost Award and Purchase Prize, 30th Bradley International, Bradley University, Peoria, IL

Big XII Faculty Fellowship, Baylor University, Waco, TX

Second Prize and Solo Exhibition, 28th Annual Invitational, Longview, Museum, Longview, TX 1986

Grand Prize, Texas Arts Celebration ’86, Houston Center, Houston, TX

1985

Exceptional Merit Award, Amarillo Competition ’85, Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX

1979

Purchase Award, 22nd Delta National, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Purchase Prize, 10th Regional Exhibition, Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Wichita Falls, Texas

Purchase Award and Solo Exhibition, 19th Invitational, Longview Museum, Longview, TX

2008

1975

Grand Prize and Purchase, Mid-States Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Evansville, IN

2007

Retrospective Exhibition, Alden B. Dow Museum, Midland, MI

2006

1974

Purchase Award, 20th Drawing and Sculpture Exhibition, Ball State University, Muncie, IN

Harris Gallery, Houston, Texas “Landscapes” Retrospective Exhibition, Texas Christian University

2005

Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

1977

Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, Texas

First Prize and Purchase, 13th Midwest Biennial, Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE 1973

1971

Purchase Award and One-Man Exhibition, ’73 Artist Biennial, New Orleans Museum, New Orleans, LA

Cline Fine Art Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ 2004

Center for Spirituality & The Arts, San Antonio, Texas

2003

Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX

Purchase Award, 15th Annual Eight-State Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK

Cline Fine Art Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ

Purchase Award, 51st Regional Art Exhibition, Barnwell Art Center, Shreveport, LA

Irving Art Center, Irving, TX

Cline Fine Art Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Texas A&M at Commerce, Commerce, TX

Dallas Art League Award, Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Purchase Prize, 14th Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Roswell Residency Center for the Arts, Roswell, NM 2002

University Art Gallery, Baylor University, Waco, TX

Purchase Award, 21st International Exhibition, Beaumont Art Museum, Beaumont, TX Purchase Award, 19th Exhibition of Southwest Prints and Drawings, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Purchase Award, Pottsdam National Print and Drawing Exhibition, State University, Pottsdam, NY Purchase Award, 17th Annual Sun Carnival Exhibition, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX 1970

Museum Purchase Prize, 7th Annual Exhibition, Masur Museum. Monroe, LA First Prize, 12th Annual Eight-State Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK

1967

First Prize, 45th Regional Juried Exhibition, Art Center, Shreveport,LA

1963

Purchase Prize, Juried Arts National Exhibition, Tyler Art Museum, Tyler, TX

1962

Dietz Award, 10th Regional Exhibition, Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY

Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, TX Art Center, Waco, TX Cultural Art Center, Temple, TX

2000

Harris Gallery, Houston, TX

1998

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK Harris Gallery, Houston, TX

1997

Martin Museum of Art, Baylor University, Waco, TX University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AR

1996

Tarrant County Junior College, Fort Worth, TX William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

1995

University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX

1994

Museums of Abilene, Abilene, TX Eppink Memorial Art Gallery, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS

1993

Waco Art Center, Waco, TX Dallas Visual Art Center, Dallas, TX

69

University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX

Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX

Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE

Longview Museum, Longview, TX

Kilgore College, Kilgore, TX

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

Lamar University, Beaumont, TX

1990

Lamar University, Dishman Gallery, Beaumont, TX

Longview Museum of Art, Longview, TX

1989

Dome Gallery, New York City, NY

1992

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

Modem Museum, Fort Worth, TX Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville, MO

1988

University of Dallas, Irving, TX

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK

1987

Rosenfeld Gallery, Philadelphia, PA

Southern Colorado College, Pueblo, CO

1986

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, TX Texas Association of Schools of Art, Dallas, TX Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

Tyler Museum of Art, Tyler, TX

University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA

Watson deNagy and Company, Houston, TX

University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX

1983

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX

1980

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX

University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX

1979

El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

1976

Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, AL

Kimbell Art Museum, Artist Eye Series, Fort Worth, TX

1975

Joslyn Museum of Art, Omaha, NE

Oklahoma State University, OK

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, TN

University of Arkansas, Little Rock, AR

1983

University of the Mainlands, Texas City, TX Waco Art Center, Waco, TX

Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AR

1974

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

1974

Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, IN

Juror, Small Works on Paper, Arkansas Art Council, Little Rock, AR

1969

Montgomery College Art Center, Rockville, MD

Juror, Regional Open Exhibition, PIano Municipal Center, PIano, TX

1962

Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY

Juror, 1998 Oklahoma State University Student Art Exhibition, Stillwater, OK

V I S I T I N G A R T I S T, L E C T U R E S , W O R K S H O P S , E T C .

Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Austin College, Sherman, TX Ball State University, Muncie, IN Dallas Art Center, Dallas, TX El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX Emporia State University, Emporia, KS Galveston Art Center, Galveston, TX

70

Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, TX

Juror, 14th Annual National Works on Paper, Meadows Gallery, Cowan Fine & Performing Arts Center, University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX Mono Print Workshop, Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, TX Drawing Workshop, Paris Junior College, Paris, TX Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, Austin, TX Visual Lecture/Presentation, Texas Visual Arts Association, University of Texas, Dallas, TX Personal Career Lecture in conjunction with Retrospective Exhibition, Martin Museum of Art and Art Center, Waco, TX

Scholars Day Lecture: Motivating Resources for the Creative Process, Baylor University, Waco, TX Lecture, Irving Art Center, Irving, TX Lecture, Texas A&M at Commerce, Commerce,TX Lecture, Anderson Museum of Art, Roswell, NM Juror, Sixth Annual Regional Juried Stars of Texas Art Exhibition, Depot Civic and Cultural Center, Brownwood, TX Texas Sculpture Symposium, Texas Tech University, Junction, Texas Visiting Artist for Wilderness Studio Program, OSU-Stillwater Texas Christian University Art Department, lecture and critique graduate students Juror, 38th National Art Exhibition, Visual Arts Society of Texas, Denton, Texas Juror for student exhibition, Houston Baptist University SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2008

Texas Art Celebration Annual, Williams Tower, Houston, TX

2007

22nd Annual International Exhibition, Meadows Gallery, University of Texas, Tyler, TX 31st Bradley International Drawing & Print Exhibition, Peoria, IL District Fine Arts Gallery, Washington, D.C. Houston Baptist University Selects Texas Artists, Houston, TX

2006

Northwest Art Center International Americas Exhibition, Minot, ND Protege Invitational, Temple Art Center, Temple, Texas Texas Art Celebration, Williams Tower Exhibition Center, Houston, TX Multimedia Winter Exhibition, Art Center Waco, Waco, TX

2005

Space Invaders Invitational, University of Texas at Dallas & Binder Gallery, Marfa, TX 30th Bradley International Exhibition, Bradley University, Peoria, IL Protege Exhibition, Art Center, Temple, TX Holiday Icons, Art Center, Temple, TX Salvage V, exhibited in the new Performing Art Center, Lorena, TX Critics Choice Exhibition, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, Dallas, TX Invited to show in the Space-Invaders Exhibition, UT-Dallas, and the Eugene Binder Gallery in Marfa, TX

71

2004

2003 2002

Texas Art Celebration, The Williams Tower Exhibition Center, Houston, TX

16th Annual National Works on Paper, Meadows Gallery, The University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler, TX

Drawing Exhibition, Howard Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Art View 2001, Waco Art Center, Waco, TX Teacher/Protege 2001, Cultural Activities Center, Temple, TX

Protege Exhibition, Cultural Activities Center, Temple, TX

The Mac’s 2001 3rd Biennial Juried Exhibition, Dallas, TX

Visions International Competition, Art Center, Waco, TX

Invitational Drawing Exhibition, McNeese State College, McNeese, LA

The 2002 Protege Exhibition, Cultural Arts Center, Temple, TX Project Phoenix, Red Bud Gallery, Houston, TX 2001

2000

Teacher/Protege 2000, Cultural Activities Center, Temple, TX 43rd Annual Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

28th Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition, Lakeview Museum, Bradley University, Peoria, IL

Sculptural Syncretism (Four Texas Artists), Collin County Community College Art Gallery, Allen, TX William Campbell Contemporary Art 25th Anniversary Exhibition, Fort Worth, TX 26th Annual Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR 1999

25th Print, Drawing & Photography Competitive Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, AR Oil Patch Dreams – Circuit Exhibition, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX Museum Southwest, Midland, TX The El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX Wichita Falls Museum and Art Center, Wichita Falls, TX Texas National, Meadows Gallery, Stephen F. Austin University, Nacogdoches, TX Texas Art 2000, Assistant League of Houston, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX

1998

Dallas Area Artists, Lowell Collins Gallery, Houston, TX The Assemblage Art Awards Exhibition 1998, Dallas Public Library, Dallas, TX Critic’s Choice, Dallas Visual Art Center, Dallas, TX

1997

23rd Dakotas International Works on Paper Competition, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD Texas Reflections,Waco Art Center, Waco, TX Central Texas Artists Invitational, Waco Art Center, Waco, TX

1995

William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Fort Worth, TX Harris Gallery, Houston, TX Editions Limited, San Francisco, CA Archa Art Center, Prague, Czech Republic

72

Mark Makers Drawing Exhibition, Frogmans Press and Gallery, Beresford, SD 59th Annual National Exhibition of Contemporary American Paintings, Four Arts Plaza, Palm Beach, FL 1994

Dakota International, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD 18th Annual Invitational, Emporia State University, Emporia, KS

1993

1978

Works on Paper Southwest ’78, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

1977

Artist Biennial, New Orleans Museum, New Orleans, LA

1975

27th Mid-States Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Evansville Museum, Evansville, IN

1974

20th Annual Drawing and Sculpture Exhibition, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 13th Midwest Biennial Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Joslyn Museum, Omaha, NE

35th North Dakota National Print and Drawing Exhibition, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND

Mid-States Exhibition, Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN

49th Annual Competition, Museums of Abilene, Abilene, TX 1991

Amarillo Competition 1991, Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX

1973

Texas Art Celebration ’91 – Cullen Art Center, Houston, TX 1990

1989

1987

Artist Biennial Exhibition, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA

Cars in Art The Automobile Icon, Pensacola Museum of Art, Pensacola, FL 33rd Annual Delta Art Exhibition, The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

15th Annual Eight-State Invitational Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK 1972

Excellence 4th National Sculpture Exhibition, Plaza of the Americas, Dallas, TX

1985

Cyrna International Art Gallery, World Trade Center, Chicago, IL Abstract Painters, Richard Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ

18th Annual Drawing and Sculpture Exhibition, Ball State University, Muncie, IN

New Works in Cast Paper, Klonaridist, Inc., Toronto/Ontario, Canada

19th Southwestern Prints and Drawing Exhibition, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

Texas Art Celebration, Houston Center, TX

17th Annual Drawing and Sculpture Exhibition, Ball State University, Muncie, IN

24th National Sun Carnival Exhibition, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

Texas Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

Grand Opening of Mac Gillman Gallery, Chicago, IL

14th Annual Delta Exhibition, Arkansas Fine Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

Dimensional Paper Exhibition, San Antonio Art Institute, San Antonio,TX

1971

1970

Amarillo Competition ’85, Amarillo Art Center, Amarillo, TX 1984

9th National Print Exhibition, Silvermine Guild of Artists, New Canaan, CT Pottsdam National Print and Drawing Exhibition, State University, Pottsdam, NY

Sculpture, Galerie Simonne Stem, New Orleans, LA 1986

Annual Texas Fine Arts Association Exhibition, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX

Twelfth Annual Eight-State Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City

Ericson Gallery, New York City, NY 25th National Invitational, Longview Museum of Art, Longview, TX

1983

26th Annual Delta Art Exhibition, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

1982

Watson-deNagy Gallery, Houston, TX Artists’ Choice, William Crapo Gallery, Swain School of Design, New Bedford, MA

The Drawing Society Regional Exhibition, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

1969

14th Annual Sun Carnival Exhibition, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX 11th Annual National Print and Drawing Exhibition, Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, OK

1968

Texas Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

73

Catalogue Checklist

Catalogue No. 1 Cover, page 8 & 14 Chili Factory, 1959 Oil on Linen 30 x 40 inches Catalogue No. 2 Page 15 Owl, 1958 Oil on Linen 24 x 18 inches Catalogue No. 3 Page 8 & 16 Dallas Rail Yard, 1958 Oil on Linen 26 x 20 inches Collection of Bobbie & John Nau, Houston, Texas

Catalogue No. 12 Page 9 & 21 Storm Clouds, 1960 Oil on Canvas 64 x 52 inches Catalogue No. 13 Page 22 McNeil Lime Company, 1960 Gouache on Paper 14 x 8 inches

Catalogue No. 4 Page 17 Pipe Fitters, 1959 Oil on Linen 30 x 24 inches Private collection

Catalogue No. 14 Page 23 Newell Salvage, 1960 Oil on Linen 36 x 46 inches

Catalogue No. 5 Page 17 Refinery, 1959 Oil on Linen 22 x 28 inches

Catalogue No. 15 Page 24 Autumn, 1961 Oil on Linen 34 x 32 inches

Catalogue No. 6 Page 17 City, 1959 Oil on Linen 40 x 50 inches Private collection

Catalogue No. 16 Page 25 Evening Field, 1961 Oil on Linen 44 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 7 Page 18 Tyler Refinery, 1959 Oil on Linen 20 x 26 inches Catalogue No. 8 Page 6 & 18 Slag Pullers, 1959 Oil on Linen 34 x 42 inches Catalogue No. 9 Page 8 & 19 Steel Mill, 1959 Oil on Linen 18 x 24 inches Catalogue No. 10 Page 20 Morning Fog, 1960 Oil on Linen 36 x 46 inches

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Catalogue No. 11 Page 9 & 20 Midnight Over West Texas Plains, 1960 Oil on Linen 30 x 40 inches Collection of Sam & Nan Dealey Dallas, Texas

Catalogue No. 17 Page 26 The Cave, 1962 Oil on Canvas 70 x 62 inches Catalogue No. 18 Page 26 Incline, 1963 Oil on Canvas 68 x 62 inches Catalogue No. 19 Page 27 Incline IV, 1966 Ink on Paper 32 x 18 inches Catalogue No. 20 Page 27 Northern Rim, 1966 Ink on Paper 30 x 26 inches

Catalogue No. 21 Page 27 Cliff Face, 1967 Ink on Paper 30 x 24 inches Catalogue No. 22 Page 28 Incline I, 1968 Acrylic on Board 10 x 14 inches Catalogue No. 23 Page 29 Stream Bed, 1967 Oil on Canvas 44 x 32 inches Catalogue No. 24 Page 29 Rapids, 1968 Oil on Canvas 78 x 62 inches Catalogue No. 25 Page 29 River VIII, 1968 Oil on Canvas 60 x 44 inches Catalogue No. 26 Page 9 and 30 Formation III #2, 1969 Cast Fiberglass and Lacquer on Wood 58 x 48 x 5 inches Catalogue No. 27 Page 31 Formation XXXXIV, 1979 Vacuum-form Plastic 28 x 26 x 4 inches Catalogue No. 28 Page 33 Formation Series VI #4, 1973 Vacuum-form Plastic 68 x 50 x 10 inches Catalogue No. 29 Page 34 Delta VIII, 1984 Acrylic and Sand on Canvas 82 x 66 inches Catalogue No. 30 Page 35 Legend Series XXXIV (detail), 1985 Mixed Media on Paper 72 x 48 x 4 inches

Catalogue No. 31 Page 36 Legend Series V, 1986 Acrylic on Paper 28 x 25 inches

Catalogue No. 42 Page 47 Study for Sleeping Giant, 1996 Charcoal on paper 30 x 30 inches

Catalogue No. 53 Page 54 Glacial Melt, 2004 Mixed Media on Paper 78 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 64 Page 62 Fault Zone, 2008 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl 60 x 60 x 4 inches

Catalogue No. 32 Page 10 & 37 Legend XVIII, 1986 Acrylic on Cast Paper 30 x 26 inches

Catalogue No. 43 Page 48 Warehouse, 1995 Ink on Paper 28 x 20 inches

Catalogue No. 54 Page 55 The Discovery, 2005 Acrylic on Canvas 54 x 50 inches

Catalogue No. 65 Page 62 Cross References I, 2007 Mixed Media on Wood 62 x 154 x 4 inches

Catalogue No. 33 Page 10 & 38 Legend XVI #3, 1985 Acrylic on Cast Paper 70 x 45 x 3 inches

Catalogue No. 44 Page 11 & 48 Blast Furnace, 1996 Charcoal on Paper 14 x 14 inches

Catalogue No. 55 Page 56 Pier 57, 2005 Mixed Media on Wood 18 x 18 inches

Catalogue No. 66 Page 63 Mudslide on the Western Slope, 2008 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl 66 x 50 x 4 inches

Catalogue No. 34 Page 38 Legend XXIII, 1986 Acrylic on Cast Paper 28 x 25 inches

Catalogue No. 45 Page 49 Tyler Pipe Co., 1998 Pastel on Paper 34 x 30 inches

Catalogue No. 56 Page 56 Mission Window, 2006 Mixed Media on Wood 14 x 14 inches

Catalogue No. 67 Page 63 Industrial Wall, 2007 Mixed Media 80 x 48 x 4 inches Private collection

Catalogue No. 35 Page 40 Nautical Burial, 1992 Charcoal on Paper 44 x 33 inches

Catalogue No. 46 Page 50 Catalytic Junction (detail), 2000 Wood, Steel and Acrylic 84 x 78 x 12 inches

Catalogue No. 57 Page 57 Chelsea Wall, 2006 Mixed Media on Wood 16 x 16 inches

Catalogue No. 36 Page 10 & 41 Pleistocene Memorial, 1990 Fiberglass, Bone and Wood 80 x 72 x 12 inches

Catalogue No. 47 Page 51 Iron Wall (detail), 2000 Wood, Steel, Acrylic 48 x 40 x 12 inches

Catalogue No. 58 Page 58 Falls, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 38 inches

Catalogue No. 37 Page 42 Blocks and Casings, 1996 Oil on Canvas 70 x 50 inches

Catalogue No. 48 Page 51 Intake II, 2003 Mixed Media on Wood 52 x 48 inches

Catalogue No. 59 Page 58 Mountain Stream, 2005 Acrylic on Board 30 x 26 inches

Catalogue No. 38 Page 11 & 43 Heavy Metal II (detail), 1993 Pastel on Paper 30 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 49 Page 51 Industrial Wall, 2005 Mixed Media on Wood 44 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 60 Page 59 Rapids, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 38 inches

Catalogue No. 39 Page 44 Industrial Waste, 1994 Pastel on Paper 44 x 32 inches

Catalogue No. 50 Page 52 River Wall, 2003 Acrylic on Canvas 70 x 66 inches

Catalogue No. 61 Page 59 Rush, 2006 Acrylic on Canvas 74 x 36 inches

Catalogue No. 40 Page 11 & 44 Retrieval IV, 1995 Acrylic, Metal and Compounds on Wood 36 x 30 x 3 inches

Catalogue No. 51 Page 53 Canyon Wall, 2003 Acrylic on Canvas 80 x 60 inches

Catalogue No. 62 Page 60 At the Mammoth Site, 2006 Mixed Media on Paper 50 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 41 Page 46 North Highlands Wall, 1996 Mixed Media 36 x 40 inches

Catalogue No. 52 Page 53 Canyon, 2005 Acrylic on Canvas 78 x 38 inches

Catalogue No. 63 Page 12 & 61 Cross Reference II, 2007 Mixed Media on Canvas and Ink on Vinyl 70 x 75 x 3 inches

Catalogue No. 68 Page 63 Mission Wall I, 2008 Mixed Media on Wood and Ink on Vinyl 61 x 40 x 4 inches Catalogue No. 69 Page 13 & 64 Pleistocene Memorial, 2008 Mixed Media on Vinyl 64 x 44 inches Catalogue No. 70 Cover & page 65 Door of the Blast Furnace, 2008 Mixed Media on Wood and Ink on Vinyl 41 x 56 inches

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Catalogue Credits We would like to thank the following people, institutions and sponsors for their direction, support and considerable effort in making this national exhibition of Karl Umlauf’s works possible: Armin Mersmann, Curator and Bruce Winslow, Director of the Aldon B. Dow Museum, Midland, Michigan. This large, nationally recognized Museum of Science and Art was a perfect venue to display Karl’s lifelong creative entrenchment with science and technology.

Cohn Drennan and the staff of the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern State University for their excellent job of installing and curating the exhibition and his wife Cathy for designing a beautiful and informative brochure. Cohn has exhibited his masterful direction in presenting not only the Umlauf retrospective but also Karl’s most recent series “Cross Reference.”

Kim Tomio, Director and Ken Tomio, Curator at the Tyler Museum of Art with their exhibition Father & Son III: Charles and Karl Umlauf – Two Generations of Texas Art Icons. The exhibition was beautifully presented and garnered national attention as well.

To Elaine Taylor, Gallery Manager of the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, for her dedication to the Arts Center and interest, in not only Karl’s work, but that of his father and students. Her commitment allowed us to present for the first time Karl’s influences and those he has influenced.

To David Dike Estates, L.P. for their extensive sponsorship and contributions to all the shows.

Again, we wish to thank Patricia Meadows, Curator of the Texas Sculpture Garden and the Hall Collection, Frisco, Texas. Additionally, Vince Mariani of the University of Texas-Austin, who in the original book presented a special insight and mythical summation of the depth of the artist.

The catalogue and book supplement, Karl Umlauf – Natural Evolution, would not have been possible without the dedication and commitment of several exceptional people and firms: John Moore Walker Photography, whose special photographic vision is very much appreciated, Sondra Brady and her tireless hours editing Karl’s images and Becky and Ken Phillips of WinshipPhillips in Dallas, for their design and editorial direction that is evident in this remarkable catalogue.

Special recognition and gratitude should be paid to Katie Robinson Edwards, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Art History at Allbritton Art Institute, Baylor University, for her exceptional essay which brings to light all the important changes, progressions and dynamic factors from the past to the present in Karl’s work.

Special gratitude to Russell Tether for his efforts and diligent manner in assembling and curating this overwhelming presentation of Karl Umlauf’s life as an artist, and to gallery director, Leslie Humphrey, for taking care of the exhaustive details. Unprecedented steps are being made to move this provocative work to the forefront.

And to Karl and his wife Shirley, who deserve special recognition and gratitude for their endless efforts in supplying documention, visual material and chronological information on all the art work.

Karl Umlauf – Natural Evolution

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June 6 - June 28, 2008 Fort Worth Community Arts Center Fort Worth, Texas 76107

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without the written permission of the publisher.

An exhibition organized by Russell Tether & Leslie Humphrey Gallery 2 David Dike Fine Art & Estates 1229-B Slocum Street, Dallas, Texas 75207 Telephone: 214-741-2789 Facsimile: 214-741-2786 www.daviddikegallerytwo.com

Photos of Karl Umlauf: John Moore Walker Photography jmwalker3@mac.com

Copyright © 2008 David Dike Estates L.P. (dba Gallery 2 David Dike Fine Art & Estates) First Edition of 2000 copies ISBN 978-1-60643-650-9

Catalogue Design: WinshipPhillips, www.winshipphillips.com

Photography: John Moore Walker, Jessica Cook, Chris Hanson, Kenneth Ransom, Larry Sengbush, Bob Smith and Stuart Umlauf

Cover Images (top to bottom): Chili Factory 1959 (detail), Door of the Blast Furnace 2008 (detail).