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Staniar Gallery
StaniarGallery
Exhibition: September 5-October 5, 2022 Lecture and Reception: Tuesday, September 20 5:30 p.m. Wilson Concert Hall
MEANINGS OF THE PAST (from the series Black Alchemy: If this one thing is true); 2020; inkjet silk print, black c-stand; print: 40x50 inches, c-stand: variable
Aaron Turner is a photographer and educator currently based in Arkansas. He uses photography as a transformative process to understand the ideas of home and resilience in two main areas of the U.S.: the Arkansas and Mississippi deltas. This exhibition features photographic still-life studies taken with a large format view camera, that are reflections on identity, history, blackness as material and abstraction. Turner received his MA from Ohio University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Recent recognition of his work includes an Artist 360 Mid-America Arts Alliance Grant, the 2021 Houston Center for Photography Fellowship, a 2021 Creators Lab Photo Fund award from Google’s Creator Labs & the Aperture Foundation, and 2022 Darryl Chappell Foundation photographer-in-residence at Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
StaniarGallery
ESTEBAN RAMÓN PÉREZ: DISTORTED MYTHS
Exhibition:
DNA (Bad Blood) (detail), 2019, 12x12x1 feet
In his interdisciplinary works, artist Esteban Ramón Pérez often incorporates materials such as leather and embroidery, paying homage to his experience growing up in his father’s upholstery shop. Drawing on his West Coast Chicanx experience, his practice can be seen as an expression of rasquache aesthetics, an approach to artmaking based on a theory developed by Tomas Ybarra- Frausto to describe “an underdog perspective, a view of los de abajo [from below].” Pérez describes his work as “an interrogation and excavation of my subjective memory, spirituality, fragmented history, and social political reality.” Pérez has exhibited widely since receiving his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 2019. In 2020, he was selected for the prestigious NXTHVN Fellowship program and is a 2022 recipient of the Los Angeles Artadia Award.
StaniarGallery
AMANDA LECHNER: TERRA IGNOTA: LAND UNKNOWN
Exhibition: November 7–December 9, 2022
ANTHROPOGENIC GEOLOGY, 2019, egg tempera on panel, 11x14 inches
Terra ignota (also terra incognita) is Latin for land unknown. It is a term long used in cartography to indicate the unexplored, undescribed and unmapped. In our contemporary age, terra ignota aptly expresses the unmapped immensity of outer-space—the unknowns of the ocean floor or the complexity of the human brain.Through her work and scholarship Amanda Lechner envisions and enacts moments of experimentation and discovery, pacing the threshold between the described and unknown. This exhibition includes works from the past several years of Lechner’s painting practice in egg-tempera and improvisational fresco—processes that relate to the birth of scientific inquiry and the history of visual art. The work takes inspiration from geology, climate science, natural history, personal storytelling and the language(s) of painting itself. She utilizes observation, invention and abstraction to make images that reside simultaneously as fictions and documentary. Hopscotching improvised connections, Lechner’s paintings extend the challenge of close looking and prompt attention to unseen connections. This project is about curiosity and explores the terra ignota between science, philosophy, mythology and human experience.
StaniarGallery
SAM BLANCHARD: FUTILE STATE
Exhibition: January 9–February 8, 2023 Artist’s Talk: Tuesday, January 24 5:30 p.m. Wilson Concert Hall
ANOTHER EXERCISE IN FUTILITY (detail), 2016, 3D printed bronze pick-axes, plastic, brass, aluminum, compressor; dimensions variable
Sam Blanchard uses computer-based fabrication and presentation methods to create works that interrogate the human experience in the age of technology. Previous projects include kinetic sculptures, interactive environments and video installations. Blanchard is currently Associate Professor of Studio Art in the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. He has an active international exhibition record with solo exhibitions at such venues as the Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center, The Delaware Contemporary and The New Galley (Calgary, Ontario). His collaborative work in the fields of computer science and engineering have been presented at such venues as South-by-Southwest, World Maker Faire and the Smithsonian Museum of American History. He received his BA from Ohio University and MFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design.
StaniarGallery
ADRIENNE CALLANDER: FIELDWORK
Exhibition: February 13–March 17, 2023 Artist’s Talk: Wednesday, March 1 5:30 p.m. Wilson Concert Hall
TOP OF THE WATER BOWL, 2022, photograph, dimensions variable
Artist-educator and scholar Adrienne Callander considers entrepreneurship a creative medium. In her artistic endeavors and publications, she explores the overlap of imagination, engagement and dissent to pose the question of where an art practice begins and ends. This exhibition presents artifacts from a year spent caring for two Bluefaced Leicester sheep and a livestock guardian dog in the Ozark Mountains region of Northwest Arkansas. It is a rumination on a learning curve, a reflection on the acts of owning, belonging and care. It is also an LLC that produces and sells pasture seed packs, yarns, field aprons, and other goods to, in turn, support local independent artists. Callander is Assistant Professor in Art and Entrepreneurship, cross-appointed in the School of Art and the College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She has exhibited in the US, Canada, Germany and Iceland and presents nationally and internationally on intersections of entrepreneurship and social practice.
StaniarGallery
SENIOR THESES EXHIBITION
Exhibition: March 27–April 7, 2023 Reception: TBA Wilson Concert Hall
2022 SENIOR ART MAJORS
In their senior year, Studio Art students work independently on a body of work to be presented in Staniar Gallery as the culmination of their undergraduate education. The annual exhibition showcases drawing, painting, photography, printmaking and sculptures by the young artists who concentrate in one of these areas to earn the BA degree in Studio Art. As their debut into the art world, the exhibit gives the graduating seniors the opportunity to display their work in a professional gallery setting.
StaniarGallery
DELILAH MONTOYA: CONTEMPORARY CASTA PORTRAITURE
Exhibition: April 24–May 25, 2023 Reception: TBA 5:30 p.m.
Wilson Concert Hall
Casta #2 from Contemporary Casta Portraiture: Nuestra Calidad, 2018, photograph and mixed media, 38x26 inches
This exhibition by Delilah Montoya is based on the artist’s research into the racial categorizing that was expressed in 18th century paintings made in Spanish Americas known as “casta paintings.” The historical works visually reinforced stereotypes by representing different racial mixes from the children of Spaniards who coupled with people in the “New World.” Montoya’s contemporary photographic portraits of Houston and New Mexico colonial families are presented as DNA analysis of the sitters and a global map of their families’ 100,000 years migration. The ethnographic art project addresses themes of identity and the impact of race and class distinctions. Montoya is an emerita professor from the University of Houston in the School of Art. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards and has been exhibited throughout the United States including New Mexico, Texas, New York, California as well as internationally in Puerto Rico, Russia, Japan, France and Mexico.
