Lawndale Art Center develops local contemporary artists and the audience for their art.

On View 11.20.2015 -1.9.2016Read MeCandace Hicks

Bread, Bath and BeyondEmily Fleisher

A Library for Soft RainsJason Urban

NIGHT WALKThe Center for ImaginativeCartography & Research

Also on view through January 9, 2016

Ghost GridJonathan Leach

Lawndale Regional Wilderness ZoneElizabeth Eicher & Hélène Schlumberger

Read MeCandace HicksJohn M. O’Quinn Gallery

Instructions for ViewingIn an escape game, the player, trapped in a contained space, must amass clues to find a means to get out. You can play this game and may leave at any time. People that don’t like to read in art galleries are encouraged to ignore the text on the wall. In fact, you don’t have to finish reading this pamphlet. You can simply have a look around. If you are still reading, you should know that the text on the wall is mostly a list of coincidental occurrences with very little reflection about what the coincidences might mean. Sometimes a coincidence is only significant by possessing the mere quality of seeming significant. It’s like when something is “interesting.” Repetition punctuates good design just as coincidence catalyzes fiction, so to be on the safe side there is a lot of duplication and reiteration in the objects included. To repeat is to build a sense of unity or order in a world that seems meaningless. Some of the objects can be manipulated, which could be a way of feeling more involved, but you don’t have to touch anything if you don’t want to. When I was building this room I read that a mirror always looks like it should be lighter than the weight you perceive when you pick it up. A mirror should really be provided after you read a sentence like that. I know I want to try picking one up just from thinking about it. There are clues that lead to a numerical code. If you solve the puzzle, you can see more than blue light inside the door, but it’s nothing special. It’s certainly not as uncanny or surreal as a Duchampian door. It doesn’t open. It’s not real. You might come to the conclusion that all art is akin to holding a mirror up to life, and if you could do that, it would be pretty darn surreal.

1. Camera Obscura, 2015Wooden cabinet with lens, glass plate and casters7” x 7” x 66”

2. Room at Sea, 2015Wooden cabinet with paper, brass and plastic flip card animations6” x 6” x 66”

3. Periscope, 2015Wooden cabinet on Lazy Susan bearings and mirrors18” x 18” x 66”

4. Tornado Zoetrope, 2015Wooden cabinet with turntable, strobe light, cotton tornado and boombox18” x 18” x 66”

5. Vermeer Fountain, 2015Wooden cabinet with clay fountain, fluorescent light and pump-driven water feature18” x 22” x 66”

6. Flies, 2015Wooden cabinet with paper, brass and plastic flip card animations6” x 6” x 66”

7. The Interrogation of Infinite Space, 2015Wooden cabinet with 2-way mirror illusion of model library and LED lighting18” x 18” x 66”

8. Cloud Ames Room, 2015Wooden cabinet with servo-powered cloud, LED lighting and miniature room with green wallpaper18” x 18” x 66”

9. Rooms by the Sea, 2015Wooden cabinet with television, turntable and miniature replica of Edward Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea15” x 24” x 66”

10. Edward Hopper’s Doorway or The Way Out, 2015Wooden cabinet with coded door lock30” x 8” x 80”

11. 2 glass decoders, 2015Wood, glass and casters18” x 18” x 66”

12. 10 framed inkjet prints, 2015Dimensions variable

Numbers correlate with checklist.

Black arrows denote mobility of objects within exhibition.

Checklist

Read Me Floorplan

BioCandace Hicks has collected coincidences for over ten years. It started when she read two books in a row that both included the phrase “antique dental instrument.” She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Stephen F. Austin State University. In 2009 she earned an MFA from Texas Christian University. Her artist’s books are in collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and many university special collections including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. She has exhibited throughout Texas, California, and New York, as well as in Beijing, Barcelona, and Cordoba.

www.candacehicks.com

AcknowledgementsThanks to David Lebaillif for his generous assistance with the electronics in Read Me and his continuous support and encouragement.

This project is funded by a Stephen F. Austin State University Faculty Research/Creative Activity Grant.

Bread, Bath and BeyondEmily FleisherCecily E. Horton Gallery

Artist StatementMy work has always explored the elements in my immediate surroundings and the idea of familiarity within the home and landscape. I pluck elements from my daily routine and play with the boundaries between interior and exterior space, the familiar and remote. As I’ve moved around the country, the dominant aesthetics and unique aspects of a place have influenced the direction of the work.

The objects in this exhibition focus on the potential for moments of spirituality and meditation within the home – specifically the bathroom and kitchen. I use a wide variety of materials and processes to re-examine the ordinary. The imagery is also appropriated from seemingly diverse, yet related sources; houses of worship, a 19th century Hiroshige print, and the cosmos. I’ve used these varied explorations of the spiritual to draw connections to my own home and the everyday.

Checklist

Nearly Everything, 2013Silkscreened mat board and stop motion animated video6” x 5” x 2”

Risen, I Put the Yeast In: Traditional Loaf, Infinite Loaf, Haloaf, Embryoaf2015Parchment paper liner left over from baking loaves of breadApprox. 14” x 15” each

Ring Around, 2015Wood, thin-set mortar and paint8” x 8” x 8”

Eddy, 2015Markers and acrylic paint on Plexiglas, caulk, plywood and thin-set mortar76” x 37” x 2”

Hung Over, 2015Chicken wire and caulk40” x 35” x 8”

Earth Moving, 2014Wood, metal, plaster and model railroad materials75” x 40” x 45”

Works are listed counter-clockwise from the gallery entrance.

Bio

Acknowledgements

Emily Fleisher is originally from New York and earned an MFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design. She has shown at various venues including Stay Gold Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, Blue Star Art Museum in San Antonio, TX, Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, TX, and Women and Their Work in Austin, TX. She has participated in several residencies and is also an Editor at Large for Agave Magazine + Press. Fleisher currently lives with her family in San Antonio, TX and teaches at San Antonio College.

emilyfleisher.net

Thank you to the entire staff at Lawndale and Lily Cox-Richard from the Programming Committee for their advice and assistance in preparing for this exhibit.

And thank you to FRAMED in San Antonio for the donation of emergency hinging tape.

A Library for Soft RainsJason UrbanGrace R. Cavnar Gallery

Artist StatementIn “There Will Come Soft Rains,” a chapter of his 1950 dystopian novel The Martian Chronicles, Raymond Bradbury paints a picture of an automated house in the year 2026 devoid of inhabitants. This “home of the future” cooks, cleans and carries on unaware that its family is gone. Somberly, the story ends with the destruction of the house.

For A Library for Soft Rains at Lawndale Art Center, I’ve been using this chapter as a motif of sorts to explore the growing interdependency of analog and digital printed matter. The various pieces in the exhibit process the Bradbury story through a range of technologies from high to low tech. CNC routers, rapid prototyping, as well as simple relief printing are employed to create images and objects that are both complex and rudimentary in their origins. As an artist interested in printed matter, the library as a physical tool for distributing knowledge is of particular fascination to me. The book is a conveyor of information, it’s endurance and ephemerality, and its evolution from utilitarian object to elite artisanal good is reflective of the changing cultural roles of both analog and digital.

A Library for Soft Rains, 2015Hand-dyed woodcut on Masa paper, digital print, gypsum, wood and houseplant Dimensions variable

Checklist

BioJason Urban is an artist, writer, and teacher living and working in Austin, TX. Originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania, Urban earned a BFA from Kutztown University in Kutztown, PA and an MFA from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, IA. His prints, drawings, paintings and installations have been featured in numerous venues both nationally and internationally. Urban currently teaches Printmaking and Foundations at the University of Texas at Austin.

As a supplement to both his research and teaching, Urban is part of the online collaborative, Printeresting.org, winner of a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation ArtsWriters Grant.

jasonurban.com

NIGHT WALKThe Center for Imaginative Cartography and ResearchProject Space

Artist StatementAt night, we go walking. The heat of the swamp relents, castle walls darken, lights go on, feelers move outward, possibilities dilate. What are we doing in this place? How did we get here?

At night, we go looking—searching, gleaning, making. The earth begins to breathe from beneath the concrete, between the cracks, beyond the landscaping. Where are the others? Where can we meet?

At night, we start imagining. The day’s husk of cynicism and dread is shed. Maps emerge from our movement. We shake off demands for a clear line. We collapse the space and its experience. We draw maps of memory, myth, and artifact; of action, knowledge, and desire.

Checklist

BioThe Center for Imaginative Cartography and Research is a collaborative project, started in 2011, between Erik Sultzer and Emily Halbardier. Together, they explore and document relationships between creative production, community, and place. Erik Sultzer was born and raised in Western Kansas, and received his BFA in Painting from the University of Kansas. Emily Halbardier was born and raised in Houston, and received her BFA in Painting from the University of Houston. Both artists received their MFAs in Studio Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and are currently living and working together in the Houston area.

thecforicandr.info

The Center would like to thank everyone at Lawndale Art Center for their support.

Acknowledgements

Night Walk, 2015Mixed media installation35’5” x 15’ x 9’

Lawndale Regional Wilderness ZoneElizabeth Eicher & Hélène SchlumbergerMary E. Bawden Sculpture GardenOn view through January 9, 2016

Artist StatementAs viewers of art, we’re asked to engage in a specific and often stringent mode of viewing. The act of looking, in the art world, is to be engaged in a contemplative observation where we’ve become receptive vessels to at least pondering the artists’ message. Our viewing methods are also coded in natural parks and reserves. Placards, observation decks, pathways and mile-markers are erected to let us know when we’ve reached an appropriate place to appreciate the surrounding grandeur of the wild.

Ostensibly, these two types of viewing are unrelated or even at odds with each other. In Western tradition, nature and culture are perceived as opposite and often in direct conflict; however, the difficulty of neatly assessing any one thing as either cultural or natural betrays the folly of that assumption. Centuries of mutual meddling, pressures exerted toward either end, ensure that neither culture nor nature exist wholly without each other. This interconnectedness doesn’t stop mankind’s tendency to assign the attribute of “natural” to culturally crafted things. The very creation of a natural park, the act of delineating an existing area into a new zone of human authority using some small gestures, is clearly a culturally defined action and surprisingly similar to art-making.

The key parallel between natural parks and art spaces is the way the visitor is guided through their experience. Some methods, like placed texts, are obvious. Other methods, like locational curation, are less obvious and in that way possibly more effective. This guidance always comes from an authority; the owner or the space dictates the message. The messages are generally benign or positive – “Don’t destroy the ecosystem” or “Please care about things” – but that doesn’t mean a visitor should ever forget they’re being manipulated. For instance, this artist statement exists to instruct you on the artists’ methodology and sway you to their ideas.

In the art world, the majority of the looking to be done is looking at something. Look at a painting. Look at a sculpture. Look at artwork. Look at text. Lawndale Regional Wilderness Zone proposes you look from something. Look from an observation tower. Look from a position of self-authority. What happens when we, as viewers, make our own decisions about what to look at? What happens when we know better than to trust an obviously misguided authority? We see our own grandeur.

ChecklistLawndale Regional Wilderness Zone, 2015Wood, paint and polyurethane9’ x 15’ x 6’

BiosElizabeth Eicher and Hélène Schlumberger’s collaborative work explores power dynamics, ideas of time and effort and the embodiment of social roles. They are interested in the social interactions between artwork and viewer, viewer and artist, artist and artist, and the potential conflicts those relationships can engender. The duo periodically runs a venture called Stadium, whose goal is to harness the productive and creative impetus that exists within competitive structures. Eicher and Schlumberger both received BFAs from Tufts University, in conjunction with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (where they met and began collaborating) and MFAs in social practice from California College of the Arts. Elizabeth is a native Houstonian. Hélène grew up in France and in Houston; she calls both home.

elizabetheicher.comheleneschlumberger.com

Jonathan Leach’s work focuses on the visual language of commercial architecture, city traffic and safety/cautionary imagery. Leach’s mural activates the surrounding architecture and visually impacts the space. Ghost Grid features a hardline geometric style with an emphasis on bright color and spatial illusion, using the three windows as a base grid structure that warps and changes, highlighted by reflective paint accents that activate the mural at night.

Artist Statement

Ghost GridJonathan LeachNorth Exterior Wall On view through January 2016

BioJonathan Leach is a painter/sculptor currently living and working in Houston, Texas. After receiving a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2001, Jonathan has exhibited his work nationally, exploring the language of architecture, advertising, and traffic in his abstract works. Jonathan has had solo shows at Gallery Sonja Roesch, the Galveston Arts Center and galleryHOMELAND and created public sculpture in the form of a putt putt challenge incorporated in Discovery Green’s Insperity Golf Experience. Leach’s work was featured in the 2013 Texas Biennial. His work is also in the collections of NRG Texas, Hess Co., the Bank of Montreal, Hobby Airport of Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Jonathan is represented by Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, Texas, Camibia Art in Austin, Mirus Gallery in San Francisco, California, and Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Tierra Garzon, Uruguay.

plasticagenda.info

The Lawndale Mural Project is generously sponsored by David R. Graham / Felvis Foundation and

Kinzelman Art Consulting. Jonathan Leach is a recipient of an Individual Artist Grant Award funded

by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.