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 Botanical past exhibitions future exhibitions and events press release | | | |
On Being Human August 29 - October 31, 2020 Artists who address the human condition help us to navigate what it means to be human. These last months have reminded us of the importance of our basic humanity and the inherent value of others. After isolating, we felt a need to be surrounded by people—hence this invitational exhibition about people seen through the artist’s eye. In addition to Valley House artists, we have invited figurative artists whom we admire to participate: Deborah Ballard, Vera Barnett, Lu Ann Barrow, Peter Bonner, Curt Brill, Lloyd Brown, Jerry Bywaters, Sean Cairns, Jeanne Campbell, Lindy Chambers, John Cobb, Brian Cobble, Robert D. Cocke, Carol A. Cook, Laurie Hickman Cox, Lee Baxter Davis, Laurence Edwards, David Everett, Max Ferguson, Barnaby Fitzgerald, Scott Gentling, Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Ira Greenberg, Jimmy Hill, William Eric Horsbrugh-Porter, Otis Huband, Sedrick Huckaby, Anita Huffington, Kathryn Keller, Sirena LaBurn, Emily LaCour, Rudolf Sotelo Lailson, Jungeun Lee, Laurie Lipton, Jun-Cheng Liu, William B. Montgomery, Philip Morsberger, Fred Nagler, Trish Nickell, Gail Norfleet, Michael O’Keefe, Luke Sides, Hadar Sobol, Ellen Soderquist, Everett Spruce, Earl Stroh, Bob Stuth-Wade, James Surls, Chaco Terada, Valton Tyler, Mary Vernon, Donald S. Vogel, Amy Werntz, Jim Woodson, and Miguel Zapata. In memory of Lu Ann Barrow (1934–2020) Her paintings enriched our lives with uplifting parables on being human. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Lindy Chambers: Obscura June 27 - August 22, 2020 Meet the Artist by Appointment: Saturday, June 27, 11:00am - 5:00pm Valley House is pleased to welcome back Lindy Chambers for her third solo exhibition. Born in Tennessee, Lindy, an identical twin, spent her youth drawing and riding horses before moving to Texas in 1972. Her early focus on sculpture shifted when the foundry she built to cast her own bronzes burned to the ground. She turned to painting, inspired by rural trailer life around her Bellville, Texas, home. The trailers, where dogs and goats once ruled, are now peopled with human activity: drive-in movies, family reunions, bike riding, playing games, mowing the yard, watching flying saucers, gardening, etc. Most of my inspiration comes from rural Texas. My focus begins when I leave the highway pavement and drive on dirt and gravel roads in the country. I am oddly drawn to the obscure habitats and curious color combinations that I find off-road. Before every painting, I make a series of black-and-white thumbnail sketches. When I start to paint, the color is intuitive, and the process is spontaneous. I try to listen to the canvas and react to it. If I overthink the painting, it is likely to end up in Danny’s burn pile. —Lindy Chambers Three upcoming solo exhibitions will be held at the Lawrence Arts Center, Kansas; Women & Their Work, Austin; and the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Luke Sides: A Gluttonous Past June 27 - August 22, 2020 Meet the Artist by Appointment: Saturday, June 27, 11:00am - 5:00pm My work has dealt with Pigs, Puppies, Pastries, Peppers, and Portraits, but most importantly PUNS. I feel my work is greatly influenced by the Funk movement with a little Pop component. Pigs have been an interest of mine from a very early age after reading Animal Farm and raising pigs as a child for FFA. I have always seen my sculptures of pigs as self-portraits. The gluttonous nature of pigs resonates deeply with me. In the past, I ate myself into a state of obesity and high cholesterol. The combination of these things and a deep family history of heart disease were not enough to curb my appetite. On the other hand, pigs are extremely smart. Pigs are survivors to the point that feral pigs and wild boars have become a real problem for rural communities across the US. Although King Pig is cast in bronze, many of my pig sculptures are cast in pig iron. All these aspects make the pig my spirit animal. I have embraced my shortcomings and work daily to rectify them, but I also embrace the tenacity of the pig and see that as my strongest trait. —Luke Sides Valley House has represented Luke Sides’ sculpture since 2011. Luke was born in Dallas in 1975 and earned his BFA (1998) and his MFA (2001) from the University of North Texas, Denton. He has been a Professor of Art at Collin College – Plano Campus since 2002. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Henry Finkelstein: Recent Paintings March 21 - April 25, 2020 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 21, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, March 21, 11:00am Valley House Gallery is honored to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Henry Finkelstein. About this body of work, he says: "Color, light and air, space and volume have always been at the core of my paintings. But increasingly I find that the character of the place itself is just as important to me. I’m drawn to old places, where people have lived a long time, where the land is considered, but not overly manicured, with ancient trees that frame some sort of gardening or farming. When I was in art school in the 1970s, I would not have admitted these things. Most of the discussion was limited to the abstract or formal elements of painting. So much has changed since then that such taboos have become irrelevant. This is liberating for me. My love for the subject doesn’t lessen my passion for the formal. It is always a synthesis of the two." A residency at Rochefort-en-Terre in Brittany, France, in 1992, and again in 2000, introduced Henry Finkelstein to this region where he returns each summer to paint from direct observation. Finkelstein earned his MFA in painting from Yale University School of Art in 1983, followed by a Fulbright Grant to study in Italy. In 1994, he was elected a National Academician. Finkelstein has taught painting and drawing in New York City since 1996. This is Henry Finkelstein's ninth solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery since 2002. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Lilian Garcia-Roig: Cumulative Nature - Water COLORS February 1 - March 14, 2020 Opening Reception: Saturday, February 1, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, February 1, 11:00am Valley House Gallery is honored to present our 10th solo exhibition of paintings by Lilian Garcia-Roig. About this body of work, she states: "This series of on-site paintings was made during the summer of 2019 on the banks of the Skykomish River in the foothills of the Cascades mountains in Washington State. As in my other plein-air works painted in forests, these paintings document a real-time process: the accumulation of fleeting moments experienced on site. Working with oil on canvas, the paintings are produced in a wet-on-wet, cumulative painting manner that was influenced by the watercolor and gouache works I made there in 2016. This summer was only the second time I have been able to spend an extended period working in oil on this singular, complex subject—the COLORS in water." Lilian Garcia-Roig was born in Havana, Cuba, reared in Houston, and lives in Tallahassee, where she is a Professor at Florida State University. She earned degrees at Southern Methodist University (BFA) and the University of Pennsylvania (MFA), and has been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA Fellowship Award in Painting, a Skowhegan Residency, two Fellowships at The MacDowell Colony, a Kimbrough Award from the Dallas Museum of Art, and a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Chaco Terada: Listening in the Silence December 14, 2019 - January 25, 2020 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 14, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Coffee and Conversation with Chaco Terada: Saturday, January 4, 11:00am - 12:00pm The gallery will be closed December 24, 25, 26, and January 1 Valley House Gallery is honored to present our first exhibition of work by Chaco Terada, a native of Japan who has called Dallas home since 1992. Chaco was the nickname given by her grandmother and she uses it along with her given name, Chikako. Born in Toyama, Japan, in 1963, to Haruko and Yhohei Terada, Chaco began the practice of calligraphy with her father, Yhohei Terada, a master calligrapher who taught its history at Toyama University. Even as a child, Chaco departed from a strict observance of copying traditional form for a more poetic interpretation. As she says, "I looked at the calligraphy from all sides and even from the back with light showing through it. It was beautiful to me. My father corrected my work with orange sumi ink. I liked the visual element, missing altogether the point of his corrections." Living as an independent spirit began early in Chaco’s life. In her twenties, she traveled to ten countries as a part of the cultural exchange programs, Up with People and The Ship for World Youth. She recalls, "I wanted to learn about other cultures and not just stay with the Japanese kids." When language skills isolated her, she used calligraphy as a tool to communicate. It was during her involvement with these programs that she began to realize the importance of calligraphy in her life. Moving to the United States liberated Chaco, giving her the freedom to focus on her inner life as a source for artistic expression. Her work became a process of self-analysis, a process that allowed her to draw from her experiences, memories, and feelings. All these elements have forged stories in her imagination, stories in which reality and illusion meet. These stories grow quietly into images as she listens to conversations within her mind. An image can have a long journey in her thoughts, sometimes a year, or longer. "It took some years to develop the ways to express the beauty in my life as artwork," says Chaco. When she decided to combine photography with her calligraphy, her partner, the photographer David Gibson, also an artist represented by Valley House, advised her how to achieve the effects she envisioned. Chaco photographs wherever she goes; it could be nothing in particular, a wall detail, or water on the street. She walks slowly; it is her way to see more. Something from the past connects her to what she sees in the photograph, and her dialogue begins with a string of words. For "Night Player 2" she writes: "Listening to the night, I hear the tune of the moon, stars, silhouette of trees and skyline. Someone plays the night for me. Beats of my heart are joining you." The forty-seven works in "Listening in the Silence" are made using the process she developed that incorporates multiple layers of silk organza, sumi ink, mineral pigments, and archival pigment printing. Each is unique. Photographic images are printed on the silk and calligraphic marks float in the layered atmosphere as if they were dancing. They are intimate in scale, like windows to her private reflections, meditative moments that both convey and invite serenity. Each one is an open invitation to go beyond the surface. A catalogue has been published in conjunction with this exhibition. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Gail Norfleet: Made in Layers November 2 - December 7, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, November 2, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, November 16, 11:00am Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our fifth solo exhibition of work by Dallas artist Gail Norfleet. Plexiglass continues to be a foundational element in her work. The clear material is the surface upon which she applies paint and collage, and its inherent transparency allows light to illuminate multiple layers. Working on the front and back, and on two panels, creates a real space. In this exhibition, Norfleet places familiar still life subjects (flowers, vases, birds) in front of brightly rendered landscapes and surreal interiors. The subjects originating from life are playfully manipulated into impossible yet compelling compositions. "Bending toward the light, based on reality, a real and illusionistic space is painted on two transparent layers. Could the flower garden be a mirage?" —Gail Norfleet Gail Norfleet earned her BFA at The University of Texas at Austin, and her MFA at Southern Methodist University. She has had solo exhibitions at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary and the former Delahunty and DW Galleries. Norfleet was recently appointed to the Advisory Council of the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. The Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas, will open a solo exhibition of her work in March 2020. View the exhibition on Artsy Learn more about Gail Norfleet: Watch a discussion with Gail Norfleet, Jim Woodson, and Sedrick Huckaby on The Art of Painting: A Conversation with President Bush's Art Instructors at The George W. Bush Presidential Center Watch an interview of Gail Norfleet in her studio by Eric Miller and Lin Wang on Art After X * * * Mary Vernon: New Work September 21 - October 26, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, September 21, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, October 5, 11:00am Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our seventh solo exhibition of paintings by Mary Vernon. Vernon recently retired as Professor of Art at Southern Methodist University where she began her 50-year teaching career in 1967, now giving all of her time to her second career in the studio. Born in Southern New Mexico, Vernon was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. A comprehensive catalogue of Mary Vernon’s paintings from the last five years will be published in conjunction with this exhibition. A booklet, "Stories," will be available as well. "The really good artists around now, of whom Vernon is one, take their virtuosity as a gift, and give it away as a gift to our powers of sight and our capacity for joy. They don’t take it entirely seriously—it’s like dancing with a god, or wrestling with an angel—but they respect it too. They’re on such good terms with it that they’ll josh it a bit so it doesn’t put on airs. Mary’s outrageous sense of humor is everywhere in her work, but it’s not lightweight—it’s as serious as a Shakespeare comedy." —Frederick Turner View the exhibition on Artsy Visit the Bath House Cultural Center at White Rock Lake in Dallas to see more of Mary Vernon’s paintings in "Conversation: Landscape Paintings as Movement at Rest," on view through September 28, 2019. Learn more about Mary Vernon: Listen to Mary Vernon interviewed by Craig Gould on the podcast Outside of New York that features in-depth discussions with members of the art world who live and work outside of New York Read Frederick Turner's review on Glasstire of the exhibition "Conversation: Landscape Paintings as Movement at Rest" at the Bath House Cultural Center Watch an interview by Jeff Levine on Modern Dallas about Mary Vernon's 2017 exhibition Read Michael Frank Blair's review on Glasstire of Mary Vernon's 2017 exhibition Watch the Art After X video of Mary Vernon’s Artist Talk about her 2015 exhibition Join the effort to endow the Mary Vernon Painting Prize at SMU Meadows School of the Arts Listen to an interview with Mary Vernon about her 50-year teaching career on the blog for the SMU Meadows School of the Arts 50th Anniversary Read about Mary Vernon's 50 years of art and teaching at SMU Watch an interview with Mary Vernon about her 2017 exhibition "Painting is Drawing" at The Grace Museum in Abilene Watch a time-lapse video of the installation of The Grace Museum exhibition Read an article about Mary Vernon by Gail Sachson in Patron Read an article about Mary Vernon by Julie England in Prime Women * * * Bird Show August 10 - September 7, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, August 10, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Valley House Gallery is pleased to present BIRD SHOW, a summer celebration of our skyward friends, featuring artists inspired by the avian world. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, and prints by artists including Vera Barnett, David Bates, Evelyn Beard, Kathy Boortz, Sean Cairns, Lindy Chambers, Brian Cobble, Robert D. Cocke, Alex Corno, Margie Crisp, Otis Dozier, David A. Dreyer, David Everett, Janine Faure-Terrieu, Kelly Fearing, Barnaby Fitzgerald, Constance Forsyth, Scott Gentling, David H. Gibson, Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Cindi Holt, Otis Huband, Anne Chase Martin, Merritt Mauzey, Mark Messersmith, Brian Molanphy, Pauline Muth, Fred Nagler, Gail Norfleet, Leona Pierce, Bill Reily, Everett Spruce, Bob Stuth-Wade, Janet Turner, Valton Tyler, Mary Vernon, Anne C. Weary, and Clara McDonald Williamson are on view. Some birds are easily discernible in representational works, while other artists abstractly interpret the bird form and spirit. The exhibition also includes paintings by Valley House founder Donald S. Vogel, whose name means bird in German. Valley House Gallery will host two Bird lectures in conjunction with the exhibition: Thursday, August 15, 6:30pm: "Celebrating Birds: Nature's Art Takes Flight" by Tania Homayoun, Ph.D., Texas Nature Trackers Biologist, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. This talk will explore the many ways that birds are deeply intertwined with human art and culture and provide a perspective on their importance in our natural systems as well. Through Texas Nature Trackers, Tania Homayoun engages naturalists of all interests and ability levels in collecting citizen science and crowd-sourced data on Texas’ unique flora and fauna with a particular focus on species of greatest conservation need. Previously, Tania worked for Audubon Texas with the Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center and later the Conservation Science Team as its Urban Conservation Program Manager, where she worked to develop and deliver conservation plans, educational programs/trainings, and activities supporting biodiversity and sustainable communities. Tania holds Bachelor's degrees in Ecology/Evolution/Conservation Biology and Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in Conservation Biology from the University of Minnesota, where she studied the impacts of urbanization on landbird communities. She is an avid birder and always has room for one more native plant in her patio garden. Wednesday, September 4, 6:30pm: "Whooping Cranes: Saving a Texas Icon" by Ben Jones, Senior Director of Conservation, Dallas Zoo, and Sprina Liu, Bird Curator, Dallas Zoo. Whooping cranes are North America’s tallest bird and one of our most endangered. By the mid-1900's, the whooping crane population plunged to an unprecedented low of only 15 birds, due to habitat loss and over-hunting. Thanks to conservation efforts, over 500 birds persist in the wild today. The Texas Gulf Coast is the winter home to whooping cranes who return to the same nesting areas and mate for life. Come join us and learn about the new Whooping Crane Center of Texas, a 5-acre breed-and-release conservation facility designed with help from crane experts and staffed by the Dallas Zoo’s experienced bird department. After the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge in Maryland lost funding and was no longer able to care for their whooping cranes, the Dallas Zoo immediately offered support. As one of only six organizations worldwide selected to participate in the whooping crane breeding program, the Dallas Zoo’s innovative solution was to create the Whooping Crane Center of Texas. We invite you to come and learn about this iconic part of our state’s natural heritage. The whooping cranes future is uncertain without continued conservation intervention. BIRD SHOW will be on view Monday through Saturday, 10:00am to 5:00pm, from August 10 through September 7. The gallery will be closed on Monday, September 2, in observance of Labor Day. BIRD SHOW image includes works and details of works by (clockwise from upper left): Lindy Chambers, David A. Dreyer, Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Kathy Boortz, Valton Tyler, David Everett, Mark Messersmith, Mary Vernon, Vera Barnett, Anne Chase Martin, and David H. Gibson in the center. View the exhibition on Artsy View the exhibition on Facebook * * * Otis Huband: Recent Paintings and Collages June 15 - July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 15, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our third exhibition of paintings and collages by Otis Huband. He begins his work with no preconceived ideas, but rather to discover what will reveal itself. Huband states, "I work from the inside out rather than from the outside in. I feed on my subconscious reservoir instead of duplicating reality, and create a separate, new, and personal reality. An artist is not bound by the laws of gravity, but free to create a pictorial logic." Born in 1933, and reared in Virginia, Otis Huband began his formal art education after 4 years in the US Navy. He earned his BFA and MFA at Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William & Mary, now Virginia Commonwealth University. Two years after receiving his MFA, Otis and his wife Anne took a freighter to Italy where he studied painting and sculpture at Accademia di Belle Arti in Perugia. They made Houston their home when they returned to the US in 1965. A catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition will be available. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * Jason Mehl: Sculpture June 15 - July 20, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 15, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, June 22, 11:00am Maggie Adler, Curator, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, writes, "To me, Jason's works enact a process of perpetual transformation. Time slows in an evocation of the geologic and environmental processes with which his work is in harmony. Whether the forms resemble solidifying magma, the calcified bones of some mythic beast, or craggy stalagmites shaped by a persistent drip, they strike me as constant reminders of the meditative potential of manmade forms." Jason Mehl describes his sculpture as a study in the morphology of recollection, based on recurring patterns of nature and how we remember. The Texas born sculptor has divided his interests between art and science since high school at The Winston School where he worked with clay for hours daily. He continued these dual interests at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he received a BS in Environmental Science in 2002 with a Minor in Art. From 2002 to 2008, Mehl's diverse work and travel experiences provided visual and philosophical references influential in his sculpture: an internship for the Nature Conservancy at Clymer Meadow Preserve, a Blackland Prairie in North Texas; a trail crew foreman for riparian restoration in New Mexico; a research project in the wilderness near Joshua Tree, California; and extensive travel in wilderness areas from Costa Rica to British Columbia, always pursuing his interest in our environmental impact, which has since come to be known as the Anthropocene. Mehl lived in South Korea from 2008 to 2013. The move allowed him funding and free time while he taught at Seokyeong University and two others. During breaks he traveled extensively in Southeast Asia. He was the co-founder of "Something Something Project Space" in Seoul and helped develop rock climbing areas in Korea while presenting his sculpture in multiple exhibitions. His sculptural style had been evolving in unique ceramics since the late 1990's, but a major shift happened in Korea when he cast his first bronze in January 2011. We first became aware of Mehl's sculpture when he participated in the Fairmont Residency Program in Dallas in 2016-17. Valley House is pleased to present our first exhibition of Jason Mehl's bronze sculpture. * * * Jim Woodson: Time Enfolded May 4 - June 8, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 4, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, May 11, 11:00am The High Desert in Abiquiu has inspired Texas artist Jim Woodson since exploring the region via motorcycle in the late 1980’s. His paintings are a unity of the intuitive process of painting, personal ideology, and the desert landscape. Woodson embraces the concepts of time, space, and knowledge in his work and uses these three elements to title his paintings. Jim Woodson's personal ideology is expressed in the following short statements on painting (in no particular order): "Remember less, Explore More. Learn then forget, then look and discover. Move Thought into Thinking. A verb is more active than a noun. Try not to Know. A bit of knowledge spoils what can be discovered. Filter knowing at the end of the brush. Ideas Die if not Transformed." In 2013, Jim Woodson was honored by the Texas State Legislature and the Texas Commission on the Arts as the Texas State Artist of the Year in 2D. This designation is the state’s highest recognition for excellence in the arts. Woodson earned a BFA from Texas Christian University in 1965, and an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 1967. In 2014, Woodson was distinguished as Professor Emeritus at TCU, where he had been on the faculty since 1974. This is Jim Woodson’s fourth exhibition at Valley House Gallery. View the exhibition on Artsy * * * David A. Dreyer: Days Between March 23 - April 27, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 23, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Spring - water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge -- the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness. —Han-shan, Cold Mountain Chinese poet, translation by Gary Snyder This early Chinese poem echoes the way David A. Dreyer finds inspiration in stillness—stillness in nature and in the isolation of his studio. Observations of the vast landscapes and skies in Texas and New Mexico inform his personal language of pictorial elements built over time in layers of color and line. The process of painting is an uncertain path, fueled by curiosity and listening. Small graphite drawings are the impetus for Dreyer’s oil paintings, which develop through intuitive responses to the work as it progresses. Phrases written on the edge of the canvas at critical stages of the paintings’ development become titles in poetic verse that reveal transitions in Dreyer’s path within the abstract. Dallas artist David A. Dreyer earned his BFA in 1990 and his MFA in 1992, both from Southern Methodist University. We are honored to present his seventh exhibition at Valley House Gallery. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Michael O’Keefe: Recognitions February 9 - March 16, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, March 9, 11:00 am “Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it’s right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of...recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it...” ―William Gaddis, "The Recognitions" “A great deal of my recent work was made during a time when I was reading the great American novel by William Gaddis, "The Recognitions," the most demanding book I’ve ever read. Along the way, I extracted sentence fragments that interested me and I pieced them together to make the titles for the last three years of my work. So, my recent work is linked to Gaddis’ novel through the titles, but also in the theme of “recognition,” which speaks to the nature of my work. I feel my way through various processes until I recognize a possibility―a possibility that is promising in terms of visual dynamics but also in terms of giving a body to some part of my experience. It is my hope that the viewer is compelled to recognize some part of themselves reflected in the work.” —Michael O’Keefe Michael O’Keefe earned his MFA from SMU and currently teaches at The O’Keefe Studio Center in Richardson, Texas. This is his fifth solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery. Michael O’Keefe’s exhibition "Enduring In The Posture Of Love" is on view at The Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas through February 17. A catalogue for The Museum of Biblical Art exhibition, including an essay by Scott Peck, is available. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Miguel Zapata: Madrid / Dallas December 15, 2018 – January 26, 2019 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 15, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Madrid / Dallas is an apt title for our exhibition honoring Spanish artist Miguel Zapata (1940-2014). Miguel began dividing his time between the two cities in 1986, when he was the first contemporary Spanish artist invited for a solo exhibition at the Meadows Museum. SMU’s Luís Martín describes the self-educated scholar-artist as having “the greatest Renaissance mind that I have encountered in my life.” In sculptural reliefs, collages, and drawings, Miguel Zapata’s visual vocabulary contrasts architectural and figurative elements appropriated from the Classical past with bold, gestural elements of abstraction and text. Miguel’s intention was to achieve a balance between the frenzied vitalism of Dionysian forces and the harmony and beauty of Apollonian forces. In describing his work, Miguel Zapata said, “The images in my work are not the product of observing Nature; they proceed from the cultural baggage which has been stored in my memory, where vivid memories are combined with images pulled out of books, prints and even from simple oral descriptions; I gather them and order them within a coherent framework; I manipulate them, trying to reduce what was a multiplicity of things, into a unity in which the memory of the original image remains in a more or less deformed fashion. You might say that I work on the work of man. It is a melancholy, sometimes ironic, vision upon the readymade. Reality is reduced to pure archaeological data which almost constitutes a negation of the present. And it is imagination that has acted as an abstractive process, transforming it.” Since 1959, Miguel Zapata has had over 70 solo exhibitions in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Japan, and the United States. In 2015, an exchange program bearing his name was established between Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, in Miguel’s birthplace of Cuenca, and Texas State University. A catalogue will accompany this exhibition. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Malou Flato: Recent Paintings November 10 – December 8, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, November 10, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: prior to the reception, at 5:30pm Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition of paintings by Texas native Malou Flato. Over the past forty years, Malou Flato’s paintings have focused on the Texas landscape—its native flowers, blooming cactus, diverse citizenry, and especially its precious water and abundant sky. Flato has a studio in Austin and another on her great-grandfather’s ranch on the southwestern shoulder of the Hill Country, in Edwards County. “Texas is my inspiration,” she says. “I have made my life here, and I would like to think that my art reflects the place I know best.” Malou Flato’s works can be seen in many public places in Texas and beyond. They enliven a border crossing in Brownsville, park benches in Houston, the River Walk in San Antonio, a residence for single mothers in Austin, and a DART station in Dallas. She has been the featured artist of the Texas Book Festival. Central Market stores in five Texas cities have devoted prime space to her paintings, including their newest Dallas location at Midway and Northwest Highway. Beyond Texas, her murals grace subway walls in Boston and a public school in Washington State. The Art Center of Corpus Christi honored its native daughter with a solo exhibition in 2015. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * John Cobb: Italian Sketches November 10 – December 8, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, November 10, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our third exhibition of paintings by John Cobb. This exhibition is comprised of a series of small works painted on site during a recent residency in Italy. "We visit the land of dreams, through those winding narrow lanes, the poplars all in a row, the majestic cypresses, all in flash. We try to capture these scenes in the undulating landscape, so manicured, and we look for the vestiges of what might have been wild once. We look in the past, maybe of Corot wandering about amongst the oaks near Volterra, and we measure what we see, whether these idyllic landscapes can be represented in the faces of people we meet there. The modern world has its occlusions, it seems to create an ever-present strain upon our hopes, a snide and hurried disaffection. Can I reconcile these observations of the people's faces in the large cities with such a cultivated and deeply cultured realm? Is there a disconnect? Had I only gone to escape? Where-ever I went was I liable only to discover that lurking spirit of preoccupation. These doubts I cast aside in the doing of these works, silently and alone, I have intended to simply convey a newly conceived scene forever able to assuage man's terrors, a reinvention into the dream, an Italy of a deep history." JCobb View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Bob Stuth-Wade: Painting in Earnest October 6 - November 3, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, October 6, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, October 27, 11:00am For the last four years, Bob Stuth-Wade has used his vintage mobile studio “Earnest” to travel beyond his favorite Texas sites, painting along the coast of California, in New Mexico, Arizona, and across the country in North Carolina. In Texas he has continued his affection for Big Bend National Park and the Colorado River. About the exhibition title "Painting in Earnest," Bob Stuth-Wade says, “Incidental adventures color the intimacy of spouses living in a vehicle together. Earnest is a temporary home in the places I most love to paint. Sulphur Springs Fish Camp on the Colorado River feels more like home than our house in Dublin. Big Bend and Canyon de Chelly are the same. Standing or sitting at my easel in these places, there is a sense of sweet transparency. I become like the magnifying glass I held as a child that focuses the diffused light of the sun to a burning point. As an artist, I am a lens that focuses the diffused light of awareness and the beauty of this experience into a painting. That is painting in Earnest.” In addition to landscape paintings, watercolors, and drawings, a series of shell compositions will be shown in homage to Morandi’s bottles. This series stems from Bob’s practice of beginning each day by drawing shells to sharpen his vision. Bob Stuth-Wade’s self-directed art education began under his mentor, Dallas artist Perry Nichols, when he was still a student at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. "Painting in Earnest" is Bob Stuth-Wade's 10th solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery. A comprehensive catalogue, with an essay by Rebecca E. Lawton, will be available. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Lloyd Brown: Cross Country on Highway 50 August 18 - September 29, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, August 18, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP Artist Talk: Saturday, September 22, 11:00am In Lloyd Brown’s examination of America, we see small town intersections, train crossings, and rural stretches of road, in paintings made after he traveled across the United States on Highway 50. With an inventive approach to shaping and framing his paintings—through curved surfaces, multiple panels, and overlapping images—Lloyd Brown helps us to see in new ways. About the exhibition title "Cross Country on Highway 50," Lloyd Brown says: "In 2005, I began photographing US Highway 50. My focus was a section of highway known as the Loneliest Road in America that traverses Nevada. Raised in Utah and Nevada, I grew up crossing the Great Basin. My divorced parents lived at opposite ends of the 500-mile divide of mountains and valleys. Highway 50 was the connection between Fillmore, Utah, and Reno, Nevada. In 2012, I extended the highway theme to include Colorado. In Fall 2014, I covered the rest of the highway on a road trip that took me all the way to Maryland. This is not a project to be completed in a single season. It will likely involve the rest of my life, but I really like the idea of covering the breadth of the nation from the vantage point of a single highway." Lloyd Brown lived in Texas for 21 years and now resides in Utah. This is his ninth solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery, and a comprehensive catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Miles Cleveland Goodwin: Horseshoe Bend July 14 – August 11, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, July 14, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, RSVP I have walked along the Toccoa River underneath the old iron bridge for four seasons. I have seen as it has seen: the bend in the river, the beaver scampering away from the hellish howls of my relentless hound, who is fixed like a worm to wet earth. Inspirations are echoed from mountain top to mountain top, and slowly fall through the air down into my grasp. —MCG In Miles Cleveland Goodwin’s soulful compositions, he narrates the story of his life. Goodwin responds to his environment, the lives of common folk living around him, and the mysteries of life. Through his work, we experience the inherent ambiguities and provocations felt when confronting life as it is. Goodwin’s paintings metaphorically speak to the fundamental nature of life, in all of its heartbreak, wonderment, and everyday beauty. Miles Cleveland Goodwin was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and raised in the South. He earned his BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. He lives and works in Georgia. This is his third exhibition at Valley House Gallery. View the exhibition on Artsy. Read Lin Wang's review of Miles Cleveland Goodwin's 2017 exhibition The Maze in Urban Art and Antiques. * * * Vera Barnett: Home June 9 - July 7, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 9, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, June 23, 11:00am Vera Barnett developed three distinct series of paintings to embody the meaning of an artistic and domestic life at Home - Portraits, Still Lifes, and Pets. Each series is anchored by a larger thematic painting and surrounded by miniature paintings - all created in a two-step process. First, Barnett fabricates her subject as a stage set made of cardboard, sewn fabric, and found objects. Then, she makes a painting from her construction in a trompe l’oeil manner. Her series of Portraits represent family life - herself, her son, and grandchildren. Childlike sketches on cardboard easels reference the budding of an artist's self-knowledge. At the age of 3, Barnett decided to be an artist, and still has vivid recall of the drawings she saw and made before entering kindergarten. Barnett's Still Life paintings embody the things we bring into our home. However, with an irreverent eye, Barnett selects everyday objects which remind her of other things: a pepper under a light bulb becomes a reclining sunbather and a radish becomes a plumed bird. In the playful series of Pets entitled "When the Cat’s Away" we see that our homes are never truly asleep and often beyond our control. Barnett says, "You may own your home, but other life forms share your house. While my husband's cat Taco is asleep, I imagine lively mice beginning to play in a halo of small paintings." Vera Barnett earned a 4-year certificate at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1981. In the mid-1980's, Vera Barnett and her husband, artist Jack Barnett, moved to Grandview, Texas. This is her third solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Trish Nickell: Points of View June 9 - July 7, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 9, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, June 16, 11:00am For artist Trish Nickell, life took a dramatic turn when she and her husband, David Szafranski, moved to Paris in 1996. Their planned year in France extended to a stay of 12 years. When they returned in 2008, they settled in Portland, Oregon, influencing Nickell to include views of the Northwest coast along with the French landscapes already inspiring her. Trish Nickell was born in Dallas, and grew up in the Park Cities, graduating from Highland Park High School in 1965. In 1968, Nickell earned a BA from University of North Texas, and in 1986 a MA from University of Dallas, followed by a MFA in 1988, also from UD. Independent study with artist John Evans was crucial to her development. About her work, Trish Nickell says: "Occasionally Nature gifts our eyes with a fleeting moment of beauty. As Pierre Bonnard said, 'Art begins in the sensation of being overwhelmed by the beauty of Nature.' That is where my new paintings begin. The views I choose to depict are derived from moments when Nature presents itself completely unsolicited with a certain light, a certain combination of colors exploding before me. I see all parts of the field of vision equally and simultaneously. The whole view is unique. It's not about one exceptional area within the whole. These views have a sense of solitude, but that solitude liberates the imagination and invites meditation. They may seem quotidian, but with closer awareness, abundant richness reveals itself. My friend and mentor John Evans says, 'All my paintings are of worlds where I want to be.' My paintings are also places in which I want to be, and I hope each viewer wants to enter the space depicted. Nature is perfection that cannot be duplicated. However, I take Nature's beauty and expansiveness into myself, allowing it to change and transform my work." * * * Allison Gildersleeve: High Frequency April 28 - June 2, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, April 28, 11:00am Behind my canvases, collages, and drawings lies a singular proposition: places are not inert; they are repositories for all that passes through them. My work is an inquiry into the experiences and sensations manifestly lodged within our surroundings—not as formal histories but as personal, ever-changing narratives. I deliberately return again and again to familiar settings—wooded areas, home interiors, open highways, back country roads—to show that repeated visits to the same place invariably result in wildly divergent depictions. The practice of drawing is an essential part of my work. One wall of my studio is dedicated to my drawings; it becomes a storyboard for the project at hand. I’m interested in the point where imagery breaks down into abstraction, but not completely—I always want to catch it before the sensation of place dissolves into pure mark making. Brooklyn-based painter Allison Gildersleeve spent her youth in rural Connecticut, where she was born. She earned a BA from the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1992, and an MFA in 2006 from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Valley House has represented Gildersleeve since 2014. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Watch an interview with Allison Gildersleeve and Cheryl Vogel on YouTube. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Anne C. Weary: True to Nature April 28 - June 2, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, May 5, 11:00am Where I draw is the home and world of the animals--deer, foxes, coyotes, rabbits, armadillos, and wild pigs—and of course birds. They’re all around somewhere when I’m drawing quietly and my land is a safe habitat for them. I cannot resist the beauty and atmosphere of the woods-unspoiled and untouched by humankind. Anne Weary’s studio is the outdoors and her drawings express a spiritual reverence for nature. On her land in Italy, Texas, she sets up a table in the woods, along the creek, or in a pasture, and makes finished drawings on site with graphite, charcoal, or conte. A drawing can take up to two months, one at a time, and Anne hopes the seasons don’t change her subject. Anne Weary was born in Dallas, and Texas land has inspired her art for most of her life. She began studying with Dallas artist Olin Travis at age 12. In 1979, she earned a 4-year certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she studied with Lou Sloan. Her focus was on drawing and she was awarded two prizes for excellence in drawing. Valley House’s founder Donald Vogel mentored Anne Weary and we have represented her since 1987. Her drawings are in the collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, Dallas Museum of Art, El Paso Museum of Art, The Grace Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art, and Tyler Museum of Art. Read more about Anne Weary in Waxahachie NOW magazine. * * * Alex Corno: Iron and Graphite March 17 – April 21, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 17, 6:00pm – 8:00pm It is a great pleasure to welcome Italian sculptor Alex Corno for his second exhibition in the United States. Sculpture, wall reliefs, two-dimensional mixed media works, and drawings are arriving from his studio near Milan. In his abstract constructions, Corno does not make art to repeat what is visible, to paraphrase Klee’s affirmation. He uses the formal language of materials and space: opposing thin arcs, rods, and loops with weighty rectilinear forms to achieve a dynamic balance. Corno welds his iron and stainless steel sculptures in a diverse range of scales, from small interior works to monumental garden sculpture. Craftsmanship enhances every aspect of his work: from the welds, to the edges, and the bases that support them. Corno was born in Monza in 1960. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti de Brera in Milan in 1982. A catalogue will accompany this exhibition. Watch an interview with Alex Corno and Cheryl Vogel by Jeff Levine on moderndallastv * * * David Collins: Day Shift March 17 – April 21, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 17, 6:00pm – 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, March 17, 5:30pm Valley House has represented David Collins since 2010, and we are pleased to welcome him back to Texas for his third exhibition here. His 2016 move from the bustle of New York City to Long Island influenced a change in his palette that reflects the peaceful, natural atmosphere of his new surroundings. His personal iconography of shapes and memory continues to reference architectural elements, as well as aviation motifs inspired by his family’s history in inventing Cold War era technology. In these new paintings, the kaleidoscope of shifting geometric planes are painted directly onto sealed but unprimed linen. Collins is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a recipient of fellowships at Yaddo Artist Colony in 2003 and in 2005 and at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 2008. Jesuit Dallas Museum will present an exhibition of David Collins' paintings and color monotypes, opening with a reception on Friday, March 23, 6:00pm-8:00pm. David Collins graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas in 1984. Jesuit Dallas Museum is located at 12345 Inwood Road, Dallas, TX 75244. The exhibition will be on view through May 28, 2018. Contact Jesuit Dallas Museum Director Elizabeth Hunt Blanc, 972-387-8700 x383, to schedule a tour. Watch an interview with David Collins in his New York studio on artthisweek.com Watch a gallery talk by David Collins about his 2011 exhibition Clearstory on the Valley House Gallery YouTube channel View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Cindi Holt: Inside Looking Out February 3 – March 10, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, February 3, 6:00pm – 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, February 17, 11:00am Cindi Holt is a self-taught artist who was first inspired to paint in 1985 when she was 34 years of age. Her richly-detailed paintings are imaginative, carefree responses to a place. Even the formal rooms she painted of the Texas Governor’s Mansion in the 1990’s have an energetic warp described by Clint Willour, Patterns are chalk-a-block: bumping into one another; climbing over each other; jostling for space. Flowers on tables mate with those in the carpet and in paintings on the wall. Furniture takes on human form: chairs bow and tables stand on tiptoe... Central Market commissioned Holt to paint a three-panel panorama of the highlights of Fort Worth for their Fort Worth store, and a four-part mural for their café at the Preston Royal location in Dallas. The original paintings are on view at The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, respectively. Cindi Holt is a California native who lives in Fort Worth and has been represented by Valley House Gallery since 2003. * * * John Cobb: Reclamation December 9, 2017 – January 20, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 9, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, January 13, 11:00am When John Cobb enrolled in RISD in 1974, his realist tendencies were ostracized. Using funds intended for his education, Cobb moved to Europe, bought a Vespa, and learned by independent study in museums and by making watercolors in Morocco, Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy. When funds ran low he returned to Austin to finish his art degree at St. Edward’s University. Valley House Gallery has exhibited his work since 2010. These small works are the result of a tribulation. Eyes that could see only double, a heart that gave out from chemo, facial surgery to remove half the face; I lived only in hope against hope to be able to work again. With that old dear longing, restored face, renewed heart, and improving health, I started again to recline upon the shores of Texas waterways and vistas wishing to express as simply as possible my love and delight at being able to see and paint again. Also included in this exhibition will be the egg tempera panel, Christmas, one of the recent paintings completed for The Chapel installation, now 36 years in the making. “God bless us one and all.”—Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens —John Cobb * * * Henry Finkelstein: Paintings December 9, 2017 – January 20, 2018 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 9, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, December 9, 11:00am Henry Finkelstein returns for his eighth solo exhibition at Valley House Gallery since 2002. A residency at Rochefort-en-Terre in Brittany, France, in 1992, and again in 2000, introduced him to this region where he returns each summer to paint. Finkelstein earned his MFA in painting from Yale University School of Art in 1983, followed by a Fulbright Grant to study in Italy. In 1994, he was elected a National Academician. Finkelstein has taught painting and drawing in New York City since 1996. Unlike strictly abstract painters, I paint mostly from direct observation. Nature offers me a necessary resistance that I find challenging. To this day, discovering new color relationships as I paint from nature remains a central focus of my work. I am not interested in documenting that fact of where I am, but in trying to convey what that place says to me. I go there, I enjoy the light, I enjoy the history. I’m more interested in my direct feelings from what I see, which come mostly from color. When I draw for a while, looking for a motif, color starts to give me a real buzz and I get excited. For me it’s the feeling I can imbue into the work and hopefully communicate to someone else. It is never fixed, but rather it lives on in its own right. This is the simplicity that I seek. —Henry Finkelstein * * * Donald S. Vogel (1917-2004): A Celebration November 4 - December 2, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, November 4, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Donald S. Vogel, along with his wife Peggy, founded Valley House Gallery in 1954. As a studio painter, Vogel allied himself with the temperaments of Vuillard, Renoir, and Bonnard. In his paintings, he created imagined worlds of color and light; contemplative works that exist as “moments of pleasure.” Early in his life he decided not to paint the hardships of his youth. Vogel studied at the Art Institute of Chicago where the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Nabi paintings were uplifting antidotes to his impoverished circumstances. The WPA Easel Project in Chicago gave him the prosperity of materials, models, and rent that let him work continuously. In 1942, Vogel moved to Dallas and received news that he won a coveted medal and cash award from the American Academy in Rome; however, the war prevented him from traveling to Italy. In 1951, he began dividing his time between the studio and the gallery when he became the director of the Betty McLean Gallery, and then Valley House. Through all the years, Donald Vogel always thought of himself as an artist first. This exhibition celebrates the 100th Anniversary of his birth year. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * Mary Vernon: Paintings September 23 - October 28, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, September 23, 6:00pm-8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, October 14, 11:00am About her recent work, Mary Vernon states, "I hope to prove this to you: drawing and painting are holding each other tightly, constantly interfering with each other. It's not that drawing is first and painting is last. It is not exactly that drawing is the truth and painting is the lie that we prefer. It is not at all that drawing is the outline and painting is the coloring-in. The two acts, drawing and painting, get in each other's way at every moment." This exhibition celebrates Mary Vernon's 50 years on the faculty at SMU. In recognition, the Mary Vernon Painting Prize has been announced by the Meadows School of the Arts. Join the effort to endow the prize, which will annually recognize an outstanding undergraduate art student as selected by the faculty of the Division of Art. Funds may be used by the recipient to open a studio or otherwise launch his or her art career. A legendary professor, Mary Vernon taught art history, painting, drawing, and color theory to thousands of students, including Valley House curator Cheryl Vogel. University students voted Vernon their favorite professor at SMU for ten consecutive years. Read a synopsis of Mary Vernon's career and influence written by Julie England and Lin Medlin, and a feature by Gail Sachson in Patron magazine. Read more about Mary Vernon's 50 years of art and teaching at SMU. A second Mary Vernon exhibition "Painting is Drawing" is on view at The Grace Museum in Abilene, through January 6, 2018. The Artist Reception will be Saturday, October 7, 5:00pm-7:00pm, at The Grace Museum. Watch a time-lapse video of The Grace Museum installation, and an interview with Mary Vernon about the exhibition. A Few Words about the Drawing/Paintings of Mary Vernon by Frederick Turner "It’s not that Mary Vernon doesn’t have an axe to grind; she does, but it’s not the ordinary kind, where the Artist’s Socially Responsible Message overwhelms the poor wretched image. It’s that the axe she grinds is one of sheer astonishment at the beauty of the world and, even more, of our perception of it if we open our eyes. Her pawings or draintings are like the very pieces of the world they represent: not the way a photograph is like them, but the way our real amazing jelly eyes grab them and try to make sense of them. They look as if they’d been there forever, with their quirky textures and odd bits of brightness and splotches and drips and smears and all. These lives are not still, but dancing with light and color—she is one of the great colorists of the world, but it’s all done with such insouciant mastery that one doesn’t feel got at or advertised to. She can be as glum and drab sometimes as any odd dim afternoon with some impending revelation or sudden retrospective insight in it. Vernon’s peculiar virtuosity—or rather the way she rides it—is a sort of solution to a big contemporary problem among good artists. There’s plenty of virtuosity about, and artists want to be singular. Do they just throw out their amazing gift, given to them for the solace and enlightenment of the world? Do they sneer at it while exercising it? Do they coyly disguise it? Do they show it off as a sort of conjuring trick, with an intellectual explanation? I’m not talking here about the usual bright artist who never bothered to learn virtuosity in the first place, and can get away with that these days. No, the really good artists around now, of whom Vernon is one, take their virtuosity as a gift, and give it away as a gift to our powers of sight and our capacity for joy. They don’t take it entirely seriously—it’s like dancing with a god, or wrestling with an angel—but they respect it too. They’re on such good terms with it that they’ll josh it a bit so it doesn’t put on airs. Mary’s outrageous sense of humor is everywhere in her work, but it’s not lightweight—it’s as serious as a Shakespeare comedy. And what Mary means by “drawing” is, I think, also more generally the virtuosic power of revelation, the sweet shock of the wabi-sabi of the world, its messy amazingness, its cockeyed calm. She’s a nature artist, one could say, but for her the human, technology and all, is still nature naturing, inventing odd aspects by which it sees itself anew." - Frederick Turner, 2017 View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * TREES A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. (Greek Proverb) An exhibition benefiting Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center August 19 - September 16, 2017 Opening Reception Saturday, August 19, 6:00pm to 8:00pm Native Plants for Birds Lecture by Dr. Tania Homayoun, Urban Conservation Program Manager, Audubon Texas Wednesday, August 23, 7:00pm The Big Thicket and the Sociability of Trees Lecture by Dr. Pete Gunter, Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas Monday, August 28, 7:00pm A Passion for Texas Native Trees Lecture by Tary Arterburn, Principal, studioOustide Thursday, August 31, 7:00pm Tour of Dogwood Canyon For Valley House Patrons Saturday, September 2, 10:00am Trees of Art and Life in the Middle Ages Lecture by Danielle Joyner, Visiting Assistant Professor, Southern Methodist University Thursday, September 14, 12:00 noon Artists included: Jack Barnett, Vera Barnett, Lu Ann Barrow, Kathy Boortz, Lloyd Brown, Lindy Chambers, John Cobb, Brian Cobble, Robert Cocke, Tim Coursey, David A. Dreyer, David Everett, Phil Evett, David FeBland, Henry Finkelstein, Barnaby Fitzgerald, Malou Flato, Bart Forbes, Lilian Garcia-Roig, David H. Gibson, Allison Gildersleeve, Miles Cleveland Goodwin, Cindi Holt, Otis Huband, Anita Huffington, Philip Van Keuren, Olivia Leigh Martin, Winston Mascarenhas, Mark Messersmith, Trish Nickell, Gail Norfleet, Michael O’Keefe, Shane Pennington, Phillip Shore, Everett Spruce, Jane Starks, Jim Stoker, Bob Stuth-Wade, James Surls, Olin Travis, Janet Turner, Valton Tyler, Mary Vernon, Anne Weary, Jim Woodson and Tom Woodward. Please check back as we are receiving work for the exhibition and will be adding it to the website. * * * Kathy Boortz: In Plain View (a mixed media celebration of Texas backyard birds) June 17 - July 22, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 17, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Kathy Boortz' mixed media sculptures of Texas birds are envisaged from pieces of wood found on her walks, developed by modeling heads in clay and welding legs in iron, then completed by painting the whole. Boortz describes the way she begins, "When I hike, my eyes are often downcast, feasting on the gifts of nature offered up by the natural world. Weighed down like a peddler, I arrange and rearrange the treasures I gather till I reach my destination, my home and studio, where I review and reassemble my stash, my prizes of singular beauty. The shapes I select lend themselves to further interpretation, semblances of the animal world which I revere and speak for. Some literally make themselves while others need tweaking but all in all, my aim is to lovingly portray the beauty, the humor, at times the harshness of the fauna of our natural world." * * * Lindy Chambers: No Glass Slipper (living off the grid in rural Texas) June 17 - July 22, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 17, 6:00pm - 8:00pm Gallery Talk: Saturday, June 24, 11:00am Lindy Chambers began her trailer paintings in 2011, inspired by the rural “off the grid” lives seen in the region near her Bellville, Texas, home. Beginning with thumbnail sketches and tonal studies, Lindy assembles these trailers—entrenched with their animals, trash, electric wires, propane tanks, and window units—into inventive, colorful compositions where dogs rule, and all strays are black. Detritus is littered throughout, a nod to an earlier series of large scale paintings and assemblages of non-biodegradable trash. She finds meaning in what others discard and overlook. Born in Jackson, Tennessee in 1949, Lindy spent her childhood drawing and riding horses with her identical twin sister, LeeLee. Marriage brought Lindy to Texas in 1972. She studied sculpture at the Glassell School of Art in Houston and built a foundry where she cast her own sculpture for many years. * * * Barnaby Fitzgerald: Concordances May 6 - June 10, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6, 6:00pm – 8:30pm Artist Talk: Saturday, May 20, 11:00am Valley House Gallery is pleased to announce our 8th solo exhibition of Barnaby Fitzgerald’s oil paintings, egg tempera paintings, and drawings. He is a Professor of Painting at Southern Methodist University where he has taught since 1984. Fitzgerald spent his childhood in the Perugia region of Italy before receiving a Magistero degree in printmaking and drawing at the Istituto Statale d’Arte in Urbino. He received a B.F.A. at Boston University and an M.F.A. from Yale University, both in painting. Poet scholar Frederick Turner writes, Barnaby Fitzgerald’s outrageously gorgeous paintings are a guilty pleasure - yet the guilt is unnecessary, for they do not cloy or fatten us. They are as intellectually challenging and stimulating as they are sensually seductive. An exhibition catalogue, with an essay by Frederick Turner, Ph.D., will be available. * * * John Hartell: Paintings (1955-1993) March 25 - April 29, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 25, 6:00pm-8:00pm Valley House Gallery is honored to present a selection of paintings from the estate of American artist, John Hartell (1902-1995). We were introduced to Hartell's luminous paintings by a tip from a dinner guest at the home of his daughter, Dallasite Kay Cattarulla and her husband Elliot. John Hartell taught two disciplines at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York: freshman architects and graduate painters. He was a much-loved professor there from 1930 until his retirement in 1967; one of his most illustrious students is the architect Richard Meier. As an artist, Hartell's first solo exhibition was in 1937 at Kleeman Gallery in New York. He exhibited at Kraushaar Galleries in New York for four decades, beginning in 1943. The Hartell Gallery at Cornell University, under the Sibley Dome, is named for him. In describing John Hartell, the artist Michael Boyd writes, "He was engaged in a kind of visual alchemy, where the visible world is transmuted into pure color and light, where objects seem to condense out of light." John Hartell's daughters Kay Cattarulla and Mari Quint will attend the opening reception. * * * Mark Messersmith: Pay the Thunder No Mind - Listen to the Birds, and Hate Nobody March 25 - April 29, 2017 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 25, 6:00pm-8:00pm Artist Talk: Saturday, March 25, 5:30pm Valley House Gallery presents our third solo exhibition for Mark Messersmith, a Professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. In lushly-colored paintings, Messersmith creates dense narratives packed with animals, birds, plants, and insects that express his concern for the shrinking world they inhabit. New to this exhibition are small paintings of birds. They are a dramatic shift in scale from his monumental paintings which are embellished with carved pediments and predellas that further the narratives and express his affection for Renaissance altarpieces and folk art. Messersmith earned a BFA at Fontbonne College in St. Louis, and an MFA from Indiana University. He was awarded the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in Painting in 2006. Among the many museums that have collected his works are the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, Musée du Haut-de-Cagnes, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Tyler Museum of Art. The exhibition title is adapted from a quote by Eubie Blake. * * * David A. Dreyer: Till Things Never Seen Seem Familiar February 18 - March 18, 2017 David A. Dreyer was born in Dallas in 1958, and earned his BFA and MFA at Southern Methodist University. He has had solo exhibitions at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas and The Grace Museum in Abilene. We are pleased to present his sixth exhibition of paintings and sculpture at Valley House Gallery. An exhibition catalogue will be available. About this body of work, Dreyer states, "The art I make does not tell a direct story, but prompts one to find things truly unseen. In this exhibition, the works develop through intuitive improvisations, actions upon surface, and lines perpetually reflecting and responding to the previous surface condition until each piece manifests the familiar - a rightness of resolution - the gestalt. This echo of familiarity drives my work, as I simultaneously move head-hearted toward and away from where it comes." * * * Miles Cleveland Goodwin: The Maze January 14 - February 11, 2017 Valley House Gallery is pleased to present our second exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Mississippi artist Miles Cleveland Goodwin, along with the publication of a catalogue illustrating his recent work. Working in his open-air studio, Miles is deeply in touch with his surroundings – both corporeal and spiritual. He incorporates materials provided by the land - dirt, ash, nests, and the refuse of rural life – in his oil and egg tempera paintings, resulting in complex and unexpected surface textures. Likewise, his sculptures evolve through an intuitive process born from his natural inclination to see poetic metaphor in all he observes. Not unlike the spirit of Southern literature and Delta blues music, there is an autobiographical nature to his storytelling. Miles says, I don’t like to do things I don’t know. He paints to figure out who he is. In Goodwin’s soulful compositions, he narrates the story of his family and the essential nature of animals and land around him. In his work, we feel the temperature and humidity. We sense the ever-present spiritual forces that guide our world. We experience the inherent ambiguities and provocations felt when confronting life as it is. The honest intention and lack of guile behind the paintings resonates within us long after an encounter with his work. About this body of work, the artist states: I live in a small town in central Mississippi. I live here because there is a sense of the old world, old ways of doing things—rough hands and bright souls. When I drive to town every morning for three shots of espresso on ice, I see people with cemeteries on the side of their yards, those plastic flowers all around. People who are not racially divided, but together because of a long history of ups and downs. A place where the woods are swallowing homes like snakes eat eggs; they travel down the winding body of the highway roads. It is all so beautiful and true. Collectors Catherine Such and Douglas Walker, recently wrote an appreciation about Miles’ work: Miles Cleveland Goodwin looks at an America that is both long past and just within reach of the future. He crafts a unique landscape portrayed through a lens of archetype and myth and peopled with characters familiar or fantastic yet always resonant. Not quite dystopian, but fundamentally introspective and haunting, the work is meticulously crafted with layers both of material and allusion into a narrative that simultaneously draws the viewer into what might be happening but maintains a deep reserve. Nothing is quite straightforward and narratives are never definitively resolved in Goodwin’s work. Viewers are compelled to speculate about a greater story that lingers tantalizingly just out of reach. Longing, mythos, a gothic formality, and many recognizable but dreamlike elements provide an entry into an ultimately interior experience of his work. The subconscious experience of his art is deeply intimate. This rests on a bedrock of rare skill and ability, coupled with a distinctly southern artistic sensitivity. Goodwin expands his psychological themes with color – particularly white and crimson – and the depth of surface, texture, brushwork and manipulation of paint and material. Imagery arises through a complex and ever-evolving process of interaction between artist and materials. The result? An old master painting rescued from a corner of the attic. A scene played out in a landscape emerging from our shared anxiety for the future. Or a prophetic vision transfigured in pigment and feathers and branches. Deeply American, in its isolated landscapes and beautiful anxieties, the work of Miles Cleveland Goodwin endures. Miles Cleveland Goodwin was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1980, and raised in the South. He earned his BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, and eventually returned to Mississippi. Valley House Gallery presented his first exhibition in Texas, Where We Prayed, in 2015. View the exhibition on Artsy. * * * PUBLICATIONS: >>>> Coinciding with David Gibson's retrospective exhibition is the release of two publications designed by award-winning Nazraeli Press, each with an essay by John Rohrbach, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art: >> "Images Panoramas Sequences" is comprised of three cloth-bound volumes spanning thirty years of work. Nazraeli Press states, "[this monograph] is a long-overdue survey of Gibson's highly-acclaimed photographic output. Working quietly and without regard to passing trends, David H. Gibson has created a body of work that celebrates the ethereal beauty of our natural world." Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies, this set is $250. >> "Still Light" is a hardcover monograph with 70 plates that are highlights from 30 years of Gibson's photography. Also limited to 500, this volume is $55. IN MEMORIUM: >>>> On August 5, our dear friend and artist Philip John Evett passed away at 93 years of age. Phil was a mainstay of the San Antonio art scene after moving to Texas from England in the 1950's. He taught at the San Antonio Art Institute for three years and then at Trinity University for twenty six years. He retired to his home and studio in the Hill Country in 1988 to work full time on his wood sculpture and ink drawings. Valley House first exhibited Phil's figurative sculptures in 2003 in the exhibition "Working with Wood." His dry British wit, gentle demeanor, and openness meant he befriended most everyone he met. It is rare to see octogenarian artists continue to produce art with great intensity; it is even more unusual to be able to say that the quality of the work is strong, excites, and continues to be relevant. Phil did this into his 90's. Texas has lost a major force in Texas Sculpture. I feel honored to have represented Phil, and called him my friend. One of my regrets as an art dealer is that Valley House was not representing Phil Evett 30 years earlier. Our hearts go out to his wife Joanne and to all of his friends who will miss him. - Kevin Vogel >>>> All at Valley House mourn the passing of one of Dallas' most avid arts patrons, Betty Blake, who celebrated her 100th birthday earlier this year. Betty and my father, Donald Vogel, opened the first important modern art gallery, the Betty McLean Gallery, in Dallas in 1951, at the newly developed Preston Center. They brought landmark exhibitions to Dallas, alternating internationally-recognized artists with Texas artists. In 1957, Betty, along with other modern art pioneering women in Dallas, including Lupe Murchison and Betty Marcus, worked hard to create and sustain the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art. It merged with the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1963. Betty Blake was a long-term trustee of the American Federation of the Arts and received their Cultural Leadership Award in 1995. She also served locally on the boards of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In her last years, Betty regularly visited Valley House on Saturday afternoons to say hello and to see what was new. She was insatiably curious and had a lifelong love of art and artists. We will miss you Betty. - Kevin Vogel >>>> Be sure to read Rebecca Sherman's magnificent profile on Betty Blake in the October issue of PaperCity magazine. * * * For press requests, contact Laura Green at LGreen@valleyhouse.com | ||||
