Brandon Zech and Christina Rees resume Glasstire’s Top Five tradition, but use our Five-Minute Tours as the portal to view the art.
“We have almost 90 video tours up now, and they keep coming in.”
To view last week’s Top Five in which Brandon Zech, Christina Rees, and Christopher Blay discuss art books to hunker down with, please go here.
1. Chris Sauter: Extraction Economy
Dock Space Gallery, San Antonio
March 7 – April 30, 2020
Via Dock Space: “Extraction Economy is a meditation on the landscape. The exhibition is built around ideas rising from a video shot by the artist along the Oklahoma panhandle. Themes of resilience, sacrifice, and removal arise alongside images of agriculture, oil production, and heritage. Through video, drawing, and sculpture, the work acknowledges the complex relationships permeating the land and its role as a repository of actions.”
2. Jade Walker: Heartfelt
The Museum of Pocket Art, Austin
Fall 2019 – Spring 2020
Via MOPA: “We each find tonal shifts in the skin we inhabit, from the underside of our feet to the tender skin at our wrists. As our largest organ and one that is so tightly stitched to our identities, these shifts in the color of our skin are important but sometimes not detected until examined. Isolating a swatch of color from our bodies and remixing various samples create an overall palette and allow an insight into the complexity of our identity, our heritage, and the social weight both carry.
“Heartfelt is specially crafted for and inspired by the wearer of the work, Robert Jackson Harrington. He provided six color samples of his skin from a Sherwin Williams color deck, which were used to create the shades of the work. The shape repeated in each of the six fabric books references a birthmark or ‘Mark of Royalty’ Robert wears.”
3. Bob Schneider + Margie Criner
Yard Dog Art, Austin
March 6 – April 18, 2020
Via Yard Dog: Chicago artist Margie Criner makes abstract, organically shaped sculptures that house miniature dioramas, viewable through a peephole. Austinite Bob Schneider is a long-time Austin musician and artist. For this show, Bob has created a group of mixed media work that combines painting and collage with his original poetry.”
4. Barbara Attwell: REWYLDING
Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin
February 27 – April 26. 2020
Via the Museum:
“The works in REWYLDING are comprised of felted wool. Large clothing-like wall hangings refer to an ancient Celtic tradition of binding oneself in protective cloth to meet the wild forces of Nature. Some resemble the animal one desires to draw power from; others use primitive symbols to tap into the ancestral heritage that we are all heirs to. Smaller felted sculptures tell wildlife stories. The outdoor works embrace Attwell’s interest in sculptures as serve as habitat for bats and birds.
“Underlying Attwell’s work is the search for ways that all things wild — clouds, mountains, otters, ourselves — are connected in a delicious and fierce beauty. She wants to reawaken the singularity we have lost with this powerful undercurrent. In today’s culture, alienation and a peculiar poverty of soul are the result of spending more time controlling nature than knowing it. We need to summon our primordial self – the one who, for instance, introduces themselves to trees, knowing that they respond.”
5. Texas Women: A New History of Abstract Art
San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA)
February 7 – May 3. 2020
Via SAMA:
“Texas has been well known for its representational and figurative art — think Julian Onderdonk bluebonnets — since at least the nineteenth century. But by the mid-twentieth, parallel with innovations outside the region, several artists began a rigorous exploration of abstraction and non-objectivity — and women artists made significant contributions to the development of abstraction in America.
“Texas Women: A New History of Abstract Art explores this untold story. The first major survey to focus on Texas women working primarily in the mode of abstraction, the exhibition will include ninety-five works in painting, sculpture, installation, and works on paper by seventeen artists from different generations — among them Dorothy Antoinette ‘Toni’ LaSelle (1901-2002), Dorothy Hood (1919-2000), Susie Rosmarin (born 1950), Terrell James (born 1955), Margo Sawyer (born 1958), Sara Cardona (born 1971, Mexico City), and Liz Trosper (born 1983).
4 comments
Hmm, can we now expect to see legitimate exhibition reviews based on video walk-throughs (or other documentation)? When I was actively writing about art, it was taboo (though sometimes tempting) to write about work one had not experienced in person. Is that norm obliterated now? We know all too well what happens to norms when they are abandoned, even for wickedly short periods of time. Just curious.
Thanks for doing the 5 minute tours, featuring them in the top 5 and finally… including my work at the amazing Museum of Pocket Art!! This has been a great fix for the difficulty of not seeing art on the regular, thank you!
I’m so, so glad that SAMA is extending the Texas Women show. I had planned to go over spring break and can’t wait to see it in person! Also love the painting behind you, Christina.
Hey Melinda,
The painting is by Fort Worth-based artist Devon Nowlin.