Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.
For last week’s picks, please go here.
Tammie Rubin, “Blue Headdresses and North Star,” 2023, stoneware, underglaze, house paint.
1. Tammie Rubin: I am my best when I’m escaping
Big Medium (Austin)
March 17 – April 29, 2023
From Big Medium:
“Big Medium proudly presents I am at my best when I’m escaping by Tammie Rubin, our 2022 Tito’s Prize Recipient.
In this exhibition, the artist transforms the gallery space into a portal for escape and delves into her fascination with power objects, coded symbols, migration, rituals, and faith. Rubin employs ceramic conical forms, raised maps, and murals to create metaphysical, physical, and spiritual escape and relocation spaces. Using imagery and objects of the familiar, she contemplates ideas of authenticity and inherited meanings while inviting new considerations that open dream-like spaces of unexpected associations and dislocations.”
Matt Manalo, “No Partaking,” 2019, embroidery on handmade vintage placemat from the Philippines, 10 x 64 inches. Photo by the artist.
2. Philippine-Made: The Work of Matt Manalo
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
February 11 – May 13, 2023
From the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft:
“Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) presents Philippine-Made: The Work of Matt Manalo, an exhibition of self-reflective sculptures made from air-dry clay, bamboo, and plant materials with cultural ties to Matt Manalo’s home country of the Philippines. Born in Manila, Manalo has spent half his life in America, an experience that has served as a pivotal point of inflection for the artist. The exhibition encapsulates his time living in the United States after immigrating with his family to Houston.”
Veronica Castillo, “Diosa del Maguey,” 2023, clay and Policomado, 22 inches.
3. Veronica Castillo: Tierra y Mujer
An Arte Gallery (San Antonio)
March 9 – April 2, 2023
From AnArte Gallery:
“AnArte Gallery is honored to present Veronica Castillo’s solo exhibition Tierra y Mujer, a contemporary art exhibition of clay sculptures depicting the relationship of women to the earth and all her elements. Through a deeply contemplative artistic practice, Castillo creates images of women and earth intertwined as allegorical representations of rebirth, regeneration, and regrowth. By focusing on literal, metaphorical and symbolic representations of women engaged in daily activities, such as planting and harvesting food, grinding corn, talking to birds, climbing trees, she hopes to expand how we understand procreation. While women are traditionally depicted as mothers, Castillo wants to honor women as life affirming radical matriarchs, caretakers of the earth, that also birth ideas and dreams.”
Gretchen Marie Schaefer, detail from “Inclined Fold From Above,” 2021, digital video, 2.33 minutes.
4. Betting on the Sun
Texas Tech University Landmark Arts Gallery
February 16 – April 16, 2023
From Texas Tech University’s Landmark Arts Gallery:
“The artists and collaborative teams selected for this exhibition acknowledge and utilize facets of the historically bounded category of sculpture yet are not easily classified. Their work suggests an infinite malleability – a demonstration of elasticity and heterogeneity described by Rosalind Krauss in the seminal ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’ – while signaling a new era of logic rooted in survival.”
5. (De)compose: Sara Dotterer, Ian Grieve
Southern Methodist University Pollock Gallery (Dallas)
March 25 – April 15, 2023
From the Pollock Gallery:
“(De)Compose is an interdisciplinary show with works that span painting, sculpture, virtual reality, and projection. Conceptually, the exhibition displays an exploration of the processes that allow decomposition or erasure to be a part of the work’s composition, emphasizing the power of cyclical ways of working.”
