Texas Tech University

Painting alumnus RANDALL REID, of San Marcos, will open a solo show of his recent work at William Campbell Contemporary Art in Fort Worth this Friday, May 10th during an Opening Reception from 6:00-8:00 PM.  The exhibition is titled Resurrected Dreams: Cowboys, Aliens & Espionage.

Largely informed by personal interest in old television series, movies, and 1960s sci-fi, the new pieces explore our collective pop-cultural history Resurrected Dreams is the first body of Reid’s work so tightly focused on specific themes. He has cropped, painted, and otherwise manipulated found graphics to highlight theme and pictorial quality, along with structural elements, color balance, and texture. Of the new work, Reid comments, “I feel I am arranging layers, passages, ambiguous realities, and figurative elements, which can become narrative anthologies.”

This exhibition continues through June 15th. Works in the exhibition can be previewed at William Campbell Contemporary Art.

Reid also has a solo show which opened in Santa Fe last Friday. Randall Reid: Full Circle is currently on view at Nuart Gallery through May 19th.  A review of the exhibition by Tor Travis can be found at the Santa Fe Reporter.

On Monday night Ken Little was honored as the 2014 TEXAS STATE VISUAL ARTIST – 3D in a public ceremony sponsored by the Texas Commission on the Arts in Austin.

You can go to the TCA page to read more about Ken and his accomplishments.

Ken, a 1970 alumnus of the studio art program, has been a longtime supporter of School of Art.  In 2007, he teamed up with the Medici Circle School of Art support group to create a new scholarship endowment to benefit Studio Art students.

TJ Tucker is a Communication Design alumnus who has been Creative Director of Texas Monthly for a while now.

He recently redesigned the entire look of the publication and was interviewed about it in a 2-part series of interviews with Neil Jamieson.  Below find links to the two interviews.

Tour of the Redesign, Part 1.

Tour of the Redesign, Part 2.

Scott Thurman (2007 BFA in Studio Art; MFA from University of North Texas) who currently resides in Austin,  was back in the media spotlight this week as PBS announced that they would be airing The Revisionaries this week, an independent film he directed.  In Lubbock the film aired on Monday evening, January 28th.

If you missed it, you can stream the film online via PBS-Independent Lens, for free, through February 28th.

The film premiered last April at the Tribeca Film Festival where it received a “Special Jury Award” which was presented by Michael Moore at the awards ceremony.  Since then the film has been selected by and screened at various national and international independent film festivals.

You can read more about the film and all the folks who worked with Scott to get it done at The Revisionaries – Official Movie Site.

Exhibition installation view at Regina Rex.

Corey Escoto (2005 BFA in Painting, with an MFA from Washington University, St. Louis), a Texas native currently living in Pittsburgh, PA, has a solo show at Regina Rex in Brooklyn, NY through February 17^th.  This exhibition includes photographic sculptures and a grouping of instant-film photographs (think Polaroids) that defy immediate comprehension.

Reviewing the exhibition for online blog The L Magazine, Corinna Kirsch observed, “What’s being emphasized here is the physical nature of photography.”

Corey’s take on this assessment is, “Let me just say that I care about imagehood as well as the objecthood because while I find the discussion about images, photos, and how they operate to be interesting that is not one of my primary concerns as an artist more broadly.”

“Dreamliner” (2012) Fuji Color Instant Film, 5×4 inches.

I chatted with Corey in early December about his new “photographs,” soon after his return from the Miami NADA art fair (which coincided with Art Basel Miami) where his 4×5” “Polaroids” were snapped up by savvy collectors (for only $1,200 apiece). He suggested that although the works are photographic, they are made with the concerns of a painter.  “…[T]he works are constructed by hand and I wanted them to be able to stand alongside paintings and dialogue with the painting process. Additionally, I am interested in creating photographs that run counter to (but also in dialogue with) the type that our photography-obsessed culture makes on a daily basis (100 million photos on Facebook a day).”

“Zion Cubes” (2012) Fuji Color Instant Film, 4×5 inches.

I observed that standing in front of what I recognize to be a Polaroid photograph or any other instant-photo object, yet seeing photographic images that do not correlate to any known indexical possibilities, causes me to become “visually flummoxed.”    read more >>