STEPHENVILLE, Texas — The Department of Visual Arts and Design exhibition “Seeing Doubles” by Michelle Thomas Richardson runs through March 8 in the Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center Gallery on the Tarleton State University campus in Stephenville.
A talk by the artist is set for 3 p.m. Thursday, March 2, in the Fine Arts Theater and will be followed by a reception in the gallery. Both are open to the public.
Richardson is the university’s 2022/23 Artist-in-Residence. The recognition is a yearly position that awards funding to competitive applicants who work with the visual arts faculty and students to produce a spring exhibition.
Richardson, a Dallas-Fort Worth artist and public art advocate, led an independent study course where students contributed to the pieces in the exhibit and learned about installation artwork, nontraditional materials and how to develop a sustainable studio practice after art school.
“The concept of recycling [white noise] stories and images over time evolves as a physical mass: an architectural construction, a makeshift altarpiece, a landfill,” she said. “Nearly 100 individual works echoing devices dating back to the 1890s comment on the ongoingness of social issues. Each piece acts as a singular moment in time; together they play as a universal rerun, building today’s American landscape year by year.
“Using stacked cardboard boxes, the resulting interior space houses a short hand-drawn animation in an intimately scaled space similar to an average safe room or walk-in closet. Drawing on opposites, the work alludes to a dichotomic reality as it teeters between inside and outside, loud and quiet, black and white (red and green), art and trash, etc.”
Richardson’s work investigates perception of our lived environment and combines elements of drawing, painting, fibers and sculpture. She earned her master of fine arts degree in drawing and painting at the University of North Texas after graduating from Louisiana State University with a degree in studio art.
She is a recent recipient of an artist grant through the Dallas Museum of Art, supported by the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund, and has been named a Nasher Microgrant finalist, CADD FUNd finalist, and shortlisted for the prestigious Artpace residency program.
She has exhibited nationally from New York to Oklahoma and across Texas. In addition to her studio practice, she works as a Public Art Project Manager with Arts Fort Worth.
A founding member of The Texas A&M System, Tarleton State University is breaking records — in enrollment, research, scholarship, athletics, philanthropy and engagement — while transforming the lives of approximately 18,000 students in Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Bryan and online. For 125 years, Tarleton State has been committed to accessible higher education opportunities for all while helping students grow academically, socially and professionally through programs that emphasize real world learning and address regional, state and national needs.