FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 11, 2019
STEPHENVILLE, Texas — “Drawn,” a group exhibition that brings together the works of five accomplished artists, begins its nearly month-long run today in the gallery of Tarleton State University’s Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center in Stephenville.
Artists Ryan Goolsby, Bella Jones, Angela Kallus, Ryder Richards and Fabiola Valenzuela address a variety of conceptual and formal concerns in the exhibit through pieces that directly and indirectly utilize traditions of drawing.
The exhibition runs through March 8 and is free to the public. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Goolsby earned his master’s degree in fine arts from Texas Christian University.
“I often find myself preoccupied by things that many people overlook,” he says. “Derelict signs stripped of neon. A bike rack on a public sidewalk. Strings of holiday lights cascading from a ceiling. A cast iron radiator affixed to a wall. I am drawn to the latent functionality of these objects — the glimmer of a possible purpose in an otherwise inert being. There is a strange beauty in this limbo, when entities are caught between something and nothing, between a point and pointlessness.”
The English-born Jones has a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Manchester Metropolitan University and is obtaining her Master of Fine Arts from TCU. She has exhibited in both Britain and the U.S. and currently splits her time between Manchester and Fort Worth. She is a multidisciplinary artist exploring the commonplace narratives that surround the body and human sexuality. By using hypnagogic imagery, Jones creates “dreamscapes where sensuality thrives in an uncorrupted and unregulated way.”
Kallus earned her MFA from UNLV in 2003, having moved to Las Vegas to further her study on Dave Hickey’s discourse on beauty to be as persuasive then, as now. She says she values craft highly, and she readily claims that while her stratagems may be outré at the moment — her work is neither post-skill nor post-studio, nor can it be construed as “social practice” — she believes that everything comes back around, eventually. She lives in Fort Worth and teaches drawing at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Richards was born and grew up in Roswell, N.M. He earned a BFA in painting with a minor in architecture from Texas Tech University and an MFA from TCU. He is a co-founder of the RJP Nomadic Gallery, The Art Foundation, and Culture Laboratory Collective, and the founder of EUTOPIA: Contemporary Art Review.
“With several facets to my practice, many of my projects are research based,” he says. “Specific pieces are performative works based around invisible labor and precarity within the art world, while others take the form of tightly rendered drawings, paintings or installations commenting on high-modernism’s relationship to science fiction or authority.”
Valenzuela, an intermedia artist living in Fort Worth, earned her bachelor of fine arts in painting from the UT Arlington. Her work concentrates on identity and memory through the use of painting, installation and sculpture.
“As the youngest in my family, I reflect on the many stories that my parents talk about,” she says. “Their journey here to the United States plays an important role in many of my pieces. I am influenced by stories that come from a variety of photographs taken before I was born. My work is a process for me to try to understand my past. The spine of my work is this appreciation of hard work and the journey that my parents have gone through. Within my work I hope to never forget what has been done for my siblings and me.”
Tarleton,founding member of The Texas A&M University System, provides a student-focused, value-driven education marked by academic innovation and a dedication to transform today’s scholars into tomorrow’s leaders. It offers degree programs to more than 13,000 students at Stephenville, Fort Worth, Waco, Midlothian, RELLIS Academic Alliance in Bryan, and online, emphasizing real-world learning experiences that address societal needs while maintaining its core values of tradition, integrity, civility, excellence, leadership and service.
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Contact: Phil Riddle, News and Information Specialist
817-484-4415
priddle@tarleton.edu
