Posts Tagged 'Artist'

Q&A with Yonavea Hawkins, Caddo Beadwork Artist

Published March 21, 2022 Dallas , Guest Blog Post , Late Nights , works of art Closed
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Yonavea Hawkins is an artist who creates intricate beadwork for Native American and Caddo cultural items. We are delighted to have her participate in the upcoming Late Night celebrating the new exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, during which she will showcase several of her pieces and talk about her process and the connection between traditional and contemporary beadworking. Read our special Q&A with her to learn more about her practice ahead of the event on March 25!

Yonavea Hawkins working on a belt on a loom during a “Live Bead” on stage at an event.

How did you begin creating art?
As a child I was always drawing and painting, with art class in school being my favorite subject, then to obtaining a fine arts degree from Oklahoma City University and started working as a graphic designer. Eventually my 8 to 5 creative jobs morphed into print quality control with organized paperwork of meeting deadlines and budgets. Then and now with a full-time job, evenings and weekends are my creative times. Working from a small desk, my present work evolved from learning to sew and bead to make Caddo regalia for myself, my children, and then Native American regalia for others. Now I create a variety of bead work, cultural items, or diverse art with different beading techniques for juried art markets with competitions. Changing from pencil and paint to beads and buckskin became new mediums to work in and another way to express myself creatively.

Hawkins completing beadwork on a commissioned piece while in her booth at an art market.

The words “contemporary” and “traditional” carry a lot of weight when describing Indigenous arts. Where do you situate your work?
For my work it’s a combination of contemporary and traditional because of the materials used and the design elements, to the construction of the finished work. Contemporary because of the use of the current Charlotte bead colors and todays materials to bead on. Traditional, when I find the materials online to buy as I am an urban Native American without access to harvest and collect traditional materials once used. The use of glass bead work starts from European contact as beads, wool and silk were trade goods to Indigenous peoples, and these trade goods became traditional for some Indigenous peoples. Beading techniques developed for using trade beads and used today holds the traditional look, but in contemporary colors and designs, unless you find a stash of antique beads.

Three of Hawkins’ bracelet cuffs

Tell us about some of the work you’re showing at DMA’s Late Night.
Several years back, a collector of my art told me that my beadwork was “Wearable Art”. As such a great deal of my work created for art markets are bracelet cuffs, contemporary beaded belts, belt buckles, hair barrettes, necklaces, and hatbands. After attending an art market, I never know what work will sell out and what I will be creating next, but I plan to show a variety of pieces mentioned earlier. I will also show cultural items that have won awards at art markets such as moccasins, turtle shell purses, bandolier bags, and pipe bags.

Work in progress of a smoked buckskin pipe bag with a Southeastern eagle on the front.
The completed pipe and pipe bag titled “Peace Eagle”. Five beading techniques are used on this pipe bag.

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You can find out more about Yonavea Hawkins in this recent artist interview. Don’t miss out on our Late Night celebration on March 25, featuring artist demonstrations, art making, performances, films, and talks about the exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, and more! Get tickets here.

Unnecessary Embarrassment: Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s Letters

Published June 18, 2020 American Art , Archive , Exhibitions 2 Comments
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Among the treasures in the DMA Archives are four letters exchanged in the summer of 1941 between artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi and the Director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Richard Foster Howard. For more than 40 years, these letters were the only works by Kuniyoshi housed in the DMA. Since 1988, Museum visitors have become acquainted with him through Bather with Cigarette. This star of the American art collection is currently on view in My|gration in the Center for Creative Connections.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Bather with Cigarette, 1924, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Association Purchase Fund, Deaccession Funds/City of Dallas (by exchange) in honor of Dr. Steven A. Nash, 1988.22, © Estate of Yasuo Kuniyoshi/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Displayed alongside works by artists and designers including Hans Hoffman, Peter Muller-Munk, and An-My Lê, Kuniyoshi’s painting represents one of the 14 immigration stories shared in the exhibition’s “Arrivals” section. The 1941 correspondence between the 51-year-old artist and the DMFA director sheds light on the challenges and discrimination Kuniyoshi experienced in the US.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, from the Archives of American Art, photographed by Peter A. Juley & Son

Kuniyoshi arrived alone in Spokane, Washington, as a teenager in 1906. Although he initially planned to stay only a few years, by 1910 his artistic talents had led him to New York City. There he enrolled in a series of schools and entered the circle of leading figures in American art.

Bather with Cigarette was completed in 1924—the same year Congress effectively banned immigration from Asian countries. Kuniyoshi had already witnessed the government’s discriminatory policies. His marriage to fellow artist Katherine Schmidt in 1919 caused her to lose her citizenship. In 1922 the Supreme Court ruled that Japanese people were not the same as “free white persons” and thus did not have the same rights to naturalization. 

Fast forward to the summer of 1941. Headlines about naval attacks and international conflict fueled racism and xenophobia in the US. Kuniyoshi, like many American artists, wanted to travel the country in search of new inspiration. Unlike most of his peers, he could not embark on a trip without being hyper-aware that his appearance and national origins could be perceived as threatening. To mitigate the risk of police detention, he asked regional arts leaders to provide letters verifying his profession. The DMA Archives holds Kuniyoshi’s initial request to Howard (May 22, 1941), the director’s two-part response (here and here, May 26, 1941), and the artist’s thank you (mailed mid-journey from Colorado Springs, July 9, 1941).

Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s original letter to Richard Foster Howard.
Click HERE to expand.

In December 1941, Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US declared war. Kuniyoshi was not among the 120,000 people of Japanese heritage who were forcibly moved to internment camps in early 1942. He was, however, declared an “enemy alien.” Federal authorities impounded his bank account and confiscated his binoculars and camera as potential spy equipment. Despite this maltreatment, he spent the war years working for the federal government as a graphic artist and radio broadcaster (valued for his fluency in Japanese). Following WWII, Kuniyoshi became the first living artist to be honored with a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1948. Although he had identified as an American and lived in the US for over 40 years, immigration laws prevented him from becoming an American citizen before his death in 1953.

Emily Schiller is the Head of Interpretation at the DMA.

Get to Know C3 Visiting Artist Karla Garcia

Published March 19, 2019 Behind-the-Scenes , Center for Creative Connections , Creativity , People Closed
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The C3 Visiting Artist Project is back again for 2019 with three artists from across North Texas: Karla Garcia, Spencer Evans, and the Denton-based artist collective Spiderweb Salon. Over the course of the year, we’ll be chatting with the artists to dive into the process and methodologies behind their projects presented in the Center for Creative Connections.

Our first artist of the year is Karla Garcia. Garcia’s project for C3, Carrito de Memorias (Cart of Memories), utilizes an interactive “food” cart, designed and constructed by the artist with resources at the University of North Texas Fabrication Lab. Using handmade papers, Karla invites visitors to consider our memories associated with identity, roles, and traditions when making and sharing food. We interviewed Garcia to learn more about her practice and processes as an artist. Check it out below, and visit her project in the Center for Creative Connections through the end of April!

Tell us about yourself.
I am an artist, an educator, a mother, and an MFA candidate at the University of North Texas (UNT). I am originally from the border city of Juarez, Chihuahua, where I spent my formative years before moving to El Paso, Texas. I received my Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Graphic Design from the University of Texas in El Paso, and later moved to Dallas, where I currently reside. My current practice explores the concept of home and is based on the years when I moved from Mexico to the United States.

Tell us a little about past projects that led you to apply to the C3 Visiting Artist Project.
After being accepted into the Museum Education program at UNT, part of our curriculum was to research and collaborate with fellow classmates to create education programs for various audiences at museums. I was able to do my internship at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, where I worked with the Interpretation and Public Programs fields of the Education Department. One of my responsibilities was to set up an art cart for a few hours on Fridays. I talked to visitors about the processes of art making that were relevant to the exhibitions on display and assisted in an interactive activity for the Gabriel Dawe piece Plexus #34. My supervisor and mentor Peggy Speir was invaluable in this experience as she designed a type of loom that was used for visitors to explore the same technique that Dawe used for his large-scale artworks. I enjoyed that type of interaction, where I got to learn about the visitors’ personal lives through conversation as they learned about the artist, the museum’s collection, and processes of art making. This led me to create an art cart activity for a Louise Nevelson piece, Lunar Landscape, by painting blocks of wood black to be used to form compositions and explore the artist’s creative process. These activities inspired me to design my own art cart titled Carrito de Memorias (Cart of Memories), where I explore ways of creating an engaging activity to enable the public to connect to artworks from the DMA’s collection and connect to other people through the display of the community’s personal experiences.

Tell us about the installation you’ve created in the Center for Creative Connections.
I wanted to create an art cart inspired by the history of ancient Mexico and the food carts I visited when growing up in Juarez. To me, a food cart is not only a place where food is easily accessible, but also a type of neutral space where people from all social backgrounds gather. I wanted to create this same inviting feeling for the C3 space, but rather than offering food, we are asking visitors questions that relate to the DMA’s collection regarding tradition, identity, and roles. It is a difficult thing to ask people you don’t know about their personal views, or asking them to share a memory. In my research, I have found that street food is an extension of our kitchen space. We form our traditions around food, and our families’ oral histories are passed on to us during holidays and personal celebrations, and even through daily routines. The cart became this extension of our personal spaces in our homes where everyone is welcome to share their stories. The menu on the tables around the cart have three options relating to gender roles, identity, and traditions. There are three artworks from the collection with a description that matches these categories. I’m thrilled to read everyone’s answers and see their drawings. With these, I will create sculptures that embody the public’s collective memories.

Join Karla Garcia for a Gallery Talk on Wednesday, March 20, from 12:15 to 1:00 p.m. Gallery Talks are included in free general admission. You can participate in an art-making activity related to the Carrito de Memorias installation in C3 at the FREE 2019 AVANCE Latino Street Fest / DMA Family Festival at Klyde Warren Park on Sunday, April 7, beginning at noon.

Kerry Butcher is the Education Coordinator for the Center for Creative Connections at the DMA.

The Artful Overlapping of Old and Modern Iran

Published February 7, 2019 Curatorial , Exhibitions , Keir Collection of Islamic Art , Late Nights , works of art 1 Comment
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A work by Houston-based Iranian-American artist Soody Sharifi is now on view in the Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery. Courtly Love, an archival inkjet print from 2007, is an adaptation of a 15th-century painting in the Keir Collection. The original painting is an illustration of a tale from the Khamsa of Nizami, a collection of five tragic love poems. It depicts a scene from the romance of the Iranian king Khusraw and Armenian princess Shirin. Drunk and guilty of an amorous tryst, Khusraw has arrived at Shirin’s palace on horseback. Shirin, peering out from a window, is counseled by an older woman and refuses him entry. The scene is witnessed by a variety of attendants, including three scribes holding poetic manuscripts below. A darker mood is also present; anxious angels who know the inevitable tragic outcome of the story hover at upper left, while two gardeners with golden shovels foreshadow the twin graves in which the lovers will lie for eternity.

Khusraw at Shirin’s Palace, painting from a manuscript of Nizami’s Khamsa, last quarter of the 15th century, ink, colors and gold on paper, The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the DMA, K.1.2014.738

Courtly Love is one of a series of works that Sharifi has termed “Maxiatures,” a play on the term “miniatures” that is commonly used to describe the small format of Islamic book paintings. Sharifi’s works are large. For them, she has selected well-known examples of architectural paintings that illustrate Persian literary classics, such as the Khamsa, to serve as a basis for adaptation through the addition of new figures taken from photography. She also works with the architectural elements in the original image, changing their scale and contents. In this work, some of the original painted figures have vanished, and those that remain become unwitting bystanders to a new cast of figures inserted into the scene: contemporary, young Iranians, mainly women, going about daily tasks. These include making a call at a phone booth, jumping rope, playing with a hula-hoop, painting toenails, installing a satellite dish, and looking over the balustrades and through windows. Three young men speak to the women from outside the garden walls—the circumscribed formalities of courtly love referenced in the title of the work, and perhaps referring to the themes of the original painting.

Soody Sharifi, Courtly Love, 2007, archival inkjet print, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Richard and Glen de Unger in gratitude to Walter Elcock for his attentiveness and support for the Keir Collection, 2018.40

Sharifi’s work appears to be concerned with issues of dual identities, of a past and present that is especially acute for Iranians of her generation who were exiled by the revolution of 1979. Given that the figures in her works are young, this may represent the nostalgia of young Iranians today who still live in proximity to the elegant palaces and gardens depicted in historical paintings, perhaps inhabited now only by ghosts, like the figures in 15th-century paintings. Her concern with dualities—of language, of national identity, of traditions and contemporary technologies, of political tensions—seems to be present in this work, where contemporaneity hovers over a past that can no longer be reached. Certainly, there is also a sense of humor—it is clever and funny to see modern people in these poetical constructs.

Soody Sharifi’s work is displayed in the Keir Collection Gallery alongside the painting that inspired it so that the public can appreciate her interventions, decode her intentions, and enjoy the presence of both works of art at once. Join Sharifi in person as she shares insights into Courtly Love at our next Late Night on February 15.

Heather Ecker is The Marguerite S. Hoffman and Thomas W. Lentz Curator of Islamic and Medieval Art at the DMA.

 

Ruth Pershing Uhler: A Texas Woman Artist to Know

Published January 31, 2019 American Art , works of art Closed
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Why do some women artists become famous while others become footnotes in art history textbooks? That is the topic of discussion in The O’Keeffe Sisters and Women of American Modernism, a series of short talks at the DMA on February 2. Few art history scholars knew Georgia O’Keeffe had a younger sister named Ida who was also an artist, and whose work is now exhibited in Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow. Ahead of the talks, we thought we would take a look at another woman modernist in the DMA collection you probably haven’t heard of: Ruth Pershing Uhler.

Ruth Pershing Uhler was born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1895. Uhler and her family moved to Houston in 1909, but she returned to Pennsylvania to study art. Receiving the proper training was the first hurdle women had to clear to become artists. Women were often encouraged to study “lesser” mediums like watercolor instead of oil, and art was seen as part of a woman’s aesthetic training to create a beautiful home rather than as a career. Uhler didn’t settle for these expectations. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (and did learn to work in oil), and after graduating she obtained a fellowship that provided her with her own studio and the ability to paint and exhibit art in Philadelphia. She worked in Philadelphia for 11 years before returning to Houston in 1925 and exhibiting across Texas in the 1920s and 30s.

Ruth Pershing Uhler, Earth Rhythms, c. 1935, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas Artists Fund, 2018.10, © Estate of Ruth Pershing Uhler

In 1935 Uhler went to Santa Fe with friend and fellow Texas artist Grace Spaulding John. The landscape of New Mexico inspired a series of nine paintings that Uhler completed after returning to Houston the next year. Earth Rhythms (c. 1935), recently acquired by the DMA, belongs to this series. While it is possible Uhler saw and responded to the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, Uhler’s paintings—with undulating forms that glow with an almost spiritual quality—are also reminiscent of Transcendentalists like Raymond Johnson and Agnes Pelton, who were working in New Mexico during the same period. Uhler’s series was exhibited in 1936 at the Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Houston Artists.

Uhler teaching in the MFAH galleries c. 1950. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Archives.

At the time, it was impossible for a woman to support herself as a full-time painter without a gallery to represent her and sell her art, so most women artists took second jobs. Uhler became a teacher at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) in 1937, and in 1941 she became the MFAH’s first curator of education, a position she held until just before her death in 1967. In the same way that Ida O’Keeffe held nursing and teaching jobs on and off her entire life, being an art educator provided Uhler with financial stability, independence, and creative fulfillment. She was hugely influential in the growth of the MFAH’s education programs, but the demands of her job led her to abandon painting.

Curiously, one day in 1940 Uhler intentionally destroyed many of her paintings in a fire. She built the bonfire in the backyard of Grace Spaulding John’s house, which she had been house-sitting. John’s daughter saw her and asked what she was doing. Uhler officially ended her career as a painter that day, remarking, “Well, I only want my best work to survive.” Consequently, her works are few and difficult to find today.

As art historians reconsider the influence of women artists in modernist movements, and as Texas artists are given more serious attention, artists like Uhler will become more popular. It takes time and a conscious effort on the part of curators to shine a light on under-recognized women artists, but we get a fuller and more realistic view of art history when women’s work is recovered from the margins.

Lillian Michel is the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at the DMA.

Get to Know C3 Visiting Artist Lauren Cross

Published October 26, 2018 Center for Creative Connections , Community Connection , Creativity , Dallas , DFW 1 Comment
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The Center for Creative Connections (C3) is thrilled to host Lauren Cross as our final artist in the 2018 Visiting Artist Project. Through her practice, Cross brings her passion and knowledge for engaging communities across the DFW Metroplex to the DMA. Her project created for C3 is no different: Assembly invites visitors to independently contribute drawings of useful and meaningful objects in their lives on 4 x 4-inch cardboard squares. Every few weeks, a selection of drawings will be installed with the goal of creating a collaborative quilt. Read this interview with the artist to learn more about her project—and stop by C3 to contribute your own drawing for the quilt!

Lauren Portrait

Tell us about yourself.
I am an artist, curator, and scholar; I am a wife, and also a mother to a beautiful, vibrant 15 month old. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas, and also spent a lot of time in both North Texas and East Texas as a child, visiting my uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. Like many artists, I find that my work is both visually and contextually autobiographical.

Growing up within African American families with a strong impulse for oral history and cultural tradition had an important impact on my thinking as an artist. As a result, my pull within art history and cultural discourses has often looked intently at narratives that vividly describe my personal history and influences. I am the descendant of African American quilters, carpenters, builders, creatives, and culture bearers whose legacies are often reclaimed in my work.

Tell us a little about past projects that led you to apply to the C3 Visiting Artist Project.
I have always been a teaching artist who has engaged community within my work. One of my first projects after graduating was to design an arts curriculum for a local church in Dallas. Most recently, I helped develop community art projects for my nonprofit organization, WoCA Projects. This involved a partnership with ACT United, which created a photography education and exhibition project called My Fort Worth and a commission from the City of Fort Worth that collected over 2,000 visitor responses across the city about public art.

In applying for the C3 Visiting Artist Project, I saw an opportunity to connect my interest in community with my interdisciplinary studio practice using brown paper bags, digital imaging, and installation. With that, I thought of my Everyday Use installation projects, which I felt connected well with the DMA’s permanent collection. I felt that those works in particular gave me an aesthetic and material language that would allow me to create a project that could speak to DMA visitors.

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Tell us about the installation you’ve created in the Center for Creative Connections.
The installation I created, called Assembly, is a project that allows me to speak to my practice, which has often referenced the cultural narratives surrounding both brown paper bags and quilts and their relationship to African American culture. I thought a lot about C3’s emphasis on objects as they relate to identity as inspiration. It seemed like a great opportunity for me to address the objects that I use and reference in my work and the narratives about identity that are connected to them: skin color, hierarchy, cultural heritage, and history. I was happy to have the opportunity to probe visitors to think about everyday objects that mean something to them in hopes that there could be wider conversations about the things that have meaning in our lives.

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Do you have any favorite visitor contributions you’d like to share?

visitor contributions

What have you enjoyed most about this experience so far?

I have enjoyed seeing the sheer volume of thoughtful responses from visitors to the project. It has been empowering to pose a question and to get such great feedback. As an educator, it’s like teaching a subject that your students get excited about. I have also enjoyed having the opportunity to work with various museum educators throughout the project to find ways to connect visitors to the wider themes we are dealing with.

What upcoming projects are you working on or excited about?

I have an exciting exhibition coming up at the Cliff Gallery at Mountain View College (DCCD) from November 19 to December 14. This includes a Kitchen Table Talk with African American women artists and creatives in North Texas on Thursday, November 29, from noon to 2:00 p.m. and an artist reception on Friday, December 7, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I will also have an exhibition at the Carillon Gallery at Tarrant County College South Campus in March 2019 as a result of my artist residency there this fall.

Join C3 Visiting Artist Lauren Cross for a Gallery Talk on Wednesday, December 19, from 12:15 to 1:00 p.m. Gallery talks are included in free admission.

Kerry Butcher is the Center for Creative Connections Education Coordinator at the DMA.

Ten Questions with Three Artists

Published July 13, 2018 Contemporary Art , Dallas , Guest Blog Post Closed
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Throughout the summer, the Quadrant Galleries on Level 1 will feature two exhibitions drawn from the Contemporary art collection: Soft Focus and Body Ego. Four of the artists included in these installations call the DFW area home, and each Saturday in July at 3:00 p.m. one of the artists will give a free talk about the work she has on view. Last week Denton-based artist Annette Lawrence joined us to speak about her fascinating Free Paper series and how she uses drawing, collecting, and data to create objects that measure the passage of time.

This week, we’ll hear from photographer Debora Hunter, followed by artists Linda Ridgway and Frances Bagley later this month. Before they arrive, we had some burning questions for these artists about their lives and their work. Here’s what they had to say:

Debora Hunter

Hunter is a Dallas-based photographer and Professor Emerita of Art at Southern Methodist University. In 2016 she was the honoree of the Dallas Art Fair. Aside from the DMA’s collection, Hunter’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, High Museum of Art, Corcoran Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Yale University Art Museum, University of New Mexico Museum, Wesleyan University Art Museum, Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, Creative Photography Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louisiana Art and Science Center, and Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

Debora Hunter, Floral Spine, 1975, photograph, Dallas Museum of Art, Polaroid Foundation grant, 1976.79, © Debora Hunter

Learn more about Hunter’s photograph Floral Spine in the online collection.

If you could take one work of art from the DMA home, what would it be?
What fun to sleep in the Gothic revival bedstead from Rosedown Plantation.

Bed, Crawford Riddell (maker), 1844, Brazilian rosewood, tulip poplar, and yellow pine, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of three anonymous donors, Friends of the Decorative Arts Fund, General Acquisitions Fund, Discretionary Decorative Arts Fund, and the Boshell Family Foundation., 2000.324

What was the first subject you loved to photograph?
The backs of people gazing out to sea.

If you could have coffee with a photographer from the past, who would it be?
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879)—since she is English she would probably want tea.

What do you love most about teaching?
Retiring! (only joking). Actually, working with young people as they discover their interests and talents.

Any advice for young artists out there?
Listen carefully to your inner voice and then work really hard.

What is something you are looking forward to?
“Emerita,” a retrospective exhibition of forty years of my work at SMU’s Pollock Gallery opening September 7, 2018.

Film or digital?
Yes!

Last book you read?
Cake, a very fun cookbook of cake recipes with stories and illustrations by Maira Kalman.

If you hadn’t become an artist, what career would you have chosen?
Film editor or architect.

Where do you feel inspired around Dallas?
The weird Valley View Mall and the Santa Fe Trestle Trail, for different reasons.


Linda Ridgway

Ridgway is a Dallas-based printmaker and sculptor working primarily in bronze. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions around the country, most recently at Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, as well as group exhibitions at the Grace Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art this year. Aside from the DMA’s collection, Ridgway’s work is in the permanent collections of the El Paso Museum of Art, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Phillips Collection, Weisman Collection, and AMOA Arthouse.

Linda Ridgway, Harvest Line, 1995, bronze, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Nona and Richard Barrett and Mr. and Mrs. Bryant M. Hanley, Jr., 1996.190

Learn more about Ridgway’s sculpture Harvest Line in the online collection.

If you could take one work of art from the DMA home, what would it be?
If I could take only one piece, it would be Beginning of the World by Constantin Brancusi.

Constantin Brancusi, Beginning of the World, 1920, marble, nickel silver, and stone, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. James H. Clark, 1977.51.FA, © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

What is your favorite bit of nature around Dallas?
My favorite bit of nature is White Rock Lake.

What is your favorite poem?
Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver is my favorite poem at the moment.

Any advice for young artists out there?
There is a lot of advice you can give to a young artist, but the most valuable lesson is hard work and to never give up.

What is something you are looking forward to?
Having a bigger studio space to create more work.

What was the last thing you looked up on Wikipedia?
I don’t use Wikipedia, but I do use my smartphone to look up things. Recently, I looked up images by John Singer Sargent, because of a book I am now reading.

How long have you been drawing?
I started drawing as a child, but at the age of 13 I made the decision to become an artist.

Do you listen to music while you are working?
I listen to the classical station.

If you hadn’t become an artist, what career would you have chosen?
A biologist.

What are some words that you live by?
Everything will be okay.


Frances Bagley

Bagley is a Dallas-based sculptor and installation artist. Among numerous public art projects, and both Texas and national exhibitions, her work is included in the permanent collections of American Airlines, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the El Paso Museum of Art, Pepsi-Co, UT Arlington, and Southwestern Bell. Bagley is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Moss Chumley Award in 2011, the 10th Kajima Sculpture Exhibition in Tokyo in 2008, and the Jurors Award for the Texas Biennial in 2007.

Frances Bagley, Tiny Dancer, 2008, mixed media, Dallas Museum of Art, Charron and Peter Denker Contemporary Texas Art Fund, 2009.23, © Frances Bagley

Learn more about Bagley’s sculpture Tiny Dancer in the online collection.

If you could take one work of art from the DMA home, what would it be?
Isa Genzken’s sculpture Door (Tür).

Isa Genzken, Door (Tür), 1988, concrete and steel, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of The Rachofsky Collection and purchase through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2006.46, © Isa Genzken

What was the last thing you looked up on Wikipedia?
Billy Bob Thornton’s background.

What are some words that you live by?
“Tell the Truth.”

Any advice for young artists out there?
Becoming an artist is not a career choice. You should only do it if you have to and won’t be happy with any other choice.

What is something you are looking forward to?
Going to Maine this summer for Barry Whistler’s birthday party.

Favorite place you have traveled?
Tunisia.

Last book you read?
Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, edited by Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob.

If you hadn’t become an artist, what career would you have chosen?
See my answer to question #4. No other choice would have made me happy.

What is a daily ritual that you have?
Discussing the world with Tom Orr while having coffee every morning.

What material are you interested in working with next?
Oil paint.

What questions do you have for the artists? Drop by each Saturday to spend time with them in the galleries and learn about their creative process firsthand.

Jessie Carrillo is Manager of Adult Programs at the Dallas Museum of Art. 

Friday Photos: Touch But Don’t Look

Published June 19, 2015 Friday Photos 1 Comment
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Blind-folded touch-tour attendees experience Jurgen Bey's "Tree-Trunk Bench" (1999) in our Sculpture Garden.

Blind-folded touch-tour attendees experience Jurgen Bey’s “Tree-Trunk Bench” (1999) in our Sculpture Garden.

WARNING: Do not attempt a touch tour on your own–our trusty Gallery Attendants will stop you! However, on rare occasions (with a staff member present and the Conservation Department’s approval), you may be given permission to touch the art!

One such opportunity occurred this past Monday, June 15, when Amanda led a touch tour in our Sculpture Garden with painter John Bramblitt, who became blind in his late twenties. This tour was in tandem with the Arts & Letters Live program featuring Rebecca Alexander, author of Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found. Rebecca was diagnosed with Usher Syndrome Type III when she was 19 years old. This rare genetic disorder is causing her to slowly lose her vision and hearing.

Hearing both John and Rebecca’s inspiring stories, we thought it would be a great experience for a few of our visitors to learn what it is like to experience art with more than just their eyes. Amanda led a conversation focused on two different works of art and suggested techniques for exploring them with touch. We got to explore with our fingers Jurgen Bey’s Tree-Trunk Bench and Mark Handforth’s Dallas Snake.

Unfortunately, this is not something we can do all of the time. So don’t get any ideas!

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Madeleine Fitzgerald
Audience Relations Coordinator

Late Night Sketching Party

Published May 14, 2015 Creativity Closed
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Helmut mask (mukenga), mid-20th century, Dallas Museum of Art, gift in honor of Peter Hanszen Lynch and Cristina Martha Frances Lynch
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Miss Mary Pelham, c. 1757, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Michael L. Rosenberg

This call goes out to all of you who like to put a pencil to paper and draw! We invite you to join us during Late Night this Friday night, May 15, from 7:00 – 10:00 pm for an African Art Sketching Party. Artist Ellen Soderquist will host, guiding you in the process of sketching your favorite African artworks in the DMA’s collection. All ages and skills levels are welcome, and all materials will be provided.

If you leave your sketch with us (pretty please!), it will be included in a public exhibition this summer. That’s right, your work will be on view in the DMA! Visitors’ sketches of African art will be displayed during July and August on temporary construction walls built near the DMA’s African Gallery, which will close to the public in June for a reinstallation project. While the real artworks will not be on view for a few months, we look forward to sharing your sketches with the public this summer. Seeing things through the eyes of another can often enrich our own view of the world.

See you Friday at the Sketching Party!

Nicole Stutzman Forbes
Director of Education

Art Beyond Sight at the DMA

Published October 28, 2014 Access Programs , Art & Teaching 2 Comments
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October is nearly over and at the DMA we have had another fun month of Art Beyond Sight programing. This is our eighth year of presenting programs related to Art Beyond Sight and many of our programs focused on exploring works of art using senses other than vision. Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month, sponsored by Art Education for the Blind, is celebrated by over 250 cultural institutions all over the world and focuses on the idea that everyone must have access to the world’s visual arts in order to fully participate in his or her community. At the DMA, we hope to not only make our programs welcoming to visitors of all abilities, but to specifically raise awareness of making art accessible to people with vision impairment.

John Bramblitt talking about his artistic process with visitors in the studio.

John Bramblitt talking about his artistic process with visitors in the studio.

This year several of our programs for families, from First Tuesday to Arturo’s Art and Me related to Art Beyond Sight themes. Children had the chance to experience tables full of various textures and smells on First Tuesday and explore the galleries on a family tour focused on the senses. Toddlers explored texture in the African Art gallery and learned about Braille and raised line drawings. Even Arturo’s Nest, our space for children aged four and under, was stocked with toys and interactives that highlight the senses.

Sensory bins at First Tuesday
Smelling scents matching game
Sensory fun at First Tuesday

For several of our programs, we welcomed artist John Bramblitt, who has collaborated with us on ABS programming for the past 5 years. We love having John as an integral part to our programs; he is a favorite summer art camp special guest and often a featured artist at past large Museum-wide events. This year, John gave a gallery talk with an overview of his process as a painter who is blind. John focused on the way that he integrates music, texture, and even taste into his artwork. John brought several paintings and invited visitors to look closely–even to touch, something that is rare in an art museum!

John talking with a visitor during Late Night Studio Creations
John sharing his artwork with kids in the homeschool class
A homeschool participant and John discuss music and art

John also helped to lead Meaningful Moments, our program for visitors with Alzheimer’s disease. This is John’s fourth year to be a part of the program and he is definitely a crowd favorite! This year, we focused on immersing participants in a sensory experienced focused on two paintings in the American galleries. John shared how he integrates a sense of place into his landscapes and then participants described the paintings in detail to John, as he sketched their descriptions onto a Styrofoam sheet. Over the years, I have noticed that visitors give some of the best and most detailed descriptions of artwork when asked to share their thoughts with John–and his drawing of the described painting certainly amazes! To help immerse visitors into each artwork, we played related sounds, shared scents that connect to the paintings, and passed around tactile objects inspired by the works. In the studio, participants used numerous materials with a range of textures to create their own textural landscape.

Sharing scents during Meaningful Moments
A couple examines the drawing created by John
Using touch to feel textures related to artworks
Creating a textural landscape in the studio

For both Late Night Studio Creations and our homeschool program, John helped us to explore artwork with music. In the studio, participants listened to different elements of the same song (vocals, piano, or the percussion instruments) and imagined a color for the song before creating a shape or design with oil pastel using their chosen color. After gluing their shapes to a larger piece of paper, John played the song in its entirety and invited visitors to imagine a color for the song. Visitors used watercolor paint to paint over their shapes to create their own musical-inspired artworks. The process of cutting shapes and piecing them together was inspired by one of John’s recent studio experiments of cutting up and reassembling dried paint. For the homeschool program, we linked the musical studio activity to the galleries through a discussion with John about a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe that was inspired by music and movement.

Talking about music and art with John Bramblitt
Feeling tactile objects in the gallery
Listening to music and imagining color
Listening the the full song and painting the colors we hear
John’s guide dog Echo waiting patiently by his paintings

We have had so much fun with John this October for an enjoyable month of sensory exploration. For more information about the Art Beyond Sight programs at the DMA, please click here.

Amanda Blake
Head of Family, Access, and School Experiences

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O'Keeffe may be her name, but this artist's work has been long eclipsed by that of her famous sister. Now #IdaOKeeffe's distinct creative identity is getting the spotlight it deserves in "Ida O'Keeffe: Escaping Georgia's Shadow". Opening TODAY, discover uA remarkable performance by @dallasblackdance in our American Art Gallery with choreography inspired by artist Dorothy Austin’s “Slow Shuffle”. See more #DMANights highlights in our story! . . #MyDMA #DallasMuseumofArt #AmericanArt #Dance #DancePerformanc
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