This Side of Paradise:

New Photographic Work by Texas Artists

TALENT IN TEXAS VI

ARTISTS ON VIEW AT FOTOFEST
Christie Blizard (San Antonio)
Kasumi Chow & Desiree Espada (Dallas)
Bryan Florentin (Dallas)
Mary Margaret Hansen & Patsy Cravens (Houston)
Leigh Merrill (Dallas)
Michele Monseau (San Antonio)
Irby Pace (Dallas)
PROJECT B (Barbara Levine and Paige Ramey) (Houston)
Rolando Sepulveda (Austin)
Tom Turner (San Antonio)
Rodrigo Valenzuela (Houston)
Elise Weber (Houston)
Carlo Zinzi (Austin)

Installation view of Tom Turner's photographs for the exhibition This Side of Paradise at FotoFest. Photo courtesy of Nash Baker.

For the sixth edition of the biennial TALENT IN TEXAS series, organized by FotoFest and Houston Center of Photography (HCP), 23 artists from Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and Odessa present imagery that encompasses lens-based work — created by film and digital means — as well as photographic sculpture, collage, installation, performance, video and that which invokes audience participation.

The artists themselves range from M.F.A. candidates to those who have literally been in the darkroom for decades, along with a healthy dose of mid-careers, as well as those fresh from undergraduate or graduate study (including a current Core Fellow at the Glassell School, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).

Subject matter and aesthetics are equally wide-ranging —landscape, still life, portraiture, personal essay, new documentary work and a revisiting of the past, especially the rich tradition of vernacular photography — manifested in an array of attitudes and styles. Pop influences surface as do nuances from the cinema; there’s also an edge of Surrealism, alongside hyperrealism and a sense of manufactured, constructed or artificial reality, especially regarding nature, which here is either not natural or supernatural.

Landscape as metaphor, still life as a sign, portraiture as a portal, and a revisiting of the past as both a call to action and as a vehicle for time travel are some of the threads in the tapestry that is This Side of Paradise.

Like the book that its title is borrowed from, there’s a sense of romance, poetry and often buoyant possibilities. There are also injections of humor, a touch of the profound, a sense of transformation or the undertaking of a voyage to enchanted realms. Consequently, Yosemite’s mighty trees become screens for Day-Glo light shows (Tom Turner, at FotoFest) or a boy comes down from a perch in a trunk and begins a humble life where the mystical is present in the everyday (Nancy O’Connor, at HCP).

Or the portrait in a Victorian locket is super-sized (Michele Grinstead Griffiths, at HCP) while frankfurters sprout from a backyard tropical jungle (Carlo Zinzi, at FotoFest), a mockingbird’s plaintive call wafts above a fast-food establishment’s drive-through lane (Leigh Merrill, at FotoFest), or digital landscapes paradoxically possess the beauty of a piece of Tiffany Favrile glass (Michele Monseau, at FotoFest).

Watch for a saga of a pair of women on a Thelma and Louise-style caper, turning from dejected housewives to artists with cameras ready to soar into new creative worlds (Mary Margaret Hansen and Patsy Cravens, at FotoFest), and work as well as a performance, by a talent who cleverly inserts herself into Good Morning America and Today show audiences (Christie Blizard, at FotoFest). Then puffs of smoke seemingly waft from Merlin’s wand, appearing on the Marfa horizon (Irby Pace, at FotoFest), and a saucy pony tail placed against an expansive color-field of daisy yellow (Kasumi Chow and Desiree Espada, at FotoFest).

Meanwhile, there’s an intriguing amalgamation of architecture, roadside and nature (Rodrigo Valenzuela, at FotoFest) and also an inquiry into the Westward expansion and manifest destiny (Bryan Florentin, at FotoFest), counterbalanced by a personal journey and voyage into family history, juxtaposed with the wide-open spaces and natural wonders of the American West (Delaney Allen, at HCP). And a pair of collaborators raids the refrigerator of vernacular photography to construct a shared narrative inspired by the trope of the horizon and its infinite possibilities (Project B, at FotoFest).

Still life and objects as tools for mining identity bubble up as a topic (Rolando Sepulveda, at FotoFest), as do gender constructs circling around the notion of Southern ladies (Elise Weber, at FotoFest). The rich vein of contemporary portraiture and the techniques of 19th-century photography conflate (Steve Goff, at HCP), while a lakeside retreat for a middle-class family, where the body of water is gradually disappearing, becomes a new documentary subject for the meaning of place for an American family (Jack McGilvray, at HCP). And a mining of portraiture alongside still life evokes moments that can only be described as cinematic (Lané Pittard, at HCP). Rounding it all out, the audience interacts with decks of lyrical images, which function as talismans for an exchange of ideas, ritual and mystery (Julie Ledet, at HCP).

Catherine D. Anspon
Exhibition Curator and Executive Editor, Visual Arts/Features, PaperCity Magazine

About the artists
Christie Blizard (San Antonio)
Christie Blizard is an assistant professor of painting and drawing at the University of Texas at San Antonio. As an exhibiting artist, working in a variety of media merging painting and drawing with social engagement practices, since 2006, Blizard’s work has been featured in over seventy national and international exhibitions, including shows curated by renowned art figures such as Mel Chin; Pradip Malde; Dr. Charissa Terranova, assistant professor of aesthetic studies and director of Centraltrak Artist Residency at the University of Texas at Dallas; Rene Barilleaux, chief curator at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; Carter Foster, curator of drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Heather Pesanti, assistant curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and Antoine Guerrero, director of exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York.

Recent exhibitions include Austin’s Texas Biennial 2011 and 2013, curated by Virginia Rutledge; New American Paintings juried exhibitions-in-print, edition 96, West; and solo exhibitions at Lawndale Center for Art, Houston, and Women and Their Work, Austin. Other recent residencies and fellowships include the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire; and Centraltrak Artist Residency at the University of Texas at Dallas, and The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists (SIM) Reykjavik. Blizard’s seven-hour performance piece at the 2013 Texas Biennal in Houston was highlighted in an Art in America article “Bigger and Better: The 2013 Texas Biennial.”

Kasumi Chow & Desiree Espada (Dallas)
Kasumi Chow is a photo-artist based in Dallas, Texas. She graduated from the University of North Texas, Denton with a B.F.A. in photography. She has participated in group shows locally and has been featured in several online exhibitions, most recently through Womanorial.com. Her photographic work focuses on twenty-first-century femininity.

Desiree Michelle Espada lives in Dallas, Texas. She is one of four 2012 Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund Award recipients from the Dallas Museum of Art. Espada has assisted many great photographers including Ryan McGinley, Joanna McClure, Marc Alain, and more. Her work looks at female identity, coming of age, and collections.

Bryan Florentin (Dallas)
Bryan Florentin approaches photography and installation in various ways, often exploring the ontological/phenomenological aspects of images and objects. In recent years, his work has been exhibited in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Cincinnati, Houston and Dallas.

An active member of the Society of Photographic Education (SPE), he’s currently chair of the south-central region. He has served on several SPE committees including the peer review, various national and regional conference committees and an ad hoc committee to define the structure of the LGBTQ caucus. In 2013, he curated and wrote the catalogue essay for the exhibition Materiality and Identity: Garth Amundson, Pierre Gour, and Paho Mann of the Gallery at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). Florentin is a senior lecturer at UTA. He holds an M.F.A. in photography from the University of North Texas, Denton and a B.A. in art and performance from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Mary Margaret Hansen & Patsy Cravens (Houston)
Mary Margaret Hansen is a long-time Houstonian who raised three feminist daughters and calls Houston’s East End home. She took her first photography class at Cornell University, and later, studied with George Krause, Geoff Winningham, Peter Brown and Paul Hester. For decades, Hansen pursued parallel careers as a visual artist and a leader in organizations committed to public school education, urban renewal and economic development. In 2007, she became a full-time artist/writer. In 2011, as lead artist for Houston Arts Alliance’s civic art project for the City of Houston’s new permitting center, she selected and worked with fellow artists on site-specific work that focused on recycling and Houston’s cultural diversity. In 2009, she created Second Seating, a multi-media installation made with recycled materials and invited six other artists to participate in the project. Hansen exhibited during FotoFest in 1986, 1988, 2000, and 2004.

Patsy Cravens is a native Houstonian with lifelong interests in the arts and conservation. She began to photograph in the late 1970s, studying under George Krause, Geoff Winningham and Peter Brown in Houston, and in workshops with Duane Michels, Judy Dater and Cole Weston. In 1996, she produced and directed Coming Through Hard Times, a sensitive oral history documentary of her rural Colorado County, Texas neighbors, shown locally and nationally on select PBS stations. The film received several awards, including the Texas Award for best film at the USA Short Film and Video Festival, Dallas. Cravens’ photographic portraits and stories of her neighbors were published in 2006 as Leavin’ a Testimony, Portraits from Rural Texas, University of Texas Press.

Cravens’ photographs are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has shown at McMurtrey and Mancini Galleries in Houston, Houston Center for Photography, and in Mama Says…, a group exhibition held in conjunction with FotoFest 2000. Finding Our Way, made visible with a camera is the first time that the photographs taken with Mary Margaret Hansen, will be exhibited as a collaborative endeavor.

Leigh Merrill (Dallas)
Leigh Merrill received her B.F.A. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque and her M.F.A. from Mills College, Oakland, California. Merrill’s work has been a part of exhibitions throughout the U.S. in venues such as the Phoenix Art Museum; the diRosa Art Preserve, Napa, California; The Lawndale Art Center, Houston; Tremaine Gallery, The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Connecticut; and the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Ana, California.

Leigh Merrill was a part of the 2011 Fotographia Festival Internazionale di Roma, Galleria Gallerati, Rome, Italy. Merrill’s work has been included in online publications such as the Design Observer’s Places Journal and BLDGBLOG. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the City of Phoenix, Arizona; California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco; and various private collections. Merrill was born in 1978 and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She currently lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

Michele Monseau (San Antonio)
Michele Monseau was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, and lives and works in San Antonio, Texas. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). A professional working artist, educator, and founder/director/curator of Three Walls Gallery, San Antonio since 1999, Monseau is currently a new media instructor at UTSA. In 2014, she received an Idea Fund Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for The Visual Art to support an exchange with artists and curators in Mexico City. Monseau has also been the recipient of the Creative Capital Artists Retreat Grant and the Artpace Travel Grant.

Some of her recent group exhibitions include: XIV Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Universidad de Caldas, Manizales, Columbia; Nature, Nurture, Torture, Sala Jesús Gallardo, Instituto de Cultura de León, León, Mexico; Numinous Inscriptions, Loop Video Festival, MauMau Gallery in Barcelona, Spain; One Thing I Know For Sure, O’Kane Gallery, Houston, TX; ARTspace, 2015 College Art Association conference, New York; swingsong (purplerain), McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Polvo Chicago; and Box 13 Gallery, Houston and a solo exhibition Gone Again II at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, San Antonio.

Irby Pace (Dallas)
Irby Pace was born in Odessa, Texas. He earned his B.F.A., in photography, at Texas Tech University, in 2008 and his M.F.A. from The University of North Texas, Denton, in 2012.

His work has been featured in Wired Magazine, The Huffington Post, Ripley’s Believe it or Not among many other websites, blogs, and online magazines. Pace’s work was featured on the cover of the November 2013 issue of The Dallas Observer. In 2012, he was awarded “The Best of 2012: Best Art Heist” and was considered one of “The 12 Most Newsworthy Moments of 2012.” He was a 2012–2013 member of 500x, Texas’ oldest, largest artist-run cooperative gallery.

Pace is an adjunct professor at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas and at El Centro Community College, Dallas where he teaches photography and digital art. He also teaches photography, web design, and multi-media photography at The Art Institute of Fort Worth.

PROJECT B (Barbara Levine & Paige Ramey) (Houston)
Barbara Levine is an artist, collector and curator specializing in vernacular photography, unusual collections and artist’s projects. She is the author of Finding Frida Kahlo (2009), Around the World: The Grand Tour in Photo Albums (2007), and Snapshot Chronicles: Inventing the American Photo Album (2006), all published by Princeton Architectural Press. Her collection of early vernacular photograph albums are in the permanent collection at the International Center of Photography in New York. Trained as a photographer at the San Francisco Art Institute followed by a graduate degree in museology, Ms. Levine served as deputy director of The Contemporary Jewish Museum, and as exhibitions director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Paige Ramey has an extensive background in the production and preservation of pre-digital and time-based media. During her fifteen years as programs director at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), she directed a seminal program in the field of analog video preservation, working with museum conservators, archivists, and the Library of Congress to establish conservation practice standards for video repositories throughout the world. She is the writer/director of Playback: Preserving Analog Video, an interactive DVD set funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Her formative experience as a videographer in New York’s alternative dance/performance heyday—documenting influential artists such as Elizabeth Streb and Yvonne Rainer—has fueled her lifelong commitment to preserve and distribute unique cultural expressions of a pre-digital world.

Rolando Sepulveda (Austin)
Rolando Sepulveda was born in 1992 in San Antonio, Texas and is currently based in Austin, Texas, where he graduated from St. Edward’s University and continues to work as an image-maker.

Tom Turner (San Antonio)
Texas native, Tom Turner, became fascinated with the photographic image during his undergraduate studies at McMurry University, Abilene, Texas. Growing up in Sweetwater exposed Turner, at an early age, to the stark landscape that is West Texas. While attending The Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, California, Turner began exploring the concept of investigation through the photographic image, themes which remain evident in his work today. Upon completing his education in California, he ventured back to Texas where he worked in the newspaper publishing industry for four years. Deciding to pursue a career change lead him to Lubbock, where he attend Texas Tech University and obtained an M.F.A. in photography. Currently, Turner lives in San Antonio, where he is a resident artist and co-director of Clamp Light Artist Studios and Gallery as well as teaching several courses as an adjunct professor.

Rodrigo Valenzuela (Houston)
Rodrigo Valenzuela completed an art history degree in Chile and worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States. He completed an M.F.A. at the University of Washington in 2012 and is currently a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Selected recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (2015), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile (2015), Upfor Gallery, Portland, Oregon (2015), Envoy Enterprises, New York, (2015), CUAC, Salt Lake City, UT (2015), Archer Gallery, Vancouver, Washington (2014), and Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle (2013).

Rodrigo Valenzuela has participated in residencies at Skowhegan, Maine; Bemis Center, Nebraska; Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; and Vermont Studio Center, Vermont. Valenzuela is the recipient of the Artist Trust’s Arts Innovator Award (2014), the Texas Contemporary Award (2014) and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts grant (2013). His work is in numerous private and institutional collections in the United States.

Elise Weber (Houston)
Born in California, raised in Alabama, Elise Weber studied photography at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas to receive her B.F.A. Awarded a Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fellowship, Weber is continuing her education at the University of Houston as a graduate teaching fellow. The recipient of numerous scholarships and awards she has exhibited across Texas. Weber’s interdisciplinary work discusses issues of feminine traditions and female identity in today's society.

Carlo Zinzi (Austin)
Carlo Zinzi received his M.F.A. from The University of Texas at Dallas, with a concentration in photography. Prior formal education consists of coursework completed at The University of North Texas, Denton (UNT). He currently teaches studio photography courses at Austin Community College and has formerly taught photography at UNT. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States and was formerly represented by Cris Worley Fine Arts in Dallas. He has received numerous awards and publications for his work.

ARTISTS ON VIEW AT HOUSTON CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
Delaney Allen (Dallas), Steve Goff (Odessa), Michele Grinstead Griffiths (Houston), Julie Ledet (San Antonio), Jack McGilvray (San Antonio), Nancy O’Connor (Houston), Lané Pittard (Dallas)

FOTOFEST 2014-2015 ART PROGRAM SEASON SPONSORS
Houston Endowment Inc; City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; National Endowment for the Arts; Texas Commission on the Arts; The Wortham Foundation; FotoFest Board of Directors; Judith and Gamble Baldwin; Robert Gerry III; William and Rosalie Hitchcock; HexaGroup; Houston Public Media; and iLand Internet Solutions; and Silver Street Studios

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