For the Holiday Season: The Changing Seasons
Winter Exhibits: November 17 through February 6, 2012
The opening reception will take place onThursday evening, November 17, 2011 from 5:30 to 9 pm.
As we enter the holiday season the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts is pleased to present a new exhibit that reflects nostalgically on the changing seasons: The Seasons in an Earlier America: Selections from the Hosek Collection of American Art. In addition to the Hosek Collection a group of paintings from the estate of Mary Ellen Bunyard will be on display. The opening reception will take place onThursday evening, November 17, 2011 from 5:30 to 9 pm. and will coincide with Downtown San Angelo’s Artwalk. Refreshments will be served. There is no charge and the public is invited to attend.
Although our current era is a time of economic challenge there has probably never been a time in our country’s history when there weren’t challenges. Our nation however has always drawn strength from our attachment to the land, our traditions and our freedom and prosperity. This wonderful exhibit will highlight paintings that depict the changing seasons and scenes of everyday life and domesticity in an earlier time.
The Seasons in an Earlier America will feature over 30 works from the Howard “Chip” Hosek, Jr. Collection, an art collector from Pearland, Texas. These works will take the viewer through the various seasons of the year with such paintings as Spring in San Antonio by Porfirio Salinas and Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning by George Henry Durrie. Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) and his landscapes of the beautiful Hill Country is one of Texas’ best-loved artists. Spring in San Antonio, with its field of bluebonnets in the foreground leading back to hazy hills and a cloudy, pastel-tinged sky, is a wonderful example of this artist’s work. George Henry Durrie (1820-1863) was a Connecticut artist whose work emphasized the snowy, wintry scenes of New England. Many of his rural winter scenes became especially popular when they were reproduced as prints by Currier and Ives and his painting Winter in the County will have a familiarity to many viewers.
The Hosek collection concentrates on American art from 1850 to 1950 and numbers over 100 outstanding works. The collection includes a broad spectrum of styles and subject matter -- grand landscapes and intimate, indoor genre scenes as well as still life compositions and portraits. East coast painters of the Hudson River School with their atmospheric landscapes evoking the spiritual are found in JohnWilliam Casilear’s (1811-1923) Hudson River Valley and George Inness’ (1825-1894) The Five O’clock Train. The Texas landscape is also represented in the Hosek Collection not only with the Porfirio Salinas work but with Robert Wood’s Floral Spectrum, which brings to mind a Texas spring day in the Hill Country with its bright, clear light, rolling limestone hills, oak trees, cacti and of course the spreading fields of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush splashing across the foreground.
Other works in the collection include figures in the landscape such as Seaside Summers by Mable May Woodward (1877-1945). This New England artist used a light, bright palette and impressionistic brushwork and is known for her beach scenes. Likewise, Wisconsin artist Adam Emory Albright (1862-1957) also had an impressionistic style and painted in pastel tones and is known for his rural scenes, often of children at play such as A Day on the Lake showing two barefoot young children sitting on a rock overlooking a lake.
The Collection is particularly strong in American women artists such as Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1902). Her painting, Daydreams is a study of a female figure accompanied with elements suggesting both reverie and the transitory nature of things: flowing water, blooming flowers and green plants, and a beautiful young woman. Another woman artist in the Collection is Jennie Brownscombe (1850-1936) whose work, In Anticipation of the Invitation, complements the piece by Lilly Spencer.
American illustrators of the late 19th and the 20th centuries also have a strong presence in the collection, including Norman Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and Frank X. Leyendecker. A poignant N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), The Young Charles Lindbergh, is one highlight of the works of the illustrators, while Norman Rockwell’s (1894-1978) reworking of his earlier theme of boys chased from a swimming hole in No Swimming, c. 1953, shows the surprising pathos and insight the artist could bring to his magazine covers. Another sought after illustrator, Victor Coleman Anderson (1882-1937) had many cover commissions for such publications as Life and Colliers. He was well known for his circus scenes such as The Performers. The juxtaposition of the flowing orange tent top and softly luminescent blue sky together with orange highlights in the hair of the performers gives the whole circus scene an element of mystery and the unknown.
These are but a few highlights of the many wonderful paintings that will be on display at the Art Museum through the New Year. This exhibit should appeal to all family members and bring a note of cheer and warmth as we move through the holidays into the depths of winter. Sponsors for the exhibits include Claudia & Sonny Cleere and Patsy & Kirk Cleere. The exhibits will close on February 6, 2012.
For more information call the art museum at 653-3333.
19th San Angelo Ceramic Competition
Opening Reception: Friday, April 20, 2012
Exhibit Dates: April 20 - June 24, 2012
The competition is open to all artists who are residents of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. All work completed within the last 2 years, both functional and sculptural, is eligible.
Entries postmarked by February 1, 2012
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Jurors: Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio - the preeminent international dealers in 20th-century ceramics. They founded Garth Clark Gallery in Los Angeles in 1981 and opened a second space in New York, which they operated from 1983 to 2008. They now live in Santa Fe and work as private dealers. They have organized eight major international symposia on ceramic history and criticism, published numerous books and catalogs and received a number of prestigious awards, both lifetime achievement and honorary doctorates. |  |
| Garth Clark | Mark DelVecchio | |
Invited Artists: Kyle and Kelly Phelps -- identical twin brothers, who work collaboratively on their narrative work exploring the topics of race, class and the working man at their studio in Centerville, Ohio. They both received BFA's from Ball State University in Indiana and continued on to earn MFA degrees in Ceramics and Sculpture from the University of Kentucky. Kyle is Associate Professor of Art and head of the Ceramics area at the University of Dayton and Kelly is an Associate Professor of Art and head of the Sculpture area at Xavier University, both in Ohio.
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San Angelo Museum
of Fine Arts
One Love Street
San Angelo, Texas 76903
Fax: (325) 658 - 6800
Phone: (325) 653 -
3333
e-mail:
museum@samfa.org