Christine DeVitt exhibition hall
SOUTHWEST COLLECTION/MILLENNIAL COLLECTION PROFESSIONAL WORKS
Group photography exhibition
november 1, 2008-january 15, 2009
Curated by Rick Dingus and Patricia Earl and assisted by Jonathan D. Baker and Emily Nash, this exhibition will feature works from the Milliennial Collection of photography held by the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University. Seen above are works by Peter Brown (left), Steve Fitch (middle) and Peter Brown (right).
The Millennial Collection is a joint documentary project between Texas Tech University’s School of Art and the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. The collection is permanently held at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library and consists of individual portfolios by professional and student photographers. Conceived as an open time capsule that will be added to continually, the Millennial Collection aims to serve as a catalyst for learning and communication within and between communities. Investigating all sides of the photographer-subject-audience triangle, this archive will remain open and interactive in various ways to invite questions about interpretation that engage regional, global, temporal, natural, and cultural aspects with respect to a changing Sense of Place.
The School of Art’s documentary photography class, and the resulting images that reside in the Millennial Collection, are in part a response to the history collected at the Southwest Collection. In studying the Southwest Collection’s holdings students begin to understand how photographs function as historical records. It is from the Southwest Collection that students are prompted to begin to question and experiment with the variables of time, place, representation, contextual information (included or excluded), personal experience, changing frames of reference, and the challenges inherent in assigning meaning to photographic images.
Since its implementation in 2000, the Millennial Collection has grown to include over 1,500 documentary works, including photographs, artist books, and digital video documentaries.
Helen DeVitt Jones Studio Gallery
3RD ANNUAL "THE NEW WEST" EXHIBITION
Bob Chennault
Theresa "Duck" Martin
Milton "Mac" Rowley
Julie Storey
august 30-september 27, 2008
This exhibition, scheduled annually each September in conjunction with and to honor Lubbock’s yearly National Cowboy Symposium, focuses on four Lubbock artists with a traditional artistic approaches to depicting ‘the West.’ Each year, "The New West" explores local and regional artistic approaches to the portrayal of the West in contemporary visual art through the work of artists who focus on this genre, either solely or as a key component in their art. In years past, this exhibition has taken a look at local contemporary Western art (including Bryan and Jeff Wheeler and Scott White, to name a few) and sponsored an all-women local contemporary Western art exhibition (including Trish Earl, Carol Flueckiger and Future Akins, with several others) in 2007.
Curated this year by included artist Julie Storey, this exhibition examines traditional artistic approaches to depicting the West and will feature Storey’s and Bob Chenault’s paintings, Theresa “Duck” Martin’s bronze and wooden sculpture and Milton “Mac” Rowley’s photography. Each view of ‘the West’ as these artists see and define it in their various media reveals the culture and iconography associated with that term—what it meant yesterday and how it continues to shape our culture today.
Storey is an artist who teaches art in the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Lubbock High, which is a comprehensive curriculum that responds to the need for greater challenge for highly motivated high school students. Her students exhibit their work annually in March of each year at LHUCA as part of the requirements to receive an advanced diploma upon completion of the IB program. In her free time, Storey paints and writes. She has exhibited her portrait, wildlife and landscape paintings in Germany, her native country, and throughout the U.S. She says that in her past 50 years as a Texas, she has truly come to believe that “the Eyes of Texas are truly upon you.” She has always been intrigued that the vast, flat, desolate landscape of West Texas, so completely opposite in geography from the scenic German Rhineland in which she was born and spent her childhood, has been “the indigenous wellspring of the tremendous amount of talented artists who were born or lived here.”
Chennault is a self-taught Lubbock artist. His work is known throughout Texas and New Mexico, and his subject matter ranges from landscapes to still-lifes to Western motifs. He has traveled with the prestigious Texas Wild Bunch, a group of professional artists recognized throughout the state. Chennault’s love for art began as a young child and has grown two-fold as he continues to paint into his 70s. He has received many awards and has a large following of private collectors. Chennault says he’s convinced that ‘someone’ helps him to succeed as an artist, and both credits and thanks a Higher power and his wife of 45 years who died in 2000 for all that he has accomplished.
Martin is a sculptor and retired art teacher for Lubbock Independent School District whose work was most recently seen in the “100 Years of Art in Lubbock” Centennial exhibition at LHUCA that closed on July 15 of this year. A native of West Texas, Martin grew up in a true Western lifestyle, and her work is an obvious reflection of this background. An avid horse rider, Martin frequents rodeos and horse shows, where she often finds ideas for future works. Her horses have been subjects for numerous sculptures, many of which are in museum collections. Private collectors of Martin’s work include Roy and Dale Rogers and actor Barry Corbin.
Rowley, a Lubbock physician specializing in plastic surgery, grew up in Clovis, New Mexico and has been photographing the Southwest since his early teens. The majority of his artistic work is landscape photography, and of this subject matter he says, “There are also places I return to again and again, because I am intrigued or haunted by them, because there is a pulse that beckons.” Among such places that he lists