March 27 - April 24, 2010

Opening Reception:
Friday, March 26, 6 - 8 p.m.

Brown Bag Gallery Tours:
Wednesday, March 31, noon
featuring Nancy Douthey, Sura Khudairi, and Richard Nix
Thursday, April 1, noon
featuring Debra Barrera, Robyn Lehmer, Tala Vahabzadeh, and Vanessa VanAlstyne
Wednesday, April 7, noon
featuring Geoff Hippenstiel, Grant C. MacManus, Anne J. Regan, and Keijiro Suzuki

What it means to be an artist is constantly in a state of flux. New technologies and innovative ways of thinking about art––as collecting and assembling, playful performance, culture jamming, and political action––are continually evolving and pushing artists to radically rethink their practice. The 2010 graduating class of the University of Houston School of Art Masters of Fine Arts program has risen to this challenge and seized the freedom offered by this persistent change. The School of Art continues to encourage students to think in an interdisciplinary way, and its graduates have embraced a multitude of media, from video to creative writing and sound installations. The artworks in this thesis exhibition are a testament to the artists’ bravery in pushing the boundaries of convention, and their desire to seek a meaningful engagement with their audiences.

Some artists draw inspiration from the winding paths they have taken to get where they are now.  Keijiro Suzuki, from Japan, uses his observations of American and Japanese rituals, beliefs, and histories to create a series of “fictitious facts” that conjure a politically charged, often absurd reality. Anne J. Regan was born along the Blues Trail, and her work is deeply rooted in that musical tradition, resonating with the sounds and legends of the American South. Sura Khudairi explores how cultural identity is woven into and expressed by fabric and cloth; as a woman of Muslim descent, she is particularly interested in humanizing individuals behind veils, hijabs, and burquas. The veil also plays a role in Tala Vahabzadeh’s installation, appearing in photographs that show how the conflicting worlds of tradition and modernity, the public and the personal , play themselves out in women’s lives in her native Iran.

Other artists create situations where the audience is asked to interact with and even complete their art. Richard Nix sets up a series of potentially explosive displays and scenarios that ask people to take control of his art and make it into whatever they want. Debra Barrera lays out an altar of common objects haunted by histories and poetic associations that tie into texts she has written on the walls; the combination of text and relics entices us to piece them together in association with our own memories. In her performances and video installations, Nancy Douthey draws people into her meditations through repetition, interruption, and disobedient action, and with humor prompts them to question their assumptions. Grant C. MacManus uses sound to craft a subtle interaction with viewers and direct them through space. Abstraction is a mode used by some artists to open our minds to new possibilities and to consider the intangible. Geoff Hippenstiel's paintings hover inconclusively between abstract brushstrokes and their source image and are gathered together in a salon-style hanging by the artist to evoke relationships and contrasts. Materials are metaphor in Robyn Lehmer's beautiful ceramic tiles, strong and heavy objects delicately strung together and suspended from the ceiling. Vanessa VanAlstyne alters found amateur video with reproductions of digital glitches, metaphorically cleansing the video and releasing its true digital nature, while the sound draws us into her pulsating images.

Rachel Hooper
Associate Curator
Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston

The 2010 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the University of Houston's Student Fees Advisory Committee.