Outside of New York

Spencer Evans is a Dallas-based artist who uses bold colors and dynamic gestures to create portraits that question the African-American identity. Originally from Houston, he earned a BFA from the University of Missouri and an MFA from the University of Texas at Arlington. Evans drew critical praise last year for his first solo show at Dallas’ Conduit Gallery entitled “I Am Because We Are”. The series was the product of research to explore the differences between Black Americans and Nigerian Africans. Examining his ancestral lineage which he traced to Nigeria and Cameroon, the artist worked with the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary and Bowen University to engage on-site interviews in Nigeria. The discussions focused on identity and social constructs looking for differences between Nigerians and the millions of African descendants living in the United States. In the end, Evans encountered a shift of his own point of view as he discovered many similarities between the Nigerians he met and the Black Americans he knew at home. This shift became the basis for his visual exploration of the topic.

I recently sat down with Spencer at his studio in Dallas where we discussed growing up in Houston, playing college football, understanding one’s identity, code switching and challenging preconceptions.

Benito Huerta is an artist, and a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington where he has been Director and Curator of The Gallery at UTA since 1997. Huerta received a B.F.A. at the University of Houston and his Masters at New Mexico State University. He was Co-founder, Executive Director and Emeritus Board Director of Art Lies, a Texas Art Journal. As a curator, he has organized surveys and retrospectives of Mel Chin, John Hernandez, Luis Jimenez, Dalton Maroney, and Celia Alvarez Munoz. As a painter, Huerta specializes in large-scale oils that utilize pop culture and historical art references to explore the juxtaposition of death and beauty. In addition to painting, Huerta also creates three-dimensional work. He has completed public works projects which include DFW International Airport, the Mexican-American Cultural Center in Austin, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Houston Metropolitan Transit and Fort Worth’s South Main Street Public Art Project. In 2002, the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art awarded Huerta with its Legend Award. His work is included in the Menil Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, the Art Museum of South Texas and the National Museum of Mexican Art, as well a variety of private and public collections.

I recently sat down with Benito at his home studio near the UTA campus where we discussed growing up in Corpus Christi, decades in curation, beauty, death, chalupas, and booking the Rolling Stones.

Riley Holloway is a Dallas-based artist whose dynamic portraits capture the faces of the world around him. A 2015 Hunting Prize finalist, he has attended The Art Institute of Dallas, the Florence Academy of Art, and the University of Texas in Arlington. In 2013, Holloway completed a unique residency at The Fairmont in Dallas, which was accompanied by a solo exhibition in the hotel’s gallery at the completion of his time there. He has been in a number of group exhibitions and repeatedly featured in solo exhibitions at Fort Works Art in Fort Worth. In addition, he completed a prominent public art mural commission for a municipal court building in downtown Fort Worth and was recently added to the Dean Collection, a contemporary art collection owned by hip hop producer Kasseem Dean (AKA Swizz Beatz) and his wife, singer-songwriter Alicia Keys.

I recently sat down with Riley at his studio in Dallas where we discussed growing up in an artistic home, studying in Florence, the impact of the right artist residency and what it’s like to have Sedrick Huckaby as your mentor.

Dornith Doherty is an artist whose work stimulates conversations around the world’s ever-changing ecology. A native of Houston, she obtained her BFA from Rice University and her MFA in Photography from Yale. She currently resides in Southlake, Texas and is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, where she has been on the faculty since 1996. Dornith is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow and has received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the United States Department of the Interior, among many others. In addition, she was recognized by the Texas State Legislature as the 2016 Texas State Artist for 2D work. Doherty’s work has been exhibited extensively domestically and abroad and can be found in the permanent collections of prominent institutions such as the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her project entitled “Archiving Eden” looked at the infrastructure around the preservation of the world’s plant life through the utilization of seed banks, as well as looking at the inner beauty of the seeds themselves. That work drew the attention of major media outlets and resulted in a host of artist talks around the world, including TEDx Monterey.

I recently sat down with Dornith at her current show at Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas where we discussed growing up in Houston, the rigors of the Yale MFA, man’s impact on the environment, photographing the world seed bank vault in the arctic, backyard coyotes and the future of the banana.

Camp Bosworth is a Marfa-based artist who utilizes wood carving to create sculptures and paintings that reflect the world around him. Often carved and sometimes gilded in gold and silver, these pieces almost always utilize scale to create humor and interest. A native-Texan, Camp received his BFA in painting from the University of North Texas and worked in Dallas until relocating to Marfa in 1999. Camp has since become one of the de facto artists of record in the West Texas art mecca. The themes he explores range from drug cartels to boom boxes to the small-town-Texas Dairy Queen. He regularly exhibits his work throughout the Southwest, including the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie where I was recently able to sit down with Camp to discuss growing up in Texas, the influence of Claes Oldenburg, why it’s better to go big, how Marfa has evolved over the last twenty years, the oddities of interacting with busloads of tourists, giant gilded guns and steak finger baskets.

Maggie Adler is Curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, where she organizes exhibitions that explore the breadth of American art that exists within and outside of the museum’s collection. A native of rural New York, she received her higher education at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts where she obtained a BA in classical languages and art history and a Masters in art history. Prior to the Amon Carter, Maggie held positions at Williams College Museum of Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, as well as a fellowship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In addition to her curatorial duties, she also serves as co-chair for the Association for the Historians of American Art. Though her research focuses on nineteenth-century art, she is also passionate about collaborating with contemporary artists to create large-scale commissions and has worked with Jenny Holzer, Pepon Osorio, and Gabriel Dawe on site-specific installations. She is currently planning a major commission with artist Mark Dion and collaborating on a traveling exhibition pairing Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington.

I recently sat down with Maggie in the main gallery of the Amon Carter where we discussed her attraction to Williams College, her love of Winslow Homer, the color theory of Michel Eugène Chevreul, her winding career path, what makes the Amon Carter unique, and finding contemporary work that fits within the museum’s narrative.

Sara Cardona is a Dallas-based artist who creates abstract collages and reliefs. These pieces, which often evoke organic shapes and forms, draw inspiration from colors and textures found in a diverse variety of media. Originally from Mexico City, Sara has spent the majority of her life in and around Dallas. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, she spent a year at the Kansas City Art Institute before receiving her Bachelors from the University of Texas in Austin. Sara later received her MFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and completed a residency at the renowned Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is currently completing a PhD in Aesthetic Studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. After fifteen years of teaching arts related courses at Richland College, Sara recently took on an arts administration role at Teatro Dallas. Her work is consistently included in solo and group exhibitions throughout Texas and she is represented in Dallas by Kirk Hopper Fine Art.

I recently sat down with Sara at her home-studio in Oak Cliff where we discussed growing up in a family of creatives, returning to one’s roots, carving out time for one’s craft, the evolving art scene in Dallas, Bangladeshi movie posters, and her grandfather’s relationship with Diego Rivera.

Bruce and Julie Webb have owned and operated the Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas since 1987. The art gallery is a destination for collectors worldwide who share the Webb’s fondness of art in its rawest and most authentic form. Bruce funneled the eccentricities of his family’s history and a childhood combing through flea markets to develop a love for the odd, handmade and unique. He and Julie have worked over the last 30 years to curate an aesthetic that recognizes contemporary folk art that in Bruce’s words “feels like it’s from another planet.” The couple’s world-class collection of art from fraternal organizations (like the Masons and Odd Fellows) led to Bruce co-authoring a fully-illustrated book on the subject in 2016 titled As Above, So Below: Art of the American Fraternal Society, 1850-1930. The Webbs are a household name in the world of “outsider art” and are participants each year in New York’s Outsider Art Fair.

I recently sat down with Bruce and Julie at their gallery where we discussed flea markets, punk rock, Free Masonry, hobos, folk art, the uniqueness of Waxahachie, their friendship with David Byrne, and spending half the year on the road finding treasures.

Nancy Lamb is a long-admired artist that has been a fixture in the Fort Worth art and social scene for decades. A native of Fort Worth, she chose to stay close to home by studying art at Texas Christian University. Nancy first gained recognition in her hometown through a series of art classes that she taught at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History which included her production of 3D work. But Nancy is probably best known for her large-scale oil paintings of candid Fort Worth society scenes. These paintings can be found in exhibitions at home and worldwide, such as the Florence Biennale, as well as being a popular choice in private and corporate collections. Nancy is represented in Fort Worth by Artspace 111.

I recently sat down with Nancy at her home studio where we discussed growing up in Fort Worth, the disappearance of small town Texas culture, the upkeep of her four acres, going to parties, experiencing loss and what to do with thirty years of photographs.

Nic Nicosia is an internationally-recognized artist who recently returned to Dallas after ten years in Santa Fe. Nic gained notoriety in the early eighties as one of the leaders of the staged photography movement. He has been selected for the Whitney Biennial twice – once for his photography and once for a film. He has also been selected for participation in Documenta, the Kassel, Germany-based art exhibition which gathers the best of the art world for site specific works every five years. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, amongst many others. He has been the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston hosted a 20-year retrospective in 1999 which subsequently travelled to other venues; and in 2012, a major retrospective of his life’s work was published by the University of Texas Press. Nic is represented in Dallas by Erin Cluley Gallery.

I recently sat down with Nic at his home studio where we discussed growing up in Dallas, studying filmmaking, being part of a movement, the changing art world in Santa Fe, the willingness to continue to try new things, and the measurement of time.