'Trio' Faculty Show Opens Sept. 6 in Currey Gallery
Watkins College of Art, Design & Film presents Trio, a mixed media exhibition featuring work from faculty artists Cody Arnall, Adán De La Garza and Alethea Norene, from September 6–28 in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery on campus.
The exhibit’s opening reception, from 5:30 to 8 p.m on Thursday, September 6, is free and open to the public.
Cody Arnall is Visiting Faculty in the Fine Art department, teaching 3-D design. Since earning a BFA from Oklahoma State University and an MFA from Louisiana State University, he has exhibited his sculptural pieces, which subvert the contextual boundaries of familiar objects, in multiple shows in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Ireland.
“The combining of even the most disparately related items will allow us to formulate new meanings or metaphors for the shapes due to the merging of their original individual purposes. I examine this with my sculptural works that explore the union of commonplace domestic and industrial objects…I am interested in the absurdity of obstructing function and creating unexpected associations between things.”
Adán De La Garza, who has joined the Photography department as Visiting Faculty, will exhibit a sound performance entitled “Methods for Composing Random Compositions.” He graduated with a BFA in Photography from the University of Tucson and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and has participated in exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The New School (New York), and the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art.
Adán De La Garza’s sound performance works explore the territory between socially accepted auditory norms, the act of democratizing audio, and sonic warfare. He does so by inflicting sound upon himself and others as a preparatory measure to usurp the increasing power of the sonic hostility of authoritarian culture. In “Methods for Composing Random Compositions,” he serves the same purpose as the objects do and his function within these performances is just as important as the objects that are being activated or utilized. There is no ordered structure to the compositions and none could ever be repeated in the same order. The performances could happen again and though similar sounds may emerge, none would maintain the structure of any previous rendition.
Visiting Faculty Alethea Norene, who teaches 4-D design in the Fine Arts department, is exhibiting archival digital photographs and a video taken from a larger project, Truth or Consequences. She holds a BFA in Photography from Watkins and an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and has exhibited in galleries in San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, New York, Portland, Maine, and throughout Nashville. Norene recently completed a residency at the Starry Night artists’ retreat in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and the work on display in Trio documents her time in the area researching alternative healing practices.
The photographs document a specific healer’s lifestyle and how he balances a contemporary home with century-old healing beliefs from a variety of cultures. The video recalls my exchange with him when I accepted his offer for a free healing session with dinner to follow.
Currey Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m.; and Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, visit www.Watkins.edu.
Watkins is located at 2298 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard in MetroCenter. Free parking is available in the campus lot.