Pam Knox and Karen Smith at Darke

The images below are from Karen Smith's exhibition at Darke Gallery located at 5321 Feagan and Detering in the New Military area of Houston. "Joe" is the name of her exhibition....and "Joe" is the character who takes stage in all Karen's paintings with his or her many configurations and multiples .
Except that Joe is really just the name for the iconic type character populating Karen's images. Sometime Joe is female, other times, Joe is male. Sometimes there are three Joes and sometimes there are eight.
One liners of sorts, these 10" x 10" acrylic paintings are fun. Together in this grouping one thinks of running narrative but "Joe"doesn't speak that way here. Each image is more its own entity and not related speifically to the story in the images to its right or left....well, except it is "Joe" having all the fun. You gotta see!


Karen with some of the guests at the Saturday reception....a cup of "Joe."

Below are works some of the paintings by artist Pam Knox also at Darke Gallery. She works acrylic and mixed media in both her paintings and three dimentional pieces.

Left: Codes, 40" x 30", Center: 0, 60" x 48" and Right: 28, 40" x 30".

L. The title is 28 and is 40" x 30"....and one of my favorites. The pedestal pieces
are titled 776. They remind me of sentinels standing guard. I like these too. Sizes of the pedestals are 48" x 5" 12" , 72" x 6" x 6", and 65" x 8" x 8".
This exhibition runs through April.

Conference Post, Late But Not Forgotten

Late to report (life happens) but here it is.
In Dallas this year, the conference, as usual, was crammed with interesting on-site and off-site programs and presentations that made it difficult to choose just which session or what program to attend.
Highlights for me were he retrospective of J.M.W. Turner was at the Dallas Museum of Art. Wonderful! And by-the-way, this exhibition is up through May 18.
I was particularly pleased to see sessions by artists working in wax...Divas and Iron Chefs, in particular, was a great panel and session. Divas and Iron Chefs is the title of a traveling exhibition of work from artists who range in age, gender and age; who hail from different parts of the United States and whose work presents a variety of messages. The tie that binds is that all the work in this exhibition is made with wax in some way. They began with a gallery talk at their exhibition at The MAC (McKinney Avenue Contemporary) on Wednesday evening.
All artists were in attendance though some came running in just in the nick of time because of flight delays. The MAC, by-the-way, is a great space in Dallas
Divas and Iron Chefs panel session at the conference hotel on Thursday afternoon, included all exhibiting artists as well as Joanne Mattera, (artist, instructor, curator, author) whose topic was Contemporary Encaustic Painting and Richard Frumess, owner and co-founder of RFPaints, whose topic was Encaustic Painters in Ancient Times.
On Friday morning some of the artists held a hands-on workshop at an off-site campus.

This announcement is from Pegasus News:
Curated by Reni Gower of Virginia Commonwealth University, the exhibit features contemporary encaustic paintings from eight artists representing Canada and the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast regions of the United States. Made from pigment, melted beeswax and resin, encaustic paint is fixed with heat after it is applied to the canvas. While an ancient technique, the exhibition highlights the diversity of hot-wax painting, produced in a detailed, sensuous style with exquisite beauty. Once an obsolete technique, encaustic (hot wax) is now recognized both for its exquisite beauty and incredible versatility. The featured artists include Kristy Deetz, Peter Dykhuis, Lorraine Glessner, Cheryl Goldsleger, Reni Gower, Heather Harvey, Jeffrey Hirst and Timothy McDowell are among those who helped turn this legendary paint of the Fayum mummy portraits into a mainstream contemporary medium.

Another personal highlight was the collaborative exhibition of the two newly formed Texas WAX groups in Houston and Dallas. The opening reception was Friday night at Collaborating Artists Media Projects...CAMP. It was exciting for me to finally meet the artists in the Dallas group and see their work in person. See images at TexasWAX/Houston site.
A big THANKS to CAMP for hosting our exhibition and to Deanna Wood, founder of TexasWAX/Dallas and that whole group who did all the ground work for this project.

Heading to Dallas

Next week promises to be busy with the CAA Conference taking up most of the week. I look forward to all the professional stimulation but mostly to visiting with friends I haven't seen in a while and to making new ones.
Our TexasWAX/Houson-Dallas exhibition coincides with the conference. The reception is Friday night, the 22nd, from 6-8 p.m. I am excited about meeting the artists in the Dallas group who did all the ground work for this exhibition. Congratulations to them all and many thanks from us here in Houston for all their efforts.

Other news to report is that I have been chosen as one of the finalist for The Hunting Art Prize, the winner of which will be announced May 3, 2008 in Houston. I don't know at this time the number of finalists in this year's group but last time there were 104 finalists chosen. Competition is steep and I am honored to be one of the artists selected this year.