PAST EXHIBITIONS
2022
Drawn to Communities
Earlie Hudnall, Jr.
Art League Houston 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts
On View: September 16 - December 4, 2022 I Main Gallery
PRESS
Houston Chronicle - Essay: Why Earlie Hudnall’s ‘Flipping Boy’ is the definitive photograph of Houston
Glasstire - Learn About Art League Houston’s Lifetime Achievement Awardee, Earlie Hudnall, Jr.
Art League Houston is proud to present, Drawn to Communities, an exhibition of photography by Houston artist, Earlie Hudnall, Jr., recipient of the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts. Earlie Hudnall, Jr. always has a camera with him. He has been actively photographing for more than 40 years. Hudnall’s work and education has taken him around the world, yet some of his most recognized photographs are of life here in Houston’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. His compelling images of families and daily life in some of the city’s most neglected neighborhoods remains as a record of these historic communities that persevere with strength, love, and dignity. In talking about his work, Hudnall states: "I chose the camera as a tool to document different aspects of life: who we are, what we do, how we live, what our communities look like.”
In an age of digital photography, Hudnall continues to shoot with film negatives and make gelatin silver prints in his own darkroom at his home in Houston’s Third Ward. Art League Houston (ALH) humbly honors Mr. Hudnall as the recipient of the biennial 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts with this survey exhibition of some of his most significant and iconic images of Houston and of the world. A catalog published by ALH and designed by HvA Design will be available in conjunction with this exhibition. The catalog includes some of his most celebrated images along with an introductory essay by Anne Wilkes Tucker.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Earlie Hudnall, Jr. was born and raised in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He started taking photos of his own at an early age with a box camera and credits his grandmother and her photo album containing family photographs, obituaries, and community articles, for his early fascination with storytelling and photography. When his parents were busy, Hudnall would go next door to his grandmother Bonnie Jean’s home where she would tell him stories about his family and many others in his community including the story of the first African American Navy aviator Jesse L. Brown, also from Hudnall’s hometown. Hudnall said, “She told my siblings and I, ‘Go on and get Gran’s album.’ When we opened it, there was a newspaper clipping of his [Jesse L. Brown] picture and about what unfortunately happened to him in the Korean War [Brown died a hero at 24 on December 4, 1950].”
Hudnall’s father was an amateur photographer who took pictures during his time in the military and with the family. “Whether it was on Easter Sundays or when we all had on new school clothes, he would line us up and flick the camera,” Hudnall said. From then on, Hudnall began to understand, at an early age, the importance of documenting his community and the significance of who one is and how one lives. “It was important to shed light on what causes a person to move, strive and become so inventive in his or her own way of survival,” Hudnall said.
Hudnall began to take his photography practice more seriously during his tour of duty as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam from 1966-67. After returning home in 1968, he enrolled as a student at Texas Southern University (TSU), Houston’s historic Black University. While studying, he and fellow photographer, Ray Carrington III were recruited by Dr. Thomas Freedman, the notable orator and Director of the TSU Debate Team, to document the university's Model Cities Program, which provided a chance for the artist to photograph various Houston neighborhoods (Trinity Gardens, Sunnyside, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards). Hudnall discovered reminders of his own life in these Houston enclaves that influenced the photographer to capture the simple, yet, memorable moments of how one lives from day to day. “I felt that I was documenting my own community and culture by photographing the daily life of these neighborhoods”, said the artist. Impressed by Hudnall's artistry and photographic style, Dr. Freeman commissioned him to continue documenting the families, individuals, elders, and children in neighborhoods. The assignment had a lasting impact on Hudnall as an artist, as he continued to photograph these same communities throughout his career, and has produced some of his strongest work from these historic areas of Houston.
BITTER WATERS SWEET
LETITIA HUCKABY
Art League Houston 2022 Texas Artist of the Year
On View: September 16 - December 4, 2022 I Main Gallery
PRESS
Glasstire - Learn About Art League Houston’s Texas Artist of the Year, Letitia Huckaby
Art League Houston is proud to present, Bitter Waters Sweet, an exhibition of new work by Fort Worth artist, Letitia Huckaby, the 2022 Texas Artist of the Year. In her exhibition as the Art League Houston (ALH), 2022 Texas Artist of the Year, Letitia Huckaby explores the legacy of Africatown, the historic community near Mobile, Alabama, that was founded by a group of West African people who were trafficked to the U.S. as slaves shortly before Emancipation, and long after the Atlantic slave trade was banned. The ship that brought them, the Clotilda, was scuttled in Mobile Bay shortly after delivering its cargo in 1860 to conceal its illegal activity. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2018 and is currently the subject of active archaeological research.
Huckaby’s photographs, printed on cotton fabric, bring together the legacy of Africatown, its founders and their descendants, with the history of the ship Clotilda and its persistent physical proximity to the community. Through her imagery and materials, her work ties the past to the present as she examines history and its contemporary connection to the black experience. A catalog published by ALH and designed by Shefon N. Taylor will be available in conjunction with this exhibition. The catalog includes works from the project and a critical essay by Christopher Blay, a writer and Chief Curator at the Houston Museum of African American Culture in Houston, Texas.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Letitia Huckaby’s career as a photographer did not start with a camera, but with ballet slippers. In 1988 and 1989, she was chosen to participate in the prestigious Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, and study Modern dance for two weeks under Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim Fellow Pat Catterson of New York City, at Quartz Mountain. Along with dance, the residency offered classes in writing, orchestral and choral music, acting, painting, drawing, and photography. Students came from all over the state to study in all these various disciplines and it was her first exposure to the power of photography as an art form. She was immediately enamored with the process of capturing and printing an image. Unfortunately, her parents were not as impressed with her career prospects in photography, so at the University of Oklahoma, she studied Journalism with an emphasis on Advertising.
After graduating in 1994 with a BA in Journalism, Huckaby went on to secure a position at a radio station in Lawton, OK as the Promotions Coordinator. Although she thoroughly enjoyed that position, her mind kept wandering back to photography. She enrolled in a Vocational College, intending to make photography her hobby, and immediately fell in love with the medium.
It was around this time that the Oklahoma Arts Institute invited Huckaby back to assist in their Public Relations department, and she found herself wandering around the photography exhibit of instructor Christopher James, an internationally known artist, and photographer. His documentary project in India was a pivotal moment in Huckaby’s career. Specifically, James’ image Dying Man, taken in Benares, India in 1985. This photograph captures an elderly man taking his last breath in a “death hotel.” In the image, you can see the smoke from a single candle entering his nostrils and swirling around his head. It looked to Huckaby as if James captured this gentleman’s spirit exiting his body. She was so moved by this one photograph that she decided to go back to school and get a degree in photography and had the opportunity to study under James who was the Director of Photography at the Art Institute of Boston (now the art school for Lesley University).
MORNING FIELDS
JuLIE DEVRIES
On View: August 19 - December 4, 2022 I PLATFORM
Morning Fields is a large-scale painting from my Fields series,” says the artist. “It consists of various lines, patterns, colors, and transparencies that are made in spontaneous and improvisational ways to create an allover image informed by the visual environment around Houston, a visually layered city with uncontrollable growth, saturated color, and light, in a constant humidity induced state of decay.” Morning Fields is inspired by a walking path in a small section of forest in the local park near her neighborhood. This park is not a pristine natural environment, it’s a small wild respite wedged against Houston’s urban and suburban sprawl, something rare in that area of town. Julie walks there several times a week, usually around sunrise when patches of warm light dot the canopy and illuminate the depths of the dense flora. The imagery is memory-based and is meant to evoke the overwhelming and moving sensation of being surrounded by various patterns of leaves, endless greens, and warm dappled sunlight.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Julie DeVries is an artist and educator living in Houston, TX. Her artistic practice includes painting, installation, digital drawing, and animation. Her work has been collected both locally and nationally and has been exhibited in both commercial and non-profit spaces. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago focusing on painting and Latin American art history and spent a semester studying abroad in Argentina. She also received her MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Houston. She currently serves as a Visual Arts faculty member at Lone Star College North Harris and is represented in Houston by Jonathan Hopson Gallery.
WHAT WE MAY BE
2022 SUMMER INTENSIVE COHORT
On View: August 6 - September 2, 2022 I Front Gallery
Art League Houston is excited to present the 2022 Summer Intensive for Teens’ Exhibition: What We May Be, an annual group exhibition by students from ALH’s Summer High School Studio Art Intensive Program. The Summer Intensive Program serves 16 students ages 14-17 from the Houston area over a twelve-week period in the summer. The program consists of three weeks of onsite workshops, talks, a public art project, and site visits to area art spaces. The program is led by teaching artists, art historians, educators, curators and arts professionals and delves into a variety of mediums, practices and concepts. The fourth week consists of open studio time for students to create their final projects – including one-on-one studio visits from teaching artists and curators. Students are supported by ALH as they independently complete their projects, and the program culminates in a four-week exhibition in the Art League Houston Front Gallery.
PARTICIPATING HIGH SCHOOL ARTISTS
Amna Almani • Hailey Ansay • Emily BWM • itZel Carrizales-Aguilar • Catriona Clarke • Hannah Dang • Melody Daniels • Emona Ji • Evelyn Leon •
Bianca Marsan • Luis Menendez • David Morales • Ana-Sofia Powell • Keenan Sencio-Sims • Serina Yan
2022 INTENSIVE STUDIO ASSISTANT
Elisse Gachupin
2022 PARTICIPATING TEACHING ARTISTS
Ian Gerson, Nyssa Juneau, Amie Krebbs, Nicolle LaMere, Moe Penders, Chasity Porter, Emily Sloan, Thomas Tran
2022 COMMUNITY COLLABORATORS
FreshArts, TXRX Labs, Box13, Centennial Gardens, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, CAMH, Station Museum, Blaffer Art Museum, Project Row Houses, Texas Art Asylum, Mystic Lyon, Motherdog Studios, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
ABOUT THE ALH SUMMER INTENSIVE MURAL PROJECT
Since 2019, each Summer Intensive cohort has collaborated with a local muralist to design and paint a mural in a highly visible public space in Houston. Each cohort focuses on a theme that is relevant to their class and spends time in research and development before executing their design.
The 2022 Summer Intensive Mural Project, created in collaboration with Thomas Tran, explores self-reflection and what shapes us into the person we are meant to become.
Check out all of the Summer Intensive Projects here.
2022 ALH STUDENT EXHIBITION
On View: Aug 6 - Sep 2, 2022 I Main Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is excited to present the annual 2022 ALH Student Exhibition, a group exhibition featuring works in drawing, mixed-media, ceramic, printmaking and painting by students who participated in classes through the Art League School during the past year.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Ieda Acunzo • Sherri Allen • Donaldo Almazan • Bryce Bennett • Roger Boak • Dennis Carter • Janet Cox • Kimberly Crawford • Caitlin Dauer
April DeConick • Anuja A. Deshpande • Ana Eigler • Peggy Engells • Pat Engle • Ariana Gold • Erik Gronfor • Hannah Grunwald • Neha Gupta Mary Hallab
Neveen Khalaf • Afshan Khan • Susanna Kieval • Kellie Lawrence • Mary Linden • Marjorie Lofthouse • John Martel • Maria Metoyer • Jose Luis
Abigail Negrete • Anne Neill • Alexis Newkirk Angela Newman • Chandana Ravikumar • Ellen H. Ray • Corbin Robinson Diana Jean • Maria Rodriguez-Alejo
Selina Scheid • Jillian Scott • Mehnaz Shafi • Robert L. Straight • Melissa Taylor • Lori Taylor • Jerrolyn Travers • Pamela Van Giessen • Amy VanHoy
Mary L. White • Heather Yoki • Jennifer Zetts
ALH SCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the Art League School is to create a supportive, accessible, and inclusive community where all learners can exchange and discover new skills and ideas through the art-making process leading to personal and artistic growth, meaning-making, and a lifelong relationship with creativity.
ABOUT THE ALH SCHOOL
The Art League School provides lifelong learning opportunities in arts education for adults of all backgrounds and levels of artistic experience. Founded in 1968, the Art League School offers a wide range of educational offerings and creative opportunities to over 1,200 students annually through studio art classes and workshops. Led by professional artist instructors, classes and workshops take place online as well as in three fully equipped studio spaces where students work in painting, drawing, ceramics, watercolor, printmaking, mixed media, and jewelry. To ensure individual attention and to accommodate varying skill levels, courses are maintained with a limited number of students. Students also have access to exhibitions, lectures, public programs, and artist talks offered throughout the year to further their training as artists. In 2022, ALH kicked off a multi-year initiative to re-imagine the role of an Art League School to foster radical imagination, reduce economic barriers to art education and impact positive social change through the arts. 2022-23 will be a pilot year for us, as we slowly roll out new and revitalized programming throughout the year.
2022 ALH INSTRUCTOR EXHIBITION
On View: Aug 6 - Sep 2, 2022 I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is excited to present the annual 2022 ALH Instructor Exhibition, a group exhibition featuring works in jewelry, drawing, mixed-media, ceramic, printmaking and painting by some of Houston’s exciting emerging and established artists who teach at the Art League School.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Angel Castelán • Lucinda Cobley • Leslie Cuenca • John Davis • Marley Foster • Nyssa Juneau • Molly Koehn • Nicolle LaMere • Josh Litos • Polly Liu
Steve Parker • Naomi Peterson • Cary Reeder • Laura Spector Myke Venable • Erika Whitney G.
ALH SCHOOL MISSION STATEMENT
The mission of the Art League School is to create a supportive, accessible, and inclusive community where all learners can exchange and discover new skills and ideas through the art-making process leading to personal and artistic growth, meaning-making, and a lifelong relationship with creativity.
ABOUT THE ALH SCHOOL
The Art League School provides lifelong learning opportunities in arts education for adults of all backgrounds and levels of artistic experience. Founded in 1968, the Art League School offers a wide range of educational offerings and creative opportunities to over 1,200 students annually through studio art classes and workshops. Led by professional artist instructors, classes and workshops take place online as well as in three fully equipped studio spaces where students work in painting, drawing, ceramics, watercolor, printmaking, mixed media, and jewelry. To ensure individual attention and to accommodate varying skill levels, courses are maintained with a limited number of students. Students also have access to exhibitions, lectures, public programs, and artist talks offered throughout the year to further their training as artists. In 2022, ALH kicked off a multi-year initiative to re-imagine the role of an Art League School to foster radical imagination, reduce economic barriers to art education and impact positive social change through the arts. 2022-23 will be a pilot year for us, as we slowly roll out new and revitalized programming throughout the year.
SAD GIRLS
JASMINE ZELAYA
On View: May 27 - Jul 23, 2022 I Main Gallery
Opening Reception: 6-8 PM, Friday, May 27, 2022 I Main Gallery
Artist Talk: 2:00 PM, Saturday, May 28, 2022 I Main Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present the exhibition, Sad Girls, an installation of new works by Jasmine Zelaya in the Main Gallery. The title of the exhibition is a reference to Chola culture. The distinctive Chola style is characterized by dark, undulating hair, winged eyeliner, and dark lipstick; achieving a look that is both intimidating and vulnerable. The look and culture encompass a state of mind and a state of being that was welcoming to brown communities, especially one that women and girls could identify with at a time when there weren’t many avenues for brown communities and children of immigrants to feel control over their identity.
Zelaya’s parents emigrated from Honduras to the U.S. in the 1970’s, and her experience of growing up at odds between two cultures has influenced her work. Remembering her sister applying the maroon tube of L’oreal mascara in repeated, careful strokes, Zelaya says, “I was mesmerized by each application, which I eventually came to see as a ritualistic, intentional act. I am still intrigued by the idea that the outward manipulation of one's appearance can transform their state of being.”
The artist applies graphic floral patterns over the faces in her paintings and sculptures, masking the tensions that lie beneath the surface of one’s appearance, but also offering a kind of personal protection from the world. These floral elements also serve as symbols of not only a familial narrative (the women in her family are all named after flowers), but the contrast of the natural and artificial world, whose rhythmic application reminds the artist of the ritual in which we transform our outward appearance in order to navigate our lives and feel empowered.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jasmine Zelaya is a multi-disciplinary first- generation Honduran-American artist based in Houston, Texas. The daughter of parents who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1970’s, much of the artist’s work references the aesthetics of that period. Zelaya’s work explores themes of identity, assimilation and the brown body through a familial narrative rich with symbolism. Zelaya received her BFA in Painting in 2006 from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Blaffer Art Museum (Houston), Project Row Houses (Houston), The Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (Lubbock), and was recently included in the 2021 Texas Biennial: A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon, at the San Antonio Art Museum. Recent public art projects in Houston include Twins for Art Blocks at the Main Street Marquee and Detroit Red at the Moody Center for the Arts. Her work has been featured on television media and in numerous publications, including as a cover artist for New American Paintings (#132).
NEVER FREE TO REST
RASHAUN RUCKER
On View: May 27 - Jul 23, 2022 I Front Gallery
Opening Reception: 6-8 PM, Friday, May 27, 2022 I Front Gallery
Artist Talk: 2:00 PM, Saturday, May 28, 2022 I Front Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present, Never Free to Rest, a multidisciplinary exhibition of work by Detroit-based artist Rashaun Rucker in the Front Gallery. Never Free to Rest features a body of work that compares the life and origins of a commonly found bird in cities around the world known as the Rock Pigeon, to the stereotypes and myths of the constructed identities of Black men in the United States of America.
Although pigeons have a long history with humans, it’s nearly impossible to identify their original habitat. Europeans brought the pigeons to North America in the 1600s, around the same time as the inception of the transatlantic slave trade in the United States. Displaced from their natural environment, and without a migration gene to guide them, the birds adapt to their circumstances and the environments imposed upon them. Within months, their location is permanently imprinted in their minds as being home. Much like the pigeons, Black people were taken from their place of foundation and assigned a station in society within the colonized Western Hemisphere.
Rashaun Rucker says that the work “...intends to communicate how the environment we have been placed in as Black people, created by generational systemic oppressions, becomes a reluctant contentment rather than a fleeting station—the “why” of “Black men often don’t fly” (achieve)—even though we can fly beyond these constructed circumstances.”
This exhibition is the culmination of the Black Box Press 2021 Art As Activism Grant. Rashaun Rucker and Nastassja Swift were the inaugural winners of the grant, juried by Rabéa Ballin, Lauren Kelley Oliver, and Vicki Meek. Each artist received a grant of $5,000 and were offered a solo exhibition at Art League Houston and Galveston Art Center, respectively. Nastassja Swift’s exhibition at the Galveston Arts Center happened in the Summer of 2021, but Rashaun Rucker’s concurrent exhibition at Art League Houston was postponed along with ALH’s entire exhibitions calendar due to high numbers of COVID cases in Harris County at the time.
The Art As Activism Fund was created by Black Box Press out of a need to support artists in the production of an exhibition that brings together the creative energy of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. The Fund is a targeted initiative to bring focus to how art can be used as a captivating means of shifting perspectives, changing mindsets, and evoking powerful emotions which can have a broad effect on the landscape and discourse around social justice in the world.
“It is my hope that the exhibition provides an incubator for intergenerational conversations between Black men and boys, giving them a safe space to discuss these ongoing issues among themselves,” states Rucker.
Rucker’s practice serves as an archive of Black culture as it intersects with myths and realities. As source material for his drawings, he utilizes images of men incarcerated in the United States prison industrial complex; some who he knows personally, and others from media photographs. The photographs of those incarcerated are taken from various websites and newsletters and then collaged or altered to create the work. The work is intended to be a record of their lives, a marker of the social conditioning and heavy challenges faced by Black men. The exhibition is influenced by the inescapable thoughts and words of friends lost: those who were incarcerated, those who believed there was no way out—that they had been permanently assigned to the bottom of America’s caste system even though their talents were immense and so often appropriated.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rashaun Rucker (b. 1978, Winston-Salem, NC) ) is a product of North Carolina Central University and Marygrove College. He makes photographs, prints, and drawings and has won more than 40 national and state awards for his work. In 2008 Rucker became the first African American to be named Michigan Press Photographer of the Year. He also won a national Emmy Award in 2008 for documentary photography on the pit bull culture in Detroit. Rucker was a Maynard Fellow at Harvard in 2009 and a Hearst visiting professional in the journalism department at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2013. In 2014 Rucker was awarded an artist residency at the Red Bull House of Art. In 2016 Rucker was honored as a Modern Man by Black Enterprise magazine. In 2017 Rucker created the original artwork for the critically acclaimed Detroit Free Press documentary 12th and Clairmount.
His work was recently featured in HBO’s celebrated series “Random Acts of Flyness” and the movie “Native Son”. In 2019 Rucker was the first awardee Red Bull Arts Detroit grant and was named a Kresge Arts Fellow for his drawing practice. In 2020 Rucker was named a Sustainable Arts Foundation awardee. In 2021 Rucker was awarded a prestigious International Studies and Curatorial Program (ISCP) residency and a Mellon residency at the University of Michigan Institute of Humanities. Rucker’s diverse work is represented in numerous public and private collections.
PRESSURE COOKIE
MELINDA LASZCZYNSKI
On View: May 27 - Jul 23, 2022 I Hallway Gallery
Opening Reception: 6-8 PM, Friday, May 27, 2022 I Hallway Gallery
Artist Talk: 2:00 PM, Saturday, May 28, 2022 I Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present the exhibition, Pressure Cookie, an installation of new works by Melinda Laszczynski in the Hallway Gallery. The exhibition consists primarily of large paintings and small sculptures. All of the paintings and the sculptures in the exhibition are abstract, made of dyed and cast paper pulp encrusted with paint, glitter, found objects, and other materials. The surfaces read as confectionary archeological sites with layers of color and texture spilling into dense, tactile landscapes, some of which are multiples cast from a single painting. Embedded within these forms are fragments of cassette tape, documents, and notes that the artist’s grandmother shredded as she began to struggle with dementia. Through a process of soaking, blending, pouring, drying, folding, and layering, these materials are altered much like memory- rearranged, forgotten, recalled, and rearranged again.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Melinda Laszczynski received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Houston and her BFA in Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art. She is a Professor of Studio Art at Houston Community College. Laszczynski was a resident in the 2016-2017 Lawndale Art Center Artist Studio Program, the Spring 2021 Artists-in-Residence program at the Printing Museum, and the Vermont Studio Center. Laszczynski has shown her work extensively across Texas. Recently, her work has been at exhibited at the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Gallery at UTA in Arlington, Point of Contact Gallery in Syracuse, NY, and Survival Kit Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Her work has also been exhibited at Cardoza Fine Art, Galleri Urbane, Pulse Miami, and the Amarillo Museum of Art 600 Sculpture Biennial. Laszczynski’s work is included in the collections of UTSW (Dallas), Toyota (Dallas), and Lester Marks (Houston).
She lives and works in Houston, TX with her partner John and their cats Agnes and Krudler
backbone
brian ellison
On View: February 18 - April 16, 2022 I Main Gallery
PRESS
365 Things to do in Houston - 5 Must Do Things in Montrose
Culture Map Houston - 10 vivid and eye-catching February art events no Houstonian should miss
Houstonia - Four Local Artists Mount Solo Shows at Art League Houston
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Backbone, an exhibition by Houston-based Artist, Brian Ellison. For his installation in the ALH Main Gallery, Ellison has produced a series of video interviews, photographs and performances, as well as curated a collection of artifacts that celebrate black grandmothers. In the artist’s words, it is an homage to “...the unsung heroine, the backbone of black families everywhere that have come before and those that we are blessed to still have with us. The exhibition is dedicated to the women in our lives who hold many names, yet have all embodied the same role”.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Brian Ellison moved to Houston to pursue his Masters in Counseling at Prairie View A&M University. He earned his BA in Sociology at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland in 2007. Brian is a photographer, philanthropist, and conceptual visual artist. He believes there is no limit when it comes to self-expression and describes his brand as authentic and thought-provoking.Through his lens he strives to begin the healing process necessary to bring to light issues that are unravelling in front of our eye.
IN & OUT
BRADLEY KERL
On View: February 18 - April 16, 2022 I Front Gallery
PRESS
365 Things to do in Houston - 5 Must Do Things in Montrose
Culture Map Houston - 10 vivid and eye-catching February art events no Houstonian should miss
Houstonia - Four Local Artists Mount Solo Shows at Art League Houston
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present In & Out, an exhibition of new work by Houston-based artist, Bradley Kerl in the Front Gallery. Known for his vibrant, stylized paintings of nature and flora tableaux, Kerl’s new work (a survey of sorts from the past two-and-a-half years) plays, in part, with the familiar notion of a painting as a window or a portal — simultaneously inviting viewers into the work while also denying the illusory experience. Equal parts outward-facing and introspective, this exhibition negotiates what it means to navigate the world amidst so much uncertainty. Kerl’s skillful application of paint and mark-making gives his work a visceral and exuberant confidence that becomes undermined by the familiar feeling of trepidation as we look out from our homes, viewing a changed world.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Bradley Kerl (b. 1986, Beaumont, TX) is a painter and arts educator based in Houston, Texas. He holds Drawing & Painting degrees from both the University of North Texas (BFA) and the University of Houston (MFA). Bradley has been the focus of solo exhibitions at Ivester Contemporary (2020), Gold Diggers, Los Angeles, CA (2019), Jonathan Hopson Gallery, Houston, TX (2020, 2018), Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX, (2017) and Art Palace Gallery, Houston, TX (2016, 2015). Group exhibitions include paper. at BEERS London in London, England, Paradisia at Mini Galerie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Rude Assembly Part 4 at China Heights Gallery in Sydney, Australia, Got It For Cheap at Galleri Golsa in Oslo, Norway, 10 Years 10 Artists at Octavia Art Gallery in New Orleans, LA, and FUN (2017) at Kirk Hopper Fine Art in Dallas, TX. Artist residencies include Villa Lena in Tuscany, Italy and 100 W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX. His work also appears in Support Magazine #2, New American Paintings No. 138 and Friend of The Artist: Volume 7.
LATE
Kathy Drago
On View: February 18 - April 16, 2022 I Hallway Gallery
PRESS
365 Things to do in Houston - 5 Must Do Things in Montrose
Culture Map Houston - 10 vivid and eye-catching February art events no Houstonian should miss
Houstonia - Four Local Artists Mount Solo Shows at Art League Houston
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Late, an exhibition of recent work by Houston-based Artist, Kathy Drago in the Hallway Gallery. Late features nearly 100 portraits of women, age 75 and up. Sourced from iPhone snapshots, social media posts, or grainy obituary photos, these portraits, which are painted on small, round-edged wood panels that evoke Kodak slides or Polaroid pictures in a family photo album, pay homage to women in their later years. With their direct gazes and faces cropped, the women seem to lean out from the wood panels, welcoming viewers into a conversation. Drago describes the paintings as a close look at her own mortality, sparked by the death of her mother in 2015. The format of the portrait invites not only a reckoning with aging, but an appreciation of wisdom in the accumulated years of the subjects.
“I paint in oil, in layers, and work on several paintings at a time,” Drago says. “It’s a slow, contemplative process, but it serves me because the old women surround me in my studio and I have time to get to know them. I think about each woman’s life story—who she used to be and who she is now and how best to show it. I draw on my background in theater arts and approach these paintings the way an actor builds a character, using the outer physicality to reveal inner emotions and motivations. Old faces—the topography of the eyelid drapes, droopy jowls, neck flab, and the asymmetry of the wrinkled face, all features that are disparaged in our culture—tell compelling stories.”
Kathy has exhibited work in and around Houston and was a Lawndale Big Show award winner in 2017. Her winning painting titled, “I am so UPSET!”, was the first portrait of an old woman she painted. Since then, she has painted over a hundred old women and, as she paints, she fills in the blanks as their life stories swirl around in her head.
“I enjoy painting ‘old-old’ women. I think they are underrepresented as subjects, and deserve to be painted,” Drago says. “One 94-year-old woman, Margo, cried when she saw my work. She explained that she loves it when her daughter takes her to a museum or a restaurant but is saddened when other people look past her, as if she were invisible. She said my paintings make people pay attention to old women and then asked me to paint her because she wanted to join the others on the wall. She’s there now, with all the others, and I imagine the conversations they may be having.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kathy Drago is a native Houstonian. She received a Theater Arts degree from the University of Houston and worked for a decade at The Comedy Workshop, Houston’s first improvisational comedy club. During that time, she acted, directed, and taught comedy improvisation classes to countless Houstonians. She later taught theater in public schools before becoming a school administrator. All the while, she drew and painted as much as possible. Upon retirement, Kathy studied at the Glassell School of Art at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and from 2019 through 2020, she participated in the Glassell Studio School Block, a program for emerging artists with independent practices.
Kathy has exhibited work in and around Houston and was a Lawndale Big Show award winner in 2017. Her winning painting titled, I am so UPSET!, was the first old woman she painted. Since then, she has painted over a hundred old women and, as she paints, she fills in the blanks as their life stories swirl around in her head.
A WAY [A WILL]
RONALD LLEWELLYN JONES
On View: February 18 - May 14, 2022 I ALH Sculpture Garden
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present A Way [A Will], a new site-specific installation by Ronald Llewellyn Jones in the Sculpture Garden. Jones’ artwork explores barriers between creatives and audiences while including conversations regarding individuals and their communities. Jones challenges each individual’s respective perceptions in regards to the availability of access and agency within normative societal structures.
A Way [A Will] exists as a tangible illustration of an individual’s trajectory through a life cycle. Acrylic sheets hover overhead, illuminated by a stand of LED filament. The light force moves through the field of acrylic sheets which are representations of the hidden costs and glass ceilings we encounter in life.
The sculpture presents a physical manifestation of a gilded path, inviting the audience to witness the hidden parts of an individual's journey. Following the path through a system of ricochets, deflections, penetrations and moments of circumnavigation, it is possible to see how obstacles inhibit, reinforce or disengage a range of trajectories.
This artwork offers an opportunity for self-reflection upon our obligation to members of a global society. It exists as an abstraction that allows an individual to see themselves and also others as part of the same journey, traversing a similar structured network of obstacles.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ronald Llewellyn Jones is a Texas-based multidisciplinary artist whose artwork explores barriers between creatives and audiences while including conversations regarding individuals and their communities. Jones challenges each individual’s respective perceptions in regards to the availability of access and agency within normative societal structures.
Jones' work has been exhibited at Foltz Fine Art, Houston Museum of African American Culture, Art League Houston, Flatland Gallery, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Space HL, Galveston Arts Center, Hardy and Nance Studios, and BOX 13 ArtSpace. He has also led workshops in collaboration with Lemon Grove Public Library, Rosenberg Library, Houston Community College, TxRx, and Awty International School.
His work has been documented in Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, PaperCity Magazine, CITE, Spectrum South, Hyperallergic, Houstonia, New York Times, BBC News, United Nations, Democracy Now!, FreePressHouston, HoustonPress, and Glasstire.
Jones is also represented by Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston, Texas.