Hallway Gallery
Art League Houston (ALH) is proud to present Soft Listings, an exhibition featuring recent works on paper by Houston based Artist Daniela Koontz. In her 20s, Daniela Koontz worked a number of field seasons on an archaeological dig in Central America. It was there she learned to make technical drawings of artifacts in a style that informs her work today. Before the internet made list-making ubiquitous, Daniela Koontz made illustrated lists of beautiful and interesting things united by themes of her own imagining. Rather than documenting the ancient past, the resulting works on paper explore categories of late capitalism, rock & roll, supermarket flowers, and food.
Koontz’s drawings are a mix of traditional still-life painting and the type of illustrations you might find in an academic journal, but her aesthetic sensibility is a bit “Pop.” Using the drawing techniques and realism of botanical or archaeological illustration, she makes lists of like objects and groups them together to carry new meaning. The arrangement is often humorous, and sometimes poetic. Working on paper lends the work an intimacy that you might find in the rare books section of a library. The work is meant to be thoughtful and quiet.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Daniela Koontz is an artist living and working in Houston, Texas. She is currently part of the collective at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston, where she maintains a studio. Koontz has worked as a bartender, arranged flowers, delivered pizza, worked as a fry cook, slide librarian, and as an archaeologist in Honduras. From 2003-17, she worked as an Art and Art History teacher at Alvin High School and Alvin Community College, Alvin, Texas. She currently teaches Art and Art Appreciation at Manvel High School and Alvin Community College. Koontz received her MFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2003. Prior to this, she studied Painting and Printmaking at UT El Paso (graduating in 2000 with her BFA), and received her BA in Art History from UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California, in 1990. Selected exhibitions include shows at Box 13 ArtSpace, Houston; Front Gallery, Houston; Houston Center for Contemporary Crafts, Houston; Lawndale Art Center, Houston; Women and their Work Gallery, Austin; and 500X Gallery, Dallas.