September 5 - October 5, 2024
From the Gallery at UTA:
“The Gallery at UTA is pleased to present Paper Trails, a three-person exhibition featuring artists Cecelia Feld (Dallas), Jessica Drenk (Rush, NY) and Rachel Livedalen (Fort Worth). The exhibition curated by Gallery Director Dr. August Jordan Davis and Visual Resources Curator Lilia Kudelia focuses on how each artist engages with the materiality of paper and books in their artworks, often to unexpected ends.
Appropriation, layering, collage, and repurposing of texts, pages, and paper feature across the selected collages, prints, paintings, digital media, and installations forming Paper Trails.
Cecelia Feld creates brightly colored abstract collages and monotype prints using a variety of materials including photographs, magazines, and her own handmade Japanese marbled papers. Jessica Drenk recycles books, cardboard and junk mail to create 3-D sculptures and sculptural wall pieces that appear made of natural materials such as wood and stone. Rachel Livedalen produces paintings, prints, and artist books that juxtapose art historical references with “girl power” iconography to comment on representations of femininity.
According to Dr. August Jordan Davis, “Paper Trails invites us to surrender to the riot of color, surprising materials transformations, and joy in making anew that each of these artists practices to such a high degree of excellence. Feld, Drenk, and Livedalen explore how we can reshape the world around us to bring delight and wonder into sharper focus than before. This exhibition offers a glimpse into three individual spirited experiments, offering three unique creative visions – by turns intersecting and divergent – all sure to intrigue and inspire the visitor.”
“This exhibition is an enthralling meditation on the masterful use of recycled content – whether it relates to literary or archival citations, visual sources that come in printed form, or paper as sculptural material. The artworks featured in the show intelligently expose the matrices of the cultural knowledge and infrastructures that our visual culture is built upon. The exhibition invites us to think about printing industry in all its aestheticized and mundane dimensions and to question who we are as paper consumers, and how do we contribute to indexing as well as erasures,” says co-curator Lilia Kudelia.
There will be an opening reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5:30 to 8 pm with brief remarks by the artists at 6:30 pm. In addition, a gallery talk/tour conducted by Jessica Drenk will take place on Thursday, September 5 from 12:30 – 1:30 pm. A second gallery talk with Cecelia Feld and Rachel Livedalen will occur on Thursday, September 26 from 12:30-1:30 pm. The exhibition, reception, and talks are free and open to the public.
Gallery hours are 10 am – 5 pm Monday through Friday and Saturdays, 12 – 5 pm.
The Gallery at UTA is in room 169 of the Fine Arts Building, 502 S. Cooper St, Arlington, TX.
For more information, contact Dr. August Jordan Davis (817) 272-2891, Lilia Kudelia, (817) 272-2797 or Patricia Healy (817) 272-5658 or visit the gallery website https://thegallery.uta.edu.
Artist Bios
Jessica Drenk was raised in Montana, where she developed an appreciation for the natural world that remains an important inspiration to her artwork today. Tactile and textural, her sculptures highlight the chaos and beauty that can be found in simple materials. Jessica has been the recipient of several awards, including International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. Her work has been pictured in Sculpture and Interior Design magazines, as well as The Workshop Guide to Ceramics. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and is a part of several corporate collections, including Fidelity Investments, Frost Bank, and The Macallan distillery in Scotland, as well as university collections, including Yale University Art Gallery. Drenk received an MFA in 3D Art from the University of Arizona in 2007 and a bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in 2002. She lives and works in the countryside outside of Rochester, New York.
Cecelia Feld grew up in New York City and received her B.A. from Hunter College, New York in 1963. She moved to Dallas in 1969, receiving an MFA from the University of North Texas in 1976. She was the recipient of a MacDowell Visual Artist Fellowship in Peterborough, New Hampshire and participated in a printmaking residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont in 1997. Feld’s paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs were featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and are part private and corporate collections including Frito-Lay, Inc., I.B.M. and Delta Airlines. Commissions include Little Dix Bay resort and The Crescent Hotel, Dallas. Cecelia sees the relationship of the components in her work as being like jazz improvisation, dwelling on themes and variations, repetitive devices, tension and release, harmony, and disharmony.
Rachel Livedalen’s creative practice explores representations of femininity through the lens of art history and visual culture. She earned her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa and her BA from the University of Virginia. Rachel is currently an Associate Professor at TCU where she heads the printmaking area. Her work has been supported by residencies at the Kala Art Institute, Virginia Creative Center for the Arts and A&H Museums- Maitland as well as by the art installation program of the historic Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Her work is held in the collections of the Mulvane Art Museum, the Bradbury Art Museum, Soho House Austin, and UT Southwestern. Rachel is represented by Erin Cluley Gallery, Dallas, TX and Ivester Contemporary, Austin, TX.”
Reception: September 5, 2024 | 5:30–8 pm
502 S. Cooper Street
Arlington, 76019-0089 TX
817-272-3143
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