The Old Jail Art Center

February 10– May 13

Clay and Ash: New Works by Sandria Hu organized by the El Paso Museum of Art

Organized by the El Paso Museum of Art, the exhibition presents new work by Ms. Hu, who is currently Professor of Art at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, where she has taught since 1975. The artist will not only be present at the members’ opening on February 10, where she will give a gallery talk, but she will also conduct a series of artist-in-residence printmaking demonstrations for Albany High School art students on February 9.

Christian Gerstheimer, Curator, El Paso Museum of Art and curator of the exhibition, said, “Clearly, Sandria Hu’s ‘paintings’ are handmade constructions to which paint and other materials are applied that evoke the soil and climates where she has lived. ‘Clay’ refers to the clay the artist has seen in the many parts of the world that she has worked and ‘Ash’ refers to the covering of gray ash experienced after a forest fire near the town that the artist lived in Czechoslovakia.”

Hu explains the abstract imagery in her painted constructions this way: “The strong and vibrant movement in my paintings is motivated by the extreme weather and climate, by the soil movement, the wind and rain that changes the soil quickly and just as the weather stops, the soil movement stops.”

Galveston Center for the Arts Curator Clint Willour, who has followed Hu’s work for many years, commented in a catalogue essay, “Hu has managed to capture the feel of the effects of wind and rain, of sun and shadow, earth and sky, night and day, clay and ash. In doing so, she allows us to share her experience in a most fulfilling way.”

Horsky Park Sphere, 2000
SANDRIA HU
Charcoal mixed media on paper
Courtesy of the Artist and McClain Gallery, Houston, Texas

September 30 – December 31
2006

German Expressionism: Works on paper from the Kopriva Collection

Download Family Guide

Houston curator Gus Kopriva and his wife, artist Sharon Kopriva, have been collecting German Expressionist works for some time. Their collection includes pencil-signed etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, watercolors, and drawings by such artists as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Marc Feininger, Franz Marc, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, and others.

Drawn from the early decades of the 20th century, this exhibition covers several movements and culminates in a famous exhibition mounted by the Nazis, Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). The artists, from Germany and surrounding countries, reacted to the war years of both World War I and World War II and the political and social upheaval of the years between the wars with urgent visual messages.

One of the movement’s most famous adherents, Oskar Kokoschka, wrote of expressionism when eulogizing Edvard Munch, “As in love, two individuals are necessary. Expressionism does not live in an ivory tower, it calls upon a fellow being whom it awakens.

Überleben X, 1940
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ
German (1867-1945)
lithograph

The Old Jail Art Center Celebrates Rembrandt’s 400th Birthday

The Old Jail Art Center celebrates the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth by exhibiting an etching by the artist along with etchings by eight other artists from the 18th to the 20th centuries. All works are in the museum’s permanent collection. This small focus exhibition will appear in the Reilly Nail Gallery September 30 through December 31, 2006.

Along with Rembrandt will be etchings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720-1778), Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828), John Sloan (American, 1871-1951), Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989), Mark Tobey (American, 1890-1976), Terry Winters (American, b. 1949), and Kiki Smith (American, b. 1954)

Jan Asselyn, Painter, c. 1647
REMBRANDT VAN RIJN
Dutch (1606 - 1669)
Ecthing with grey wash on paper
Bequest: H. Frost Bowman Estate

November 11, 2006

8th Biennial Auction: Thinking Outside the Box

June 3 – September 17
2006

Pamela Nelson: Patterns of Soul

Dallas artist Pamela Nelson creates patterns in paintings, on floor mosaics, paper, cloth—most any surface. Her vibrant and playful works often resemble game boards for imaginary games, though more sober patterns run through the work as well. Born in Midland and educated at SMU, Ms. Nelson has exhibited far and wide and she has had a number of public art commissions, opportunities of which she is particularly fond. For over ten years, she has directed the Open Art Project at Downtown Dallas’s Stewpot Shelter. President George W. Bush appointed her to the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, D. C., a seven-member commission that approves all outdoor art and architecture in the nation’s capital. The exhibition is being curated by OJAC staff members Shelly Crittendon and Kathryn Mitchell.

Rose Window, 2002
PAMELA NELSON
American (b.1947)
Acrylic on wood
Courtesy of Gerald Peters Gallery

Burton Pritzker’s Texas Rangeland Photographs

Burton Pritzker’s first career was as an architect. He turned to photography as “a pure form of expression, without a client, which gave me an incredible sense of freedom.” Pritzker’s close-up photographs of cattle on the Texas range convert a common experience for anyone who has driven through this country into a revelatory one. We only thought we knew cattle. Pritzker today lives and works in the Texas Hill Country.

Bull #4, Marfa, Texas, January 2002
BURTON PRITZKER
American (b. 1941)
Silver Gelatin Print, 3/50
Courtesy of the Artist

A Selection of Work from Alice Reynolds

Curated by Alice Reynolds’s niece Suzanne Deats, this small show will exhibit works still held by the family and those in Albany collections. Reynolds was beloved for many years as the musical director of Albany’s annual Fandangle. As this exhibition will show, she was also a talented visual artist.
back to top	Buffalo Gals, n.d ALICE REYNOLDS American (1910-1984) Oil on canvas board Collection of Susan Reynolds Deats

March 4 – May 21
2006

Working at the Limits: Mid-20th Century Texas Sculpture by Gene Owens, Ed Storms, and Charles T. Williams

Curated by OJAC, this exhibition presents rediscovered talents from the mid-20th century. Owens, Storms, and Williams are each represented in the Old Jail’s collection. Scott Grant Barker, co-curator, has written on the subject:

Earth Gender, 1965/1974
CHARLES T. WILLIAMS
Bronze sand casting
Collection of Anita Williams

The fires of human imagination burned white hot in Fort Worth in the years following World War II. This was particularly true in the field of sculpture, where a circle of talented artists, arrayed around the charismatic Charles T. Williams, pushed their personal limits of creativity. In Fort Worth the Williams studio was a magnet for artists of all stripes but especially for those attracted to the possibilities of sculpture. Gene Owens, Ed Storms, and Charles Williams shared this time and place. Together and separately they pursued the ancient art of sculpture to the limits of their ability. Friendship, modern thought, and a passion for bronze bound them. Place of birth and inclination assured that each was irrevocably tethered to Texas. Summed together in the art of these men is a bright and unmistakable reverence for life and for the eternal substances that underpin it.

Omphalospkepsis, 1967
ED STORMS
Nickel-plated cast bronze
Collection of Patty & Stan Wright

March 4 – May 21
2006

Thomas Bewick’s Chillingham Bull

The Wild Bull, 1789
THOMAS BEWICK
Woodblock print on paper

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was England’s foremost wood engraver of the 18th century and a recorder of natural history on a par with America’s Audubon, whom he met at the very end of his life. He is famed for his General History of Quadrupeds (8 editions) and for the several editions of his British Birds/Land Birds and Water Birds. Bewick also illustrated fables and was acclaimed for genre scenes that showed glimpses, often humorous, of life in the English countryside in the late 18th century. In 1789 he created his largest and most famous image, The Wild Bull, in response to a commission from Marmaduke Tunstall, the most noted British naturalist of his day. The subject was a fine specimen of the wild cattle of Chillingham estate, thought to be the sole remaining descendants of Roman cattle. These cattle were wild indeed and very fierce. In order to fulfill the request to draw a bull from life, Bewick first walked 50 miles from Newcastle to Chillingham, then crawled on his hands and knees in Chillingham Park to get a view of and sketch a bull that was separated from the rest of the herd. The bull treed him, so Bewick got a very good and long look at his subject from that vantage point. The resulting engraving is a noble portrait.

Barney B. Holland, Jr. of Fort Worth collects the work of Thomas Bewick, with particular attention to various states of The Wild Bull. Selections from his Bewick collection will be displayed in the west gallery of the jail building in a focus exhibition.

Our Silver Anniversary: 1980-2005

The Old Jail Art Center will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in December 2005. In honor of the occasion, the museum will feature its permanent collection and its collecting and exhibiting philosophy with a series of specially curated exhibitions.

November 12-February 12
2005-2006

Double Vision: Exhibiting Contemporary Texas Artists for 25 Years

Curated by Amy Kelly

As the final show in a series of three anniversary exhibitions, Double Vision showcases the Old Jail's commitment over the last twenty-five years to exhibiting and promoting the work of contemporary Texas artists. The title "Double Vision" takes on multiple meanings. In the context of our anniversary, "Double Vision" describes the Old Jail's visionary efforts of the past while looking towards the future of contemporary Texas artists. In the context of the exhibition, "Double Vision" denotes the process by which artists were selected. Ten Texas artists, whose work had previously been exhibited at the Old Jail were selected; then they were asked to recommend another Texas artist whose work they admired.

From oil to tattoos and bronze to plastics, from hyper-realism to found objects, the Double Vision artists make use of materials ranging from traditional to non-traditional in very surprising ways.

More Fire exemplifies the artist's superb technical skill and remarkable attention to detail. In spite of its title, the meticulously rendered pipe, set against a stark white background, is suggestive of an object of courtroom evidence rather than one with allegorical connotations. It should be noted that the piece measures about four feet in height and seven feet in length.

More Fire, 2005
BLAKELY THOMAS DADSON
Oil on paper
Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

Joseph Havel's six foot tall freestanding bronze sculpture entitled Bedsheet, Torn and Twisted, confounds our expectations of mass and gravity while striking an odd balance between Old Master elegance and suburban kitsch. Havel describes his own work as being about "the possibilities of poetry in perfectly ordinary situations."

Bedsheet, Torn and Twisted, 2003-2004
JOSEPH HAVEL
Bronze with patina, unique
Courtesy Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas

Kathy Webster's monumental fiberglass triptych entitled Nite-Lites was inspired by the packaging of a dime-store object. The original vacuum-formed protective plastic mold—which allowed the consumer to see the actual product—is enlarged and coated with iridescent auto paint. In its abstracted form, it has no become the product, a work of art. Each piece of Nite-Lites measures five feet in height.

Nite-Lites, 2005
KATHY WEBSTER
Auto paint on fiberglas
Courtesy of the artist

Robert Hamilton's painting, Untitled, 2004 is reminiscent of a fuzzy radar screen, the central radius frozen in time. The smallest of those presented here, the work is 6 in. x 6 in.

Untitled, 2000
ROBERT HAMILTON
Oil on panel
Courtesy Mulcahy Gallery, Dallas

June 4-September 11
2005

Polishing Our Silver: Hidden Treasures from the Permanent Collection

In March, Dr. Rick Brettell was turned loose in the storage vault of the Old Jail, a museum he had never visited before, and in two days he had curated this upcoming exhibition. Here’s a teaser from the essay he has written for the gallery guide.

“Every curator dreams of being locked alone in a vast museum storage room with plenty of food and wine, a cot, a rudimentary toilet, and lots of time. The pleasure of sliding painting racks back and forth in differing light conditions, of taking heavy paintings down and looking at them propped up on felt pads, of moving them to look at the canvas or board on their back, of reading old labels, even of taking them out of their frames as if to mimic the artist who made them—these are pleasures that are almost unknowable to anyone who has never before worked in a museum.

Mesa, 1985
PAUL PALLARO
American
Oil & Collage on Canvas
Jewel Nail Bomar & William P. Bomar, Jr. Collection
1993.092


Silkscreen III, 1973 PATRICK HERON British (1918-1999) Silksreen print on paper Gift of Kelly Fearing 1982.031

When Margaret Blagg asked me to curate a small exhibition from the storage rooms of the Old Jail Art Center, I was able to imagine that my dream could come true—at least in part. I had heard of the Chinese figures and the pre-Columbian vessels, of the paintings by Renoir, Caillebotte, Modigilani, and others—all in the permanent collection of a museum without the word “museum” in its name in a town in Texas which, when saying it aloud, most of one’s friends think is in upstate New York! But, the lure of the unknown is very great indeed, and it was with this sense of adventure that my wife Carol and I started out for the Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas one beautiful day in March.


Sleeping Figures (study for Le Sommeil), 1867 PIERRE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES French (1824-1898) Black chalk on tan paper Museum Purchase 1992.001

In my romp through storage, I saw many works of art by great artists I had never expected to find in Albany Texas: a superb drawing by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, wonderful nude studies by Eric Gill and Paul Cadmus, a bronze by Maillol, drawings by Andrew Dasburg, a group of serigraphs by the British artist Patrick Heron, an important early landscape by the Impressionist painter Gustav Caillebotte, and the list could go on for pages. But, it was, in the end, much more interesting and rewarding for me—a so-called expert in the history of Modern Art—to have to ask my colleagues, “Who did that wonderful drawing?” and to receive an answer that made me realize two things: 1) I had never heard of the artist, and 2) I still have a lot to learn! It was this experience of being in the mind of a collector I barely know and artists unknown to me that made me recognize just how large, diverse, fascinating, and truly rich the art world is.”

Dr. Richard Brettell is the Margaret McDermott Professor of Art & Aesthetics and the Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Museums at The University of Texas at Dallas. His museum career began in 1980 when he became Searle Curator of European Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1988 he was named the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, subsequently supervising the design, construction, and installation of the Hamon Building, an addition to the museum that opened in 1993. Dr. Brettell is an authority on Impressionism and French painting of the period 1830-1930. He also serves as adjunct senior curator of SMU’s Meadows Museum.

March 19-May 22
2005

The Founder's Eye: Reilly Nail's Influence on the Old Jail's Collection

This exhibition contains 57 works of art and takes over the entire museum, sprawling through ten galleries. Along with 24 works donated by Reilly Nail, the exhibition also contains work by artists he befriended; gifts to the museum from collectors whom he persuaded to take an interest in the Old Jail; and purchases he influenced as acting director or, later, as a member of the museum's Standards and Acquisitions Committee. Mr. Nail is still involved in the museum as Trustee Emeritus.

For more on Reilly Nail and the history of the Old Jail Art Center, click here.

Parade, 1963 - 1964
PATRICK PROCKTOR (British, 1936 - 2003)
Oil on canvas
Gift of Reilly Nail
2004.003

Figure in Boat, 1957
PIERRE JACQUEMON (French, b. 1935)
Ink wash on waxed paper
Gift of Reilly Nail
1981.088

The Founder's Eye will be on exhibit at the Old Jail Art Center from March 19 through May 22. Two other special exhibitions in 2005 will also explore the museum's permanent collection and exhibition philosophy. Polishing Our Silver: Hidden Treasures from the Permanent Collection, curated by Dr. Richard Brettell, will open June 4 and be on view through October 30. Double Vision: Exhibiting Contemporary Texas Artists for 25 Years will open on November 12 in conjunction with the museum's gala celebration of its 25th anniversary.

For more on this exhibition, click here.

Reilly Nail, 1979
ROY DE VRIES (American, b. 1947)
Oil on canvas
Gift of Reilly Nail
1981.051

The Founder's Eye was co-curated by Jay Clack, Vice-Chair of the Board of the Museum and Chair of the Exhibitions Committee; Shelly Crittendon, Registrar; and Margaret Blagg, Director.

Jules, 1953
CORNELIS RUHTENBERG (American, b. 1923)
Charcoal on paper
Gift of Reilly Nail
1981.167

December 11-February 27
2004- 2005

Vernon Fisher: Notes for a New Novel

Vernon Fisher's work incorporates disparate and seemingly arbitrary images and text. Over the years Fisher has combined these two-dimensional elements in various formats, including large chalkboards, text mounted directly to the wall, sculpture, found objects, drawings, and traditional stretched canvases. Notes for a New Novel will combine several of these mediums, challenging the viewer to interpret meaning in individual pieces and in the combination of works.

Death of Marat, 2003, oil/wood, various media, 27.5 in. x 91 in.
VERNON FISHER

November 13-November 28
2004

The 5 x 7 Exhibition and Auction

5 x 7 is an exhibition and art sale organized by Arthouse, an Austin based contemporary art organization, that benefits the Old Jail Art Center as well as Arthouse. Hundreds of artists with strong Texas ties create unique works of art on a 5" x 7" format. All are diplayed anonymously and each piece is only $100. The show will debut as part of the museum's biennial Auction on November 13. The unsold pieces will remain on exhibition (and for sale) through Thanksgiving weekend.

September 18-October 31
2004

Lance Letscher: Books and Parts of Books

Ken Hale, Chair of the Art Department at the University of Texas at Austin, says of his former student Lance Letscher, that he makes art "as if it was an answer to an unanswerable question."

Letscher is a native Austinite who has also been called a poet in scrap paper. He creates his collages from a wide variety of paper sources. He often scours second-hand shops for books with unusual or colorful covers, and he is interested in those books whose pages have achieved a vintage look. The artist says that he looks for "odd colors and type faces and fonts that imply specific eras."

In addition to books, Letscher also collects handwritten documents, such as old letters, ledgers, and lists. Letscher cuts the collected scraps with exacting precision and glues the pieces onto masonite before drying in a book press. The result is an often mesmerizing surface that not only answers the unanswerable, but invites the viewer into the world the artist has created. The exhibition, Books and Parts of Books is a survey of his work from 1996-2004