Browse Exhibits (74 total)

Emblazoned Messages: Embellished Envelopes by Texas Prison Inmates

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September 7 - October 31, 1999

This exhibit consisted of seventy-nine rarely seen drawings on envelopes by anonymous self-taught Texas prison inmates. The exhibit included work from prisoners housed in Gatesville, Tennessee Colony, Lovelady, Huntsville, Brazoria, and various other facilities of incarceration in Texas. The envelopes in this exhibition, while exhibiting the return address of a specific prisoner, were not decorated by that person. There is a long tradition within prisons of certain inmates being sought out for their drawing skills by prisoners wishing to send embellished mail to friends and family.

While decorated envelopes have long been an aspect of prisoner correspondence, actually looking at them as works of art was virtually unknown in America until recently. The last two decades have seen a growing interest in American self-taught artists and generated growing and substantial body of scholarly writing. However, the study of self-taught artists in Texas remains somewhat of a frontier to this day. The drawings in this exhibition invite the viewer to set aside traditional preconceptions about art and artists and to view the works within the context of their makers and the environment of confinement. All of these works are in some way an outgrowth of personal experience and illustrate for us a knowing and deeply emotive image of the prison condition. Many of these drawings were created in response to deeply disturbing events in the life of the maker. Virtually all self-taught artists make art that springs from some similarly catastrophic circumstances in their lives. The works, while exhibiting a "raw" character and unconventional appearance, also often possess a child-like use of color and line that allowed the anonymous makers to visualize love, hopes, dreams, and memories of a freedom distant to them.

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Susan Sanders Up and Out - Recent Paintings

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November 8 - December 15, 1998

"Unlike the forest covered, glacier cut topography of New England where I grew up, Dallas land is flat and seems wide.  Here, the fences seperate the ground into impossibly discrete parcels.  Overhead power lines cut the sky and quietly join these isolated places.  This relationship of land to sky is the general topic of my paintings."

--- Susan Sanders

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A Greer Garson Scrapbook

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September 8 - November 1, 1998

From September 8 through November 1, 1998 the Mildred Hawn Gallery in SMU's Jake and Nancy Hamon Arts Library was the venue for "A Greer Garson Scrapbook."

This exhibition was held in conjunction with the Meadows School of the Arts' Greer Garson film festival, September 11-13. It furnished a context for the films in the festival, as the exhibition documented her film and stage careers, philanthropic activities, her marriage to oilman Colonel E. E. "Buddy" Fogelson, and her friendships with a number of individuals prominent in twentieth-century American popular culture and history.

Nominated seven times for an Academy Award, Greer Garson received the Best Actress award in 1942 for her role in "Mrs. Miniver." The Exhibition represented a sampling of the approxiamately 60 linear feet of archival material donated to SMU by the actress who resided in Dallas following her 1949 marriage to Fogelson. These Scrapbooks, photographs, correspondence, and other papers in the Greer Garson Collection are housed in Bywaters Special Collections.

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Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)

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April 27 - June 28, 1998

A portfolio of seventeen plates reproduced in 1964

Portfolio from the Dr. Eleanor Tufts Archive on Women Artists on deposit at SMU.

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Clay Workers

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March 2 - April 5, 1998

This exhibit featured ceramic works by SMU alumni, Lee Atkins, Roy Brown, Carolyn DeBus, Susie Moody, Madhvi Subrahmanian, and Marla Ziegler.

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Photograms by Debra Fox

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January 21 - February 20, 1998

"Photograms by Debra Fox." 13 photograms by Debra Fox on view in the Hawn Gallery January 21 through February 20, 1998. According to Ms. Fox:

"Some of the earliest photographs were what we would now call 'photograms' - meaning that instead of a negative's being used to generate a photographic print, the subject of the photograph itself constitutes the 'negative.' Depending on the density of the particular plant, these prints can take anywhere from four days to six months to print and are one of a kind, since there is no negative involved."

This process involves placing flowers, leaves, and other natural forms on paper she has chemically treated; the paper is then exposed to light. With the addition of organic chemicals, Ms. Fox is able to obtain photographs, or photograms, that are unique in form and color.

Debra Fox works as a staff member in SMU's Division of Studio Art and recently had her work on view in the exhibition "Introductions: Five Contemporary Texas Photographers" at the Contemporary Art Center of Fort Worth.

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Paper Dolls/Colleen Shull and Justin Shull

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October - December 2015

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Piecing It Together: Danielle Kimzey, Mary Laube & Christopher Reno

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March 31 - May 28, 2017

Piecing It Together features works by Danielle Kimzey, Mary Laube, and Christopher Reno. These three painters share an interest in exploring the private world of the 'home' and seek to demystify, through their abstract works, this often insular, domestic space. This collected body of works draws upon the artists' experiences of parenthood and memories of home, and brings to the forefront that which is often considered banal or overly sentimental. All three artists employ a wide range of mediums in their painting practices and rigorously examine diverse modernist and contemporary techniques and ideologies.

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Dylan Glynn: After Order, After Disorder

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January 27 - March 12, 2017

After Order, After Disorder features animated shorts, digital prints, paintings, and works on paper by Toronto-based artist Dylan Glynn. Glynn, whose practice is rooted in formal life drawing, has developed an ethereal style that captures a fantastical naiveté. Emotive and rich in narration, this body of work explores Glynn’s optimistic projections for the future, in which he envisions humanity’s return to a harmonious relationship with nature. In this exhibition, Glynn’s works are presented alongside historical photographs from DeGolyer Library’s special collections that echo the nuanced relationship between new and traditional media in the artist’s work.

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Octaviano Rangel: Was He a Beast If the Music Could Move Him So?

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Spring 2017

This exhibition of recent work by Octaviano Rangel is inspired by, and takes its name from, Franz Kakfa's Metamorphosis. On view are a series of cut paper, graphite, and ink collages, as well as a site-specific graphite drawing created directly on the library wall.

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Embodied Algorithm: [Re]embracing the Analog - New Works/Ira Greenberg

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September 8 - October 9, 2017

An exhibition of new works by Dallas-based artist Ira Greenberg. The show features drawings completed over a two year period exploring the continuum between computational (digital) and human (analog) implemented algorithms. The ultimate pieces confront viewers with large-scale snapshots of intimate moments between Greenberg’s subjects.

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Collective Practice: Community Building Through Zines - Works/Puro Chingon Collective

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October 20th - December 17, 2017

Collective Practice: Community Building Through Zines features works by PuroChingón Collective, with members James Huizar, Claudia Zapata and Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi. The works on display include prints, short films, and zines largely from the Collective’s own publication, ChingoZine. The Collective created ChingoZine to act as an alternative space for Latinx artists to showcase their work. The booklet format zines use acts as a social equalizer, enabling anyone to publish work otherwise rejected by galleries or publishing houses. It is also an inexpensive medium, allowing individuals to print and distribute zines at little to no cost and reach a wide audience. The Collective’s works seeks to do just that. Their practice is rooted in social practice and engages with people in public spaces through murals, film screenings, or parties. The exhibition’s inclusion of the Collective’s zines, and visual art helps illustrate how the use of text and images act as a means to support, represent, and empower diverse groups.

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Clear, Deep, Dark - New Works/Julie Morel

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January 6 - March 11, 2018

Clear, Deep, Dark features new works by Julie Morel. Morel’s work examines the intersections between text and visual imagery. She utilizes technology, books, typography and drawings to realize the relationships between text and image. Another important aspect of Morel’s projects is that they are never insular. Most involve collaborations with other artists, writers, and designers. The exhibition will include new works created for the Hawn Gallery as well as pieces previously shown in galleries abroad from her AFK and Electrical Drawings series.

In Morel’s newest body of work, Clear, Deep, Dark, Morel takes inspiration from the darknet, a term referring to the hidden side of the internet that deals with illicit transactions, sharing of sensitive information, and protecting human rights. She builds upon her Electrical Drawings (2015) series, incorporating new terms connected to the darknet in her work and examines what becomes of physical objects when they take on new lives in the digital realm. The redisplay of Morel's work alongside her newest series generates a unique context for the pieces, encouraging new conversations between the objects and viewers.

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Chromarray - Works/Constance Lowe

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April 6 - May 28, 2018

The Hawn Gallery presents Chromarray, work by San Antonio-based artist Constance Lowe, featuring works from her Garden City (Air to Ground) and FabCom and Chromarray series.Lowe’s work examines the intersection between nature and humans’ built environments, with a special focus on biology, mathematics, psychology and agriculture. Lowe’s most recent series, Garden City (Air to Ground) (2015) takes its inspiration from circular and gridded NASA satellite photos of Midwestern fields. The landscapes contain personal connotations to Lowe as they represent land once owned by her family. Lowe uses a range of materials in her work such as dyed calfskin, wool, felt, translucent drafting film, and photographic reproductions of nature. Lowe’s blending of natural and synthetic materials reveal how nature can be manufactured and our constructed world made to appear naturally occurring. These pieces reveal the social implications of human being’s dissonance from nature.

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ARK: An Experimental Film/Mike Morris

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August 20 – December 9, 2018

ARK is a cinematic installation featuring a film by Michael A. Morris made from archival 35mm film prints held in the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection. This work is installed on a looping film system devised by the Collection’s Jeremy Spracklen and Scott Martin, and in conjunction with Brad Miller from Film-Tech Cinema Systems. The looping film is a new mosaic of images and sounds created by contact printing and hand processing of short lengths of films selected from the archive. Highlighting the mechanics of projection typically hidden from the viewer, the space of the Hawn Gallery performs as a small cinema. The metaphor of both Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant serves as a parallel for the archive as it rescues hundreds of films from the deluge of time. These films are reactivated by bringing them back into the light and onto the screen in a new looping film installation. Such assemblage embodies our cinematic heritage.

ARK is a film made from 35mm prints held in the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection’s archive. The film was made from a selection of individual films in the darkroom to create new contact printed strips of film. The process involved experimenting with methods of exposure in response to the visibility of the 35mm projector, normally hidden in a booth behind the audience. The film is based on a rare version of the 1928 silent epic Noah’s Ark, which makes use of optical sound added in the 1950s, along with a number of other films. The Ark depicted in the film is intended as a stand-in for the archive, a holding place to preserve films from the passage of time and a refuge from which to repopulate the world with images.

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Information/Object: Late 20th-Early 21st Century Artists' Books

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February 1 - March 8, 2019

Almost as old as the codex, the artist’s book has centuries of history. Artists have used the book as medium for exposing their images and concepts, which in turn challenge the form of the book as an information package and loops back to extend the idea of a book qua book. In this ongoing dialog between the artist, the page, and the reader or browser, the parameters of the book are bound; confined within the pages of a quarto or folio; or unbound; stretching and folding out beyond the reaches of a rectangular or square surface. This exhibition draws upon artists’ books from SMU Libraries collections and other institutions to ask questions about the book as an object in the mid-twentieth century, a period of great proliferation of artists’ book, up to our current time.

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The Illusion of Being: Photographic Works/Lynné Bowman Cravens, Ross Faircloth, and Ashley Whitt

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March 22 - May 17, 2019

The Illusion of Being is a three-person exhibition of photographic works by DFW based artists Lynné Bowman Cravens, Ross Faircloth, and Ashley Whitt. Each artist utilizes lens-based media to investigate notions of reality as perceived by the self.

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Pipes on Paper: The Wallmann Collection of Books on the Organ

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July 15 - August 2, 2019

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Against the Best Possible Sources/Elizabeth Moran

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September 6–December 20, 2019

Guided by a preoccupation with the subjectivity of facts, Elizabeth Moran uses photography, text, sound, and other forms of recorded documentation to examine the reliability of information and how evidence is often far from evident. Against the Best Possible Sources is part of an ongoing project including extensive research of the TIME, Inc. corporate archive and an investigation of the earliest history of the first professional fact-checkers, a position invented by the fledgling company in 1923 and held exclusively by women until 1971.

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Sounding/Allyson Packer

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February 7 - September 13, 2020

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Incidents on a Page: Dallas-Venice Dreamscapes, 1976-2020/Michael Corris

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September 21 – December 18, 2020

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R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation/Basil Kincaid

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October 28 - December 11, 2016

R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation by Basil Kincaid launches the Hamon Arts Library’s contemporary arts exhibition program for the Hawn Gallery and is curated by the first Curatorial Fellow for the Hawn Gallery, Georgia Erger.

Basil reclaims seemingly innocuous materials – fabrics, fibers, and even debris – and repurposes them into monumental textile works. For R3clamation: Routes & Roots, Basil fills the gallery with assemblage quilts, sculptures, and garments, comprised of the clutter we encounter daily in our urban communities. Intimately relevant to their place of cultivation, the works are imbued with the West African and American ancestral traditions that are steeped in the artist’s practice and etched in our community’s collective memory. By no means static, these art works are worn by the artist during his performances and throughout the creative process. They become vessels for the black American body, representative of the trauma and subsequent healing the body has experienced

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Curatorial Minds Lab

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A bimonthly gathering (online/on-campus) of SMU alumni and current students interested in deepening their understanding of the historical development of curatorial practices and the study of contemporary art display theory/practice including exhibition typologies and curatorial models. In the framework of this program, history, theory, contextualization, organization, and execution of curatorial projects will be discussed, evaluated, and critiqued.

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Narrative as Reality: A World Reimagined

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Selections From the Jessica and Kelvin Beachum Family Collection

February 17 – May 20, 2022

A glimpse into the Jessica and Kelvin Beachum Family Collection beholds an artistic world of hope, Black joy, reality, and aspiration. Each composition within the collection offers a unique story. These non-linear narratives on the Black experience, with their own distinct actualities exhibit a reality not often portrayed, yet a collective, lived experience that strives to represent a livelihood untouched. Narrative as Reality: A World Reimagined contains the work of artists, Dominic Chambers, Ryan Cosbert, Robert Hodge, Nelson Makamo, Delita Martin, Sungi Mlengeya, Mario Moore, Robert Pruitt, Athi-Patra Ruga, and Ferrari Sheppard. Artist as storyteller and aesthetic elegance collide in this breathtaking collection of work that bestows a world where narratives hold power and imagery conveys truth.

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