Friday, May 2, 2008

The MAC presents: Tracy Hicks, “Global Warning: still/LIFE” and Billy Hassell, “Field Notes”

By Pegasus News wire

The MAC announces its May – June Exhibition addressing the alarming reality of global warming and human impact on our planet in the introspective art of Tracy Hicks and Billy Hassell. Opening with a gala reception on May 9, 2008, the thought provoking exhibition runs through June 21, 2008. Tracy Hicks works will be in the large gallery and new works space and Billy Hassell in the square gallery.

Hicks' two decades of category-defying work grappling with issues of defilement and preservation, turns his attention to the natural, social and cultural ramifications of global climate change in his installation "Global Warning: still/LIFE."

Billy Hassell's, installation vivid and colorful "FIELD NOTES" is the culmination of his Audubon Society field journal observations of endangered birds and other wildlife in their changing native Texas habitats. The exhibit will include works the artist that has never exhibited together, including the Avian Art Lithographs series made for The Audubon Society.

"The MAC is excited to bring together in one exhibition, two artists unique and synergistic views about our fragile ecosystem," said Claude Albritton, President of the Board and co-founder of the MAC. "We are proud to have the opportunity to present diverse works that address many issues including the environment."

About Tracy Hicks

Tracy Hicks, born in San Antonio, Texas in 1946, though he would never claim to be truly self-educated, has no college degree. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He makes art, uses preservation as a medium, writes, teaches, and researches with scientists, amphibians, and other artists. Glass, plastic, rubber, metal and photography all are used as basic tools of preservation for Mr. Hicks' exploration process.

His latest solo exhibit called Two Cultures: Collection: still/LIFE was showcased at Hall Center in Lawrence, Kansas. His work also has been exhibit as one-man show in Houston, Santa Fe, and Indianapolis. His selected exhibitions include The Meadows Museum and The Arlington Museum of Art. He has been awarded with grants such as the Dozier Travel, New Forms Regional Initiative and has taught at the Modern Museum of Forth Worth, Southern Methodist University and The Dallas Museum of Art. He currently lives and works in Dallas.

About Hicks' Work

Incorporating everything from scientific glassware to casts of recently extinct species of frogs using jewel-bright dyes and pigments, Hicks' installations blaze with the richness of cathedral windows and overflow with the profusion of Victorian curiosity cabinets. Juxtaposing the exotic specimens collected in the Amazon forests of Peru next to familiar flora and fauna from his Oak Cliff back yard – Hicks addresses the beauty, mystery and haunting precariousness of life on our planet.

"Global Warning: still/LIFE," was created in 2005 at the invitation of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, which houses the world's most extensive collections of amphibian species. Working with natural scientists there, Hicks developed a process for making casts of the fragile scientific specimens without damaging them. The resulting installation incorporates hundreds of frogs, cast in translucent rubber and infused with dyes and pigments that glow in the dark or under ultraviolet light, giving new life to species that have disappeared from the Earth.

Hicks' earlier work dealt largely with preservation in the context of humans' search for personal and cultural meaning or, as he puts it, the question of "what we find precious enough to hide away in our sock drawers." An installation titled "The Storeroom," exhibited in 1993 by the Dallas Museum of Art in a two-man show that also featured British artist Damien Hirst, captured the look and feel of a Depression-era root cellar. "Third Ward Archive," installed at Houston's Project Row Houses in 1996, gave life and form to a proud but imperiled African-American community's photographic self-portraits.

After traveling to Guatemala in 1998 to help herpetologists from the University of Texas at Arlington collect amphibian specimens, Hicks became a breeder of tropical frogs. His collection of approximately 300 frogs includes species presumed extinct in the wild. He is a member of a network of serious amateur breeders who work in cooperation with zoos and other institutions to document, preserve and study the scores of frog species that are in danger of disappearing, in part because of global climate change.

Artist Statement – Tracy Hicks

"No matter who we are, we are measured by what we do. As an artist, my chosen role is to reflect our culture and socialization in visual terms that can lead to some series of small personal epiphanies. In my lifetime our culture has altered our physical world in ways that are difficult to define in conventional terms. While theologians, scientists and politicians argue about the nature of nature, I have watched it decline. I have seen the amphibian decline first hand. It is a warning to me. The "Global Warning: still/LIFE" installation project is my attempt to define the metamorphosis currently happening with intellectual and visual terms that can be seen and felt by anyone."

About Billy Hassell

Born in Dallas, Texas, Billy Hassell has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and an M.F.A from University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Hassell was commissioned by Audubon Texas to do a series of prints identifying specific geographic regions of Texas. Hassell has done one lithograph a year for the last five years, completing the final one, Aplomado Falcon, this spring. He has worked as Adjunct Professor of Drawing at The Department of Art and Art History at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas.

He has participated in selected exhibitions at M B Modern in New York, The Dallas Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, both in Texas. His latest solo exhibitions include a 15 year survey organized by The Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi, LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, Louisiana, Parchman Stremmel Galleries in San Antonio and Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas. Prestigious publications such as ARTnews, Southwest Art, The Dallas Morning News, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram have wrote essays and reviews about Hassell's work. Public art of his can be seen at DFW International Airport, The Crescent Collection, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and University of Texas in Austin. He is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas and William Campbell Contemporary Art in Ft. Worth.

About Hassell's Work

Charles Dee Mitchell writing about Hassell's latest exhibit at the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi in 2007 stated, "Even as the past century marked the triumph of abstraction in modern art, realism and the representation of the natural and man made world have remained core elements in many artistic projects. But realism as a style remains a moving target. At the furthest remove there is naturalism with its complete fidelity to observed detail. For the past century few artists have aimed so far. We expect artists with a commitment to the real world to do some creative picking and choosing among the plethora of detail the world offers, to aim at a form or realism that involves varying levels of stylization and selection. We recognize the world they present us, but we also know and appreciate that they have made it somehow their own. With an exhibition history that goes back twenty-five years, Billy Hassell is an artist who has created such a personalized world. He is engaged and committed to the natural world, having done work for both the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy of Texas, but from his earliest paintings he was always been willing to tweak its colors and twist the shapes of its inhabitants."

Artist Statement – Billy Hassell

"Informed and inspired by nature, my work seeks to describe and illuminate a personal vision of the natural world that is based on direct observation and study. It is a visually expressive interpretation. Through color and exaggeration of form I emphasize aspects of the landscape particularly the indigenous flora and fauna. While I would consider my work more than mere landscape painting it certainly fits into that tradition. Unlike many contemporary landscape painters, however, my work is not based on photography but on plein air sketches and watercolors done on location.

I am very interested in capturing the feel and sense of a place and I am particularly interested in places that have environmental and regional significance. While the landscapes are specific and rather literal in depiction, the images of the birds that frequently dominate the works are treated more as iconic signifiers, simultaneously representational as well as symbolic. In addition to the landscape, my work has also been influenced by Mexican and American folk art, the arts of ancient Egypt and Japan, and the 19th century American landscape painters. I am also very interested in the early Texas regionalists and feel a direct lineage to that tradition.

Over the years, working with organizations like Audubon Texas and the Nature Conservancy I have become increasingly sensitive to the fragility of the environment and the urgent need to slow down and, if possible, reverse the infringements on the environment that are seriously impacting critical habitats and the survival of endangered species. It is my hope that my work will, in some measure, help raise the public's awareness of some of these concerns."

More information can be found at:

Source: The MAC

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