Herself, detail (2021) Graphite, ink, Organdy dress, bronze, books, and mixed media 35 x 79 x 32 inches | LINDA RIDGWAY: HERSELF Nasher Public
August 19 - September 12, 2021
Nasher Sculpture Center 2001 Flora Street Dallas, Texas 75201 www.nashersculpturecenter.org
Linda
Ridgway’s attentiveness to the rhythms of nature and its echoes in
poetry has sustained more than three decades of involvement in
sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. For her Nasher Public
installation, she has brought together a compelling installation that
forms a meditation on time, memory, and touch, drawn from her
experiences over the months of the pandemic and its aftermath.
Ridgway
creates an evocative symbolic language using forms found in nature as
well as domestic textiles and objects. While her works reflect personal
experiences and often allude to specific poems or works of literature,
they also contemplate enduring questions of womanhood, tradition, and
ephemerality. Often ethereal in their delicacy and the inclusion of
impermanent organic material, her works thoughtfully question accepted
understandings of nature and femininity, and their connected cultural
associations. Gestural lines, exquisite detail, and organic forms
create a sense of intimacy and history that is both contemplative and
reflective. Through Ridgway’s close attention to the qualities of her
materials and the purposeful placement of these personal expressions,
the artist invites introspection, a reconsideration of the self as well
as a meditation on the past.
The central piece Herself offers
as a centerpiece a dress that Ridgway inked to run through a press at
Flatbed Press in Austin: meant only to produce prints, the dress itself
becomes a kind of artifact of Ridgway’s creative process. She has
surrounded the dress with objects related to her life, her family and
friends, and her ongoing interests. The image of a clock, for example,
resembles one owned by her parents, while the inclusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
a beloved text of Ridgway’s, points to the source of the work’s title.
Ridgway acknowledges that the dress’s presentation, surrounded by
objects significant to her, suggests an element of the funerary; this
theme is echoed in the burnt roses of The Uses of Sorrow, which concerns her father’s death some years before. The
artist’s work emerges not only from specific sentiments but also from a
rich appreciation of poetry. Ridgway uses Frost in her work frequently,
both referencing and physically including his words in the sculpture The leaves whisper on their branches (2010-21),
which combines the title of Frost’s, “Sound of Leaves,” with Walt
Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” Ridgway’s love of Frost, amongst other
writers such as Harper Lee and Mary Oliver (whose poem “The Uses of
Sorrow” inspired the title of Ridgway’s 2005-18 assemblage sculpture),
is rooted in childhood memories of her mother’s passion for literature.
Ridgway both references and physically includes literature in her
sculptures by interweaving text in nests and using books as the
stuffing of her pillows. In this way, she investigates how instrumental
these works are to her identity as an artist, mother, daughter, and
friend. For Ridgway, aspects of the Nasher Public installation Herself also
speak to the end of certain aspects of her life, which coincided with
the pandemic: namely, the 2017 death of her partner, the artist and
founder of Green Mountain Foundry, Harry Geffert, who worked with
Ridgway on her meticulously cast sculptures. The past year has seen
Ridgway complete the process of closing the foundry, selling the
property, moving, and developing a new way of living and working.
Elements of her work and life with Geffert abound in Herself,
as does the sense, as Ridgway describes it, of “tumbling down into a
difficult place,” like Alice, as suggested in the large drawing Fallen upon a corner of the Moon, featuring an image of the dress, inverted. click here to see a video of Linda Ridgway speaking about this exhibition
| Diagram from the River Ouse (2020) Bronze, unique 33 x 13.5 x 3 inches | FROM THE FIRST AND LAST LINES TO THE RIVER OUSE: WORKS BY LINDA RIDGWAY
June 4 - August 29, 2021
Tyler Museum of Art 1300 South Mahon Avenue Tyler, TX 75701 www.TylerMuseum.org
Organized
by the Tyler Museum of Art, this exhibition spotlights recent works by
Linda Ridgway – many of which have been finished in 2021 – alongside
select pieces from throughout her career.
Ridgway (born 1947 in
Jeffersonville, Indiana) creates poetic bronze wall reliefs that convey
both autobiographical and cultural imagery. Although educated as a
printmaker, Ridgway continues to experiment with the limits of various
media to create work that remains intimate regardless of scale.
Ridgway’s
bronzes emerge from a two-dimensional template to become new spatial
objects that elucidate the artist’s personal experiences. These works
span the themes of femininity, tradition, and heritage while
establishing their own permanence through the medium of bronze.
She
juxtaposes the delicacy of the textures of lace and crochet work with
the monochromatic and industrial fortitude of metalwork. While some of
her works emphasize a reverence for domesticity, Ridgway also uses the
translation of knit pieces into bronze sculptures to underscore a
disintegration of memory.
The artist’s work emerges not only
from specific sentiments but also from a rich appreciation of poetry.
Ridgway uses Robert Frost in her work frequently, both referencing and
physically including his words in works such as “Now Let the Night,”
2013 and “But the Secret Sits in the Middle and Knows,” 2011. Ridgway’s
love of Frost, amongst other writers such as Mary Oliver and Harper
Lee, is rooted in childhood memories of her mother’s passion for
literature. Ridgway both references and physically includes literature
in her sculptures by interweaving text in nests and using books as the
stuffing of her pillows. In this way, she investigates how instrumental
these works are to her identity as an artist, mother, daughter and
friend.
| | ART IN THE TIME OF EMPATHY
October 3, 2020 - December 19, 2020
Arthur Roger Gallery 432 Julia Street New Orleans, LA 70130 http://arthurrogergallery.com/exhibition/empathy/
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Art in the Time of Empathy, an exhibition of gallery and invited artists examining the year 2020 as a unique historical moment and a transformative time.
Art in the Time of Empathy
is the largest exhibition in the gallery’s 40+ year history, featuring
over 70 invited and represented artists. Playing off the iconic title
of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera,
artists address the many aspects of quarantine, politics, social
justice, science, and community in a time where physical distance has
redefined these dialogues. A time capsule for our period, Art in the Time of Empathy
is an exploration of the human side of this moment, an opportunity for
a community to pause and reflect on the many perspectives of a shared
experience.
The exhibition features artists who used this time
of sheltering in place to re-examine their studio practice and to
contemplate themes of separation, normalcy, politics, social justice,
and a return to nature and to self as well as pieces curated to speak
to the changes happening today. Demond Melancon and Meg Turner confront
the devastation of COVID-19 and the price paid by frontline workers.
Frahn Koerner, David Halliday, and Jacqueline Bishop address the
physical separation of social distancing and the complex emotions that
follow. Ted Kincaid unpacks the shocking, divisive, and hateful state
of American politics.
The renewed force of the Black Lives
Matter movement demanded action from many artists. Whitfield Lovell and
Leonard Galmon present striking portraits of Black Americans, and
George Dureau’s photographs from the 70s celebrate Black bodies which
historically have been excluded or appropriated in Western art. While
being painted in 1991, Douglas Bourgeois’ Mistaken Identity
addresses the extreme police violence against Black people and rings as
true today as when it was painted. David Leventi’s 2010 photograph of a
prison interior and Deborah Luster’s revisiting of her One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana
photographic series from the turn of the 21st-century address the
social inequity in incarceration. An-My Lê documents the moment in 2016
when the confederate monuments were removed from the New Orleans
landscape. Mario Moore’s 2020 painting During and After the Battle of Antietam
is a depiction of The Battle of Antietam—the deadliest war in the US
and gave President Lincoln the confidence to deliver the Emancipation
Proclamation.
Some artists approach these complex issues with
humor. Richard Baker’s paintings of vintage cookbooks speak to gender
roles and the increase in cooking at home during the lockdown. Still
life paintings by David Bates and Amy Weiskopf consider the experience
of quarantine and its associated activities. Douglas Bourgeois’ 2020
painting creates a fictional graduation yearbook recalling memories and
experiences sorely missed amidst strict new remote school protocols.
Joseph Havel’s sculpture of a stack of translucent books and Jim
Richard’s painted backyard scene created during the COVID lockdown
speak to the solitude of open time. James Drake’s 2016 collage You Owe Me Money
evokes the economic downfall, devastating unemployment, and financial
difficulties that people around the world are facing due to the
pandemic.
Other artists focus on our community, its struggles,
triumphs, and resilience. Canadian painter John Hartman’s 2015 portrait
of New Orleanian Doreen Ketchens recalls a time when music and people
filled the French Quarter, now uncomfortably quiet. Robert Polidori
highlights the devastation of hurricanes with his piercing photographs
of the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. Robert Colescott’s 1996
painting confronts his racial identity and Robert Gordy’s painting
correlates the devastation of the AIDS crisis to that of the COVID
pandemic. Dawn DeDeaux looks ahead towards a fascinating socially
distanced future caused by climate change with her Space Clown series.
| Field #2 (2019) Bronze, unique 30 x 14 x 20 inches | CONTEMPORARY WOMEN ARTISTS
September 3, 2020 - October 9, 2020
John Breggruen Gallery
10 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105 https://www.berggruen.com/exhibitions/contemporary-women-artists
We are pleased to present Contemporary Women Artists,
an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by eight of
the most exciting female artists creating work today, including Tauba
Auerbach, Carmen Herrera, Clare Kirkconnell, Suzanne McClelland, Julie
Mehretu, Beatriz Milhazes, Linda Ridgway, and Kiki Smith. This show
will be on view through October 9, 2020.
Contemporary Women Artists
presents a compelling selection of works by women artists who have each
pioneered facets of the contemporary art canon. While Milhazes fuses
cultural elements from her native Brazil with influence from European
Modernist painters, Mehretu completely reenergizes and renews 21st
century Abstraction. Altogether, the works composing Contemporary Women Artists are intricate yet bold; delicate yet powerful.
Spanning an intriguing breadth of subject matter, Contemporary Women Artists
showcases works that both allude to and subvert mainstream ideas of
femininity. Kirkconnell, Ridgway, and Smith consider the natural world
in their alluring renderings while Auerbach and Herrera compose works
of rigid geometries. When viewed altogether, power between delicacy and
boldness is shared. The viewer can appreciate how strength radiates
from seemingly fragile, natural forms while a certain subtlety can be
found in the linear components of abstract works.
|
| LINDA RIDGWAY (b. 1947)
Dallas-based artist Linda
Ridgway is best known for lyrical bronze sculptures that are autobiographical
in nature, but also speak to more universal female experiences. Her works are
collected by major art museums in Texas and beyond, and her gallery presence
reflects the lucrative production of a well-established artist. Ridgway's work
creates delicate balances and binaries exploring general themes of femininity,
tradition, and heritage, but also her own personal identity as artist, mother,
and woman. She counters the fleeting nature of memory and the inherent
disintegration of organic materials by casting her works in bronze, preserving
both the object and memory indefinitely.
Born in 1947 in
Jeffersonville, Indiana, Ridgway earned a B.F.A. from the Louisville School of
Art in Anchorage, Kentucky, and went on to earn an M.F.A. from Tulane
University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her investigation of issues concerning
personal memories and the cultural legacy of women often manifests itself in
forms found in nature such as vines, leaves, and flowers, as well as bronze
versions of delicate objects traditionally associated with women, such as lace
and textiles. Her early education in and training in printmaking is evident in
the fine, gestural lines of her sculptures, that help maintain a sense of
intimacy even in her large-scale pieces.
In all her work, Ridgway
makes plain her respect for minimalist art, a movement pioneered in the 1960s
by artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Dan Flavin, who sought to reduce
art to its very essence by using industrial manufacturing techniques and
products to fashion simple structures of steel, wood, and fluorescent light.
Even more influential were the postminimalist sculptures of Eva Hesse and Joel
Shapiro, who reoriented Ridgway's thoughts on what sculpture is, and could be,
by introducing overt process techniques and personal subject matter into
minimalism's basic geometries. Other artists crucial to Ridgway's development
were the Swiss modernist sculptor Alberto Giacometti and the American painter
Agnes Martin, in both of whose work Ridgway found a degree of emotional
intensity expressed with a refined minimum of artistic means.
Whether sculpture,
installation, or works on paper, Ridgway's work suggests episodes from the artist's
personal history. Rather than illustrate such episodes, however, Ridgway
prefers to leave interpretation up to her viewers, allowing room for their own
thoughts and emotions to complete the meaning. Ridgway's work demands our
intense concentration and presence; her works are at once surprising and
personal, revealed slowly to patient and meditative viewers. Once heard, her
works speak of things both private and universal, quietly preserving organic
form and memory.
--Heather Bowling, Dallas Museum of Art Digital
Collections Content Coordinator, 2018
| Shadows danced, as memories once scribed in the land I (2018) Graphite and colored pencil on paper 44.5 x 33 inches
| LINDA RIDGWAY: Cover Up, Grassland, and Shakespeare
February 9, 2019 - March 23, 2019
Reception 6-8pm Saturday, February 9, 2019 Artist Talk Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 2pm
Talley Dunn Gallery 5020 Tracy Street Dallas, Texas 75205
Linda Ridgway, based in
Dallas, is widely recognized for her poetic sculptures in bronze.
Working across various media, Ridgway creates an evocative symbolic
language using forms found in nature as well as domestic textiles.
While her works reflect personal experiences and often allude to
specific poems or works of literature, they also contemplate enduring
questions of memory, womanhood, tradition, and ephemerality. Often
ethereal in their delicacy and their inclusion of impermanent organic
material, her works question accepted understandings of nature and
femininity, and their connected cultural associations. Gestural lines,
fine detail, and organic forms create a sense of intimacy and reveal
the influence of post-minimalism in her work. Through her close
attention to the form and textures of grasses, trees, flowers, and
lace, and an underlying sense of the fleeting nature of bodily
experience and memory, Ridgway prompts a reconsideration of self, and
how we understand ourselves in relation to society. Cover Up, Grassland, and Shakespeare
features a selection of Ridgway’s recent works on paper. In a process
similar to her direct castings from flowers, branches, or other
objects, Ridgway creates a faintly embossed image by pressing lace or
grasses directly onto the paper’s surface. The pressure needed to
create this ghost image destroys the lace or grasses in the process.
Then, working in graphite, Ridgway adds to the faint index left by the
object, rendering it fully in painstaking but delicate detail. In the works Victorian Twins, Forever, and Victorian Geometry,
which depict lace using this process of embossing and drawing in
graphite, Ridgway carefully cuts into the surface of the drawing,
emphasizing each minute area of the lace’s negative space. The
repetitive and meticulous nature of Ridgway’s process bears homage to
the laborious work of tatting lace or crocheting doilies—work
historically performed by women. In her meticulous renderings, and by
cutting into the drawings’ support to reflect the transparency of lace,
Ridgway transforms her drawings into textiles; thereby, the works
subvert the hierarchal separation between art and craft. Meanwhile, many of the works in Cover Up, Grassland, and Shakespeare speak
both to the temporary, fleeting nature of life, and to its poignant
beauty. In drawings with titles that reflect the poetry of Robert
Frost, the Christian parable of the lilies of the field, and
Shakespeare, Ridgway captures the subtle movement, elegance, and
material vulnerability of thin grasses, flowers, and transparent
fabrics. Ridgway’s works on paper create space to recognize the
fragility of life and to contemplate its moments of exquisite beauty.
| Loss (2018)
Bronze, tulle, and netting 47 x 28 x 18 inches
| A VISUAL EPILOGUE: LINDA RIDGWAY & HARRY GEFFERT
September 15, 2018 - February 23, 2019
Reception Saturday, September 29, 2018
The Grace Museum Main Gallery 102 Cypress Street Abilene, TX 79601
A VISUAL
EPILOGUE: LINDA RIDGWAY and HARRY GEFFERT will be the first and last, two
person exhibition of works on paper and sculpture by two of the most prolific
and widely- recognized contemporary artists who worked together in life and in
the studio for decades. The original concept for the exhibition was transformed
by the November 2017, tragic, sudden death of Harry Geffert. In time,
Linda Ridgway, known personal and poetic visual dialogues, graciously suggested
a new concept and title for the exhibition, A Visual Epilogue, referencing the
literary term for a short final chapter at the end of a literary work detailing
the fate of the main characters. The result is a selection of Geffert’s
sculpture paired with Ridgway’s recent monoprint- drawings and sculpture
curated to celebrate Geffert’s and Ridgway’s individual and personal journeys
as artists and life partners.
When
Ridgway decided to work in bronze, she turned to Harry Geffert and his famous
Green Mountain foundry and studio in Crowley, Texas to learn the art of bronze
casting. Harry Geffert’s mastery of both lost-wax and direct casting is evident
throughout his over fifty-year career as a sculptor; a career that included
numerous solo museum exhibitions, an NEA grant, and a Legend Award from the
Dallas Visual Art Center. Geffert also established the sculpture department at
Texas Christian University and fostered many aspiring artists there through 27
years of teaching. In the 1980’s Geffert left academia and started his own
foundry where he produced impeccable bronze castings for artists Joseph Havel,
James Surls, Vernon Fisher, Frances Bagley, Ken Little, Clyde Connell, Ridgway
and manty other well-known sculptors. For years, Geffert ran his foundry at the
service of other artist clients but he never stopped making his own work.
Geffert taught Linda Ridgway how to make bronze castings from delicate things
like lace and tiny tree branches and their collaborative efforts have become
legendary.
Both artists have exhibited widely and have inspired generations of
artists as mentors and teachers. Ridgway was in Abilene in May to support
former student Shawn Smith’s success at his exhibition opening at The Grace.
Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and in France and Switzerland,
and is held in museum and public collections throughout the US including The
Grace Museum. Ridgway received a B.F.A. from the Louisville School of Art and
an M.F.A. from Tulane University. Although educated as a printmaker,
Ridgway continues to experiment with the limits of various media in combination
to create an impressive body of work that is autobiographical, poignant, poetic
and profound in simplicity. Memory and poetry are interlaced by direct
casting of fragile vines and roses and drawing-enhanced monoprints of graphite
dusted aprons and crocheted keepsakes.
Although personal in content, the exhibition can
also be experienced as a meditation on the universal significance of close
personal relationships, cherished memories, valued mentors, artistic
expression, love and loss.
|
Harvest Line (1995)
Bronze, unique |
BODY EGO
June
12, 2018 to September 9, 2018
Artist Talk July 21, 2018 at 3pm
Dallas Museum of Art
Hanley Quadrant Gallery
1717 North Harwood
Dallas, Texas 75201
Viewers
have the opportunity to explore their own bodily perspectives and see
themselves as a vital part of the exhibition in Body Ego.
Art critic
Lucy Lippard organized an exhibition titled Eccentric
Abstraction in
1966, bringing together artists who were setting the stage for a new
art
movement. She coined the term “body ego” to describe the artists’
approach to
material, form, and the physical sensation the work gives the viewer.
“The
work’s bodily presence,” Lippard stated, “was achieved through scale,
spatial
relation, physical orientation, and material.” Thus, the “bodies”
Lippard
examined were not those of the artists, but rather the bodies of the
viewers
and of the sculpture itself.
Spanning from the 1960s to the present, Body
Ego includes works by more than ten female artists in the
DMA’s collection
and considers how abstract sculpture represents the human body, and the
ways
viewers relate to the objects through their own experiences and
perception.
|
Husband (2005)
Bronze and silk
16 x 38 x 20 inches |
COMMANDING SPACE: Women
Sculptors of Texas
October 14,
2017–November 18, 2018
Amon
Carter Museum of American Art
3501
Camp Bowie
Boulevard
Fort Worth, TX 76107
The
evocative power of sculpture seems boundless in the hands of five
living women
artists whose work fills the Amon Carter’s gallery dedicated to
regional
artwork. Texas-based artists Celia Eberle, Kana Harada, Sharon Kopriva,
Sherry
Owens, and Linda Ridgway take the traditions of sculpture in new
directions for
the twenty-first century. Allusions to nature and human figures connect
the
diverse themes present in their work, which range from evocations of
history
and metaphor to explorations of memory, myth, and ritual.
Eberle,
Harada, Kopriva, Owens, and Ridgway work using a wide-range of
techniques and
resources, but they all celebrate hand craftsmanship and recast the
original
function of their materials to infuse them with new life. No matter
their
construction, these sculptures visually command space, allowing
visitors to
emotionally and physically engage with them. As the Amon Carter
continues its
commitment to featuring the work of regional artists, this exhibition
is a
destination for anyone interested in Texas art, especially that made by
women
sculptors working in the vanguard of three-dimensional creative
expression.
|
In a turning
row II (2017)
Bronze and cotton
34 x 20.5 x 8 inches |
Botanica
Curated by Todd von Ammon
July 13 - August 29, 2017
John Breggruen Gallery
10 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Named after the botanica shops
of the San
Francisco Mission district—purveyors of a wide variety of medicinal
herbs and
folk medicines—this exhibition examines the many transformations of
botany in
contemporary art. Botanica
explores the curious case of the still life in the late 20th and early
21st
centuries, through the lens of artists whose interpretations of this
subject
matter range from the traditional to the idiosyncratic. Each work in
the show
presents a different state of organic matter, culminating into an
anti-ecosystem of sorts that highlights a wide array of distinct art
taxonomies. The unique materials, techniques and histories are as
varied as the
number of works—from generative digital video to found street detritus
to oil
paint. Botanica
intends to evoke the dizzyingly wide variety of substances and objects
found
within the shops from which the exhibition derives its name.
click here
to read the whole press release
|
Line - Storm
Song (2017)
Bronze, unique
83 1/4 x 58 x 5 5/8 inches |
THIS IS NOW
August 26 - October 7, 2017
Reception 6-8 pm Saturday, August 26
Talley
Dunn Gallery
5020 Tracy Street
Dallas, TX 75205
Group Show featuring:
Anila
Quayyum Agha, Helen Altman, Jennifer
Bartlett, David Bates, Tim Bavington, Natasha Bowdoin, Julie Bozzi,
Margarita
Cabrera, Dale Chihuly, Rachel Cox, Leonardo Drew, Jeff Elrod, Vernon
Fisher, Francesca
Fuchs, Ori Gersht, Joseph Glasco, April Gornik, Kana Harada, Joseph
Havel, Butt
Johnson, Ted Kincaid, Rima Canaan Lee, Melissa Miller, Cynthia Mulcahy,
Amy
Myers, Robyn O’Neil, Aaron Parazette, Sam Reveles, Linda Ridgway, Susie
Rosmarin, Matthew Sontheimer, Erick Swenson, Liz Ward, Sarah Williams,
Xiaoze
Xie
|
Linda Ridgway and
Katherine Brimberry in residence at UNT's P.R.I.N.T. Press |
COLLABORATION:
Linda Ridgway and Katherine Brimberry
Collaboration
MONDAY, APRIL 4 TO SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2016 AT P.R.I.N.T PRESS
Lecture
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2016 AT 1 P.M. IN SAGE 116
Open House
THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2015 FROM 4 P.M. TO 6 P.M. AT P.R.I.N.T PRESS
The Print Research Institute of North Texas
University of North Texas
1120 West Oak Street
Denton, TX
Linda
Ridgway and Katherine Brimberry will collaborate to produce hand-pulled
fine art prints and deliver lectures to students and the general public.
Trained
as a printmaker, Linda Ridgway creates bronze wall reliefs that convey
autobiographical and cultural imagery. Ridgway’s work spans the themes
of femininity, tradition, and heritage while establishing their own
permanence through the age-old medium of bronze. She holds an MFA from
Tulane University and a BFA from Louisville School of Art.
Katherine
Brimberry is Owner, Director, and Senior Master Printer of Flatbed
Press in Austin, Texas. Co-founded with Mark L. Smith in 1989 with the
mission to collaborate and produce limited editions with artists,
Flatbed Press grew to include exhibitions and technical workshops. In
2012, Brimberry became sole owner and director of Flatbed Press and
Galleries.
To see
photos from this residency, visit P.R.I.N.T.'s facebook gallery here
|
Rrosa Se'lavy's Jacket (2015)
Monoprint and graphite on paper
44.25 x 33.25 inches |
HOT OFF THE
PRESS: Recent Works from Flatbed
December 12, 2015 - February 28, 2016
Art Museum of Southeast Texas
500 Main Street
Beaumont, TX 77701
Flatbed
Press in Austin, Texas, is a world renowned printing press and for
twenty-five years has published innovative and exceptional prints by
both recognized and emerging artists. Printmaking as a fine art form
has existed for hundreds of years. Recently, artists have ventured into
new realms with the medium, exploring innovative ways of incorporating
untraditional media and pushing the process to new depths. This
exhibition highlights recent prints by 12 Texas artists, including:
Ricky Armendariz, Alice Leora Briggs, Veronica Ceci, John Robert Craft,
Suzi Davidoff, Sandra Fernandez, Annalise Gratovich, Jules Buck Jones,
Sharon Kopriva, Linda Ridgway, Frank X Tolbert2 and Joan Winter. This
group of both established and emerging artists evidences the breadth
and originality of Texas artists working in the print world, and
stretches the boundaries of traditional printmaking as they cultivate
their oeuvre.
Rainey
Knudson wrote a review of the exhibition for Glasstire:
Prints,
and Architectural Pathos, at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas
Currently
on view at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont is a show of
recent works produced by Austin’s Flatbed Press. The exhibit is small,
given AMSET’s modest galleries. It’s also uneven, as contemporary
printmaking tends to be—but there are some standouts.
Linda
Ridgway, who currently has a solo show at the Old Jail Art Center in
Albany, is represented by three elegant monoprint drawings of
translucent, seemingly x-rayed clothing: a child’s dress, a jacket, and
a veil. I like Ridgway’s charged drawings of textiles—I seem to
remember a particularly compelling thong from her show at Brand 10 in
Fort Worth from a few years ago, as well as some very nice drawings of
crocheted lace. I imagine her printmaking process is more technically
complicated than it appears, given the spare final results. These works
suggest ghostliness, the ethereal nature of memory, and TSA
checkpoints. Plus they just look cool. (more)
|
The Sound of
Trees (2015) detail
Bronze and text
12 x 11 x 22.5 inches |
Cell Series:
LINDA RIDGWAY: THE SOUND OF TREES
September 19, 2015 – February 7, 2016
The Old Jail Art Center
201 South 2nd Street
Albany, TX 76430
Dallas
artist Linda Ridgway (b. 1947 in Jeffersonville, Indiana) manipulates
molten bronze and applies carefully considered patinas to create
seemingly fragile and ethereal objects. Themes and subjects related to
nature, femininity, memory, tradition, and literature are incorporated
into her sculptures as well as her two-dimensional works.
As one of Texas’ most recognized and admired artists, Ridgway utilizes
her talents and creations combined with her interest in poetry to
create a poignant installation of new work in the OJAC’s Cell Series.
The Cell Series presents the work of living artists within the
“challenging” upper galleries of the historic 1877 jail structure.
Sustaining the passion of the OJAC founders in supporting and
exhibiting contemporary artists, visitors encounter works by artists
that attempt to interpret and translate the world we universally
experience with often surprising and enlightening results.
Read
Curator Patrick Kelly's interview with the artist here
|
Without
Ceremony (2001)
Bronze, unique
Dimensions variable
|
ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACT: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation
August 26 – November 30, 2014
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art,
Pepperdine University
24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90263
Artists
have grappled with the forces of nature from the time of the earliest
cave paintings to the present. Today, our environment is strongly
impacted by the Earth's relentlessly evolving weather conditions, such
as tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves,
severe
winds, rains, etc. Man has also added to the list of stimuli which has
significantly affected the quality of the human environment with
industrial pollution, manufacturing, automobile and airplane exhaust,
plastics, paints, etc. In Environmental
Impact: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation,
curator Billie Milam Weisman is showing various examples of how artists
have reproduced, commented and critiqued our ever-changing environment,
whether the result of nature's forces or man's interventions. The
exhibition brings together different approaches to the subject—both
formal and conceptual—including commentary on pollution and natural
disasters, and observing and altering the environment.
Artists
include: Lita Abuquerque, Peter Alexander, Charles Arnoldi, James
Bachman, Radcliffe Bailey, Zigi Ben-Haim, Veronica Brovall, Vija
Celmins, Louisa Chase, Dawn Dedeaux, Daniel Dove, Andy Goldsworthy, Joe
Goode, Jia, Gegam Kacherian, Won Ju Lim, Jen Liu, Srdjan Loncar, Ju Mi,
Andy Moses, Gina Phillips, Andrew Piedilato, Linda Ridgway, Thomas
Rose, Edward Ruscha, Charles Simonds, Ryozo Tsumaki, Matt Wedel, Neil
Welliver, Frederick S. Wight, Dustin Yellin
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Other (2014)
Limited-edition print
16 x 16 inches
|
LINDA RIDGWAY: OTHER
Grove and Ceremony
Limited-Edition Prints
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to own a print by artist Linda Ridgway
This ode to motherhood and its multifaceted meaning comes from Dallas,
Texas-based artist Linda Ridgway. The original is printed in Ridgway's
characteristic graphite printing technique and incorporates live oak
leaves, known for their strength, stability, and grace under pressure.
Sounds like a lot of moms we know.
Artist Linda Ridgway combines the mightiness of
oak with the complexities and intricacies of motherhood in this
delicate, symbolically rich print.
About the Artist Linda
Ridgway (b. 1947 in Jeffersonville, Indiana) lives and works in Dallas,
Texas. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and in France
and Switzerland, and it resides in museum and public collections in
Texas, Washington, D.C., and California.
About
the Print Oak leaves dusted and printed in graphite
form the basis of this exclusive Grove and Ceremony limited edition. It
includes a hand-numbered letter of authenticity signed by the artist
and is printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm archival paper with
UltraChrome ink. Stated print dimensions refer to paper size, not image
size.
16” x 16” for $200, edition of 25
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The Left
Hand of Dog (2012)
Graphite on cut paper
22 x 30 inches
|
DRAWN IN /
DRAWN OUT
February 8 – May 24, 2014
Artists at The Old Jail Art Center, Albany:
Helen
Altman, Heyd Fontenot, Laurie Frick, Joseph Havel, Bill
Haveron,
M, Katrina Moorhead, Shaun O'Dell, Robyn O'Neil, Justin Quinn, Linda
Ridgway, Matthew Sontheimer, Terri Thornton, Eric Zimmerman
Artists at The Grace Museum, Abilene:
Adela Andea, Vernon Fisher, Linnea Glatt, Hollis Hammonds, Timothy
Harding, Rusty Scruby
Traditionally,
drawing has largely been an aid to artists in the preparation and
planning of the “higher” art forms—painting and sculpture. The
communication of larger and more complicated ideas and concepts was
left to its big brothers. This is despite the fact that drawing has
always been the primary and universal means of communication through
maps, plans, doodles, scribbles, signage, and symbols. In the arts
however, drawing was relegated as a means to another end. Recently
drawing has had a quiet resurgence and become the principal medium, or
an integral part of multi-media practices, of many artists. The playing
field has leveled.
Drawing is usually defined as a “line or
mark-made composition created in pen, pencil, or charcoal, in a
monochromatic palette.” Hybrids—incorporating collage, pigment,
photography, sculpture, and other “non-drawing” elements—make the
classification more problematic. Trying to define contemporary drawing
sometimes interferes with the appreciation of particular works.
It
could be that the re-defining and pushing of boundaries have helped
elevate the “medium” in its hierarchal struggle. In order to move past
the question of categorization, it may be better to label a work a
drawing simply if the artist (or in some cases, the curator) declares
it to be one. At this point we are free to approach a work unhindered
by the obstruction of categorization.
Drawn In / Drawn Out grew
from a desire to curate an exhibition that reveals not only the
diversity of drawings currently being created by artists, but also
highlight the inherent possibilities their drawings possess.
Concentrating on visually and conceptually innovative techniques
narrowed the number of works that could have potentially been included
in this exhibit. Inclusion was further limited to artists that have
either lived or studied in Texas and were influenced by their tenure.
It
became evident early in the curatorial process that a preconceived
notion of a “Texas vernacular” does not exist in contemporary drawing.
Instead, artists are using drawing to explore a variety of themes,
concepts, and approaches to image making. The artists in Drawn In /
Drawn Out utilize and combine portraiture, landscape, narrative,
fantasy, symbolism, conceptualism, text, and appropriation, conveyed
through representation and abstraction. The results are drawings that
directly engage and communicate an endless amount of stimulating visual
and intellectual experiences and ideas—expressed in ways that painting,
sculpture, and photography cannot.
The realization that an
additional venue and an additional curatorial perspective would create
a larger, more dynamic and diverse exhibition prompted me to ask Judy
Deaton, Curator at The Grace Museum, to co-curate a drawing exhibition.
I extend my thanks to Judy and the staff of The Grace Museum for their
participation and efforts in this endeavor. Finally, I thank the
participating artists for their visionary work.
-Patrick Kelly, Curator of Exhibitions, The Old Jail Art Center
|
Ryman's
White in Silence, Page 55 (2013)
Bronze, unique
11 x 24 x 9 inches
|
LINDA RIDGWAY:
The Grand
Anonymous
September 5 – October 12, 2013
John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of works by
Dallas artist, Linda Ridgway. Linda
Ridgway: The Grand Anonymous
marks the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery and will be on
view September 5 through October 12, 2013. John Berggruen Gallery will
host an opening reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5:30 – 7:30 pm.
Linda Ridgway (born 1947 in Jeffersonville,
Indiana) creates poetic bronze wall reliefs that convey both
autobiographical and cultural imagery. Although educated as a
printmaker, Ridgway continues to experiment with the limits of various
media to create work that remains intimate regardless of scale.
Ridgway’s bronzes emerge from a two-dimensional template to become new
spatial objects that elucidate the artist’s personal experiences. These
works span the themes of femininity, tradition, and heritage while
establishing their own permanence through the medium of bronze. Ridgway
juxtaposes the delicacy of the texture of lace, and crochet work with
the monochromatic and industrial fortitude of metalwork. While some of
her works emphasize a reverence for domesticity, Ridgway also uses the
translation of knit pieces into bronze sculptures to underscore a
disintegration of memory. Ridgway extracts the artisanship of crochet
work to develop a history of herself as an artist in the enduring
medium of bronze.
The artist’s work emerges not only from specific sentiments but also
from a rich appreciation of poetry. This is exemplified in A whir among white branches
great and small,
2013 which draws its name from the poem “Our Singing Strength” by
Robert Frost. Ridgway uses Frost in her work frequently, both
referencing and physically including his words in works such as Now Let the Night,
2013 and But the secret
in the middle knows, 2011.
Ridgway’s love of Frost, amongst other writers such as Mary Oliver and
Harper Lee, is rooted in childhood memories of her mother’s passion for
literature. Ridgway both references and physically includes literature
in her sculptures by interweaving text in nests and using books as the
stuffing of her pillows. In this way, she investigates how instrumental
these works are to her identity as an artist, mother, daughter and
friend. In this exhibition, Ridgway celebrates the anonymous artistic
achievements of the women in her life by memorializing them in bronze.
|
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BOOM TOWN
The Art Foundation curates Boom
Town as part of DallasSITES: Available Space
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
July 19- Aug 18, 2013
Artists:
Jesse Morgan Barnett, DB12 (Jesse Morgan Barnett, C.J. Davis, and
Michael Mazurek), Cassandra Emswiler, Brandon Kennedy, M, Kirsten Macy,
Margaret Meehan, Keri Oldham, Tom Orr, Arthur Peña, Linda Ridgway,
Gregory Ruppe, Paul Slocum, and Terri Thornton.
"There is an
absurdity in creating cultural products when there is no culture to
justify them."
- Luis
Camnitzer, “Contemporary Colonial Art,” 1969
Boom
Town, an exhibition organized by The Art Foundation for Available
Spaces, describes the tangle of networks – political, economical,
geographical, social and historical – that shape Dallas’ current
cultural climate. The exhibited work is by a handful of exemplary
artists with connections to Dallas whose various modes of expression
evince equal parts conflict, anxiety, or refusal. Without posing a
justification for their choice to be here, Boom Town reveals the
vibrancy and viability of this city’s artists, in hopes of aiding in
their liberation from the burden of the local.
As part of the
exhibit The Art Foundation will develop a take-away flier and a poster
will be for sale in the Dallas Museum Gift shop.
PRESS:
Dallas Museum Blog: UNCRATED “Making Use of
Available Space”
D Magazine - Front Row: “Local Artists Poised to Infiltrate the Dallas
Museum” Peter Simek, July 17
D Magazine - Front Row: “Photos: Friday
Night at Dallas SITES: Available Space” Andi Harman, July 22
Dallas Observer: “The DMA Gives a Shit About
Local Art. It’s Time You Did Too.” by Jaimie Laughlin, July 24
Blouin ArtInfo: In The Air “Dallas Museum of
Art brings the Local Art Scene into its Galleries” Meredith Caraher,
July 25
|
The Perfect
Six (2006)
Bronze, unique
35 x 18.5 x 14.25 inches
|
LINDA
RIDGWAY: A Song Only to Herself
February 8 - March 30, 2013
The Cole Art Center
Stephen F. Austin State University
329 E. Main Street
Nacogdoches, TX 75962
Opening Reception: Friday, February 8 at 6:00pm
The Stephen F. Austin State
University College of Fine Arts and School of Art will open the
exhibition “Linda Ridgway: A Song Only to Herself” with a reception at
6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, in The Cole Art Center @ The Old Opera House in
downtown Nacogdoches.
The show, which is featured as part of the
College of Fine Arts’ University Series, includes bronze sculpture and
drawings on paper, according to John Handley, director of galleries for
SFA.
“Ridgway is an important contemporary artist living in
Texas whose work is widely known and appreciated,” Handley said. “Her
work is in the collections of several prominent art museums in Texas. I
first saw her work while living in the San Francisco Bay area at the
John Berggruen Gallery.”
The subjects of Ridgway’s prints,
drawing and sculpture are directly related to childhood memories of her
own mother reading from Robert Frost’s writings, according to
information at www.lindaridgway.com. “Her work acknowledges and
celebrates a path of self-revelation with text-based works of crocheted
lace transformed through the print process, resulting in eloquent and
poignant statements about time and experience,” the site says.
Ridgway will attend the opening reception and will speak about her work.
The
exhibition, which will run through March 30 in the Reavley Gallery, is
sponsored in part by the Nacogdoches Junior Forum and the SFA Friends
of the Visual Arts. All exhibitions, receptions and gallery talks are
free and open to the public.
The Cole Art Center is located at 329 E. Main St. in downtown
Nacogdoches. For more information, call (936) 468-1131.
|
In the Long
Night (2008)
Graphite on paper
22 x 30 inches
|
ONCE
& AGAIN: Rebecca
Carter, Teresa Rafidi, and Linda Ridgway
November 3, 2012 - December 8, 2012
brand 10 art space
3418 West 7th Street
Fort Worth, TX 76107
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 3rd from 5:00pm - 9:00pm
brand 10 art
space presents Once and
Again
highlighting the works of artists Rebecca Carter, Teresa Rafidi and
Linda Ridgway with selected works in video, photography, drawing and
sculpture revolving around the idea written by Thomas Wolfe, “You can
never go home again”; that memory, time, perception and experience
change the familiarity and complexity of home.
Rebecca Carter’s
work explores states of intimacy and alienation by engaging in
processes of appropriation, tracing, erasing, digital glitches and
reconstructing. “No place like home” a video projection, appropriates
the iconic Dorothy’s shoes from The Wizard of Oz movie images and
reflects upon them with distance and dexterity referencing both a
personal history as well as a collective one.
Photographs by
Teresa Rafidi are ordinary interior places that shift attention away
from subject matter and illuminate the space by hinting at a figurative
presence that is not always seen. Her photographs contain a
sense
of altered reality, creating a quiet image that contains both presence
and absence simultaneously while triggering nostalgia and reverence.
The
subjects of Linda Ridgway’s prints and drawing and sculpture are
directly related to childhood memories of her own mother reading from
Robert Frost’s writings. Her work acknowledges and celebrates a path of
self-revelation with text-based works of crocheted lace transformed
through the print process resulting in eloquent and poignant statements
about time and experience.
|
But the
secret sits in the middle and knows (2011)
Bronze, unique
24 x 28 x 7.5 inches |
ESPOUSED
September 22, 2012 - January 6, 2013
Art Museum of Southeast Texas
500 Main Street
Beaumont, TX 77701
The Art Museum of
Southeast Texas (AMSET) presents Espoused, a vibrant group
exhibition
featuring 36 contemporary Texas artists (including Linda Ridgway and
Harry Geffert) who are partners either in marriage, as significant
others or as a collaborative team. Espoused comprises more than 40
works in a variety of media and highlights these diverse pairs of
artists working together in various ways through inspiration,
creativity, encouragement, studio space and techniques. These
couples further examine how their works are or are not influenced by
one another.
The
artists whose work will be featured include: Shannon and William
Cannings, Jerolyn Bahm-Colombik and Roger Colombik, Elizabeth Akamatsu
and Piero Fenci, Suzanne Bloom and Ed Hill (MANUAL), Linda Ridgway and
Harry Geffert, Letitia and Sedrick Huckaby, Janet Chaffee and Benito
Huerta, Carter Ernst and Paul Kittelson, Corinne and Charles Jones,
Cathy Cunningham-Little and Ken Little, Liza and Lee Littlefield, Joan
Batson and Bert L. Long Jr., Beverly Penn and Marc McDaniel, Susan
Budge and Jesús Moroles, Sharon Engelstein and Aaron Parazette,
Charmaine Locke and James Surls, Ann Stautberg and Frank X. Tolbert 2,
and Marianne Green and Randy Twaddle.
Many of these artists have
gained national and international attention and are represented by
major galleries and in museum collections across the country.
AMSET also has exhibited individually or owns work by several of the
featured artists.
“We
are pleased to present Espoused to the
Southeast Texas community,” said AMSET Curator of Exhibitions and
Collections Caitlin Williams. “This is an exciting exhibition teaming
with a variety of subjects, media, styles, and
personalities.”
Espoused is organized by AMSET and funded in part by the
Southeast Texas Arts Council, Edith Fuller Chambers Charitable
Foundation, the late Dorothy Anne Conn, City of Beaumont and the Texas
Commission on the Arts.
|
May 21, 1982 (2011)
Graphite on paper
44.5 x 30 inches
|
PAPER SPACE:
DRAWINGS BY SCULPTORS
September 7 - October 27, 2012
Opening Reception
Friday, September 7, 2012 – 6:00–8:00 PM
Inman
Gallery
3901 Main Street
Houston, TX 77002
Paper
Space showcases a broad range of drawings by sculptors,
from works created in the 1940's by Alexander Calder to contemporary
drawings by emerging artists. The exhibition is far from a definitive
survey but we endeavored to represent a diversity of modern as well as
contemporary work. The show focuses on several ways that drawing
informs sculptural practice: some drawings are brainstorms for eventual
3D works; some act as schematic drawings for the execution of works;
some are two-dimensional representations of existing sculpture; some
seem to be made for the sheer joy of mark-making; and some represent an
investigatiion of concerns parallel to an artist's sculptural practice.
|
The
Alice Chronicles #1 (2011-12)
Graphite
on paper
71
x 42 1/4 inches
|
LINDA RIDGWAY
– ALICE, THE POET AND THE GRASSLANDS
March 2 – April 14, 2012
Talley Dunn Gallery
5020 Tracy Street
Dallas, TX
75205
Talley Dunn
Gallery is pleased to present
“Alice, the poet and the grasslands,” an exhibition of recent drawings
and
bronze sculptures by renowned artist Linda Ridgway.
Drawing inspiration from various
works of poetry and
literature, Linda Ridgway began her recent series for “Alice, the poet
and the
grasslands” about a year ago. As
a way
to memorialize the words of authors such as Robert Frost, Carl
Sandburg, and
Lewis Carroll, Ridgway’s artwork celebrates the beauty and delicacy
found
within basic forms. In
works such as The
Dreamer, Ridgway cuts hundreds of tiny pieces from the paper
to have their
hanging shapes open the surface of the picture plane and cast shadows
over the
composition.
Creating
a play of texture and depth within the surface,
Ridgway’s poignant drawings invite the viewer to enter the artist’s
world and
experience form anew. New
bronze
sculptures But the secret sits in the middle and knows and
Mondrian’s
Flower also express Ridgway’s ability to convey emotion
through a minimal
language that relies on the play of line and shadow.
With a series of drawings entitled The
Alice Chronicles, Ridgway references the title character in
Lewis Carroll’s
beloved book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, as
a means to explore
the idea of personal journey, not only for the fictional character, but
for the
artist and viewer as well.
Please click here
to read a review of this exhibition in D Magazine.
|
Knowing
(2007)
Bronze, unique
39 x 38 x 3.5 inches
|
LINDA
RIDGWAY : INTIMATE CASTINGS OF EXPERIENCE
by Tracee W. Robertson
Linda
Ridgway decided to work in bronze 20 years ago, adding her printmaker’s
point of view to an age-old medium. She has exhibited widely since
1974, with solo exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Glassell
School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the El Paso Museum
of Art, Dunn and Brown Contemporary in Dallas, John Berggruen Gallery
in San Francisco, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans, and Charles
Cowles Gallery in New York. The 1997 survey exhibition at the Glassell
School of Art, which traveled to the Dallas Museum of Art, coincided
with a turning point in Ridgway’s career. Celebrating her 50th
birthday, she embarked on her most thematically and technically daring
decade. Now, as she approaches traditional retirement age, Ridgway is
one of the most prolific and recognized artists working in Texas.
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