OJAC exhibits to open Feb. 26
Two new exhibitions open Tuesday, Feb. 26, at the Old Jail Art Center and will remain on display at the local museum until May 18.
OJAC members who sent in their RSVP before the Feb. 18 deadline will be able to attend the artist’s reception and special members’ opening event this Saturday, Feb. 23 for an early viewing of the artwork.
Allied: The Tia and OJAC Collections, as well as the next installment in The Cell Series, titled Matthew Bourbon: Waiting for Now, are the featured exhibits.
The opening will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. this Saturday and will include a preview of the artwork collections before they go on display to the general public on Tuesday, Feb. 26, as well as refreshments, remarks from the artist, and dinner, according to developing and marketing coordinator Susan Montgomery.
Desserts for the event will be provided by the museum’s Docent Corps.
Allied: The Tia and
OJAC Collections
Allied is a presentation of works from the Tia Collection of Santa Fe, New Mexico “paired” with those from the permanent collection of the Old Jail Art Center.
“The connections between the works range from blatant to subtle,” said OJAC executive director Patrick Kelly. “Some groupings present artists from different cultures or eras who investigated similar themes, or that elicit similar moods through formal devices. Other times, the juxtapositions can involve artists who use traditional approaches to image creation with those who utilize unconventional mediums.”
The exhibit is supported by John and Ginger Dudley, Clayton Henry, and Sally and Robert Porter.
Cell Series
San Francisco Bay area native Matthew Bourbon is a professor of art at the University of North Texas, and is also an active art critic.
His exhibit, Waiting for Now, will be displayed at the OJAC as part of the Cell Series at the OJAC that presents living artists and their work.
Bourbon’s paintings often feature mundane or innocuous scenes which are partially obscured by areas of colorful stripes and shapes that create abstract forms.
“The coexistence of the two within the framework of a painting is a source of fascination for both the artist and viewer,” said Kelly. “Recently though, Bourbon has all but eliminated the obvious figurative elements that lend themselves to linear narrative and has begun to investigate ‘pure’ abstraction of form. These eliminate the information normally used by a viewer to decipher the narrative.”
Bourbon notices the diverse “languages” in a painting and is interested in how artwork can be “understood” or “misunderstood” depending upon how the viewer interprets the images on the canvas, according to Kelly.
The 2019 Cell Series is supported by the McGinnis Family Fund of Communities Foundation of Texas in memory of Juli Weida McGinnis, Kathy Webster in memory of Charles H. Webster, and by Barbra and Jay Clack, Susie and Joe Clack, Jenny and Rob Dupree, and Amy and Patrick Kelly.
