2 new exhibits to be featured at Old Jail
By Melinda L. Lucas
Members of the Old Jail Art Center will get an up-close look at three new exhibits during a reception on Saturday, Sept. 23, with the galleries then open to the public during regular museum hours.
The OJAC staff has been busy preparing for the weekend’s opening, with both artists on hand earlier in the week to install their pieces.
In addition to viewing the exhibitions, those attending the reception will have a chance to meet the artists.
Fall Features
Artists whose works are being exhibited starting Sept. 23 are Leigh Merrill: Garden of Artificial Sugar and Karla Garcia: When the Grass Stands Still.
Both exhibits will be on display until Jan. 13, 2024.
Leigh Merrill
Garden of
Artificial Sugar
Leigh Merrill has created a new body of work for Garden of Artificial Sugar that stems from her meticulous “photographic” process.
Often utilizing thousands of individual photographs, Merrill isolates and then manipulates visual elements of nature before seamlessly stitching or collaging each together to eventually fabricate a unique scene.
Playing off the fallacy of truth via photography, Merrill creates her own fictional realities that appear as brilliantly colored scenes of (un)natural landscapes.
With Merrill’s work, what originated as photographs of bucolic flora and funga – void of fauna – have transformed into sugary semblances of reality.
Karla Garcia:
When the Grass
Stands Still
Karla Garcia is a Mexican-born, Dallas based artist whose research into her history and place informs her work.
Utilizing primarily terra cotta clay in a very direct approach, Garcia creates elaborate installations interpreted from desert landscapes.
For her Cell Series exhibition titled When the Grass Stands Still, the artist researched the regional environs of the museum’s region of Texas. Coordinating with the OJAC’s Robert E. Nail Jr. archivist Molly Sauder, Garcia studied historical images and books relevant to the natural landscape as a resource for a new body of work for her installation.
Garcia suggests that the sculptural forms “exist as part of the land, teaching and reminding us of our personal and cultural history and being part of the land.”
More Information
Old Jail hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
The museum is closed on Sundays, Mondays, and major holidays. Admission is always free.
For more information or to become an OJAC memb er, call 325-762-2269 or visit theojac.org.
