ABOUT

Lawndale Art Center is dedicated to the presentation of contemporary art with an emphasis on work by Houston artists. Lawndale presents exhibitions, lectures and events to further the creative exchange of ideas among the region’s diverse, artistic, cultural and student communities.

The Lawndale Artist Studio Program is part of Lawndale’s ongoing commitment to support the creation of contemporary art by Gulf Coast area artists. With an emphasis on emerging practices, the program provides three artists with studio space on the third floor of the Lawndale Art Center at 4912 Main Street in the heart of Houston’s Museum District.

Artists have full access to their studios 24 hours a day, seven days a week; access to visiting artists, writers and curators; and receive a $500 monthly stipend for the duration of the program together with an initial $1500 materials allowance. If accepted, artists are expected to present a workshop or presentation to the general public and the local arts community to share their practice or explore a related topic.

Works produced during the 2008-2009 program will be exhibited at Lawndale Art Center during May 2009. Lawndale Art Center works with resident artists to create additional exhibition opportunities during the residency.

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2009-2010 STUDIO PROGRAM RESIDENTS

Lawndale Art Center is pleased to announce the residents for the third year of the the Lawndale Studio Residency.

Dawn Black was born in Louisiana where she received a BFA from Louisiana State University. She earned both MA and MFA, specializing in Painting and Sculpture, from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. In 2000 she spent the summer exploring Venice, Italy while making prints at Scoula di Graphica, a printmaking studio on the Grand Canal. She has had solo exhibitions at Curator’s Office, Washington DC; Kunstoffice, Berlin, Germany and Eve Drewelowe Gallery, Iowa City, IA. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at School 33, Baltimore, MD; Morehead State University, Morehead, KY; Florida State University Museum of Art, Tallahassee, FL; Irving Arts Center, Irving, TX; Reynolds Gallery, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA; Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA; Novato Art Center, Novato, CA; Upstate Artists Guild, Albany, NY; Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge, LA; Gallery 119, Chicago, IL; University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA among others. Her work has been recently reviewed by the Washington Post, Art Papers magazine, and online at www.artinamerica.com and is in various private collections, notably the Zacharius collection. Her work is represented by Curator’s Office.

Nick Meriwether received his BFA in painting from the University of Houston in 2006. He is a multidisciplinary artist, whose primary mediums include drawing, sculpture, video and computer software. He works professionally as a photographer's assistant, an art instructor and a graphic designer. He is a member of the local drawing collective Sketch Klubb. During his residency at Lawndale, Meriwether plans on working with microcontrollers and interactive computing to create a new body of sculptural work.

David Waddell is a Houston based artist who creates other worlds through stop-motion animation, small sculptures, and collaged drawings. Lately, digital media has played a larger role in all of the work by combining the use of Flash, Final Cut, a scanner, in addition to photography. The iPod is utilized for viewer interaction with his modern day flipbooks that play out like a nature documentary. Tactility and the use of the hand are an important role throughout the work and the process. Waddell makes creatures, landscapes and houses with found objects and collage. After working on three consecutive collaborations, which include TaMarmaruga shown at Lawndale last season, the nature of his work has been affected in a positive manner. He is excited to work on his individual body of work which will include more experimentation with sound and further layering through the process of filmmaking. Waddell’s work has been included at Gavin Brown Enterprise, Lawndale Art Center, New York Fashion Week, Fotofest and Aurora Picture Show. He received his BFA from University of Texas and his MFA in painting from American University. Waddell is currently the Director of Media Studies at HSPVA.

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2009-2010 JUROR BIOS

Bill Arning will begin his appointment as Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston in April 2009. A native of New York, Arning has more than twenty years experience in the arts, having served as curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and as director and chief curator at White Columns Alternative Arts Space in New York. Arning has organized numerous exhibitions, including the widely acclaimed retrospective America Starts Here—Ericson and Ziegler—1985-1995 (in collaboration with Ian Berry, curator, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY) that toured to Austin, Kansas City and Cincinnati. The exhibition won an AICA award from the region’s branch of the prestigious art critics association as did other Arning-curated shows such as AA Bronsons Mirror, Mirror, Son et lumière, a show of sound and light works, and The Boston Area Drawing Show for the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts. Arning was also one of four curators on the acclaimed exhibition Sensorium that considered how technology has altered our experience and understanding of the five human senses, and collaborated on Chantal Akerman-Moving Through Space and Time, seen in Houston at the Blaffer Gallery in 2008 before traveling to Cambridge, Miami, and St Louis. Arning received his Masters in Art History from Tufts University in Massachusetts and his Bachelors degree from New York University. He has served on the boards of numerous not-for-profits, most recently Participant Inc. in New York, and The Gallery at Green Street in Boston.

Michael Guidry, a New Orleans native, received his BA from the University of New Orleans in 1992 and his MFA from University of Houston in painting in 1996. He returned to New Orleans and worked as the Assistant Registrar and Curator of Traveling Exhibitions for 9 years for the New Orleans Museum of Art. In August 2005 he came back to Houston and took the position as the Curator of the University of Houston’s Public Art Collection. He is the Chair of the Programming Committee for Lawndale Art Center, has done independent curating, sat on public art panels for Houston Metro and the Houston Arts Alliance. Michael Guidry is an artist as well and is represented locally by Wade Wilson Art.

Mary Magsamen is a curator, visual artist and educator. She is the curator at the Aurora Picture Show, a non-profit micro-cinema that presents artist-made, non-commercial film and video. Magsamen received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and she collaborates on video projects with her husband, Stephan Hillerband. Their work is exhibited in galleries, museums and film festivals. She also teaches Introduction to Interdisciplinary Art at the University of Houston.

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2010-2011 APPLICATION INFORMATION

Application information for the 2010-2011 Lawndale Artist Studio Program will be available by late-March 2010. Please sign up for our newsletter (link to newsletter sign up) to receive information on this and other artists opportunities at Lawndale Art Center.

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