ANNUAL CONFERENCE - LUBBOCK
OCTOBER 1-3, 2015
Texas Tech University
College of Visual and Performing Arts in collaboration with TASA: Interdisciplinary Arts Conference ARTS PRACTICE RESEARCH
Scholarship, Pedagogy, and the Creative Process
In teaching the fine and performing arts, real-time and immersive learning engages students in "arts practice" - that is, in the processes, techniques, skills, data-sets, and critical perspectives whose combinations in real time yield the art object or experience. Arts Practice Research, organized in trans-disciplinary collaboration wtih the Texas Tech College of Visual & Performing Art, Texas Assocation of Schools of Art (TASA), the TTU School of Art, the TTU Vernacular Music Center, the TTU Department of Theatre & Dance, the Roots Music Institute, the Department of Fashion Design, and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, will bring together teachers and students, creators and scholars, campus and community, vernacular and cultivated genres, "traditional" and "modern" idioms.
Spring 2015 Envision Newsletter, TASA Lubbock Conference Recap (PDF)
Conference photographs by Rebecca Dietz, Lubbock 2015
Keynote Speaker: Nick Cave
photo by rebecca dietz
Nick Cave is a Messenger, Artist and Educator working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums inclusive of sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. He has been described as a Renaissance artist and says of himself "I have found my middle and now ... working toward what I am leaving behind."
Paul Hanna Lecture: Felice House
Paul Hanna “Felice House, Giving Voice to the Female Hero”
Felice house lecture - photo by rebecca dietz
Felice House transforms male dominated archetypes from Hollywood Westerns into heroic female icons in her large-‐scale figurative paintings. House was awarded the annual Paul Hanna lecture at the recent TASA conference in Lubbock, Texas. Through her lecture, she wove a narrative of heroic female characters (from the historical to the mythical) as represented in paintings and sculptures across time. Representations of Joan of Arc, for example, painted and sculpted from both male and female perspectives, helped to frame her own work as a female artist, painting the female hero. Her lecture revealed the dominance of the male hero throughout Western art history, and the difference found in representations of equally strong female archetypes. For instance, art historical representations of female heroeswere often sexualized or overly feminized, as so often found in images of Joan of Arc, where her tomboyish haircut is rendered as long flowing hair, and her manly wardrobe is replaced with a longer dress-‐like garment.
Felice House is a figurative painter who studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the Visualization Laboratory at Texas A&M University, and the University of Texas in Austin. Her recent series of paintings, titled RE•WESTERN, were the primary focus of her Paul Hanna lecture. Interested in gender flipping, House transforms images of the “mythical American West through a postmodern lens that reflects and critiques Hollywood Westerns.” Her series, RE•WESTERN, places contemporary women into iconic movie images of such characters as John Wayne and James Dean. It is also worth noting the way in which she paints. The scale of her paintings is typically larger than life. Young, beautiful, yet dominant female characters are portrayed through quick and gestural mark making, painterly strokes and intense swaths of color. These heroic female representations are realist in style, yet expressive and alive in their rendering.
Throughout her presentation, Felice House reflects on her frustrations with placing her female characters in the pre-‐existing archetypes of the male hero. She states that “while effective, performing this “gender flip” is ultimately frustrating because it places women in the same existing male framework that female heroes have been forced to reference, which has the effect of cementing the role of hero as male.” She is self-‐reflective and critical, yet her work not only questions the heroic frameworkin Western art history, but also provides a fresh perspective on AmericanHollywood Western film iconography. House is indeed successful, in her RE•WESTERN paintings, in creating contemporary empowered visions of women through the lens of the male hero archetype. The complexities and layers within this topic, along with her virtuoso skill in painting, made this an engaging and inspiring Paul Hanna lecture.
Hollis Hammonds Chair of Visual Studies St. Edward's University
Till Your Eyes Water - Performance by Jess Humphrey
ONE CUBE FOOT EXHIBITION
The exhibition was on view at Texas Tech University Satellite Gallery at LHUCA. The reception was held during First Friday Art Crawl during the conference weekend. Photos and Review by Rebecca Dietz
The 2015 TASA “One Foot Exhibition” is an annual juried exhibit with student and faculty award winners. Charles Adams, of CASP ( Charles Adams Studio Project) was this year’s juror. The submissions for this year’s exhibit were exhibited at the Texas Tech University Satellite Gallery at LHUCA, during the conference and as part of the lively and well-attended First Friday Art Crawl in LHUCA (Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts). Faculty winners included Mark Greenwalt (first place), Shannon Cannings (second place), Alexandra Robinson (third place). Student winners included : Jennifer Fisk (first place), Elizabeth Grimmett (second place), Chris Marin (third place). As TASA’s One Foot Student Exhibition title indicates, submissions for this show must be limited to one square foot for 2D work or one cubic foot for 3D pieces.
Arts Practice Research, Conference Brochure (PDF)
Conference Blog
2015 Conference co-chairs:
Carol Flueckiger - Texas Tech University
Chris Smith – Texas Tech University
Nicole Wesley - Texas Tech University
Bill Gelber - Texas Tech University
