We sent our new intern and brand new Austinite, Greta Goldbart, out on the WEST Austin Studio Tour on Sunday without any real direction on whose stops to visit. These are her top 5 picks! While the art tour is over, you can still check out these Austin artists by following the links to their websites.
By Greta Goldbart, guest writer
Alica Philley – WEST #164
A master of masking tape, Alicia Philley recently migrated from painting on canvas to wood paneling. Her arrangements of color and line are vivid, encouraging the viewer to investigate the way the vertical interacts with the organic. The grain of the wood pops through the paint when the light hits it in a particular way, invoking the growth and natural line patterns of the medium and engaging it with her own expression.
Herb Ingram – WEST #166
Herb Ingram has been working with wood since shop class in high school, and it’s easy to see—his careful, soft bowl forms are carved with care and are made of local Texas hardwood which he chops himself. Exalting smooth surfaces as well as the burls and natural effects of the wood, Ingram pays tribute to the trees that provide his medium by burning an image of the tree from which the wood from each piece came into the base of the form.
Base of an Ingram bowl
Mae Crocker – WEST #314
Mae Crocker investigates the “psycho-geography”—the effects of space and place on the mind—through paintings one might consider landscape, yet feature no foreground. Crocker’s wonderful sunset locations are populated with power lines and technology that seem to have escaped their human creators and take on a life and landscape of their own.
Heidi Pitre – WEST #316
Heidi Pitre’s paintings range from portrait to still life, yet are anything but still. Expressive to the highest degree, her mastery of shading and color create such lifelike skin on her subjects that it is easy to disappear into the mise-en-scene of a painting. Even her painting of tin cans is imbued with a kind of life that completely animates the still image.
Renee Victor – WEST #315
Renee Victor’s landscapes are both natural and alien, geometric and organic, and full of details she calls “mystery moments”—small extensions of lines and shapes—tackling ideas of borders, immigration, and the fundamental question “Where am I?” Angle and color combine to create the familiar, yet the strange; the home, yet the alien planet.
Hey, thanks for the shout out! Enjoyed meeting Greta.
Nice work!