Ann Huey & Debra Rueb

Two artists, Ann Huey, from Lancaster, Texas, and Debra Rueb, from Houston, Texas created acrylic paintings and photographs for an exhibition titled New Works on view through June 21st.

Ann Huey used her graphic, caricatural painting style to lift her acrylic portraits directly out of her family photos from 1967. Writer, James Michael Starr stated “they so look like 1967, in hair, dress or facial expression, that they become archetypes. Ann’s acrylic portraits are of Texans we’ve all met, married, descended from or are otherwise related to, are so dead-on because her subjects are vulnerable and somewhat at ease … We know that we know Ann’s family friend (Dee 1967), smiling auntie (Aunt Winnie 1967) and the artist herself (Ann 1969) because they allowed their snapshooter to capture the imperfection of their humanity and because Ann has, in turn, relayed it with humor and affection. She’s also captured a milieu, and what sticks most with me is the sociological record, the documentation of a tribe at a critical moment in time.”

Debra Rueb’s series of Tammy pictures challenged and entertained. Writer Clint Willour stated, “Rueb has taken the doll that she played with as a child – the “not Barbie” alternative, Tammy- and moved her from the 1950’s into the new millennium, photographing her in situations acting out the artist’s love of puns, metaphors and cliches. Tammy is now empowered- mirroring the progress of women in the decades since Eisenhower and father knowing best. She has also created diptychs pairing visual representations of a sentence with a diagram of that sentence in picture form. Rueb states, “as a visual artist when I hear expressions like “being bogged down in red tape” or “shaking a leg”, I naturally visualize these things. My goal with this series is to express myself visually while examining wordplay. Tammy acts out metaphors in playful dramas of the English language.” Rueb’s altered photographs “literally” came to life in Tammy Cooks Up a Storm, Tammy Gets Ahead, Tammy Strings Words Together, Tammy Crosses the Line and The Last Straw.