Gladys Bel
Houston-based artist, Gladys Bel’s charcoal and ink drawings were highly modeled and precise representations of forms that appear vaguely familiar but remain enigmatic. The powerful and curious images, which the artist viewed as emblems, signs or an alphabet, explored personal and cultural symbols.
Bel previously focused on three-dimensional work until six years before this exhibit when she began drawing “as a way to find new forms to sculpt.” Her “drawing rapidly gained a life of its own.” Bel’s forms, sometimes anthropomorphic in nature, refered to the diaphanous realm of her own psychological space in which she “attempts to tease out personal memories and cultural images that jar in (her) unconscious and conscious. Later (she) combine(s) these images, layering them into more ambiguous forms.”
