TalkAbout: Everything You Ever

11:30AM – 12:30PM

Join us for a conversation in the gallery about creating artwork in times of political, social, and cultural anxiety with artist Tammie Rubin, Hollis Hammonds and Michael Anthony Garcia.

TalkAbout is a program that facilitates casual conversations with artists and the people who inspire them.

Tammie Rubin is a sculptor who transforms familiar and trivial objects into mythic relics: surreal, dark, playful and sensual. Her works are intensely colored, technically complex, and intricately ornamented sculptural assemblages of everyday objects.  She completed her MFA in Ceramics at the University of Washington and a BFA in Ceramics and Art History from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has exhibited nationally; selected solo exhibitions include de stijl Gallery, Austin, TX, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN, Art and Design Gallery at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, and Pottery Northwest, Seattle, WA. Selected group exhibitions include Evansville Museum of Arts, History, & Science, IN, San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, TX, Rockford Art Museum, IL, Mulvane Art Museum, KS, and Lillstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL.  She was awarded a grant from Artist Trust, Grants for Artist Projects (GAP), and an Artist Project Grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Rubin’s work has appeared in the journals fields Issue 7, Ceramics: Art & Perception, Ceramics Monthly, and newspapers such as The Seattle Time, The News-Gazette, and The Austin American Statesman. Rubin lives and works in Austin where she is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture & Ceramics at St. Edward’s University.

Hollis Hammonds’ dystopian drawings and found-object installations have been widely exhibited throughout the US. Built on threads of personal memory tied to the public collective consciousness, her work reflects the evidence of war, natural disasters, environmental degradation, and the ills of consumerism. Hammonds attempts to illustrate or capture moments in time, some representations of the past, others a projection of one potential future, and still others completely from the realm of fantasy. She is interested in how these worlds of truth and fiction, past and future, intersect and overlap. Hammonds is the author of Drawing Structure: Conceptual and Observational Techniques, and has had her creative work featured in multiple publications. She was awarded the grand prize for the Dave Bown Projects 14th Semiannual Competition, and has been an artist in residence at McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Vermont Studio Center, and Atlantic Center for the Arts, and is an Associate Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Visual Studies at St. Edward’s University in Austin.

Michael Anthony García is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art from Austin College in Sherman, Texas in 1996. His practice includes photography, sculpture, installation and performance work, the bulk of which conveys the minutiae of fleeting moments of interaction between the body, the mind and our prowess (or missteps) in coping with the human condition. Through the use of found-object and multimedia, García explores the gradient of ideas that lie within this spectrum. He is a founding member of Los Outsiders curatorial collective and has curated large-scale exhibitions of international artists, premiered new work at The Experimental Action International Performance Art Biennale in Houston, Laguna Gloria in Austin, and The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. He created a year-long traveling social practice work with Jaime Castillo for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. Recently, he created new work for Threewalls Gallery and the Wabash Arts Corridor’s inaugural Performance Art Series “A More Perfect Union,” in Chicago, curated an exhibition of abstract Texas-based painters at PrintPress for the East Austin Studio Tour, and has begun a durational performance that takes place through the Mexico City Metro system and stations.