Shows of force
12:48 AM CST on Thursday, December 2, 2004
THE ARTIST AND THE BIBLE: 20TH CENTURY WORKS ON PAPER
Who: The Greater Denton Arts Council and Christians in the Visual Arts
When: 1 to 5 p.m. daily through Dec. 30. The galleries will be closed Dec. 24-26.
Where: The Meadows Gallery at the Center for the Visual Arts, 400 E. Hickory St.
Details: Free. Call 940-382-2787 or visit www.dentonarts.com.
SEEKING SHELTER
What: A master of fine arts exhibit of recent work by Deanna Wood
When: Show runs through Friday. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through Friday. A closing reception will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday.
Where: The East Fine Arts Gallery, located in the TWU Fine Arts Building, at Oakland Street and Pioneer Circle
Details: Free
ONION ROOTS
What: A master of fine arts exhibit by Niema Jones
When: Show opens Monday and runs through Dec. 17. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Where: The East Fine Arts Gallery, located in the TWU Fine Arts Building, at Oakland Street and Pioneer Circle
Details: Free
Three local galleries feature art that all deal with forces, both human and elemental.
The biggest of the three is the Center for the Visual Arts’ Meadows Gallery, where the Christians in the Visual Arts shows select 20th-century works on paper.
The works specifically deal with artists and the Bible, and it brings the work of several artists back into the Meadows Gallery, including paintings by Marc Chagall, the prints of Ukranian-American Ben-Zion and the print portraiture of French artist Michel Ciry.
The pieces come from the collection of Edward and Diane Knippers. Edward Knippers stirred Denton a little several years ago with his own large-scale paintings, all of which depicted biblical scenes populated with saints and sinners painted as nudes.
The show represents a breadth of stylistic interpretation and vision of biblical themes, characters and narratives. Centuries after the Europeans used stained glass to teach the illiterate masses the stories of the Bible, the Knip-pers’ show reveals the same source is as fascinating for living artists.
In the East Fine Arts Gallery at Texas Woman’s University, one of Denton’s most distinctive paint-ers, Deanna Wood, shows off one of the themes that has arrested her imagination the longest: tornadoes.
In “Seeking Shelter,” Wood has depicted the storms from both a cool, detached vantage point, and she has also gotten more up close and personal to the storms. Now, she is using beeswax and oil paint over paper, wood or canvas. She’s also done an installation — wood houses have been set out on the gallery floor, and nearly 200 small, wax-covered clay and paper tornadoes hang in a spiral from the ceiling.
TWU student Niema Jones’ master of fine arts show opens Monday at the East Fine Arts gallery after Wood’s show comes down.
“Onion Roots” uses personal artifacts and keepsakes from Jones’ past and turns them into visual icons. She integrates oils, acrylics, wax, raffia fiber and linoleum in her art, which plays with the repetition of building up and tearing down.
— Lucinda Breeding