Press Release: Ann Stautberg

09.10.98

In The Hudson (Show)Room

Ann Stautberg

GALVESTON, TEXAS

Exhibition: September 23 ?cember 13, 1998

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio is pleased to present new
photographic works by Texas Gulf Coast artist Ann Stautberg in The Hudson
(Show)Room.

Ann Stautberg was born in 1949 in Houston, TX and now lives and works in
Galveston, TX. She holds an M.A. from the University of Dallas and a B.F.A. from
Texas Christian University. Stautberg has exhibited her photographs since the 1970s
throughout Texas, including group shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston;
Laguna Gloria Museum, Austin; Dallas Museum of Art; The Art Center, Waco; and the
San Antonio Museum of Art. She has held one-person shows at the Tyler Museum of
Art, Tyler; Galveston Arts Center; and the Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, where she is
represented.

Ann Stautberg experiments with the medium of photography, specifically, with the
effects of hand-tinting black and white photographs. Her skills as a photographer and
painter are clearly evidenced by her precise printing and the steady hand of her brush.
Stautberg's work is unusually large-scale, almost painterly, in contrast to the more
intimate hand-tinted photographs from the turn of the century. Her work solidly
references this period of photography, when photographs were used as souvenirs of
travel, rather than tools of expression. However, her works do not merely document a site
but express it.

Stautberg's subject is the Texas landscape, and her lens turns to her immediate
surroundings, the Texas Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast is a complicated location. It is an
industrial panorama, with oil rigs and shipping ports interspersed with shabby vacation
homes. The beaches are anything but pristine, with cars and trucks driving on the sand.
Palm trees are as tall as the electric poles at their sides. However, amidst this landscape is
a dominant beauty? Texas sky and its reflection in the Gulf Coast.

This contradiction is what Stautberg captures with her camera, avoiding romanticism
and nostalgia while still presenting a sense of time and place. 5/28/97, PM, Texas
Coast depicts an abandoned rowboat overturned on the beach. The background is
dominated by an eerie sky, its gray clouds painted a muddy blue to heighten the
emotional character of the natural surroundings. 3/20/97, PM, Texas Coast
shows a fire on the beach, but not the expected happy family campfire?her, Stautberg
presents a seemingly violent, accidental fire. Stautberg's honest and haunting images
reflect the authenticity of the Texas landscape, an ever evolving visual and cultural
experience.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org