Hills Snyder explores history and myth through installations that playfully combine arcane and pop cultural references. Snyder’s propensity for punning, coupled with his interest in means of making sense (and nonsense), infuse his work with insights that transcend everyday ironies to touch on universal themes.
Evoking associations that are as often literary, philosophical, or religious as they are political or art historical, Snyder’s projects expose hidden meanings in familiar images. Intrigued by the post-9/11 proliferation of patriotic symbols, Snyder spliced the striped portions of three US flags to create Ridge and Furrow (2003), whose title is an etymological play on the word delirium (from the Latin delirare, literally, “to go off the furrow”). His earlier Back to Basics (2001), a red, yellow, and blue acrylic guillotine, injects menacing undertones into modernism’s palette of primary colors. Sometimes cryptic but always good-humored, Snyder’s works generate narratives that ricochet off one another like reflections in a hall of mirrors.
Born in Lubbock, TX, in 1950, Hills Snyder currently resides in Helotes. Solo shows include Fresh Up Club, Austin, TX (2004); Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, TX (2001); and Casino Luxembourg, Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg (1998). Group shows include McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX (2004); Pearl, London, England (2001); and Lombard-Fried Fine Arts, New York, NY (2000).

Elizabeth McGrath, who was based in San Antonio at the time of her Artpace residency, is currently a psychotherapist in Boulder, CO. In her prior career as an artist, she made things that went together as installations. Her work often evoked associations with domestic materials and experiences, including the work she created during her Artpace residency in 1996.
McGrath graduated from Austin College, received her MFA at the University of Texas at San Antonio and went on to earn a MA in Transpersonal Counseling from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
In 1994 she was selected by a regional panel of arts professionals who convened at Artpace to participate in the Foundation’s London Studio program in April 1995, for which she spent six weeks in England. The same year she also received a Mid-American Arts Alliance/NEA Fellowship Award in sculpture.
She moved to New York City in 1998, entered in psychoanalysis, and eventually decided to pursue a different profession. She currently practices as a registered psychotherapist in Boulder, where she works with individuals, couples and specializes in facilitating psychotherapy groups.
Image courtesy of the artist.

In 1995 San Antonio native Jesse Amado was one of three residents inaugurating Artpace San Antonio’s International Artist-in-Residence program. Twelve years later, the now New York- and San Antonio-based artist returns in this exhibition of his conceptually driven sculpture and two-dimensional works. New projects are combined with seminal pieces from the past, tracing the artist’s investigation of text, repetition, and communication. The works present a minimalist aesthetic endowed with cultural and emotional inquiries into how ideas of art and beauty are transferred and coded.
Jesse Amado was born in San Antonio, TX, in 1951 and received his MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio, TX, in 1990. Since that time he has been awarded a visual arts fellowship grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and artist-in-residence grants from the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia (through the NEA) and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Nebraska. He has had solo exhibitions at Finesilver, San Antonio, TX (2003); McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX (2003); and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (1996). Group exhibitions include Never Leaving Aztlan, Museo de las Americas, Denver, CO (2005); Visualizing Identity, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX (2003); and Film Revival, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Program, Long Island City, NY (2003).
Frances Colpitt: Could you talk a little bit about your installation and how you conceive of its unfolding?
Jesse Amado: Well, I think I should be able to. I want to attempt to get through a lot of things that I feel are trapped inside. It has to do with a societal syntax and with a personal syntax, and most of all with a visual syntax. The theme is the washing and the cleansing of all of those things. So, I want to go through the process of cleansing, and more importantly, I hope that the poetics of the works will also be something much more, ultimately.
FC: One of the main ingredients in this exhibition is soap, and it seems very much like the kind of material that you would choose. Were you attracted to the soap because of its smell and its sense of waxy tactility?
JA: The idea of the soap is for all those reasons: the tactile quality of it, the smell of it, particularly this soap that I am using. Just taking it out of one box and putting it into another was quite an experience because it is an incredibly strong smelling soap. Then, there is the whole notion of washing, which is something I like to do. I like to wash up. Another thing that sort of was a revelation was a botanica in my new neighborhood. I told you about the place that I am getting ready to move into. My neighbor is a botanica. So, I went in there and there was a wonderful display of about one hundred different soaps that one can get in order to wash oneself with the hope of, perhaps, having a better love life. There are so many soaps that are available through this botanica to use to cleanse yourself, and to wash away the things that are impure and that are keeping you from being happier, I suppose. And the packaging of this soap is really beautiful too. So that convinced me once I saw that. I was wanting to change my work, to reevaluate it, to see what was wrong with it and what was strong about it. I thought the perfect metaphor for that would be to just wash away everything that had ever been accumulated in my work.
FC: One of the things I was going to ask you is whether your work responds to the place of its making. And now I see that although the work appears very cool and conceptual–and it appears to be homeless in a way–there are reference points in your living in San Antonio.
JA: Yes, that is very true. I am essentially tethered to this area for many reasons: because of my family, and because of my job most of all. I made the commitment to stay in this town a long time ago, but I also made a commitment to art and so I had to find a way of making a substantial art or meaningful art. One way of doing that was to refer to what San Antonio is and the pleasures that San Antonio has to offer in terms of its imagery and in terms of the kind of things that surrounded me when I was a child. You know the iconography of San Antonio is very prevalent, and I know that this plays an important part in my work even though it is not very evident, but it does derive from that.
FC: Maybe it is more metaphorical than it is formal. Your work does not reflect what we would call the indigenous style of San Antonio.
JA: The formal part of the work is important. So I do not forget about that, but I also want to stress the metaphorical aspect of it. I think of my work in very poetic terms. Poetry is very important to me….
FC: In this particular work or installation, the soap is the generative object–the motif of the show–and then you will also be using mirrors and glass.
JA: Real shiny, reflective kind of things.
FC: And the sink in the middle.
JA: It will actually be mounted on a table. And that will drain into a trough, where the soapy water will accumulate. So it will be a whole process of having the soaps in their boxes, I think, and then maybe having soaps out of their boxes, then the soaps being picked up and used to wash with, and put into another compartment. There is a ritualistic, ordered aspect of the washing that I hope to accomplish. The reason that I have the mirror is because I want to see myself going through the process of washing during the installation. Also, because of its reflection, the mirror emphasizes the duality of things. If I can see my “dual” self, I can remove myself instead of focusing on myself. If I can be beside myself, by using the mirror, and see myself doing what I am doing, it will probably help me get to the place I am hoping to get to.
FC: Is it an autobiographical exhibition?
JA: Of course it starts there and I am the author of what is going on there. But I am trying to distance myself as quickly as I possibly can, and through the mirrors I will be able to achieve that. Hopefully when the act is finished and when the viewers come in, they can see themselves as well, and possibly see something more than themselves. They can see how they are when they are beside themselves.
FC: Something that I have noticed about your work is that it is not just the objects, but the space between them that is very important. So even though there are individual pieces, there is an activation and utilization of all the space, which becomes charged.
JA: Yeah, I try to put myself in the place of the viewer and I try to create a distance between myself and the work as soon as I possibly can. I try to become the viewer suddenly, instead of maker. I try to go through the movement that a viewer would, and I kind of like that part of the process. I think about activating the viewer, whether I want to keep him still or make him move. There has to be some kind of movement. There has to be some kind of outside force that I think that the art work needs to complete it. The activation is essentially important. I try to come to it as soon as possible.
FC: Are you shifting roles? Are you artist and then viewer, and then artist and then viewer?
JA: Yes, and gradually I remove myself almost completely as the artist. I just want to give up the work as soon as I possibly can. I feel much better about the work if I can do that.
November 30, 1994

Robinson received an MFA in sculpture from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1994. The residency in Norway took place in 2004 at Nordisk Kunstnarsenter Dalssen, Dale i Sunnfjord. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Twang, Art Museum of Southwest Texas, Beaumont (2004); The Locker Show, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2004); Process, KIASMA Nykytaiteen Museo, Helsinki, Finland (2003); and 10 X 3 Ten Contemporary San Antonio Artists, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX (2002). He has been a recipient of the Art Matters Fellowship Grant, Art Matters, New York, NY; and the Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts Assistance Award, Kansas City, MO.

Bale Creek Allen was born in 1968 in Hollywood, CA to Texas-born artists Terry and Jo Harvey Allen.

Bale was the first recipient of a four year degree from Boston’s prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts after only 2 years of study. Because of his tenacity and exceptional body of work that was produced during the 10 short years after leaving the school, the faculty voted unanimously to award him his degree. Bale is the truest definition of an artist, excelling in a multitude of mediums such as bronze sculpture, painting, photography, neon, wood work, spoken word, music and theatre. This aptitude for multiple mediums has given him the opportunity to share his knowledge with others as an adjunct professor and an artist in residency while teaching at California State University at Fullerton, Texas Tech University, University of St. Louis and University of Texas at Austin, to name a few.

James Cobb has lived and worked in San Antonio for over thirty years. A d-i-y practitioner, Cobb first became interested in art through the Mail Art movement, eventually transitioning into oil painting, digital image creation and musical forays. Recent group shows include Go West 1, the First Bilateral Contemporary Art Exhibit Between France and Texas, held at UNESCO’S Hall Ségur in Paris and the William Tower Gallery, Houston; and Psychedelic, Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s at the San Antonio Museum of Art. One-person exhibitions include Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Antonio, Amersfoort, The Netherlands; Cardiff, Wales; and Osaka, Japan. He currently divides his time between working with computer-aided graphics and painting. Recently, Cobb worked on a collaborative installation with UK artist Andre Stitt at Flight Gallery in San Antonio.

Marilyn Terry Lanfear, a well-known San Antonio-based artist, died Sunday, January 19. She was 89. Lanfear worked in water color, oil paint, sculpture, fiber and more, and her work is in permanent collections in San Antonio, Corpus Christi, El Paso, Bentonville, Arkansas, and more.

The Waco native was raised in Corpus Christi where she attended Del Mar College, and later transferred to The University of Texas at Austin. Later, Lanfear received an MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio. She remained in San Antonio and taught drawing, design, and painting at San Antonio College, then at the University of Oregon at Eugene, and William and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, before making her way to New York City in the mid-1980s.

Michael Ray Charles was born in 1967 in Lafayette, Louisiana, and graduated from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1985. In college, he studied advertising design and illustration, eventually moving to painting, his preferred medium. Charles also received an MFA degree from the University of Houston in 1993. His graphically styled paintings investigate racial stereotypes drawn from a history of American advertising, product packaging, billboards, radio jingles, and television commercials.

Michael Miller is primarily an abstract painter, but his diverse training in multiple mediums influences his techniques and methods. Miller studied painting with Paolo Frosecchi and instructors at the Art Students League of New York, including Bruce Dorfman, Kikuo Saito, Frank O’Cain, and Larry Poons. He was also an active photographer at an earlier point in his career. One of the most formative experiences of Miller’s professional life took place in 2006 when he moved to Mapuo, Mozambique and developed a love for Mapuo designs and the religious objects and crafts of sub-Saharan Africa. Today, Miller paints on both primed and unprimed canvas to better “incorporate visual contamination” in his work. He also makes assemblages with painted canvas cutouts suspended by wire in wooden boxes.

My formal study of art did not begin until my mid-twenties when I enrolled in the art education program offered at the University of New Mexico and studied painting and drawing with Elen Feinberg and Jim Jacobs. In 1984, I graduated with a BAE, and in 1995, I earned a MAE from Texas Tech. After 24 years of teaching art to children in the public schools,I am exploring the painting process full-time in the studio of my home.

My paintings are stage-set like tableaux that thematically explore allegorical relationships between nature and man-made architectural/design forms. The culturally derived forms mimic natural forms and pay homage to the life cycle. The formal and metaphorical connections in each series of paintings and works on paper are collage-like in format, depicting images saved from documentary current-events photos, contemporary design and fashion magazines. I fuse abstraction, out-of-scale relationships and implausible fictions. Interiors and figurative elements intermingle with the aesthetic and destructive forces of nature. The undercurrent directing the work is a sense of “memento mori,” the awareness that all is transitory. To soften the gloom of the subject of fragility, the catastrophic, the “passing of life,” I exaggerate with opposite images of folly, grandeur and a kind of joy in vanity.