Announcing the opening of the Galveston Artist Residency and Gallery,
A new Gulf Coast Arts Initiative.
We are pleased to announce the official opening of the Galveston Artist Residency (GAR) and Gallery on Saturday, September 28, 2012 from 4-9pm. In honor of the opening, GAR will have the current artists in residence studios open to the public, a show of the resident’s work and a celebratory party to mark our beginning with food and live music. Galveston Artist Residency is located at 2521 Mechanic Street, Galveston, TX 77550.
This year we were excited to welcome Nick Barbee, Nsenga Knight, and Kelly Sears to GAR as the first, full time artists-in-residence, and Colin Hunt as the Summer 2011 artist-in-residence.
Nick Barbee works in a variety of media, dealing with formal concerns of presentation, the history of abstraction and historic narrative. Barbee will be showing his body of work Cato, recently on view at Rice University’s Emergency Room. Nsenga Knight is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work poses questions about process, power, representation and the construction of historical narratives. Knight will be exhibiting a series of photos that are part of an ongoing project. The work has also been exhibited at the Ice Box in Philadelphia. Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker whose collage-like works are created from discarded periodicals, books, archives and orphan films. For the fourth time, Sears was selected to screen an animated short film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film, Once it Started it Could Not End Otherwise will also be presented at the GAR opening. Colin Hunt is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Hunt’s fragmented trompe l’oeil paintings are a meditation on love and despair and blur the line between memory and the tangible.
GAR was created to promote and encourage the knowledge and appreciation of art by giving artists a gift of time and space for the development of their work. The residency provides studio space, accommodation, and a stipend to three artists annually. GAR is committed to supporting serious creative artists of any discipline. This includes, but is not limited to; visual artists, multimedia or film artists, writers and composers, with a special interest in artists who are involved in non-commercial endeavors, environmental or sustainable living projects or projects that can increase community involvement or social awareness. The residency is open to emerging artists as well as mid-career and established artists.
Potential recipients of GAR grants come from a pool of artists nominated by a jury of independent art professionals. Residency applications are sent to this pool of nominated artists, and Residency grant offers are then sent to the artists selected. At the present time there will not be open calls for grants or applications for residency.
In addition to our residency program, the GAR Gallery and Courtyard will host various public programs such as art exhibitions, film series, open studios, lectures, etc.
GAR is located in a pair of radically redesigned and rebuilt industrial structures on the edge of downtown Galveston. These former cotton-baling workshops now comprise studios for four artists, a dedicated gallery building, courtyard garden and outdoor display/event space. Construction was underway throughout 2011 and is now complete.
For more information about the Galveston Artist Residency, please visit our website at www.galvestonartistresidency.org, or email us at info@galvestonartistresidency.org.