News
Tickets available for Assemble: The 2012 Visual Arts Center Celebration
January 10, 2012
The Visual Arts Center is alive with activity, installing amazing new exhibitions for the upcoming spring season, and preparing to host our closest friends and supporters for Assemble. We hope you can join us to be a part of this spectacular evening of art, festivities and libations as we commemorate an extraordinary year of growth and transformation.
Learn more about our dynamic community—where the VAC shines as a place for art education and creative evolution. Your involvement and generous support plays a vital role in our continued success. Please purchase your tickets and plan to join us today!
Assemble
January 28, 2012
6–9 pm Visual Arts Center
For more details about Assemble, visit www.utvac.org/assemble
Celebration tickets can be purchased for $200 per person by calling Shannon Stagner at (512) 471-1695—and we have sponsorship opportunities still available. Proceeds from Assemble will benefit Visual Arts Center programming.
Join us, help shape our work, and see what is created next.
VAC Featured on KLRU
November 11, 2011
Visual Arts Center from KLRU Collective on Vimeo.
The Visual Arts Center on the University of Texas campus draws together a uniquely diverse arts community of students, alumni, faculty, guest artists and creative voices from around the world. Hear how the fall artist-in-residence Mika Tajima is influenced by Austin's architecture and Richard Linklater's film "Slacker."
Sign Up for Austin's Cultural Campus Bike Tour
October 19, 2011
Sign Up Now For Austin’s Cultural Campus Bike Tour, Co-Hosted by Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop Saturday, November 12, Starts @ 9 am
Explore art, history, the humanities, and science while enjoying a casual bike ride! Co-hosted by Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop and the Austin Cycling Association. This no-drop, co-ed group ride is perfect for cyclists of all levels and riding abilities. Total distance is about 6 miles. On this route, riders will visit museums that are part of Austin's Cultural Campus: the Blanton Museum of Art, The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Harry Ransom Center, LBJ Library and Museum, and the Visual Arts Center. Docents will briefly share museum highlights.
Information: Ride size is limited, so please RSVP to eileen@mellowjohnnys.com. Helmets and signed waiver are required. Ride may be cancelled in the event of inclement weather; please check www.mellowjohnnys.com for updated information. We will not ride if the temperature is below 50 degrees at ride time. The group will meet at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop, 400 Nueces.
Invitation to Alumni for Studio Visits with Artist Jaime Isenstein
July 22, 2011
Each year, the Department of Art and Art History and the Visual Arts Center have the unique pleasure of hosting a variety of artists and lecturers from around the world. This fall, we are excited to announce an exclusive opportunity to participate in a private studio visit with guest artist Jamie Isenstein. The VAC and the department are pleased to invite our alumni to gain insight and constructive input towards their developing studio practice.
Jamie Isenstein is known for blurring the lines between performance and sculpture, using her own body as a ready-made object. Her VAC exhibition “ ” opens on September 9 and explores classic conventions of the gallery: the "abstract sculpture," the "sign-in book," and the "installation shot." The studio visits will occur while Isenstein is in Austin for her week-long residency at the VAC, September 7–15. Learn more about Isenstein and her work, or watch a video of a recent interview with the artist.
The studio visits are open only to alumni of the Department of Art and Art History who live and work in Austin and the immediately surrounding area (Travis, Williamson, and Hays counties). Unfortunately, current students are not eligible at this time. Artists must apply to be considered and will be selected in advance by the visiting artist. Proposals are due Monday, August 29, 2011 and must be submitted through SlideRoom. For further application details, or to begin the application process, visit utvac.slideroom.com. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance via email, phone or mail.
Center Space Project members visit Los Angeles
April 12, 2011
Five undergraduate students in the Department of Art and Art History recently proposed to, and received funding from, the College of Fine Arts' Doty Society Fund to travel to Los Angeles to supplement their education as studio artists at UT. Each is an active member of the Center Space Project, the student organization of the Visual Arts Center (VAC), and three work at the VAC.
Many aspects of the practice as an artist, such as maintaining a studio space, seeking gallery representation, and exhibiting work outside of the university are not topics clearly defined in classroom curriculum, and much of which is often not realized until one is well out of school. The group's purpose in taking this Professional Travel Initiative was to interview artists, curators, and institutions in and around Los Angeles to get a better understanding of the mechanics of the art world; and to learn more about what it takes to make a living as a successful commercial artist.
Through their video and audio interviews, respected artists, dealers and curators were questioned about their roles in the art world and why Los Angeles has become such a hot spot for contemporary art. A majority of these interviews will be posted on the group's upcoming blog.
Photo, clockwise from bottom left:
Vladimir Mejia, Freshman, Studio Art
Donnie Carver, Senior, Studio Art
Brooke Bamford, Junior, Studio Art
Linda Tsai, Junior, Design
Jade Abner, Junior, Studio Art
ON SITE Austin, April 1-10
March 29, 2011
The VAC is one of 18 arts venues in Austin participating in ON SITE, an innovative series of art happenings from April 1-10, 2011.
For more information on great art events around town, check out Discover Art Austin.
VAC Collaborates with Cohen New Works Festival
March 2, 2011
The Visual Arts Center will collaborate with the Cohen New Works Festival this spring to present Digital Craft: Handmade Craft Meets Digital Design, an installation work exploring the interface between 3-D computer technology and seasoned millinery technique. The exhibit will run March 28 – April 2.
The Cohen New Works Festival, presented by the University Co-Op, is a week-long celebration of new work by UT students. This highly anticipated festival, produced by the Department of Theatre and Dance, comprises over thirty new theater, music, dance, opera, installation, and site-specific performances. The festival also features post-show discussions, presentations of student research about performance, and guest-artist conversations. With an emphasis on original work, an infrastructure supported and led by students, and free admission to the public, the festival is the largest collegiate event of its kind in the nation.
For more information please visit www.coopnwf.org.
Amanda Ross-Ho installation featured in Austin American-Statesman
February 9, 2011
Jeanne Claire van Ryzin of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a really nice piece on current Vaulted Gallery resident artist Amanda Ross-Ho and her installation that is underway, UNTITLED NOTHING FACTORY.
Natasha Bowdoin's Implausible Tiger in Houston
February 1, 2011
Natasha Bowdoin, whose installation The Daisy Argument is currently on view in the VAC's Arcade, has a solo exhibition of new work entitled Implausible Tiger at CTRL Gallery in Houston. The exhibition features new works on paper and will be on view until February 19. Be sure to check out this show if you are in Houston, as well as stop by the VAC to experience her site-specific installation.
Implausible Tiger was recently reviewed in the Houston Chronicle and arts writer Douglas Britt named Natasha "one of the most exciting artists working in Houston today."
Out of Place, curated by Noah Simblist, at Lora Reynolds Gallery
January 11, 2011
AKh-48, 2008, Nida Sinnokrot, Image courtesy of Lora Reynolds Gallery
Out of Place, an exhibition curated by Art History Ph.D. candidate and VAC Curatorial Fellow Noah Simblist opens at Lora Reynolds Gallery on Jan 15, 2011. The exhibition, which runs through March 5, includes six international artists, many of whom rarely exhibit their work in the U.S., more often showing in Europe or the Middle East: Yael Bartana, Oded Hirsch, Tom Molloy, Nida Sinnokrot, Jan Tichy and Eric Van Hove. The premise of the exhibition is related to Edward Said’s description of his memoir Out of Place (the namesake of the show) as “a record of a lost or forgotten world.” He was referring to the Palestinian condition of exile—a displacement that creates a gap between both physical spaces and states of mind. But this notion can be thought of in more general terms, serving as the starting point for a group of artists who explore placelessness as it is manifest in Israel-Palestine. Being in one place, but consumed by the memory of another, produces works that are uncanny, combining familiar and unfamiliar contexts into something strange.
Co-sponsored by the Visual Arts Center.