FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 11, 2007
FOR MORE INFORMATION: contact Jade Walker
    Director, Creative Research Laboratory
    email:crlab@uts.cc.utexas.edu
    phone:(512) 322-2099

RECEPTION: Saturday, February 24, 6 - 9 pm
EXHIBITION DATES: February 24 - March 17, 2007
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesdays - Saturdays, 12-5 pm

Senior Studio 2007

February 24 - March 17, 2007

On Saturday, February 24, the Creative Research Laboratory will present the work of Austin's most exciting young emerging visual artists in: Senior Studio 2007. Each year roughly 150 students graduate with a B.F.A. or B.A. from the Studio Art Division in the Department of Art and Art History. The Faculty in Studio Art nominated the work of 67 graduating students and Noah Simblist, teacher, writer and artist, will curate the show from these nominations. The show represents a full range of media from drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, metals, prints and photographs, to video and performance.

The studio program in the Department of Art and Art History is one of the most diverse in the country, with 390 students pursuing both the B.F.A. or B.A. degrees in studio art. The curriculum stresses both hands-on technical development and fluency in contemporary visual art discourse. The B.F.A. degree requires 20 studio courses (60 credit hours), each consisting of half-day work sessions in fully equipped studios led by faculty artists. Time in the studio is supplemented by another 20 required academic courses in arts and sciences for a total of 120-degree hours. Students selected for the exhibition finish their degree programs in the Fall 2006, Spring 2007 or Summer 2007.

Noah Simblist is a writer and artist living in Dallas, TX. He received his MFA from the University of Washington. He was an active member of SOIL, an artist cooperative in Seattle where he curated the exhibition Abstraction/Construction. Following Seattle, he spent a number of years working in New York. Now relocated to Dallas, Simblist writes for Glasstire.com, Artlies magazine (Texas) and Zerodegreesart.com (LA). He has exhibited at Garner Tullis in New York, the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, Michigan, CSAW in Houston, Gray Matters Gallery and And/Or Gallery in Dallas and publications about his work are included in The Seattle Times, The New York Times, and New American Paintings. In addition to writing and making work, he teaches painting, drawing, and art criticism at Southern Methodist University.

The Creative Research Laboratory is a component of the University of Texas at Austin College of Fine Arts in the Department of Art and Art History. It serves as a flexible interdisciplinary educational environment advancing professional practices in Studio Art, Art History, Design, Visual Art Studies and Art Education. As a creative incubator, it is designed to facilitate collaboration between artists and scholars and connect with diverse communities at large. Creative Research Laboratory presents a year-round schedule of exhibitions of work by students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, and facilitates workshops, performances, demonstrations, seminars and collaborations.

Creative Research Laboratory presents a year-round schedule of exhibitions of work by students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, and facilitates workshops, performances, demonstrations, seminars and collaborations.

Creative Research Laboratory is located in East Austin at 2832 East Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, inside Flatbed World Headquarters. There is ample free parking and bus service available on Capitol Metro's route 18. Creative Research Laboratory is open from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The activities of the Department of Art and Art History and the Creative Research Laboratory are free and open to the public.

For more information about the Creative Research Lab contact Gallery Director Jade Walker, crlab@uts.cc.utexas.edu, or 512.322.2099.

For more information about the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, contact Carolyn Porter, carolynp@mail.utexas.edu, 512.471.3379.

Jade Walker
Gallery Director: Creative Research Laboratory
Department of Art and Art History,
University of Texas at Austin
2832 East Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Austin, Texas 78702
directions: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~crlab/map.html
phone: (512) 322-2099
email: crlab@uts.cc.utexas.edu
url: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~crlab/
gallery hours: Tu-Sat, 12-5 p.m

Juror Statement

This exhibition was constructed with work that emerged by virtue of its thoughtful, imaginative, playful and wry qualities. I made a conscious choice to represent a range of media, while at the same time I wanted each piece to have enough room to breathe. As a result, this is a relatively spare show. I believe that this quality allows work that is rigorous to be treated with dignity and respect. It was amazing to see some of these pieces take on a life of their own once given some unadulterated attention. In my mind, this is a reward for the artists that followed through with serious investigations in their studio practice.

But this show is not merely a collection of autonomous pieces. It is also the result of relationships that cropped up between the works selected. A series of hands welcomes you as you enter the exhibition, echoed by images of bent arms in the photos across the room. A performance leads you in a guided meditation on deciphering abstract symbols, like a kind of symbolic docent for the show as a whole. A room of candy color that acts like soft-core pop. A living room sits at the center, purified by white paper and then defiled by the traces of everyday life. Two paintings that hover over it all ­ a dystopian spin on suburban sprawl.

I found the diversity of the work very interesting. There is no overriding ideological dogma that reigns supreme. Each artist seems to be treated as an individual with unique interests and I tried to balance this with their relationships with each other. Is this a result of the atmosphere at UT or more a reflection of the art world at large? These things are hard to gauge but in either case, as seniors, they are about to step into a larger world and this balance will ultimately serve them well.

- Noah Simblist