Art in the Metroplex, one of the oldest (almost-)annual open-call visual art shows in the state, is recommended viewing for any loud and proud North Texan.
The art from Tarrant, Dallas, and 17 surrounding counties, and it’s mostly painting, is exceptional, and a lot of familiar names in great Fort Worth painting –– including Daniel Blagg, John Hartley, Nancy Lamb, Devon Nowlin, and Winter Rusiloski –– are represented. Eat your heart out, Austin.
Hanging now through Wednesday at Fort Worth Community Arts Center, the exhibit is a return of sorts. Until three years ago, Art in the Metroplex was a 28-year-old annual event hosted by Texas Christian University. The show went away for painful, perhaps obvious reasons. TCU professor and sculptor Ronald Watson, who was there since the beginning, said that “several of the foundations that underwrote the show were cutting back on their contributions,” according to Elaine Taylor, FWCAC gallery manager.
FWCAC leaders, she continued, sought to bring back the exhibit to serve artists, saying it was “a needed institution –– the caliber of the jurors and the value of the awards made it a must-have for the Metroplex.”
FWCAC brass also thought the show would draw some attention to the center.
“The [arts center] may be Fort Worth’s best-kept secret,” Taylor said, “and with this exhibit we hope to raise our profile both inside and outside of Fort Worth.”
Though nearly every piece –– nearly every single piece –– is noteworthy, there are some standouts. Hartley’s portrait of a shiny but genuinely distressed toy African-American servant, circa the antebellum South, lying on his back peacefully is a miraculous photorealist mind-trip. It costs $6,000 and is worth every penny.
Another mind-bogglingly wonderful piece is “Ahab’s Dream.” Rusiloski’s abstraction veritably churns and heaves off the canvas, a small riot of dark, frenetic vertical strokes hung with a geometric splotch of bright orange squeezes against a massive clutch of shades of white above insidious, fin-like black forms threatening the surface, the area to the other side of the “ship” receding into somewhat soft, somewhat tranquil blues, pinks, and reds. Every brushstroke is inspired and masterful.
Art in the Metroplex definitely isn’t all seriousness. Assembled from fabric, wire, cork, and embroidery on plywood, Abby Sherrill’s “Spit Bath” is a whimsical, almost childlike, and completely intentionally undercooked love letter to the nitty-gritty of process. Attached to a vertically rectangular piece of maroon fabric with a crown of crude “bubbles” made from black string, a horizontally rectangular splotch of ghostly blues, ghostly reds, and ghostly streaking yellow in the upper left-hand corner of the center is balanced by a spectral knot of ghostly blue, red, and yellow lines in the lower right-hand corner, a deranged swing of sorts swooping down drunkenly over the tangle.
And Diana Synatzke’s “Camper,” composed of high-fire stoneware and 04 glazes, is, well, a model of an old-fashioned camper, this one on cute, little model cinderblocks.
Sara-Jayne Parsons was this year’s curator. After serving as exhibitions curator at The Bluecoat in Liverpool, U.K., the University of North Texas album has just assumed the position of curator of the galleries at TCU.
Recommended by TCU’s art department and staff and FWCAC’s exhibition advisory panel, Parsons is “a great segue,” Taylor said, “a connection from TCU to us.”
