Douglas MacWithey Douglas MacWithey, Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers

9/17/11 – 10/22/11

Bill Davenport, Bill Davenport and the Golden Treasures of the Pharaohs

Douglas MacWithey, Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers

Between Covers: An Exhibition for Smart Phones and the Internet
presented by WordSpace

 

Large Gallery
Bill Davenport
Bill Davenport and the Golden Treasures of the Pharaohs

Bill Davenport, Strawberry
Bill Davenport, Strawberry (Photo courtesy Hampton Burwick)

 

Part roadside attraction, part excavation, Bill Davenport fills the large gallery with specimens unearthed from contemporary mass society. Inspired by Harry Burton’s photographs of the King Tutankamun excavation, the Houston based artist utilizes steel, paper mache and found objects to presume the chaos and mysticism of ordinary man’s treasures.

Bill Davenport is a Houston based artist who holds a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts. He works as a contributing editor for Glasstire and a freelance art critic for the Houston Chronicle. Bill has been exhibited in over 60 exhibitions beginning his career as a resident at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in the 1991 Core Fellows Exhibition and most recently at the Inman Gallery in Houston and the Angstrom Gallery in Dallas.

 

Square Gallery
Douglas MacWithey
Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers

Douglas MacWithey, Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers
Douglas MacWithey, Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers

The Seals of the Philosophers was a collaborative effort of Douglas MacWithey and Charles Dee Mitchell for over a year before MacWithey’s unexpected death in August 2010. Illustrations from Opus medico-chymicum of Johann Daniel Mylius, a 3000 page alchemical text published in the 17th Century, inspired the past five years of MacWithey’s studio work. Selections from the Seals of the Philosophers is an in depth look at that work, including sculpture, drawings, and notebooks.

Douglas MacWithey was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1952 and received his MFA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. MacWithey was part of the Dallas art scene from the 1980’s, although this was to be his first exhibition here in over ten years. Recent exhibitions include “Douglas MacWithey: Selections from the Seals of the Philosphers” at testsite in Austin and “Douglas MacWithey: Sculpture and Drawings” at Barry Whistler Gallery.

 

New Works Space
Between Covers: An Exhibition for Smart Phones and the Internet
presented by WordSpace

Between Covers, presented by WordSpace
Between Covers, presented by WordSpace

WordSpace has brought readings, workshops, and performances by local and national figures to Dallas since 1994. Their venues include bookstores, Poetry Slams, private homes, outdoor markets, the Kessler Theater, and schools. For the installation Between Covers, WordSpace introduces a new online registry that celebrates the diversity of North Texas published writers, from poets and novelists, to the authors of cookbooks and textbooks. Through the wonders of smart phone technology, attendees can access videos of local writers and literary organizations.

About the curator, Charles Dee Mitchell

Charles Dee Mitchell, a freelance writer based in Dallas, has been a regular contributor to the Dallas Morning News, Art in America, and Photo-Eye Magazine. He has written catalog essays for exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio. As a curator he has worked with both commercial and university galleries. In spring 2009, University of Texas Press published Lance Letscher: Collage, a monograph for which he has written the lead essay.

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