Foundations: An Ecosystem in Practice

Texæsthetic 1100: Foundations
Jordan Roth, Founder, Texæsthetic

The development of the visual arts in North Texas has been shaped by artists whose contributions extend well beyond their individual practices. Their influence can be found in the institutions they established, the opportunities they created, and the relationships that continue to affect the careers of other artists. These histories reveal a cultural environment built through decades of participation, often by people whose contributions have received less attention than the work they produced.

Texæsthetic 1100: Foundations brings together thirteen artist practices through which these relationships can be examined. As the first public presentation of Texæsthetic, Foundations introduces an approach to understanding the region through its artists and the circumstances in which their work developed. Some helped establish organizations and opportunities that influenced the development of others. Others pursued their own directions through relationships with those who preceded them, becoming active participants in the continuation of that history. Their experiences demonstrate how the contributions of individuals accumulate across a community, shaping the conditions in which art is made, exhibited, and sustained.

Texæsthetic is the Texas proof of concept for a cultural operating system. With ARTecosystems, it shares an operating logic, TXÆ, and together they provide infrastructure to sustain regional art scenes for the benefit of artists, galleries, collectors, curators, researchers, museums, universities, and other institutions. For Foundations, Texæsthetic served as a resource for the exhibition.

Texæsthetic is built on a simple discipline: every claim must be traceable. The æIndex, a private, artist-centered foundation, records what is known about each artist, including exhibition histories, gallery representation, educational institutions, and critical attention, alongside the sources that establish it. An artist enters the index by meeting a minimum qualification: representation by a Texas gallery, an exhibition history in Texas, or a faculty position at a Texas institution. Closer scrutiny is applied for a particular purpose, and Foundations is one such purpose. For this exhibition, the records of the selected artists were examined in depth, gaps and conflicts in the evidence were noted, and each selection rests on a documented reason. The relationships between artists are treated the same way, as connections that can be followed back to evidence. Foundations itself enters the æIndex as an exhibition. This record can inform a more comprehensive understanding of the state’s visual arts, revealing the contributions that sustain its culture and identifying where meaningful engagement may strengthen its future.

The intersecting histories of John Pomara, Lorraine Tady, and Greg Metz offer one entry into this history. Each has pursued an individual practice independently, although their paths intersect through the University of Texas at Dallas and through exhibitions and initiatives beyond the university. Pomara’s investigations into the relationship between painting, photography, mechanical reproduction, and digital technology helped establish new possibilities for artists working at the boundaries of these processes. His willingness to experiment with emerging tools was accompanied by a willingness to share what he discovered.

In an interview about her Plugged-in Paintings, Tady identifies Pomara as the colleague who introduced her to glitch programs. Her subsequent work employed digital manipulation, printing, hand intervention, and rescanning, developing methods that were distinctly her own. The connection documents how an idea moved between two artists and emerged in different forms. Knowledge acquired through one practice became available for another artist to transform. Tady’s work also reflects a sustained interest in the relationships between systems and their interruption, with a practice that continues to move across drawing, painting, printmaking, and digital processes.

The university continues to provide a meeting ground for these exchanges. UT Dallas brought together practitioners whose histories and commitments preceded their association with the institution. The Art Barn, and later CentralTrak, and now SP/N Gallery contribute places where exhibitions, residencies, and conversations can develop outside the usual expectations of the classroom. These initiatives are part of a much larger North Texas art scene, demonstrating what an institution can accomplish when it supports the curiosity and initiative of the people working within it.

The relationship between teaching and independent practice is vivid in the history of Lee Baxter Davis. At East Texas State University in Commerce, now Texas A&M University–Commerce, Davis developed an influential teaching practice while pursuing a fiercely individual approach to drawing and printmaking. His imagery, often darkly humorous, psychologically charged, and resistant to polite conventions, offered students an example of an artist working according to the demands of his own imagination. The reach of his teaching can be seen in the widely different practices of artists associated with his influence, including Gary Panter, Georganne Deen, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Robyn O’Neil. The striking differences among their achievements reveal the breadth of Davis’s influence.

Greg Metz, a former student of Davis, carried his own experimental and political commitments into the Dallas art scene. His work and organizational activity preceded his later involvement in university teaching. In 1989, conversations between Metz and Tracy Hicks helped initiate Dallas Artists Research and Exhibitions, or D.A.R.E., which contributed to the establishment of The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in 1994. The MAC provided a home for experimental work and serious discussion. Metz’s involvement in its origins illustrates how artists can identify a need and undertake the effort required to establish an institution capable of addressing it.

Erica Stephens’s development demonstrates how the influence of these artists extended into the practices and opportunities of those who followed. Her education brought her into contact with Pomara and Metz, while her participation in Oh6 placed her among a group of artists who undertook the practical work of organizing their own exhibitions. Formed in 2004, Oh6 presented projects at the Casket Factory, Angstrom, and 500X, taking advantage of circumstances that permitted experimentation and artist-directed programming. Stephens’s subsequent work has moved between painting, material experimentation, and writing. Her Frosted Florals, developed through the use of cake-decorating tools and acrylic mediums, challenged familiar distinctions between fine art materials and domestic craft. Her continued involvement in education, including curriculum development at Dallas College, extends the range of her contribution. The opportunities and relationships that contributed to her development have, in turn, informed the opportunities she helps create for others.

Joachim West’s relationship to this history developed differently. His practice, involving performance, constructed environments, found materials, and deliberately provocative imagery, had already established its own identity before his later association with the circle surrounding Davis and the Lizard Cult, the name given to Davis’s students at East Texas State in the 1970s. West sought out connections with Davis and Metz, participating in exhibitions that brought renewed attention to that history. His involvement was a deliberate engagement with an established circle of artists whose influence he subsequently helped carry forward through his own participation.

Other artists in Foundations have contributed through the creation and preservation of institutions and records upon which subsequent artists depend. Carroll Swenson-Roberts, for example, was associated with D.W. Gallery, which emerged from the Dallas Women’s Co-op in 1975. Its establishment reflected the determination of women artists to provide exhibition opportunities for themselves and their colleagues. Swenson-Roberts participated as a member and exhibiting artist, alongside a practice of meticulous Prismacolor drawing that developed its own narrative language. Equally important to her history are the twenty-three years she spent teaching art to elementary-school children. That work brought regular encounters with art into the lives of students long before questions of professional training or careers would have been relevant to them.

Byrd Williams IV represents a rich relationship between personal practice and historical continuity. His work belongs to a four-generation photographic history in Texas, although his achievements as an artist are distinct from the documentary inheritance of his family. His early exhibition history includes MJS Fine Art in Fort Worth in 1977, placing him within an established North Texas gallery environment at a time when the broader Texas art scene was already attracting attention. Williams subsequently contributed to photography education, including the development of the program at Collin College, while undertaking the demanding work of preserving his family’s archive. The transfer of that material to the University of North Texas made photographs, documents, and equipment available for research beyond the family itself. His contribution reaches into the future through the preservation of evidence that later historians and artists can continue to interpret.

Benito Huerta has also helped determine how the region’s work enters the historical record. Alongside a practice in painting, printmaking, installation, and public commissions, he participated in developing ArtLies, a publication devoted to critical discussion of Texas art. Its reviews, interviews, and commentary provided a sustained forum for examining work as it was being made and exhibited, while its subsequent digitization has preserved much of that conversation for future readers. Huerta’s twenty-five years directing and curating The Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington similarly created opportunities for exhibitions and public engagement. His contributions reflect an understanding that the production of art requires a critical culture capable of examining it seriously.

Emmanuel Gillespie’s work occupies another intersection between individual practice and public participation. His subjects include Black history, family, migration, and the social experiences through which personal identities are formed. His educational and community projects have brought students into the actual processes of producing work for public environments, including the Jesse Owens mural at the South Dallas Cultural Center and the commemorative statue honoring Ernie Banks. Together with Valerie Gillespie, he has also helped establish Pencil on Paper as a place for exhibitions, instruction, and professional development. These activities connect the artist’s studio to a wider field of participants and make visible the work involved in helping others develop their own practices.

Few relationships in this exhibition reveal the unexpected consequences of participation as clearly as the connection between Chuck & George and Gillian Bradshaw-Smith. Brian K. Scott and Brian K. Jones have collaborated as Chuck & George since 1990, developing a singular practice spanning painting, ceramics, performance, installation, and elaborate theatrical constructions. Their influence has extended through the organization of events and the sustained encouragement of other artists. The Oak Cliff Visual SpeedBump Art Tour, which they established in 2000, opened studios, homes, and other spaces to the public, creating encounters beyond conventional gallery programming.

One of those encounters proved consequential. Bradshaw-Smith had already enjoyed a career in New York, including exhibitions at Cordier & Ekstrom, before pursuing work in theatrical design, imaginative toys, and other commissioned projects. She maintained a studio and participated in the SpeedBump tour during a period when her independent fine art exhibitions had become less frequent. Chuck & George encouraged her to bring her portfolio to Ro2 Art. The resulting exhibition, Finding Daphne, opened in 2016 and began a series of exhibitions, including Nocturns, Storms of Jupiter, Mixed Metaphors, and The Watery Deep. Her work continued to develop inventively, returning in some instances to ideas and forms from decades earlier.

Bradshaw-Smith possessed a body of work and an imagination that had remained active throughout her life. The opportunity to pursue that work within a renewed exhibition context opened another chapter in her career. The encouragement of two artists, followed by a gallery’s engagement with the work, helped initiate a period of exhibitions and development in her work. Her experience provides a persuasive example of the consequences that can follow from participation in the Dallas art scene.

Yuni Lee’s history offers a different example of how such opportunities develop over time. Her education took her through Brookhaven College, UT Dallas, and the University of North Texas, bringing her into contact with artists and teachers whose own practices were well established. At UNT, Vincent Falsetta organized graduate-student studio visits that led to Lee’s inclusion in Ro2 Art’s Five to Watch. She subsequently developed a practice involving painting, material exploration, and technological references, while participating in collaborative exhibitions including Squeeze Machine with Molly Valentine Dierks and Mimi & Anna with Jihye Han. Her involvement in teaching and in exhibitions organized with colleagues demonstrates an increasingly reciprocal relationship with the environment in which she developed. Since 2014, Lee has participated in more than 100 exhibitions, including 25 solo exhibitions and a presentation at Women & Their Work in Austin. Opportunities that began through education and introductions have become occasions for further collaboration and participation.

The histories of Erica Stephens, Joachim West, Gillian Bradshaw-Smith, and Yuni Lee are instructive because they reveal what can follow from the contributions of other artists. Stephens developed within an environment of experimentation and artist-organized exhibitions that she now helps extend through her own work and teaching. West sought out an established circle of experimental artists and became an active participant in its continuing history. Bradshaw-Smith found renewed opportunities to exhibit through the encouragement of fellow artists, while Lee’s early introductions developed into exhibitions and collaborations of her own. Their circumstances differ, but each demonstrates how the consequences of one artist’s participation can extend into another’s career. Their subsequent contributions also become part of the environment in which still other artists develop.

These histories reveal the value of examining the relationships behind the work. The exchange of methods between Pomara and Tady, the influence of Davis on Metz, the establishment of D.A.R.E., the preservation of the Williams family archive, and Huerta’s involvement in ArtLies each represent a different form of cultural contribution. Together, they establish a record of participation through which the development of the visual arts in North Texas can be understood with greater depth and continuity.

Foundations, presented as Texæsthetic 1100, is the first public exhibition introducing this undertaking. The thirteen practices brought together here represent an initial selection from the extensive history of the visual arts in North Texas. Their experiences demonstrate how the actions of artists, educators, galleries, and institutions have shaped the region over time, often with consequences extending decades beyond the original circumstances. This first exhibition establishes a point of departure for a project whose scope encompasses Texas and whose underlying principles are applicable to cultural ecosystems elsewhere.

The history presented in Foundations also raises questions about the conditions in which the next chapter of Texas art will develop. The state has produced accomplished artists, supported by universities, galleries, and institutions that have contributed to their development. Sustaining that culture requires continued engagement from the people who benefit from it. Collectors have particular influence through the work they choose to acquire and the relationships they establish with artists and galleries. Museums and other institutions help determine how the culture of their communities is recognized and preserved. These decisions affect the opportunities available to artists and the viability of the places that support their work.

Cultural stewardship is central to Texæsthetic because the future of the visual arts depends upon the choices made within the communities that produce them. The knowledge made available through its systems is intended to encourage more informed participation, especially among those whose attention and support can make a lasting difference. Foundations demonstrates what earlier generations of participation have accomplished in North Texas. Its larger invitation is to take an active role in the culture being created here today, supporting the artists and galleries whose work will shape what Texas becomes.