PROOF THROUGH THE NIGHT
CO CURATED BY TOMMY GREGORY
AND JUDITH RINEHART
SEPTEMBER 28 - NOVEMBER 9, 2024
J. Rinehart Gallery is honored to be hosting the exhibition, Proof Through the Night, online and in the gallery September 28 - November 9, 2024.
A Collectors Preview Reception will be held on Saturday, September 28, 2024, from 5-7pm. The Public Opening Reception will be held First Thursday October 3, 2024, from 5-8pm.
Co-curated by Tommy Gregory and Judith Rinehart, Proof Through the Night brings together artists from different regions of North America responding to our current political moment. In an era of polarization and political upheaval, art is a powerful force to understand disparate stories and life experiences. Through the fiercely individual craft of each artist, viewers can perceive the humanity that we hold in common. If night is a moment of uncertainty, the impulse to create holds out proof that the voices of understanding will prevail. The works by the Artists in this exhibition are politically charged, often because of the race, gender, ethnic background, or sexual orientation of the artists themselves, but also because these artists address the divisions in America in thoughtful ways, through unique perspectives, and attempt to demonstrate through their work how connected we are as human beings across the various cultures that inhabit and shape the United States.
Conceived over the last few years, Proof Through the Night is a continuation on the theme of Gregory’s exhibition Purple Like a Bruise, held earlier this year, in which artists from Washington State were invited to exhibit alongside artists from Texas in San Antonio. This incredible combination of artists from a historically ‘red’ state and a historically ‘blue’ state combine in a strong exhibition of works that compel viewers to address their implicit bias and confront misinformation.
Texas-based Artists Joe Harjo, Jose Villalobos, Chris Sauter and Ed Saavedra, exhibit alongside Washington-based Artists RYAN! Feddersen, Holly Ballard-Martz, Susanna Bluhm, Paul D. McKee, Romson Bustillo, and Sean Hennessey with special guest artists Alex Sandvoss and Einar and Jamex de la Torre, courtesy of Koplin del Rio Gallery.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
JOE HARJO
Joe Harjo is a multidisciplinary artist from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and is currently working and teaching in San Antonio, TX. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Central Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
His work uncovers the lack of visibility of Native culture, lived experience and identity in America, due to both the absence of proper representation in mainstream culture and the undermining of Native belief systems. He confronts the misrepresentation and appropriation of Native culture and identity, initiating a call for change. Harjo is a 2020 Harpo Foundation Fellow, a recipient of the 2022 Skowhegan Residency, the 2023 Kunstlerhaus Bethanien Residency, and the 2024 Bemis Center Summer Residency. He has most recently been awarded the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship.
RYAN! FEDDERSEN
RYAN! Elizabeth Feddersen specializes in creating compelling site-specific installations and public artworks which invite people to consider our relationships to history, culture, the land, and our non-human-kin. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cornish College of the Arts in 2009, and is now based in Tacoma, Washington. Feddersen grew up in Wenatchee and is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, from the Okanogan and Arrow Lakes bands, and of mixed European descent. Her practice focuses on creative problem solving to address social issues through visual allegories that provide opportunities for exploration, introspection, epiphany. She investigates creative strategies to activate engagement through interactive materials, community sourced content, social practice, fun and humor. These approaches enable her work to start conversations about a broad spectrum of subjects and promote collective learning. Feddersen has created large-scale site-specific pieces and interactive installations throughout North America and has a growing body of permanent artworks in the public realm.
CHRIS SAUTER
Chris Sauter is a visual artist based in San Antonio, TX. He works across-media primarily in sculpture, installation, drawing, and video. Pulling from varied sources such as agriculture, history, science, and religion his work addresses the links between material and meaning, biology and belief, the past and present.
He has exhibited across the United States, Mexico and Europe. His works have been featured at the McNay Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Kohler Art Center, the Musee d’Art Moderne Saint-Etienne, France, The Drawing Center in New York, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1. Sauter has been a resident artist at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Artpace, San Antonio. He is a member of M12, a collective of creative practitioners focused on rural issues. Sauter is associate professor of instruction at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is a local arts advocate, volunteering at various local non-profit arts organizations. He is a long-time designer and performer for Cornyation, a yearly satirical production benefitting local LGBT and youth organizations.
ALEX SANDVOSS
Alex Sandvoss is an artist from Vancouver, Canada. Sandvoss received her BMus from McGill University in Montréal in jazz saxophone. While studying music, she began painting during her free time. Sandvoss moved back to B.C. and was inspired to amalgamate her painting skills with her connection to social issues.
The Faces We Pass by Every Day was Sandvoss’s first exhibition and solo show in July 2018, and was met with great critical acclaim: She has received continuous media recognition for her works, including national media attention for her debut exhibit, where she was interviewed on CTV, as well as on CBC TV. Alex has had paintings on display at the Vancouver International Airport (YVR) since 2019.
SUSANNA BLUHM
Susanna Bluhm is a queer landscape-based artist who makes semi-abstract paintings. Raised with her brother in a suburb of Los Angeles by a therapist mother and engineer father, her Mexican grandmother was the anchor of family culture and her gay artist uncle an early source of inspiration and affirmation. Lured by lush rainy redwoods and a 24hour-access painting studio, Bluhm earned her BA in Studio Art from Humboldt State University. She then moved to Illinois and eared her MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has completed residencies at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and at the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft in Berlin. In 2014, she was the recipient of the prestigious Neddy Artist Award in Painting and has been exhibiting her work regularly since 2004. Bluhm is included in numerous private and public collections throughout the US, and abroad.
ED SAAVEDRA
Ed Saavedra is the co-director of San Antonio’s Fl!ght Gallery, and has been exhibiting his own work since 2002. Saavedra has steadily focused on problems surrounding the divide between authority figures and the marginalized or underprivileged. His work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions in Mexico City, MX, New Orleans, LA, Madrid, ES, Houston, TX, Lubbock, TX, and Santa Monica, CA.
His work has been featured at the Institute of Texan Cultures, Museo de Arte Moderno, Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, and Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Journal, and is is part of the permanent collections of the McNay Art Museum and the the San Antonio Museum of Art, both in TX.
ROMSON BUSTILLO
Romson Regarde Bustillo is a Seattle based artist. He has traveled to countries in SE Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa to further his artistic and cultural growth. Carving his own path, Bustillo integrates an interdisciplinary practice with a printmaking foundation. Often exploring universal themes of belonging and perseverance, his work nurtures the act of examining and re-examining one’s place in society concurrent with the process of ideation.
He was awarded the Seattle Print Arts Larry Sommers Art Fellowship in 2016. In 2017 he was co-recipient of the Garboil Grant, an award that considers artists “...engaging audiences outside the aesthetic industrial complex.” He received Arts-Individual Projects Grants from 4Culture in 2018 and 2020 in support of his installations and collaborative interventions. He is the recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship (2019) and the Artist Trust Artist Innovator Award (2021). He received a Northwest Film Forum/Andy Warhol Foundation Collective Power Fund Award in 2022 in "New Work Projects" category. Recent Residencies include, Centro Negra (Murcia, Spain), Jack Straw Culture Center (Seattle, WA), and the Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA).
HOLLY BALLARD MARTZ
Holly Ballard Martz is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes conceptually based sculptures and installations. Through the transformation of familiar objects, she challenges societal norms and power structures while simultaneously encouraging viewers to question their perceptions. Known for her meticulously crafted work, Martz often addresses difficult or controversial subject matter under the guise of beautifully fabricated and embellished pieces.
Martz has exhibited extensively and her work is held in many prominent collections, including the Gates Foundation, the City of Seattle, and the University of Washington. Her monumental installation danger of nostalgia in wallpaper form (in utero) has been exhibited in multiple museums and was most recently on display at the Gates Foundation. She is the recipient of a McMillen Foundation Fellowship, an Artist Trust Grant for Artist Projects, a Seattle Office of Arts and Culture CityArtist Grant, and she was a 2022 Neddy Artist Award Finalist.
PAUL D. MCKEE
Paul D. McKee earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Wichita State University, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts and has amassed an extensive exhibition record. McKee has received recognition, grants, awards, and residencies from institutions such as Visual Overture Magazine, the James Washington Foundation, The UW Henry Art Gallery, and 4Culture. His work can be found in numerous private collections in Europe and the United States. McKee’s curatorial experience includes co-founding and a 10 year history of curating at METHOD Gallery, the Tashiro Kaplan Building, as well as with multiple local and regional exhibitions.
photo courtesy of Ian Lewis Photography.
SEAN HENNESSEY
Sean Hennessey is an artist and curator based in Seattle, WA. Born in New Jersey, he is a graduate of Berea College, a unique Work-Study program in Kentucky. With a background in building sets and creating props in theater, Sean transitioned to teaching art workshops and exhibiting extensively in the Mid-Atlantic region. Sean is a co-founder of Otis Street Arts Project, an arts incubator space and gallery in Washington, DC. He founded Scenic Artisans, a company specializing in decorative paint and murals. His work is in the collections of Amazon Web Services, The District of Columbia, Prince George's County, and The US Arts-in-Embassies Program. Sean has created public art for various venues, including the Aquilino Cancer Center in Maryland, Martha Jefferson Hospital in Virginia, Howard Theatre and Library of Congress in DC, and the City of Baltimore. Currently, his artistic focus lies in the creation of relief sculptures in glass and light.
EINAR & JAMEX DE LA TORRE
Collaborating brothers, Einar and Jamex De La Torre, were born in Guadalajara, México, 1963, & 1960. In a sudden family move, the brothers moved to The United States in 1972, going from a traditional catholic school to a small California beach Town. They both attended California State University at Long Beach, Jamex got a BFA in Sculpture in 1983, while Einar decided against the utility of an art degree. Currently the brothers live and work on both sides of the border, The Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. The complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities, as well as their current life and practice on both sides of border, inform their narrative and aesthetics.
The Brothers have been collaborating in earnest since the 1990’s. Over the years they have developed their signature style featuring mix media work with blown glass sculpture and installation art. Their pieces represent a multifaceted view of life that reflects a complex and humorous aesthetic that could be seen as multi-layered baroque. Their approach is additive, constantly combining material and meaning. Influences range from religious iconography to German expressionism while also paying homage to Mexican vernacular arts and pre-Columbian art. In the last 15 years they have been creating photomural installations and using Lenticular printing as a major part of their repertoire. They have won The USA Artists Fellowship award, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, and The San Diego Art Prize,. They have had 18 solo museum exhibitions, completed 8 major public art projects and have participated in 4 biennales.
JOSE VILLALOBOS
José Villalobos grew up on the US/Mexico border in El Paso, TX. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He was awarded the Artist Lab Fellowship Grant for his work De La Misma Piel at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Villalobos is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant Award and Residency and is also a recipient of the Tanne Foundation Award. His work has been exhibited in the nationally recognized exhibition Trans America/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; NARS Foundation, New York, NY; the Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, TX; El Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Phoenix Art Museum, AZ and Denver Art Museum, CO.
His work is included in the collection of The Dallas Museum of Art, Mexic-arte Museum, Austin, TX, the City of San Antonio Public Collection, TX, Albright College, Reading, PA, and Soho House International in Austin, TX.