GAR Gallery
The GAR Gallery is open to the public
Tuesday - Saturday
11am - 4pm
Regeneration   by  Marie Leterme




"The memories evoked, emotions relived, imagination and humor freed,

answers to old questions and wishes,

recurrent dreams and nightmares,

​it's all there."


Born in Belgium, Leterme attended University of Leuven, Belgium and Catholic University in Paris. Having emigrated to Houston and without a formal art education Leterme discovered the joy of art making in the ceramic sculpture classes of artist Otis Huband in the early 70’s, followed by Ceramics and Printmaking classes at the Glassell.  

After spending most of 1979 and 1980 in Belgium including a residency at the Frans Masereel Center for Graphics, and exhibitions of etchings and ceramic sculpture in Charleroi and Oostende, Leterme returned to Houston where she founded Atelier1513 an Etching Studio and Gallery, in Rice Village in 1981. She taught printmaking workshops at the Art League of Houston, Hill Country Arts Foundation, and her own Atelier1513. From 1983 to 1992 Leterme printed editions for several artists including Knox Martin, John Pavlicek, Benito Huerta, Steven Besselman and architect Charles Moore.

In 1999 she moved her studio to the 1891 Oshman building in Galveston where she continued teaching  many monotype workshops. 

Leterme’s prints and sculpture have been shown in Solo exhibitions at the Dishman, Beaumont-1996,  Galveston Arts Center-2013 and 2000, and the Jung Center- 2004 in Houston, along with juried group exhibitions, including the Grace Museum, Abilene, Tx., the O’Kane gallery, Lawndale Arts Center, the Holocaust Museum, Houston, the Big Medium, Austin, TX. Leterme’s work is included in private collections in Europe and the USA.

Selections From the Collection 
of Engineer Rolf Pessier












Past Exhbitions

IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT

by Fred Schmit-Arnales




IT IS A GOOD PROJECT AND SHOULD BE BUILT by Fred Schmidt-Arenales 
is a three channel video installation, on view in the GAR main gallery space.


Fred Schmidt-Arenales is an artist and filmmaker. His projects attempt to bring awareness to unconscious processes on the individual and group level. He has presented films, installations, and performances internationally at venues including SculptureCenter and Abrons Arts Center, (New York), Links Hall (Chicago), The Darling Foundry (Montreal), LightBox and The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Artspace (New Haven), The Museum of Fine Arts and FotoFest (Houston), Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien (Graz), and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). His recent film Committee of Six is an official selection of the 2022-23 Architecture and Design Film Festival and was awarded a jury prize for best film at the 2023 Onion City Experimental Film Festival.

The Last Sky: Looking for Ghosts

by Juan Juarez




The Last Sky: Looking for Ghosts by Juan Juarez includes 10 works on view in the GAR Gallery small projects space.

Juan Juarez has exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee), Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee), Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi & Rio Terra San Vio (Venice), Aspex Gallery (Portsmouth), Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (Los Angeles), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), and Gallery 400 at University of Illinois-Chicago (Chicago).
2023 - 2024 Artists in Residence Exhibition
Crasis

(Andy Davis & Anne Lukins)
Preston Gaines

Devin T. Mays


May 18th - July 12th, 2024





SO WHAT
by Masha Sha

March 2, 2024 - April 27, 2024



For this exhibition at the GAR Gallery, Masha Sha has created, new large scale graphite and crayon drawings on tracing paper. The images are made up of thousands of small expressive marks that culminate in a single word or phrase. Excavating new meaning from familiar words and phrases is the energizing force behind these drawings.


In the making of the drawings for this show, the artist’s mind was engaged with the following questions:

          How to withstand a violent constant wave of time,
          which is permanently closing on you?

           How is it to be at the place where instant / immediate clashes with infinite / total?

           How daydreaming and diffused concentration on intent
           and meaning are saving graces to withstand the permanent pull in infinite directions?


Masha Sha was born in Chukotka, RU in 1982. She graduated from Pro Arte Institute, St. Petersburg, RU (2005), and received an MFA from the University at Buffalo, NY with the Fulbright scholarship (2010). Masha then completed The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, NY (2011). She received the International Award of Recognition from STRABAG in Vienna, Austria (2014) as well as the Young Artist Prize Innovation in Moscow, Russia (2006). She has participated in many exhibitions and projects, as well as a few residences, including Yaddo and Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Masha has works in many private and public collections including the Russian Museum in Saint-Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, and Anderson Museum of Contemporary art in Roswell, NM. Masha currently lives in Roswell, New Mexico.




Offshore
by James Elaine

GAR Gallery Project SpaceMarch 2, 2024 - April 27, 2024



"These small 2020-2023 paintings begin as cutting boards underneath papers and felts as I cut out shapes for larger paintings. The 'blind' razor cuts produced on these boards are the beginnings of new independent works. The cut lines are purely non objective but contain vestiges of the process of making other works. I try to uncover what used to be and create something new by adding layer upon layer of different types and colors of paint, sometimes mixing them together on the boards so that the different solutions react to one another in unexpected ways. The layering of paint covers up or erases what was before. In between the layering of paints I enhance certain cut lines with graphite, ink, or metallic paint then sand the surface down revealing hazy images of previous layers. This process repeats itself until I decide to stop."
                                                                            -  James Elaine


A specific focus of James Elaine's work is the act of reclaiming and restoring to a new identity what is lost, forgotten, or broken in life and culture. The materials reflect the body and soul of the individual as well as society as a whole. He is interested in different materials, purchased or found, that are not necessarily associated with painting or fine art, and ways to stretch mediums in new directions. Instead of starting a painting with a blank canvas many of Elaine's materials already have a history of their own, which, to some extent, directs the content of the work. 

James Elaine is an artist and curator living and working between Celeste, TX and Beijing, China. He holds a BFA from The University of North Texas, Denton. From 1989 to 2008 he served as the curator of The Drawing Center, NY and then the Hammer Museum, LA, as the Hammer Projects curator, a program Elaine founded in 1999. In 2012 he founded Telescope, a nonprofit-type gallery in Beijing, to work with and exhibit emerging artists of China and to demonstrate the benefits of a non commercial alternative system. As both an artist and curator, James Elaine fulfills a role of collaborator, and draws parallels between the two worlds. In his art practice he collaborates with the materials and imagery, and as a curator with emerging artists - helping them to find the best inside themselves as well as giving them exhibition opportunities and voice in the local and international art world.

Voice of Coralby Miguel Sbastida

November 25th, 2023 - February 7th, 2024
   “If I could talk to a coral reef, I would ask them to tell me how it is to live on the sea bed, in a parallel world but on this same Earth. I wonder about the adaptative superpowers of all the creatures that live there, and their voices too. I wonder if they know we are here roaming the dry soil and changing the Earth system at large. I wonder, if they can hear the sounds of our oil rigs and our motorboats, and if they enjoy the chatter of airplanes passing by the sky. I wonder if they know about deep sea mining and if, as trees in a forest, they also feel the death of neighbor reefs to blast fishing and trawling. I wonder if they can hear the silence emanating off their bleached bodies and I can’t fail to wonder if they might speak to us as well. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be cooked alive, in an ocean of warming, acidifying waters; but if I could, I would ask them to tell us their story, through the embodied knowledge that they are, as one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth.”







Voice of Coral is the latest chapter in an ongoing research project connected to the postnatural ecologies of coral reefs, and the sophisticated technologies being implemented at oceanic restoration sites, in an effort to accelerate the coral’s adaptation to the changing climate. The exhibition looks closely at the technique of acoustic enrichment, through a series of sculptural sound-based works that invite the viewer to experience the language of coral creatures and the fading voice of a soundscape predicted to disappear within the next century. As part of the exhibition the GAR Gallery will be donating a portion of the exhibition budget to Reef Renewal USA to help fund coral restoration and research. Visitors will also be given the opportunity to actively contribute to these efforts.




Miguel Sbastida (1989, Madrid, Spain) works at the boundary of visual arts and environmental studies to create interdisciplinary installations, situated performances and films that challenge the cultural constructions of our relationship to nature and unveil the interconnected processes of climate breakdown. Sbastida graduated from an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017) with the full support of a scholarship from La Caixa Foundation. He completed a BFA at Universidad Complutense of Madrid (2007-12) after his BFA studies in Holland (2011) and Canada (2012). His work has been shown internationally at individual and group exhibitions, including the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels; Museo Centro Gaiás, Spain; Locust Projects, Miami; Korea Foundation Gallery, Seoul; CDAN Museum, Spain; CCE Montevideo, Uruguay; Boghossian Foundation, Brussel and the Netherlands Institute for Media Art, Amsterdam among others.

His work is included in the collections of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Joan Flasch Collection, Asia Culture Institute of South Korea, Harvard University, DKV Collection, BilbaoArte Foundation or the Oneminutes Foundation Netherlands.

Voice of Coral was curated by Regine Basha.




Events

Coral Talk with marine biologist and former superintendent of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, George P. Schmahl.

Jan. 18th, 2024
6pm-7pm
Press

Read Glasstire’s review of Voice of Coral, written by Carris Adams.



2521 Ships Mechanic Row | Galveston, TX 77550 | info@galvestonartistresidency.org |