The Oak Cliff Cultural Center Presents
Influence - Art Exhibition
July 15 – September 9, 2011
DALLAS, TX – The Oak Cliff Cultural Center is excited to present Influence, a three-person art exhibition. The exhibition begins with an opening reception on Friday, July 15, 6:30 – 8:30 PM, and runs through September 9, 2011. Both the opening reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.
Influence features art work by Carlos Donjuan, Sedrick Huckaby and Marilyn Jolly, all who are visual art faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington. Each of these painters comes from a different formative time period and from different cultural influences. Circumstances have put these three diverse painters together under one roof, and they each share a passion for painting as an expressive and relevant medium that has a unique position in current art making.
While Carlos Donjuan is a former student of Marilyn Jolly's at UTA and Sedrick Huckaby studied art in the Dallas/Fort Worth region in his early years, each of these painters has a distinctive voice and uses painting materials in personal approaches.
Carlos Donjuan studied studio art at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and drawing/painting at the University of Texas at Arlington. The work of Donjuan is an interpretation of the many urban subcultures and phenomenon that he has seen or experienced. His figurative paintings are filled with hints of hip-hop, punk rock, graffiti art, street fashion, and other movements that seem to constantly change and evolve. Donjuan works in watercolor, acrylics and spray paint. His art training and background is a mixture of both academia and street art. He has had solo exhibitions in Dallas, San Antonio and Arlington, and has shown his artwork in juried and group exhibitions throughout north and central Texas, New York, California, Oregon, Washington and the United Kingdom, and has pieces in various private collections.
Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Sedrick Huckaby received his formal education at Texas Wesleyan University, where he studied with Ron Tomlinson and Jack Barnett, then went onto Boston University, where he received extensive academic training in studio art. Huckaby attended graduate school at Yale University, where he immersed himself in the idea of “art is about ideas” and expanded his conceptual horizons in art and art history. After graduating from Yale, Huckaby traveled to France, Italy and Spain for two years. It was during this time in Europe that he came to appreciate the “Old Masters” of art and the difference in the social conditions of art production between the present and the past. His works are in the collections of African American Museum (Dallas, Texas); McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, Texas); Minneapolis Institute of Arts ( Minneapolis, Minnesota); Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, Massachusetts); Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina); Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, New York); and the Tyler Museum of Art (Tyler, Texas).
Marilyn Jolly is currently an Associate Professor of Painting at the University of Texas at Arlington. She earned her MFA in Painting at the University of Oklahoma in 1983. She has shown work in the Texas/Oklahoma region for the past 25 years, including exhibitions in Fort Worth, Irving, Austin, Galveston, Lawton and Norman, Oklahoma, and in various galleries throughout Dallas. Her work has also been exhibited in numerous regional, national and international exhibitions including one-person and two-person exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Paraguayo-Americano (Asuncion, Paraguay); Santa Reparata International School of Art (Florence, Italy); and in group exhibitions at the Painting Center (New York City) and Centro Cultural Tomasa Valdes (Mexico City). Jolly’s work is included in the collections of the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts; The Belo Corporation; Southern Progress Corporation; Mexie-Arte Museum (Austin, Texas); Art Museum of South Texas (Corpus Christi, Texas); and Dr. Gilberto Cardenas at the Institute for Latino Studies (Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana). Marilyn currently works in traditional oil painting, acrylic paint and other water media, collage and encaustic (wax-based paint).
Influence is a testament to the development of ideas through painting that connect these artists and the ways that they diverge and move into separate territories. It is also a testament to the open-endedness of the painting process and the expansiveness of what painting can incorporate with advances in newer polymer painting materials, digital reproduction, mixed and traditional media.
Located in a historic storefront in the vibrant commercial district of Jefferson Avenue in Oak Cliff, the Oak Cliff Cultural Center opened its doors in August 2010. The facility was purchased and renovated by the City of Dallas through the 2003 Bond Program to function as a permanent City-owned arts center where residents and visitors of Oak Cliff could experience a variety of arts and cultural programs. The 5,000 sq. ft. storefront features a visual arts gallery and a dance studio/rehearsal space. The Oak Cliff Cultural Center is open Tuesday – Friday, 3:00-9:00 p.m., and Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
The City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs (OCA) works to enhance the vitality of the City and the quality of life for all Dallas citizens by creating an environment wherein arts and cultural organizations can thrive so that people of all ages can enjoy opportunities for creative expressions and the celebration of our community’s multicultural heritage. Our mission is to establish a cultural system that ensures that all Dallas citizens and visitors have an opportunity to experience the finest in arts and culture. The OCA is advised by an 18-member Cultural Affairs Commission appointed by the Dallas City Council. The OCA manages the city’s Cultural Contracts, Community Artists and Public Art Programs; oversees six cultural centers including the Bath House Cultural Center, Latino Cultural Center, Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, and South Dallas Cultural Center; and operates the city’s classical music radio station, WRR101.1FM. More information on the programs and services provided by the OCA can be found at www.dallasculture.org.
Courtesy of the city of Dallas.