All the obituaries for Vernon Fisher are using the words “blackboard” or “chalkboard.” It is true, many of the artist’s works feature an off-black background festooned with smudges of white that recall the classroom slates of olden days that would need their chalk marks wiped imperfectly clean at the end of the day.
Fisher left abstraction behind to become a pioneer in combining text and visuals in his work. He worked out of the same studio in Fort Worth for more than 40 years.
Francis Almendárez
Erika Jaeggli
Awards to Artists grants have been awarded to more than 300 recipients, many of whom have gone on to successful careers within North Texas and across the country. DeGolyer artists include Diedrick Brackens, Jeff Elrod, and Robyn O’Neil. Kimbrough artists include David Bates, Kelli Connell, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Sedrick Huckaby, Lawrence Lee, Melissa Miller, Michael Miller, Erick Swenson, and Xiaoze Xie. Dozier artists include Helen Altman, Scott Barber, Julie Bozzi, Joseph Havel, Stephen Lapthisophon, Katrina Moorhead, John Pomara, and Ludwig Schwarz. Over the years, the DMA has acquired works from many of the artists who have received awards from the DeGolyer, Kimbrough, and Dozier funds. Chris Schanck, a recipient of the DeGolyer award in 1994, is currently the subject of the exhibition
Installation view of Carol Flueckiger’s solo exhibition Solitary Voyager at LHUCA, Lubbock
The day that I met with Carol Flueckiger at the LHUCA was a sunny one and windy which are the two most prevailing weather conditions of Lubbock. It is no wonder, then, that these features of the Texas High Plains figure so heavily into the work of one who declares “My subject is energy.”
Flueckiger with one of her works in the show
In Flueckiger’s solo show
Solitary Voyager, at Lubbock’s Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, energy is manifest both in Flueckiger’s process for creation, as well as in the visual qualities of the paintings themselves. The large-scale works on paper most measure 52” x 72” include a limited palette of tea-toned brown and blue, the latter dictated by Flueckiger’s cyanotype process. These two colors echo the pervading pigments of the flatlands. Lubbock, remarks Flueckiger, “is an additive color landscape more light than lan