After taking a brief intermission during the pandemic, Dallas College’s Arts and Humanities Division is proud to announce art exhibits and performances are back on campus and open to the public.
“Reintroducing our programming to the public aligns with our goal of expanding access and clarifying pathways to student success. This will increase inclusion and engagement for all individuals in the School of Creative Arts, Entertainment and Design, and in our local communities here in Dallas County,” said Dr. Solomon Cross, vice provost of the Dallas College School of Creative Arts, Entertainment and Design.
The nearly two-year hiatus hasn’t slowed the Arts and Humanities Division down a bit, and they’re bringing events back with a bang. In October, Mountain View Campus and Brookhaven Campus will each host an art exhibit and a theater production.
“The Arts and Humanities Division is committed to providing culturally responsive programming that reflects our core values, coupled with student interest,” said Dean Giraud Polite. “Irrespective of the instability in educational pathways brought on by the pandemic, we look forward to having students back in our art spaces while they continue to work on their journey.”
To make sure everyone stays safe, masks and social distancing will be required at all indoor events. The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon performance will be held outdoors, near the Garden of Learning Fountain on the Mountain View Campus, and social distancing is requested.
From an exhibit showcasing how Asian and Asian American artists use nature-based imagery, to a performance meant to explores art’s role in social change, our artists’ returns to campus are events you won’t want to miss!
Theater Program:
“The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon Play”
Date: Oct. 13-16, 2021
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Garden of Learning Fountain, Mountain View Campus. Enter the Mountain View Campus Performance Hall lobby, and signs and actors will direct you to the fountain.
Free, family-friendly outdoor re-telling of everyone’s favorite Grimm’s fairy tales, including Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel. Bring your lawn chairs, blankets, bug spray and masks to enjoy your night under the stars.
Art Exhibits:
“Tree With Half a Root”
Date: Oct. 11 – Dec. 3, 2021
Time: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday – Friday
Location: Cliff Gallery, Mountain View Campus
This exhibition, curated by Kim Phan Nguyễn and Narong Tintamusik in collaboration with Gallery Manager Alison Starr, showcases how Asian and Asian American artists use nature-based imagery and materials to explore themes such as belonging and identity. Drawing from intimate memories, the gallery becomes a site of contemplation, meditation and rejuvenation. Participating artists show places that protect us from harsh surroundings and open our imaginations.
Each artist works across different media to build new worlds out of paintings, drawings, digital processes, ceramics and textiles. These created environments transcend the instability of reality into the fantastical and surreal. Shared materials such as paper, thread, clay embody delicacy and fragility at the point of near collapse. Pictures of communal spaces, family heirlooms, shifting weather, suspended toy soldiers and falling seeds occupy different levels of the room.
“Somewhere Within and Without”
Date: Oct. 11 – Nov. 5, 2021
Time: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday – Friday
Location: Studio Gallery, Brookhaven Campus
Texas-based artist Meg Griffiths’ work attempts to subtly shift and deconstruct the ways in which we engage with time, reality, perception and memory. Drawing upon personal history and identity in order to raise questions about the self, before and after seminal life events. These images also hint at larger questions concerning the human experience — being and nonbeing. Everyday household objects are used to construct scenes that ground us in the familiar, domestic and recognizable. These quotidian things are also used as a point of departure from their conventional use and connection in order to create new meaning. Each image is formed through a process that synthesizes both internal and external experience into a code. Like taking a poem, that is a portion of the artist’s life, and distilling it into a crystalline form, elegantly fixed, completely fragile and most certainly ephemeral.
Meg Griffiths was born in Indiana and raised in Texas. She received two B.A.’s from the University of Texas in Cultural Anthropology and English Literature and earned her Master of Fine Arts in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently lives in Denton, Texas, where she is an Assistant Professor and Area Head of Photography in the Department of Visual Art at Texas Woman’s University.
Meg’s photographic research currently deals with domestic, economic, historical and cultural relationships across the Southern United States and Cuba. Her work has been shown in multiple venues around country, including: Columbia Museum of Art, Center for Fine Art Photography, Museum of Living Artists in San Diego, Griffin Museum in Boston, Houston Center for Photography, Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia and Rayko Gallery in San Francisco. She has also been published in Oxford American, Aint Bad Magazine, Boston Globe, Photo District News, South X Southeast Magazine, Lenscratch, Le Journal de la Photographie and Fraction Magazine. Her work is a part of many private collections as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Center for Fine Art Photography and Middle Tennessee University.
She was honored as one of PDN 30’s New and Emerging Photographers, named one of eight Emerging Photographers at Blue Spiral Gallery, Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Ones to Watch, was recently awarded the Julia Margaret Cameron for Best Fine Art Series in 2017.