About the Exhibitions
Creighton Michael
Creighton Michael creates interrelated works in painting, drawing, and sculpture. He sets up a dialogue between paintings and sculpture that supports a careful and thorough approach to the creative endeavor, which originates out of the artist’s interest in drawing. Indeed, it must be understood from the beginning that the conceptual underpinnings of all of Michael’s work is the practice of drawing and the movement of line in space, whether that line is painted, drawn, or dimensional. Michael says of his work, “Drawing is primary, not preliminary.” Each of Michael’s sculptures refers to the transitory nature of installation and the concrete character of its materials. In all of the artist’s paintings and sculptures there is a sense of the fleeting and of the momentary that acts as a counterpoint to their implied history and which demonstrates the artist’s sensitivity for concept and aesthetic.
Michael holds graduate degrees from Vanderbilt University (MA) and Washington University in St. Louis (MFA). He has taught and lectured at Princeton University, Hunter College, the Rhode Island School of Design and other institutions of higher learning. Michael has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts the Edward Albee Foundation, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and a Golden Foundation for the Arts Award, in addition to other distinctions. Michael’s work can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Mint Museums, the National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art and others.
Tom Huang
Tom Huang is trained as an architect and furniture designer and attempts to bridge the gap between studio furniture, contemporary fiber arts, and sculpture in his work. He utilizes his skills to create both individual furniture objects and sculptural installations. Additionally, he is very interested in the relationship between the East and West, employing traditional and contemporary techniques and materials to express this point of view, stating, “I hope to better understand the global condition of cultural mixing and reconciliation by employing weaving and binding as a metaphor. I combine both traditional and non-traditional techniques and materials." Huang presents both furniture and sculpture in this exhibition. His installation, Coolies, demonstrates his awareness of history and his respect for the labor of Chinese immigrants who built the Central Pacific Railroad that joined the Transcontinental Railway to tie together the growing United States. “Coolies,” originally a non-pejorative term for a laborer who usually carried a bamboo pole, eventually became a negative term under Colonialism. Here Huang creates an exceptionally beautiful installation, utilizing bamboo and many traditional weaving techniques, to pay homage to the countless “coolies” who built the American railway.
Tom Huang (Lawrence, Kansas) holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA in Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. His work was recently featured in American Craft Magazine. He worked as a designer for Moz Designs, a specialty fabrication company where he created work for many important clients, including Disney Imagineering and Sony Entertainment. Huang is currently represented by the Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia and the Shidoni Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is also an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Kansas.
About the Museum
The DCCA, a non-collecting museum, currently presents nearly
30 exhibitions annually of regionally, nationally, and internationally
recognized artists. In addition to the exhibitions, DCCA commits
to educational and community outreach through various programs,
such as Artist Residencies with underserved community groups
and Contemporary Connections, a model program that fuses art
with schools' core curriculum, offering fresh new ways to
teach subjects such as math and science. The DCCA has partnered
in some way with more than 60 community groups and schools.
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