2019 Faculty Art Show

The Art Faculty Show holds a special place.
Often one’s first experience of art, the group
show can be an open door to what ifs. Works
presented in this exhibition offer a range of
thought–provoking pieces, books, paintings,
ceramics, sounds, edible art, and bling.
Lighting up the front gallery, Adela Andea’s
work beckons the curious. The retrofitted
1926 grand piano work Intersections by

Aaron Bielish invites visitors to “please touch.”
Cross over artist Zoila Donneys inspires with
spirited studies of graphic images. A prolific
ceramics department is represented by Cory Cryer
and Emily Howard. Mari Omori’s time sensitive
installations and video show the power of vision to
prevail over circumstance. Please enjoy the writings
by the artists themselves.

Kristine Larson, Gallery Director

Adela Andea

My art offers opportunities to investigate the visual significance of contemporary
technology. My work relies on manmade materials to create artificial environments
that suggest “beauty” assigned to the natural landscapes. The aesthetic aspects
of my art comment on the antithetic perception of real vs. artificial or organic
vs. geometric. This separation between nature and machine is inherit since the
industrial revolution. The more recent understandings of the terms replace the
dichotomy with a new hybrid form of expression.

My artistic medium is light, but I use all aspects of the most recent technology
as visual elements. All electronic components are transformed into a story about
the technology of the moment. The light installations and artworks are filled with
recycled plastic materials that are changing the perception of the light, advancing
the phenomenology of light in the art field.

By revealing the scale of personal expressiveness through new technologies, the
aesthetic discourse is questioned by the presence of consumer electronics as
an art subject and material. The self-referential materials allow the viewer to
become consumers once again. As for myself, as an artist, it is a way to escape
engrained aesthetics and recharge the art making process.

Biography

Adela Andea was born 1976, in the city Timisoara on the west side of Romania,
Eastern Europe, and lived under the oppressive communist regime of Nicolae
Ceausescu. At the age of 13, Adela Andea was a direct witness to the
bloody Romanian Revolution of 1989 which started in her hometown and
ended up with the overthrow of the totalitarian regime in Romania.

In the year 1999 Adela found herself confronted with another dangerous
situation, a war starting within 100 miles on the Romanian frontier, the
intervention of NATO in Serbia. During these times of uncertainty, she
immigrated to United States. Before settling in Texas in 2005, where she also
got her American citizenship, she lived for six years in California working full
time as a Paralegal in employment discrimination civil lawsuits. While returning
to school to pursue an Art Degree she realized that Texas would be a better
place to live and be an artist.

Adela started her artistic career as a teenager, when she was awarded the
silver medal in International Shankar’s Competition, New Delhi, India, in 1994.
After moving to United States, in 1999, she was included in numerous shows
in California, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

In 2009, Adela graduated Valedictorian and Summa Cum Laude from the
Painting program at the University of Houston with BFA in Painting with a minor
in Art History. She has an MFA in New Media with minor in Sculpture from
University of North Texas. Adela Andea is represented by Anya Tish Gallery,
Houston, TX and Cris Worley Fine Arts in Dallas.

Glacial Onyx
32 x 60 x 32 inches

Hyperion (AMSET)
36 x 36 x 108 inches

Eukaryotic Cell
36 x 36 x 36 inches

Aaron Bielish

Titled Intersections, the work involves themes of personification,
metamorphosis, and the concept of the afterlife. The grand piano
is a culturally celebrated object, a status symbol, and a musical
instrument.

This piano was damaged beyond what would make “sense” to
continue to maintain. Since then, the instrument has entered a state
of transformation from an instrument in traditional music production
to an unknown future.

My role as a composer, visual artist, and new owner of the once-piano
is to explore this transformation.Personification of celebrated musical
instruments is common, but what happens when an ‘ordinary’ grand
piano is ending its useful life?

The initial project had two phases. The first phase involved research
into the history of the instrument. The second phase of the project
involved building a support system of technologies whose goal was
not to repair the piano, but to manage its eventual demise.
Mechanisms and parts of the piano, when they broke, would not be
replaced or fixed. Instead, new mechanisms would be fitted to the
broken parts, and materials from the piano will be re-purposed.

The project is about metamorphosis, beginning with the piano as
an instrument devoted for sound, to an intermedia device capable
of a cascade of images and sounds from its past as people play.
Additionally new ways of ‘playing’ the transformed instrument will
be developed.

Biography

Aaron Bielish is an intermedia artist and musician originally from
Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He works in a diverse range of media
including photography, drawing, digital media, ceramics, and
sound. His works have been featured at festivals in the United
States, Canada and Germany. Bielish is an adjunct instructor of Art and
Music in the Art Department at Lone Star College–Kingwood.

Intersections
varying sizes



Intersections

Cory Cryer

Before I was old enough to go to school, my days were often spent with
my maternal grandmother, Gladys K. Welch. She owned a store that, today,
would be called an antique store. She and my mother would re-finish,
re-upholster and generally re-habilitate items they found at yard sales
and then sell these items in the store. I can vividly remember riding
shotgun in her blue station wagon, watching the Florida countryside pass
by looking for house numbers that matched the red-circled addresses in the
folded newspaper lying on the seat between us. It was in this setting that
I learned not all objects are created nor revered equally.

I am attracted to clay as an expressive medium through three different formats
conceptually, physically and emotionally. Conceptually, I am attracted to clay
because of its ability to assume many forms and as a result play many roles.
The ceramic pieces people choose to surround themselves with in the home
fill important roles they can provoke memories, contain sustenance and refer to
identity. Physically, I am attracted to clay due to its relationship with our senses.
The senses of sight, touch and sound may be aroused and engaged when a
person comes into contact with a ceramic piece. Although the viewer may
consider these sensory experiences sub-consciously, I think about them
consciously while working. Emotionally, I am attracted to clay and prefer it
as an expressive medium because of the personal satisfaction I receive from
the ceramic process as a whole. The sensory experiences of sight, touch
and sound of clay during the forming process are very different from those
of the viewer of a finished ceramic piece and constitute an intimate
bond between creator and the created.

As an artist working with this material, the colour of the clay as well as the
decorative treatments bear little, if any, resemblance to the finished result.
As I work the clay is warm, malleable and responsive to my slightest touch.
After firing the piece is cold, hard and fixed. The sound of a piece while
I’m working on it is low. Upon completion it’s high. The contradictory nature
of this medium from raw to finished state continues to fascinate, excite and
inspire me.

Biography

Cory R. Cryer was born and spent her early years in Seminole, Florida. Her
family moved to Houston, Texas when she was seven. Shortly after the move
to Houston the family relocated to Tehran, Iran for a year. She returned,
briefly, to Florida and then was off to a girls’ boarding school in Broadstairs,
England. School holidays were spent in Houston and ultimately, Houston
became home.

Ms. Cryer is Professor of Art at Lone Star College–Kingwood in Kingwood,
Texas where she has taught Ceramics for the past five years. She
received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Ceramics from Texas Woman’s
University in Denton, Texas and her Bachelor of Arts in Teaching Degree
from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Her work is shown
nationally and she has been the recipient of numerous awards.

Untitled
varying sizes



Ceramics

varying sizes

Zoila Donneys

For the last six years, I have been reviewing the use of basic shapes in
ancient civilizations. Early Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and cultures throughout
the continent of the Americas used the same two-dimensional shapes,
circles, triangles, ovals, and rectangles to create three dimensional forms.
Centuries later we still use these shapes, much as our ancestors did. These
shapes are found in every human project and expression including irrigation
systems, house designs, textile decorations, ceramic forms, gold ornaments,
and paintings. I have used the most common shapes in my paintings in
different combinations. It is an attempt to bring the past to the present from
a contemplative perspective, underlining the importance of having inherited
the ancient graphics in our world.

My current project “Contemplation of the Graphic Past” is a collection of
media with a geometric and cosmological point of view. This series starts
with common shapes used by Mayan and Inca empires. However, the same
basic forms live in conjunction with the power of organic forms to create
ensembles of geometric and organic forms. Art remains a powerful way
to share our thoughts and ideas. Throughout history, art has survived many
human eras and catastrophes. Shapes, textures, manifestations may change
and yet, art remains an unpredictable source of imagination.

Biography

Zoila Donneys attended her first painting classe at Modern Art Museum
“La Tertulia” and won her first prize in painting at the age of 9. She continued
painting using oils, acrylics and pastels and was inspired by the beauty of
her grandparents’ land. In 1989 Donneys graduated from the University of
Arts in Colombia where she participated in group and solo exhibitions,
including The Interior of Man, “The Guambia”, a series of watercolors
and silkscreens about indigenous groups of Colombia. As president of
graduate students in the Fine Arts University–Colombia, she also
developed programs to promote graduate student work. Donneys was
recognized as a creative graphic designer and publisher by the Graphic
Designer’s Association in Colombia in 1990. She was general manager of
Fine Arts Agency over 7 years, taught Graphic Design classes at Valle
University, and worked for newspapers, press, and printing companies in
Columbia. In 2007 she graduated from Saint Louis University–Missouri with
a Master of Arts, and dedicated most of her time to teaching. At that time,
she created paintings and photographs of exotic global fruit, a collection that
is now on exhibit in New York, Missouri, Kentucky and Florida. Her work
has also shown in South America, France and the USA.

Donneys is currently a Professor at LSC–Kingwood, a position she has held
since 2013. For the last two years she has explored different applications of
geometric shapes as important elements for artists and designers throughout
history. Her most recent collection of paintings “The Contemplation of
a Graphic Past” is on view at the 2019 Lone Star College–Kingwood Art
Faculty Exhibition.

The Next Step
2017
mixed media on canvas
40 x 30 inches
Ancestral Elevation
2017
mixed media on canvas
40 x 30 inches

In the Comet’s Light Urban Totem
2017 2017
mixed media on canvas mixed media on canvas
40 x 30 inches 40 x 30 inches

Mesoamerican Reflection Vanishing Points
2017 2013
mixed media on canvas mixed media on canvas
40 x 30 inches 45 x 45 inches

Emily Howard

My work is an investigation of the human form through ceramics. My focus on
the body is derived from studies in art history, medical science, and personal
health issues while growing up. I seek to represent chronic illness, unseen
disabilities, and my own medical experiences from a feminine point of view. This
analysis of the body has been both a coping mechanism and a way to advocate
representation of illness and disability in the arts. I use medical texts and objects
for research, as well as blogs by individuals sharing their own experience.

My research contains an eccentricity that comments on sexuality through a
medium sometimes considered a feminine craft. I explore these ideas in relation
to the body as a vessel within a medical historical context. While the female
body tends to be considered more of a vessel than the male, the human body
in general has containment vessels for various fluids and functions. The medical
experience for women can be taken less seriously than that of men, making
correct diagnoses and treatment difficult, even more so with a chronic illness.

My techniques include hand building and slip casting. I use different types of
clay for different parts of the body. I combine ceramics with medical objects
and Arduino micro programmers to create a sense of familiarity and to enhance
the viewer’s experience. I enjoy creating settings that the viewer can immerse
themselves into to gain a certain understanding of invisible illnesses.

Biography

Emily Howard is a Texas based studio artist who explores the body and chronic
illness through ceramics and different mediums. She obtained her BFA in studio
art in 2013 from Sam Houston State University and her MFA with a focus in
Ceramics from Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi in May of 2017.

During her time at TAMU–CC she received the Art Star Volunteer Award in
2016 for organizing/curating the first annual exclusively undergraduate show
for TAMU–CC, the SAMC Award for Excellence in Ceramics, and served
as the Session Chair for the Graduate Symposium: Media and Metaphor.
She has completed a commission for the Corpus Christi Arts and Cultural
Commission Art’s Forum Prize for 2017’s Art Star Volunteer Award.

She has had work published in Swirl magazine and published her thesis Not
for Medical Use. She has participated in exhibitions throughout Texas and in
other states such as Maryland, Illinois, California, and Oregon; the most recent
being Not for Medical Use, a solo show held in Box 13 Art Space Back Box
Gallery in Houston, Texas. She is currently located in the Houston area and is
teaching Art based courses with the Lone Star College System and Sam Houston
State University.

One a Day
2017

porcelain casting, slip, soda, pill bottles
varying sizes

Side Effects May Include
2017

medicine cabinet, porcelain pill bottles, stoneware,
underglaze, pencil, watercolor & velvet underglaze, glaze

12 x 4 x 12 inches

Crooked
2016

raku ceramic, raku glaze
4 x 5 x 3 inches

Mari Omori

Time Marker Project
For the first time in my life, I personally experienced how the body goes through
the miraculous healing process. Time often passes without much trace. Record
keeping of my activities while healing kept me preoccupied, mentally and
creatively. Thus, my preoccupation brought tangible evidence of time’s passage.

Assistants is an assemblage of the objects which helped me to physically move
from point A to point B for three months. The support provided by those objects
gave me independence and a sense of hope.

The idea of Prayer Beads evolved gradually, after seeing the material, my hair,
rolled into balls in the palms of my hands. As the number of the hairballs increased,
the scale of the presentation grew. Displaying them over the light box seems to
add another dimension, as if seeing an X-ray film of time.

In Indonesia, the Orthopedic surgeon recommended eight egg whites per day
as a source of protein. I faithfully followed the doctor’s advice while in recovery.

Addiction was developed during the post-surgery time. One may recognize
my prior habituation to tea through my tea projects of 1995–2015. I have been
drinking coffee 6–8 cups per day, a new habit with an unknown effect on my
recovery and wellness.

The video Dancing Alphabet is based on the casual photographs I took during
a physical therapy routine, which was writing A through Z with my affected foot.
I saw the dual possibilities that while my foot could become a tool to draw or
paint, I was also experiencing the benefits of my physical therapy. The paintings
on paper began as monochromes, then gradually the colors were added as I
enjoyed the process of marking every moment.

In my case, the fracture I sustained seems slow to complete recovery. It is often
said that life is a journey. My journey of Time Marking is a signpost on a road
whose distance not yet known.

Biography

Born and raised in Chiba-Prefecture, Japan, Mari Omori is a multi-media artist, art
educator, and curator who received her MFA from UCLA and BA from California
State University Northridge. Ms. Omori has received a number of awards including
the Mino Culture Art Project AIR, Japan, in 2008, Palm Beach County Cultural
AIR Grant, FL, in 2006, Faculty International Exploration Grant and Sabbatical
Research Grant, both in 2008.

Working in diverse materials such as paper, fiber, bronze, and video projection Ms.
Omori explores the concepts of time, identity, and transformation. She has exhibited
her work in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in Germany, Japan, Mexico,
Taiwan, Thailand, and the states of California, Georgia, North Carolina, Oregon, and
Texas. Her works are in private and public collections including the Art Museum of
South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX, and Mino Washi/paper Museum, Gifu-Prefecture,
Japan. Mari Omori is currently a Professor of Art at Lone Star College–Kingwood,
a position she has held since 2002.

Assistants
2018

aluminum, plastic, rubber,
foam, spray paint

34 x 42 x 32 inches

Prayer Beads
2018–2019
artist’s hair, thread over light box
73 1/2 x 40 x 30 inches

House of Seeds
2018–present

cotton, string, seed, ink,
4 x 3 inches (each bag when flat), 16 1/4 x 12 1/4 x 7/8 inches

(each specimen case x 20)

LoneStar.edu/Kingwood

Affirmative Action/EEO College

LSC–Kingwood Fine Arts Gallery
20000 Kingwood Drive

Kingwood, TX 77339-3801
Phone 281.312.1534
LoneStar.edu/Kingwood

Editorial Design: Jordan Minor