2014 Faculty Art Show

2014 Faculty Art Show

Adela Andea ................................................................... 1
Gerard Baldwin................................................................ 3
Cory Cryer....................................................................... 4
Joe Kagle......................................................................... 6
Mari Omori..................................................................... 8

Adela Andea

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

In 2009, Adela graduated as Valedictorian and Summa Cum Laude from the School of
Painting program at the University of Houston with a BFA in Painting and a minor in Art
History. She has an MFA in New Media with a minor in Sculpture from the University of
North Texas.

Adela Andea is represented by Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, TX and Cris Worley Fine Arts
in Dallas.

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Adela Andea

Pink Serpent, 2013, 36” x 32” x 10”
Flex neon, various plastics

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Gerard Baldwin

Gerard Baldwin’s formal art training came from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California
Institute of the Arts) and the Instituto Allende in Mexico. David Alfaro Siqueiros was one of
his mentors. Taking two years out for the Korean War where he was assigned to the National
Security Agency, Baldwin returned to his apprenticeship at UPA Studios and began a rapid
rise in the world of animation that spans more than fifty years. He has been animator, director,
writer, and producer. Some of the animated films that are a showcase for Baldwin’s talent
include Mr. Magoo, Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle, Yogi Bear, the Grinch, Aladdin, the
Flintstones, and the Smurfs. Baldwin is the recipient of numerous awards including more than
one Emmy.

Cul-de-Sac, 2014, 11” x 17”, mixed media

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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 color 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.

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Cory R. Cryer was born and spent her early years in Seminole, Florida. Her family moved to Houston, Cory Cryer
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. Currently,
Cryer is a Professor of Art at Lone Star College-Kingwood in Kingwood, Texas, where she has taught
Ceramics for the past five years. She received her MFA 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, 2014, 24” x 48”, ceramic

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Joe Kagle

Kagle has exhibited in over 695 national and international exhibitions. In recent years, from
2000 to 2006, he was asked to come to the Republic of Georgia and Mongolia as artist-in-
residence and professor-in-residence as a Fulbright Scholar and Fulbright Senior Specialist. The
American Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia (that recently bought two large of his paintings for their
new building) asked him to represent the United States at an International Plenary of Artists in
Kutaisi, Georgia (with 20 other artists from all over Europe). He has headed and directed six
museums (two university and four public), 1961-2000, and consulted foreign national museums
on collecting and fund-raising. He has headed five university art departments and divisions of
Fine Arts, 1958 through 2001. He has taught all the standard art and art history courses as well
as special courses in world architectural history, arts management, fund-raising and Chinese art
(having a Fulbright to the Palace Museum in 1966). In 2008, he had a retrospective exhibition
at the Lone Star College-Kingwood Fine Art Gallery of work from 1948 to the present. Since mid-
2009 he has created collage works and written for 60 book/journals (110-146 pages in each),
45 works of art on scrolls (40 images on each), and over 350 individual works of painting and
collage.

Kagle’s honors include: Who’s Who in American Arts, since 1965; Artist of the Year for the Pacific
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1976; Who’s Who in the South and Southwest,
since 1978; Who’s Who in American Education, since 1979: Who’s Who in America, since 1980;
John C. Gowan Award for Research from the National Gifted and Talented Association, 1982;
Kellogg Educational Fellow at Smithsonian Institute, 1983 and 1984: Who’s Who in International
Art, since 1990; National Advertising Award for Non-Profit Video, Writing and Directing, 1993;
Who’s Who in American Business and Finance, since 2003; and Who’s Who in the World, since
2004. His major work on the island of Guam received recognition in the National Works in Public
Places, an exhibit at the Smithsonian in 1975. He was voted Outstanding Educator on World

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Campus Afloat, Chapman College, 1968. He was honored with a National Joe Kagle
Volunteer of the Year Award in 1991 and given the Outstanding Service Award
for the Class of 1955, Dartmouth College, in 2005. Kagle received the Published The Waiting Room - I.See.U,
Writing Award for Lone Star College System in March 2009. Today, he exhibits Redefine Possible-#23,
with the Upstream People Gallery, an Internet gallery, which attracts 800,000 2014, 32” x 40”.
visitors to its site each month. He continues to win international awards through Photo process, collage and acrylic
competitive exhibition and works each day of his profession as artist/professor.

Kagle has been chairman of fine arts at Washington and Jefferson College,
Keuka College, and the University of Guam. He has directed Southeast Arkansas
Arts and Science Center, Brockton Art Museum and the Art Center Waco (an
over 30-year career in museum management). He was artist-in-residence for
Washington State University and is an honorary professor in the Republic of
Georgia and Mongolia. His educational beliefs are: “If education is the fuel
that fills and stirs the mind and spirit, then art is the flame that sets the mind and
spirit ablaze” and “Learners do not care how much you know until they know
how much you care”.

Through all of his 79 years (starting by being selected to study at the age
of eight at the Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts from 1940-1951) of creative,
administrative, curatorial and academic pursuits, his credo has been: “May
the beauty we love be what we do.” Joe Kagle was born in1932, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania (education: Dartmouth College, B.A., 1951-55; University of
Colorado, M.F.A., 1955-58; and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, M.
Ed., 1983-84).

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Mari Omori

Born and raised in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, a multi-media artist, art educator, and curator,
Mari Omori received a BA from California State University Northridge and a MFA from
UCLA. She has been invited to Oaxaca AIR, Mexico for three weeks (2013-14), Hilmsen
AIR for a month, Germany (2012), was awarded the Sabbatical Research Leave with
International Exploration Grant from Lone Star College Systems (2008), the Mino Culture
Art project AIR, Mino, Japan for three months (2008), the Palm Beach County Cultural AIR
Grant (2007). She had a solo exhibition, “mari omori” at the Pearl Fincher Museum of
Fine Art in 2011. She is currently a Professor of Art at Lone Star College-Kingwood, TX, a
position she has held since 2002. Her works have been widely exhibited in solo and group
shows nationally in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Texas, and internationally in Japan,
Germany, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The Past Made Visible

The Ethnobotanical Garden in Oaxaca, Mexico, the former monastery of Santo Domingo,
was given shape by collaborators, an anthropologist, Alejandro de Avila Blomberg and
one of the great Oaxacan artists, Francisco Toledo. In this garden, among the hundreds of
species of native plants to Oaxaca lives a white parasitic insect, the cochineal, which feeds
on the broad leaves of the prickly pear, or nopal, cactus. Squeeze them, and a bright red
stain is left behind, the source of a cherished crimson dye once coveted for oil paints and
cardinal robes. - Edward Rothstein, NYTimes.com, June 15, 2012.

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During my three week artist-in-residency to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2013 I made a visit to the Mari Omori
Cochinea plantation in Coyotepec. The crimson ink left a burning impression on my palm.
I explored various methods regarding how to use the ancient dye within a limited time frame,
that would reduce the amount of waste, that expressed the material nature of the dye, and that
could tie the past with the present. The works on paper in this art faculty exhibition are the result
of this exploration. I decided to choose the table setting as my subject matter as my host mother,
Mrs. Ruiz, prepared each meal for us to eat together. My idea was to represent the intimate,
food culture of Mexico in its domestic landscape. Our conversations took place around the
dining table at meal time. It was where the young learned their table manners. It was where I
was fed and sustained.

I applied the dye onto Arches paper using cotton swabs, the only art supply item I brought
from Texas. As I painted with varying pressure onto the paper, the red ink responded faithfully
with light and dense markings. The technique of dabbing with ink, with overlapping marks,
rendering with dark and light values created an explosive, organic effect, as if cells were
multiplying before my eyes. The crimson red powerfully attracts the eye and appeals to the
senses with its permanence.

Cochineal has been used as art material for painting, writing, fabric dyeing, all sorts of foods
and beverages as labeled, Red#40, cosmetics, and medicines. The crimson red color can be
changed to orange or to violet by adding salt, vinegar, and Alum.

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Mari Omori

Oaxaca a.i.r #5, 2013, 30” x 25”, Cochineal dye on Arches paper

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Many thanks to ...

LSC-Kingwood Media

Diana Sorensen: Photographer

LSCK TV: Garrick Joubert, Edwin Brega, Dan Ko

Pamela Clarke: Manager of Designs in Print

Graphic artists: T.C. Robson and Maria Valarino
LSC-Kingwood Fine Art Gallery
20000 Kingwood Drive
Kingwood, TX 77339-3801
Phone 281.312.1534
LoneStar.edu/Kingwood
Affirmative Action/EEO College