EDUCATION

2003-2006             Texas Tech University  Lubbock, TX                                  
                               Major- Theatre, Minor- Dance and Art (sculpture)
2006-2008             St. Edwards University Austin, TX                                
                               BA Theatre Arts

EXHIBITIONS

2010                       FlightPath Coffee House
                               March 2010

2009                       East Austin Studio Tour
                               Eponomous Gardens
                               5x7 On the Road  
                               Inman Gallery
                               Houston, TX -August 28 & 29
                               5x7 On the Road  
                               Dunn and Brown Contemporary 
                               Dallas, TX August 14 & 15
                               New American Talent 24                                
                               Arthouse at the Jones Center Austin, TX   
                               Curated by Hamza Walker                                            
                               5x7 Fundraiser                               
                               Arthouse at the Jones Center (Invited) Austin, TX                              
                               History of Love                                  
                               French Legation Museum  Austin, TX
2008               
                               Austin Art Garage Proposition 2                               
                               Austin, TX 2007                     

2007                       Magnolia Café      
                               Austin, TX                          
                               Austin Art Garage            
                               Austin, TX                                                

2002                       Pratt Art institute                                                
                               Brooklyn, NY

AWARDS
2003                        VASE (4)
                                Houston, TX
2002                        Scholastic Gold Key Award                  
                                Houston, TX  
                                VASE  (4)
                                Houston, TX
1997                       Youth Art Texas Winner
                                Austin, TX
                               
PUBLICATIONS

see theatre...

ARTHOUSE: NEW AMERICAN TALENT 24 features
several Austin-based artists among the national
diversity and will give you a glimpse into what’s
happening in the more noncommercial world of
images and objects, as selected by the University of
Chicago’s Hamza Walker. Through Aug. 23.
700 Congress, 453-5312. www.arthousetexas.org.

 
Austin Chronicle Arts Review BY WAYNE ALAN BRENNER
August 7, 2009


Photo by Leah Devun 'New American Talent: The Twenty-Fourth Exhibition' Arthouse at the Jones Center

through Aug. 23

New American talent? Who couldn't get behind an exhibition that's new and features Americans with talent? In fact, forget "get behind" – that's an outmoded form of expression, isn't it?

– like starting a review with a series of questions? Who couldn't immerse themselves, even profitably, in a pool of the most current visual art to be culled from that wider, incessant ocean of American creation?

You won't find that person at Arthouse, eyeing the materials manipulated, the hues rendered, the potentials given solid form (following little function but whimsy or concern's expression) and resisting vacuum in the venue's rooms. You'll find other people: representations of people, anthropomorphic objects or images spiking a familiar shape into the collection's diverse array of made things.

You'll find Space Suit Form With a Burden of Platonic Solid Talismans by Houston's Garland Fielder; this is an arresting mannequin-based sculpture that seems a distillation of the entire figurative-amid-the-abstract exhibition. (Hamza Walker, director of education for the University of Chicago's Renaissance Society, who juried this show, mentioned this piece in his opening-reception remarks, carefully inserting a shim of artistic intent between this work and what's encountered in the more commercial fashion industry. We got the feeling that the example was also an example of synecdoche.)

You'll find Elemental Topography, precise iron castings of a single female body, arranged neatly in more than a dozen distinct pieces, upon a large wooden table. The whole woman responsible for this disparate woman is Erin Cunningham of Austin.

You'll find Austinite Leah DeVun's series of photo-portraits of girls dressed as Disney character Hannah Montana, the costumed personas of these young women usurping their own identities the way photography usurped painting as a record of what's real.

You'll find Kristin Wanek of Los Angeles continuing the celebrity focus with a series of carefully crafted media-icon dioramas documenting Lady Diana Spencer's campaign toward the U.S. presidency with Jesse Jackson as her running mate.

You'll find Amy Grappell's video installation Quadrangle presenting a look into part of what the sexual revolution of the Sixties wrought among her parents and their closest friends. (More about this piece can be gleaned from "Amy Grappell's 'Quadrangle,'" p.31.)

You'll find these and other examples of people depicted and nonfigurative pieces that are yet redolent of the artist's vibrant humanness and pure abstractions that your own eyes must, if necessary, provide the humanity for, and your discoveries will, we insist, do you a world of good. Because new artistic creation, whether burdened or enhanced by Platonic-solid talismans or otherwise, is by no means an outmoded form of expression. And we stand squarely behind that statement.


Secrets of suburbia exposed in artist's love 'Quadrangle'
Author: Jeanne Claire van Ryzin American-Statesman arts critic  
Date: July 20, 2009 Publication: Austin American-Statesman (TX)

In an art exhibit brimming with the exuberant brio typical of emerging artists, visitors to "NAT 24: New American Talent, the Twenty-fourth Exhibition" at Arthouse drift back through galleries of the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center and find their way to a quiet bench...