VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Galveston Arts Center is pleased to present Dan Rizzie: The Flatbed Years, Selected Prints 1993–2009, featuring work produced by the former Texas artist at Austin’s Flatbed Press. The exhibition will open during the July 10th ArtWalk and remain on view through August 22, 2010. Curator Clint Willour will lead a gallery talk at 6:30 pm. A special preview for GAC members will be held on Friday, July 9, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

Scrolling arabesques, blackbirds and flowers populate the visual vocabulary of Dan Rizzie’s art. The son of a cultural officer for the US State Department, Rizzie lived in such exotic lands as India, Jamaica, Egypt and Jordan as a child. He continues to be an avid traveler and collector of paper ephemera, old letters, and ledger paper that find places in his collages and prints, markers of a forgotten past. A sense of history and appreciation for architecture and decorative design are the underpinnings for his images.

Curator Teresa H. Ebie writes, “Like botanical illustrations, his highly decorative compositions fill the page and typically spill jubilantly beyond the paper’s boundaries. Symbols of vitality—eggs, fruits, vessels and lotus blossoms—float across our field of vision, while leaves and vines trail away seemingly under their own power.” Also evident is the influence of artists such as Picasso and Braque and Matisse.

Rizzie received an MFA in painting from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and began making prints in the late 1970s. Flatbed Press in Austin is a professional printmaking studio for contemporary artists that was founded in 1989 by Mark L. Smith and Katherine Brimberry. Flatbed recently celebrated their 20th anniversary and Rizzie has worked with them for most of that time, experimenting with a wide variety of printmaking techniques and scale. Types of prints included in the exhibition include monotypes, etching, aquatints, woodcuts and digital ink prints.

Rizzie was born in 1951 in Poughkeepsie, NY, and moved to Sag Harbor, NY, in 1989 where he still resides. He has exhibited widely since 1975 and has had over 50 solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Dallas amongst others. Flatbed Gallery in Austin featured a show of new work by Rizzie in 2001.

Galveston Arts Center is currently operating “in exile” from our second temporary downtown gallery space—the site of the former Maceo’s Spice and Import Company located on the corner of Market and 25th Streets. The administrative offices are also at this location. The gallery and selections from GAC’s retail gallery, ArtWorks, are open to the public Monday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm. A flyer listing all ArtWalk participants with times and locations can be downloaded at www.galvestonartscenter.org.

SUPPORT AND SPONSORSHIP - Funding for GAC’s exhibition programs is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, Inc., Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund, The National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Galveston through the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund, and the generous support of the community, volunteers and an active membership. GAC’s Art for All Education Program is supported in part by the Wilton and Effie Mae Hebert Foundation, Texas Commission on the Arts, The Brown Foundation, Inc., Alice Taylor Gray Foundation, Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund, and the Jr. League of Galveston County’s Community Assistance Fund.

LOCATION AND HOURS - Galveston Arts Center is located on the corner of Strand and 22nd (Kempner) Street in historic downtown Galveston. The building is currently closed until further notice for repairs to damage from Hurricane Ike. For more information, call 409.763.2403 or visit www.galvestonartscenter.org.  

Galveston Arts Center in Exile 2 is located at 2501 Market Street, Galveston, TX, 77550. The mailing address for GAC remains the same: 2127 Strand, Galveston, TX 77550.

Pictured:  Dan Rizzie, Blackberry Thieves II (Yellow), 2009, Mounted color woodcut, ed. 8/15, Image size 31 3/4 x 25 1/2 inches, Paper size 40 3/4 x 33 3/4 inches, Courtesy Flatbed Press, Austin.