VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Galveston Arts Center is pleased to present Rusty Scruby: Playing in the Sand, featuring three-dimensional photographic reconstructions by this Dallas-based artist. The exhibition will open during the October 9th ArtWalk and remain on view through November 14, 2010. Curator Clint Willour will lead a gallery talk with the artist at 6:30 pm. A preview reception for GAC members will be held on Friday, October 8, from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The artist will be present. A color catalogue of the exhibition has been produced by the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, and will be on sale at GAC.

The works in Playing in the Sand are inspired by the artist’s childhood experiences of living on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, where he developed his affection for the beach and ocean. Three of the works are composed of multiple shapes (globes, zeppelins and torpedoes) suspended from the ceiling with monofilament. Each piece is a meticulous reconstruction of a flat, two-dimensional photograph, cut into strips and reconstructed as a three-dimensional sculpture. Scruby places the objects in precise relationship to each other so that the subject of each is revealed as the viewer interacts with the components from different points of view.

Other works in the exhibition form a dialogue with the free-floating forms in relation to subject matter, but are instead, wall-dependant. In On the Beach (2006), hills and valleys are formed as the artist weaves varying width strips of a photographic image that becomes distorted as if viewed in a fun house mirror. In Cello (2007) and Shade II (2010), Scruby again weaves the image together, this time creating a distinctively shaped background pattern recalling an M.C. Escher composition. Achieving this repetitive precision, the artist notes, is the result of “using ideas I’ve gathered over the years studying music composition, engineering and knitting, [to] create what I call ‘visual frequencies.’ I work with ideas of tension and relaxation by controlling the amount of repetition in the image as it travels across the undulating surface.”

Scruby was born in Oregon City, Oregon in 1964. He studied aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station from 1984–87, and music composition at the University of North Texas in Denton from 1988–90. The artist currently lives and works in Dallas. Playing in the Sand has been recently exhibited at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont (2010), and McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas (2009). Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at PanAmerican Projects, Miami; Parks Avenue Armory, New York; Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI; and Sandy Carson Gallery, Denver, among others. Rusty Scruby, Beyond the Plane: A Portrait of the Artist in Motion, a documentary film by Quin Mathews, premiered at the Dallas Museum of Art in September 2006.

Galveston Arts Center is currently operating in a 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 Wednesday 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, The Levin Family Foundation, 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 Harry S. and Isabel C. Cameron Foundation, 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.

Pictured Above:

Rusty Scruby
On the Beach (detail), 2006
Photographic reconstruction
50 x 50 x 6 inches

Pictured Below:

Rusty Scruby
Beach Couple, 2008
Photographic reconstruction with monofilament and styrene
74 x 50 x 48 inches