3 minute read
Artist by Proxy: An Exhibition Experience From the Inside
Exhibitions take months, sometimes years, of planning and execution to perfect. This process starts with curating an artist that suits the museum and its visitors and ends with…well, that’s not so easy to determine.
Maybe it’s the moment you brush the edge of a frame, step back and admire the wall filled with an intended collection of color, shapes, and lights. Maybe it’s the proud moment your guests arrive at the opening reception. Or, it may be the devout sadness experienced when you’re standing in a gallery of empty walls when it all comes down.
Longview Museum of Fine Arts has worked vigorously to bring diverse artists, virtual gallery talks and tours, bilingual educational wall texts, QR code accessible audio stories about the artwork, and other innovative exhibition elements to its patrons. Each step during the course is an integral part of your experience. It’s the internal encounter that matters; what you learn, what you feel, how you’re enlightened by each detail, whether it’s known or unknown. Some unknown particulars are just as important as what you experience when visiting an exhibit at LMFA, so I’d like to give you a glimpse from the inside.
Don’t worry; I’m not going to bore you with the minutiae of special lighting, hanging requirements, label designs, wall texts, framing, or insurance requirements. Rather…
When Derek Frazier, LMFA’s Preparator, received Jamin Shepherd’s shipment of sculpture and textiles, each piece was individually wrapped, labeled, and marked with tape-cutting instructions. The artist also supplied photos of completed sculptures and comprehensive assembly instructions.
Derek carefully unpackaged the pieces, assembled them, and placed them according to the written directions. Tiffany Jehorek, LMFA Executive Director, relished fluffing textile tendrils of the mixed media artist’s masterpieces. Later, our “artists by proxy” adjusted the sculptures during a FaceTime feedback call with the original mastermind.
“Taking the process off the artist’s hands is a wonderfully Postmodern way to work. Andy Warhol famously said, ‘The reason I’m painting this way is because I want to be a machine.’ In a sense, I am Jamin’s machine, fabricating his vision according to strict procedures for producing his art in the galleries.” – Derek Frazier
Jamin Shepherd is an artist, writer, and performer. He’s a Longview native, a University of Texas at Tyler graduate, but has lived all over the nation performing Shakespeare and expressing his love for abstract art and independent music. Jamin has exhibited regionally and nationally, and most recently at Longview Museum of Fine Arts, in an exhibition titled “Jammin with Jamin,” where visitors at the opening reception had the privilege and opportunity to hear him give an artist talk via Zoom. He currently focuses on mixed media art creating colorful textile sculptures and puzzling ceramics. Connections, ideas, associations, and narratives manifest in Jamin’s work, but at the intersection of the boundless territory of mystery and imagination, and the confines of language and structure.
With an artist so uniquely focused on process, perhaps, in Jamin’s case, there is no ending imaginable.
