Mine the Gap: 2019/21 Artist Studio Program Exhibition

ARTIST STUDIO PROGRAM 2020–21

MINE THE GAP

FEBRUARY 6–MAY 1, 2021

LAWNDALE

ALL WORKS COURTESY THE ARTIST.

GERARDO ROSALES

1 Bonding, 2020 Acrylic on paper 10 × 14" 2 The Banquet, 2021 Acrylic and latex on wall Dimensions variable 3 Cine Tropical, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 74 × 107"

JACQUELYNE BOE & DAVID JANESKO

5 Chirality III, 2021 5 channel video projection, digital video projectors, vinyl, projection screen, paint pigmented with powdered graphite, and wood Dimensions and duration variable 6 Chirality, 2020–21 Chemically-altered silver gelatin paper on Dibond Dimensions variable

HOLLY VESELKA

7 Thistle, 2021 HD video (color, no sound, looped), 15:00 minutes 8 Herbarium, Buffalo Bayou, 2021 Archival pigment prints on cotton rag (12 pieces), Edition 1 of 1 Objects (left to right): Maple, Shale, Sediment, Cotton, Brick, Spiderwort, Railroad Spike, Huisache, Tennis Ball, Styrofoam, Acorns, Spring Wildflowers 19 × 13"

HOLLY VESELKA

4 Buffalo Bayou Collection, 2021 3D printed objects: PLA bioplastic, pigmented powder coat, found bayou sediment; braised metal; HD videos (color, no sound, looped); and found objects

Fauna Collection: ibises, dragonfly, armadillo, hummingbirds

Historical Collection: bison skull, brass clock, marble bust, cotton

Flora Collection: baby’s breath, spring wildflower bouquet, summer wildflower bouquet, green bouquet

Color Collection: great blue heron, blazing star, magnolia, toad, oak pollen, wildflower, pinecone, piano, fall foliage bouquet

Dimensions variable

This collection was made possible through the generous sharing of knowledge and collections. The fauna scans were made using the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s

Window

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JOHN M. O’QUINN GALLERY

3 6

5

2

7

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Stairs Elevator

Study Skin Collection. The flora scans were made through the collecting effort of the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center Conservation Team. The bison scan was

GRACE R. CAVNAR GALLERY 1

made at the Polish Academy of Sciences Mammal Institute in the Białowieża Forest in Poland. The historical object scans were made through the use of a private collection and were researched at the Heritage Society and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

Entrance

2 INTRODUCTION 4 MINE THE GAP 12 JACQUELYNE BOE & DAVID JANESKO 18 GERARDO ROSALES 24 HOLLY VESELKA 30 ABOUT 32 SPECIAL THANKS

INTRODUCTION

STEPHANIE MITCHELL

Lawndale’s 2019/20 season marked our 40-year commitment to Houston artists. Throughout its history, Lawndale has held fast to our responsibility to the artists and the community we serve, striving every day to stay connected and inspired, all the while emphasizing the powerful role that art plays as the shared language of humanity. This proved especially true and important this past season as the world faced extraordinary challenges in the wake of the COVID -19 pandemic.

When we welcomed Jacquelyne Boe + David Janesko, Gerardo Rosales, and Holly Veselka as our 2019/20 Artist Studio Program partici­ pants, we envisioned a season as vital and dynamic as ever before; one could hardly imagine what 2020 would have in store for us all. In the face of unrelenting and destabilizing forces, these artists persevered to create work that is both reflective and prescient. It is thus a thrill to at last pres­ent their collective achievements in Mine the Gap, curated

by Patricia Restrepo, Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. While vastly different from any presentation of the artists’ work that would have come to pass in spring 2020, this exhibition reveals much about our current moment and undoubtedly will continue to do so in the years to come.

This exhibition and the Artist Studio Program would not be pos­­sible without the support of many individuals. We are first and foremost grateful to the artists. In addition, we thank Patricia Restrepo not only for her sensitive curation of the exhibition but also for her work on all aspects related to this publication. We were very fortunate to work with Molly Sherman on the book design and Emco Press on the printing of this publication and are thankful for their respective talents and efforts. Lawndale is especially thankful to Kathrine G. McGovern and The John P. McGovern Foundation for underwriting the Artist Studio Program’s many activities, including this publication and all accom­panying public programming.

As always, Lawndale is indebted to our tiny but mighty team, including staff Emily Fens and Lisa Gertsch, and our terrific installers, Jon Clark and David Cobb. Finally, Lawndale is thankful for the lead­ ership of our Board of Directors and Advisory Board as the organization continues to pursue new ways of expanding the impact of the Artist Studio Program on participating artists and the wider community.

In closing, this round of the Artist Studio Program marks my last as Lawndale’s Executive Director. It has been an honor and a privilege to lead this beloved organization into the future, and I delight in having contributed even a little bit to Lawndale’s extraordinary history and to the critical role that the Artist Studio Program plays in the life of Houston’s artistic community.

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MINE THE GAP

PATRICIA RESTREPO

Mine the Gap unites new work by Jacquelyne Boe and David Janesko, Gerardo Rosales, and Holly Veselka, created during their 2019/21 Artist Studio Program residencies at Lawndale. These residents have shared more than adjoining studios over the past couple of years; their works’ thematic interconnectedness and synergetic sensibilities are pronounced.

Through disparate mediums and for different ends, the artists collectively harness the quiet yet potent power of abstraction, layering, and trans­fer­ ence in their experimentations with expression. The gap between reality and the represented offers fertile ground to mine the fleeting, fragmen­ tary, and fragile. Reducing the legibility of referents limits obvious and immediate readings of the artists’ work, instead encouraging close viewing and a multiplicity of meanings. Their brave commitment to embracing systemic translation errors within their processes resulted in unforeseeable outcomes and “unnatural” configurations, thereby offering dynamic and novel possibilities for our future.

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Mapping Bodies Collaborators Jacquelyne Boe and David Janesko have created a dynamic installation of interlocking vessels activated by multi-channel projections and, at times, live dancers. Chirality III constitutes the third part of their series Chirality, a term used to describe an object and its mirrored pair, such as the right and left hands. In their work codifying embodied gestures during a pandemic, the term chirality expands to address innate asym­me­ tries within screen-mediated communication. Boe and Janesko pivoted in response to this evolving global situation, seeing possibilities instead of limitations in the ensuing restrictions. The artists refocused on parameters of isolation and the technological vehicles through which we can view performance.

The artists wanted to explore the conditions of collaborating in confined and solitary spaces. During an initial series of Zoom video calls, Janesko gave movement-prompts to Boe and a group of dancers to highlight the spatial dichotomies unique to the bedrooms, backyards, and other spaces that had become each person’s “lockdown-studio.”

The dancers were invited to move intuitively for five minutes, thereby opening passages to the subconscious and intelligence of the body. These exercises were used to visualize unseen systems and body pathways, as Boe looked to recordings of the sessions to identify recurring patterns unique to the movement of a dancer. She plucked an idiosyncratic ges­ture as a building block to choreograph a two-part mirrored phrase for each dancer. Janesko responded by creating a series of video feedback loops using apparatuses including a webcam and a streaming video application, which were layered into video documentation enlivening their installation Chirality III. One particularly striking portion of this video occurs when we see a single light source, refracted through one of Janesko’s hand­ crafted lenses, trace a dancer’s corporeal movement across the screen.

The haunting and ghostly map of a body performing for the camera has potent resonance in our present moment, in which bodies are traced virtually and mediated through virtual platforms at growing rates.

Chirality III confirms the artists’ shared structuralist approach, as they continue to visualize unseen systems. Boe and Janesko’s translation of movement and emotional intelligence into a digital language required them to harness technology for unintended purposes; they identified technological feedback error as a source of power and creative evolution.

An earlier component of this body of work contains a video of diaristic layering of movements and compressed gestures. Its YouTube premier felt like an exertion of existence. It also presented a 2020 analogue to historical precedents of tracing the passage of time like On Kawara’s date paintings or Lorna Simpson’s 31, a screen-based monthly calendar tracing everyday gestures of existence.

Chirality III is composed of three 7-by-7-foot wood-framed vessels, as well as one two-faced pod in close proximity. The artists determined the size of the vessels by having the tallest dancer lie down with her arms outstretched; the height of the pod reflects the dancer’s length from fingers to toes. A couple facets of each vessel contain screens. This work, centered in the gallery space, offers three distinct stages during the run of the exhibition. The work is energized initially by a 5-channel installation

Jacquelyne Boe & David Janesko Chirality III, 2021 5 channel video projection, digital video projectors, vinyl, projection screen, paint pigmented with powdered graphite, and wood Dimensions and duration variable

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of collaged video, including reconfigurations of documentation of virtual dance exercises. When Chirality III is activated by live bodies, dancers will perform inside the self-contained vessels. Following the performance, its documentation will be projected within the piece. Boe and Janesko also present a focused selection of cameraless photographs that act as visual maps of the video projections and choreography.

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Bonding at the Banquet Visitors to the exhibition are greeted by The Banquet, Gerardo Rosales’s monumentally-scaled, site-specific wall painting. This vast mural—nearly seventy feet long and twenty feet tall—serves as the scene upon which a single effusively-colorful painting is hung. Merging visual references to natural and spiritual realms within his animal-centric mythology, Rosales’s work is dense with narrative weight and surreal scenes. The artist contributes a dizzying constellation of distinctive and personal figuration. The Banquet, for instance, is composed of a recurring motif of two male faces integrated into a floral form. Yet, upon closer inspection the work presents homoerotic symbolism: a “penis flower.” Within this layered innuendo Rosales confronts the history of painting while reckoning with his identity as a gay immigrant who moved to Houston from his native Venezuela nearly twenty years ago. Rosales drafted this motif as a cheeky wrapping paper design in the mid-1990s in his own effort to combat homophobia, but he has not presented this imagery publicly until this show. The work has shifted dramatically since it was originally conceived, as it went from an individualistic pursuit to one brought to life on Lawndale’s walls thanks to the labor of a committed community of Houston-based artists. Each artist translated Rosales’s motif through their own hand, leading to visual texture within the over­all composition; some figures are seemingly aloof, while others smile coyly.

This variance yet again reinforces the exhibition’s throughline of artists embracing translation error as a mechanism for compelling heter­oge­ ne­ous outcomes. This work’s title alludes to the banquet in Plato’s text Symposium, in which philosophical speeches are presented from seven narrators with conflicting points of view on the subject of love and desire.

The nocturnal landscape in the painting Cine Tropical reframes the potential of the landscape genre. Here Rosales depicts nature in an intentionally artificial way. His plants are ornaments; Rosales takes natural fauna as a cue to play with formal patterns and lines. His work asserts the omnipresent potential for nature to be aggressive towards human wants or desires. The artist created rhythms within the landscape through confusing or unlikely elements. Like his fellow resident artists, Rosales finds the artifice of translation a generative space.

The rich dimensionality in Cine Tropical, the result of Rosales’s signature overlapping process, echoes his thematic focus on the survival strategy of clandestinity. The artist’s work speaks to the desire of many—

particularly marginalized, queer, and undocumented individuals— to dis­appear into the background in order to stay safe. To this tragic subject Rosales interjects with scale and humor, altogether tricky yet refreshing artistic approaches. He is able to monumentalize those often overlooked or not given the same space in the political realm, thereby demonstrating the political gesture implicit in his act of painting. These recalibrated sensibilities of play and looseness were intentionally set

by Rosales as guiding principles at the start of his residency.

Rosales adopted additional altered approaches during his residency tenure, including deciding to tackle quieter political tones and gestures.

This shift is in contrast to his work’s often more overt political messaging, such as representations of human detention centers or social inequality explored through uniforms. Rosales’s work in Mine the Gap hints at political considerations with formal references to fences featured in Cine Tropical, as well as two figurative references to coyotes. Coyotes, of course, allude to those who shepherd migrants across the border: barbaric to some, and savior to others. His visually-complex commentary on border politics is also dotted with peering eyes, watching us as we witness not only Rosales’s work but are called to bear witness to larger sociopolitical crises.

Yet, Rosales’s new work also speaks to his personal and intimate relationship with the natural world. One evening last year, Rosales had spiritual experience encountering a coyote in Houston’s Memorial Park; the two locked eyes for nearly a minute. The intimately-scaled

Gerardo Rosales The Banquet, 2021 Acrylic and latex on wall Dimensions variable Cine Tropical, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 74 × 107"

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work on paper Bonding, depicting a fusion between a coyote and an inverted person in silhouetted form recalling Matisse’s cut outs, is the result of this encounter. The artist generously offers intimate insights into his dreams and fantasies, creating animal symbolism that has an increased personal dimension. In these pieces, Rosales introduces highly personal imagery and mythology into his visual vernacular. The increased playfulness and dreamlike qualities represent an organic shift from the overtly political. Rosales wanted his work to speak more than to the super specific. His painting’s multitude of layers speaks to the more open ended content within his work.

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An Altar of Grief and Celebration Holly Veselka’s research-oriented work examines humanity’s relationship with the natural world, focused particularly on the interconnectedness of Houston’s environmental landscape. A sixth generation Houstonian, Veselka wrestles with the complexity of her responsibility around the city’s rapidly altering ecosystem. Starting three years ago, the artist was energized by experimentations with 3D scanning systems; she wanted to test the limits of these technologies. Since they are programmed to recognize human-made objects, Veselka found that the systems struggled to capture organic forms and colors, such as naturally-occurring greens.

The limitations of these emerging technologies led her to inquire about what they “see,” as well as who is programming their sight. These ques­ tions have become increasingly urgent; while many already view the natural world through a screen, this mediated experience has become more dominant during the pandemic.

Out of these investigations, Veselka created a multimedia instal­ lation, a suite of prints forming a digital herbarium, and a video. Each component of her presentation contains iterations of 3D scans of objects taken from the Buffalo Bayou vicinity, such as styrofoam, acorns, and shale. Veselka enables us to experience what technologies see when they observe the natural world. Her process demonstrates the power of abstraction, achieved through the various scanning systems she employs.

Toying with (mis)translation, the artist converts the natural and “real” into a virtual space, often only to be returned to a physical state again.

In this process, each element is uncannily new. Veselka said, “I am asking the technology to see beyond what it has been programmed to see. And I’m challenging the viewer: is this representation of our natural world adequate? Are we ok with virtual artefacts being all that remain once our dynamic and living ecosystems are gone?”

For her prints Herbarium, Buffalo Bayou and related video Thistle, Veselka subverts 3D scanning’s intended use. Her compressed 3D point clouds strip found detritus and natural elements of their original context to create airy, glitched, and eroded echoes of the originals. This multistep procedure opens options for compelling formal configurations

not anticipated or predicted by the artist, affording the outsourced scanning systems partial artistic agency. Veselka additionally reveals the artifice of the natural world through virtual rendering systems, despite rapid progress.

Recognizing that what appears to be accurate representations of nature on a screen is only ever code, Veselka celebrates the unexpected in this translation process. Rendering items such as cotton and sediment nearly unrecognizable, Veselka celebrates the flaws inherent in technological trans­ ference, likening the process to the work’s fragile subject matter. Although this subjects’ abstraction arises from technological interference, one could imagine equally that these objects have eroded over time. Her video Thistle similarly plays with the cyclical nature or erosion and rebuild­ing, as we watch its 3D scanned thistle disintegrate pixel by pixel over 15 minutes.

In her installation Buffalo Bayou Collection, the artist presents an array of objects on pedestals of various scales alongside two attendant videos.

The protagonists are broken loosely into categories including flora, fauna, and the historical. Each zone itself is composed of a juxtaposition of found objects: 3D printed and powder coated sculptures, animated models of 3D infrared scans of found objects, artifacts from one of the initial colonialist settlements on the bayou, and heirlooms related to her family’s connection to the city. Many of the same found objects portrayed in the prints of Herbarium, Buffalo Bayou are now rendered through a different 3D scann­ing technology, creating grotesque representations instead of airy ones. Spring flowers, for instance, are now bulby, hyperpigmented, and seemingly plastic.

This distorted and dense rendering feels foreign and futuristic.

There is no strict hierarchy in this space, as all items are subsumed by a larger arc and narrative. All of these individual works in totality respond to the “hyperobject,” a concept coined by philosopher Timothy Morton, in their expansion of human prescription around ecological issues otherwise beyond comprehension. While these elements form a monolithic work, they simultaneously also speak to the power of the fragment, the piece, the part.

Not only is the work divisible into discrete elements, but each 3D printed object is itself created from smaller printed elements that Veselka conjoined.

The singular fragments within—stone, buffalo, plastic, railroad spikes—each have had the potential to redirect the trajectory of regional histories, and therefore through their recomposition, the artist can imagine new histories.

Buffalo Bayou Collection is both an altar of mourning for a natural world that is on the verge of destruction and simultaneously a celebration of this place. The physical objects hold a metaphysical power akin to urns, in that they contain what remains of an object. Veselka engages her work and its viewers in a transhistorical conversation, uniting Houston’s past with our present and potential future through material translation and manipulation.

Veselka said: “Buffalo Bayou is the only remaining, semi-natural, flowing waterway in the city of Houston. It’s sediment holds organic and inorganic remains—both natural and not—that span thousands of years. Collecting along the banks of the Bayou over these past two years has been an attempt

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Holly Veselka Buffalo Bayou Collection, 2021 3D printed objects: PLA bioplastic, pig­ mented powder coat, found bayou sediment; braised metal; HD videos (color, no sound, looped); and found objects Fauna Collection: ibises, dragonfly, armadillo, hummingbirds Historical Collection: bison skull, brass clock, marble bust, cotton Flora Collection: baby’s breath, spring wildflower bouquet, summer wildflower bouquet, green bouquet Color Collection: great blue heron, blazing star, magnolia, toad, oak pollen, wildflower, pinecone, piano, fall foliage bouquet Dimensions variable

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to see into this vast container of geologic time, looking for markers or agents of anthropogenic change. In doing this research, I developed a deep sense of loss. Here on the banks of the bayou are the survivors of a once vast, beautiful, and intricate wilderness. The night herons, pileated woodpeckers, longleaf pines, and magnolias feel like distorted visions of the past. They are ghosts to remind us of what we lost.”

Veselka’s installation offers viewers a strong sense of the disparate and often overlooked elements that define a place, with just as much visual weight given to a discarded and decaying tennis ball as a heap of sand or humble pinecone.

All in All Embracing mediation as a central methodology in their practices, the resident artists find feedback and artifice generative. The artists cham­ pion asymmetries in translation processes while folding in responses to structural shifts due to the pandemic into their praxis. Taking risks with new scales, formats, and processes, they collectively contribute considerations about the transference of movement—between worlds, formats, languages, technologies, and dreams. Consequently, and encouragingly, (mis)translation serves as a vehicle for understanding the artists’ personal pasts alongside our intersecting histories.

Chirality II (video still), 2020 HD video (sound, color), 35:00 minutes Choreography and Editing: Jacquelyne Boe; Live multimedia projections and Cinematography: David Janesko; Score: Jeremy Nuncio; Dancers: Lindsey McGill (pictured), Siri Cyan, Sinclair Davis, Rachael Hutto, and Jacquelyne Boe A drive-in experience at Lawndale. From the safe isolation of their cars, audience members viewed the dance for film and live video instal­ lations while tuning into the original score on their car radio. This project was partially funded by the City of Houston, City Initiative Grant through the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and Houston Arts Alliance.

JACQUELYNE BOE & DAVID JANESKO

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Screenshot of Zoom dance rehearsal, 2021 Dancers (left to right): Lindsey McGill, Siri Cyan, and Rachael Hutto

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Gerardo Rosales

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This page Untitled, 2020 Acrylic and watercolor on paper 16 × 12" Facing page Sneaking, 2021 Acrylic on paper 60 × 48"

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My 4th great-grandfather Jean-Baptiste August “André” Sénéchal was French, and in 1839 he purchased acreage a few hundred feet from the junction of the White Oak and Buffalo Bayous.

The John Austin Two League Grant, the initial land grant of this property, read something like this: Bounded on all sides by vacant lands, we gave possession of said land...together with all rights and belongings, for himself, his heirs and assigns, and on being given the real and personal possession of said land, without objection from anyone, [he] shouted loudly, pulled grasses, threw stones, planted stakes and performed the other necessary ceremonies.1 But the land was not vacant. It had been the communal property of many human and non-human beings since its beginning, and when André arrived via steamboat, he must have seen a dense and vibrant ecosystem: We entered the little Buffalo River bordered with reeds and bulrushes in the midst of which herons and cranes and thousands of ducks were disputing. By and by the banks increased in height, approached so near to each other and formed so many narrow tortuous windings that at every instance the boat was caught either by the bow or the stern. At length the highlands appeared, covered with magnolias [eighty feet in height, and with a girth like huge forest trees] with their large white flowers and delicious perfumes. Gray and red squirrels leaped from branch to branch, while mocking birds and cardinals imparted life and language to these wonderful solitudes. ...There were a great number and variety of evergreens, laurel, bay and firs, rhododendrons, cistus and arbutus.

It seemed one vast shrubbery. The trees and shrubs grew to a prodigious height, and often met over the steamer,

Holly Veselka

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as she wound through the short reaches of this most lovely stream.2 André, his descendants, others, myself pulled grasses, threw stones, and planted stakes until this riparian ecosystem became a different type of system, one laced with highways, railroads, ship channels, and pipelines.3 Some salt dome storage caverns below the city are 600 feet across and more than half a mile tall, equaling a volume twice that of the Houston Astrodome. Because salt crystal walls are considered impermeable, they are used for storing gases, including some of the most explosive, such as ethylene. Piped directly into an underground salt dome formation, ethylene is stored under 1,500 pounds of pressure until it’s ready to be turned into plastic.

Because it is so volatile, ethylene can decompose rapidly and blow a pipe right out of the ground.4 Out of this settled plot, the greater Houston area has become the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the United States — pumping product, waste, and myth around the globe.

1. Hardy, D. H., Roberts, I. S.

3. The dense development along the

(1910). Historical Review of South-east

24-mile Houston Ship Channel, which

Texas: And the Founders, Leaders,

empties into Galveston Bay and makes

and Representative Men of Its Commerce,

Houston a seaport, offers one of the

Industry, and Civic Affairs. United

world’s great industrial panoramas.

States: Lewis Publishing Company.

This is the center of what’s been

p 218.

called the Spaghetti Bowl — well over 1,000 miles of pipelines connecting

2. Young, S. O., Carroll, B. H., ed.

dozens of chemical plants and refin­

(1912) Standard history of Houston,

eries, interchanging fuel, feedstocks

Texas: from a study of the original

and chemical products.

sources. Knoxville, Tenn.: H. W. Crew. pp 65–70.

4. Lee, J. M. (1976, November 14).

Notes from the Oil Capital. The New York Times, p. 134.

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JACQUELYNE BOE & DAVID JANESKO

GERARDO ROSALES

HOLLY VESELKA

Jacquelyne Boe is a Houston-based pro­ fessional dancer, choreographer, and educator interested in collaboration and experimentation. A graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, she received a BFA from the University of Oklahoma, where she graduated as the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, Graduate of the Year. Boe has worked with organizations and individual artists such as Erick Hawkins Dance, Erin Reck, Frame Dance, Hopestone Dance, Houston Grand Opera, Open Dance Project, Noble Motion Dance, Sean Curran, Teresa Chapman, and Rob Ashford. Boe is a crit­ ically acclaimed dance maker who has been creating original works since 2014. She was named Houston Press’ 100 Creatives, a recipient of Dance Source Houston’s Artist in Residence Program, and is a founding member of the choreographers collective Perspective Exchange.

Born in Venezuela, Gerardo Rosales is an artist and educator who has been based in Houston, TX, for nearly two decades. His recent work focuses on issues of class, race, gender, immigration, and sexuality. Rosales has exhibited widely throughout Latin America; most recently, his work has been exhibited locally at Project Row Houses and The TransArt Foundation for Art and Anthropology.

Rosales earned an MA in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and his Bachelor’s in Fine Art at the Armando Reverón Art Institute in Caracas.

Holly Veselka is a conceptual artist with a focus on project-based, research-oriented sculptures, archives, and installations that examine humanity’s relationship with the natural world. She has exhibited her work internationally and received recognitions including her selection as a 2019 Launch Pad Artist by Studio Modo and the city of Austin, a summer artist residency in 2018 at ACRE in Steuben, WI, and being listed on Creative Capital’s On Our Radar in 2016. In the summer of 2019, Holly exhibited at ACRE Projects in Chicago, IL; conducted visual research at the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the Białowieża Forest, Poland; and partic­ ipated in the 2nd Annual Digital Naturalism Conference in Gamboa, Panama. Born in Houston, TX, Holly now lives with her family in San Marcos, TX, and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University.

David Janesko is an artist exploring the emergence of complexity using an experi­ mental approach that encompasses a wide array of mediums, technology, and subject matter. He is specifically interested in the genesis of life and death from the early Earth, the emergence of the Self, and how the senses and mental illness shape reality.

Janesko grew up in Western Pennsylvania and worked for a number of years as a geol­ ogist before attending the San Francisco Art Institute (MFA, 2013). From 2013 to 2015, Janesko was a Graduate Fellow then Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Artist in Sausalito, CA, and the curator for Flatland Gallery in Houston from 2017 to 2019. David is represented in Houston

by Gray Contemporary.

About

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PATRICIA RESTREPO

LAWNDALE

Patricia Restrepo is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Houston, TX. Fostering exhibitions as laboratories, her curatorial interests include the gener­ative potential latent in archives, museology, and performative work. She is the Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), where she has worked for over six years. At CAMH, Restrepo most recently co-curated Slowed and Throwed: Records of the City through Mutated Lenses, an interdisciplinary exhibition orbiting around DJ Screw’s process of material manipulation. She also curated Will Boone: The Highway Hex, which housed all new site-specific work and was the artist’s first solo exhibition, and Stage Environment: You Didn’t Have to Be There, a celebration of CAMH’s long-standing history of cham­pioning performance. Restrepo has managed and contributed to the institution’s publication production and orchestrated the digitization of all of CAMH’s catalogues to increase accessibility to the museum’s significant scholarship. Restrepo has curated exhibitions and performance programming at Alabama Song, Hardy and Nance Studios, Houston Center for Photography, and Northset Residency. She has contributed to publications including Terremoto and Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.

Restrepo holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium and Bachelor’s degrees from Rice University.

Board of Directors (as of May 2021) Meghan Miller, Chair Jessica Seff, Vice Chair Adrienne Moeller, Treasurer Mary Catherine Jones, Secretary Christopher Sperandio, Chair,

Advisory Board Stephanie Mitchell,

Executive Director Angela Birch Cox Gaynell Drexler Illa Gaunt David R. Graham Ryan LeVasseur Teresa Porter Linsay Radcliffe Robert Raney, III Justin Segal Natalie Steen

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Advisory Board Christopher Sperandio, Chair Sterling Allen Nick Barbee Andy Campbell Lily Cox-Richard Jamal Cyrus Natilee Harren Autumn Knight

This book was created on the occasion of the exhibition Mine the Gap at Lawndale from February 6 to May 1, 2021. The exhi­bition was the culmination of the Artist Studio Program for 2019/2021 with Jacquelyne Boe and David Janesko, Gerardo Rosales, and Holly Veselka.

It was curated by Patricia Restrepo.

The book was printed at Emco Press Corporation in Houston, TX, in April 2021.

It was designed by Molly Sherman using the typefaces Lyon, Gestures, and Atlas Grotesk. Photography by Nash Baker.

Edition of 500.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Chirality III Presented by 2019/21 Artist Studio Program collaborators Jacquelyne Boe and David Janesko March 26 and 27, 2021 at 6:30 PM and 7:30 PM Limited onsite viewing available.

Visit lawndaleartcenter.org for additional information.

Choreography and Editing: Jacquelyne Boe; Multimedia Projections and Cinematography: David Janesko; Dancers: Lindsey McGill, Siri Cyan, Rachael Hutto and Jacquelyne Boe; Original Music: Jeremy Nuncio

SPECIAL THANKS

Jacquelyne Boe I would like to acknowledge my brilliantlyinventive collaborator David Janesko, these past two years have challenged and stretched me in ways I didn’t know were possible. Working with you has strengthened my weakness; our collaboration has chal­ lenged me to think and do things in ways I might not have on my own.

Thank you Lawndale’s Board of Directors, staff, donors, and advisors for your dedication to Houston artists and your contribution to Houston’s diverse cultural offerings.

I would like to thank Stephanie Mitchell for your never ending support and problem solving. For always advocating for each of us and helping us progress our careers as artists. Emily Fens, thank you for your positive attitude and logistical help throughout our residency. Patricia Restrepo, thank you for your guidance and curation of the ASP show.

Thanks to The Society for the Performing Arts Houston and the City of Houston, City Initiative Grant through the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and Houston Arts Alliance for partially funding Chirality and Chirality II.

To my dancers: your professionalism, beauty, and grace remind me even during these challenging times that dance is worth producing and there is value in what we offer. You inspire, uplift and bring beauty to the world.

So much gratitude to my longest running collaborator and husband, Jeremy Nuncio. You constantly inspire and amaze me with your musical talent and abilities.

Thank you to my family for your never ending support and belief in my success.

To all who believe that the arts play an essential role in society, thank you for your support.

Gerardo Rosales Karen Eisele, Jeanne Jones, Erica Lee, Ellie Mix, Ellen Ray, Linda Wu, Nadia Al-Khalifa, Andrea Allen, Cindee Travis Klement, Stefania Lenna, Francesca Paradiso, Niman Rosales, Juan Sanchez, Verny Sanchez, Jose Gregorio Saldivia, David Cobb, Jon Clark

Holly Veselka This collection was made possible through the generous sharing of knowledge and collections. The fauna scans were made using the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Study Skin Collection. The flora scans were made through the collecting effort of the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center Conservation Team. The bison scan was made at the Polish Academy of Sciences Mammal Institute in the Białowieża Forest in Poland. The historical object scans were made through the use of a private collection and were researched at the Heritage Society and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center. Thank you to the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation for their generous artist grant, to Jeff Haverlah for his sharing of knowledge and archives, to Ben Peck for his creative collaboration, and to Lawndale for their extensive support over the past two years.

Patricia Restrepo Jacquelyne Boe, Jonathan Clark, David Cobb, Emily Fens, David Janesko, Gerardo Rosales, Stephanie Mitchell, Molly Sherman

ALL WORKS COURTESY THE ARTIST.

GERARDO ROSALES

1 Bonding, 2020 Acrylic on paper 10 × 14" 2 The Banquet, 2021 Acrylic and latex on wall Dimensions variable 3 Cine Tropical, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 74 × 107"

JACQUELYNE BOE & DAVID JANESKO

5 Chirality III, 2021 5 channel video projection, digital video projectors, vinyl, projection screen, paint pigmented with powdered graphite, and wood Dimensions and duration variable 6 Chirality, 2020–21 Chemically-altered silver gelatin paper on Dibond Dimensions variable

HOLLY VESELKA

7 Thistle, 2021 HD video (color, no sound, looped), 15:00 minutes 8 Herbarium, Buffalo Bayou, 2021 Archival pigment prints on cotton rag (12 pieces), Edition 1 of 1 Objects (left to right): Maple, Shale, Sediment, Cotton, Brick, Spiderwort, Railroad Spike, Huisache, Tennis Ball, Styrofoam, Acorns, Spring Wildflowers 19 × 13"

HOLLY VESELKA

4 Buffalo Bayou Collection, 2021 3D printed objects: PLA bioplastic, pigmented powder coat, found bayou sediment; braised metal; HD videos (color, no sound, looped); and found objects

Fauna Collection: ibises, dragonfly, armadillo, hummingbirds

Historical Collection: bison skull, brass clock, marble bust, cotton

Flora Collection: baby’s breath, spring wildflower bouquet, summer wildflower bouquet, green bouquet

Color Collection: great blue heron, blazing star, magnolia, toad, oak pollen, wildflower, pinecone, piano, fall foliage bouquet

Dimensions variable

This collection was made possible through the generous sharing of knowledge and collections. The fauna scans were made using the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s

Window

4

JOHN M. O’QUINN GALLERY

3 6

5

2

7

8

Stairs Elevator

Study Skin Collection. The flora scans were made through the collecting effort of the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center Conservation Team. The bison scan was

GRACE R. CAVNAR GALLERY 1

made at the Polish Academy of Sciences Mammal Institute in the Białowieża Forest in Poland. The historical object scans were made through the use of a private collection and were researched at the Heritage Society and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center.

Entrance

ARTIST STUDIO PROGRAM 2020–21

MINE THE GAP

FEBRUARY 6–MAY 1, 2021

LAWNDALE