The daily devotional
Roslyn M. Dupré
Lawndale Art Center
November 21 - December 21, 2024
The daily devotional is the latest installment of Roslyn M. Dupré’s ongoing experimentations with fiber technique, language, and ritual. An assemblage of photographs and intimate sewn works, the exhibition explores the artist’s reactions to text, to forms of language, and to traditional fiber work. The project initially began as a reaction to the unusual circumstances of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown and continues as a growing record and investigation of repetition and permutation. Using a $1.25 mass-market paperback version of Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, Dupré performed daily repetitive acts cutting, quilting, pleating, reassembling and photographing pages into small works. This site-specific installation in the Lawndale stairway invites a close examination of ritual, creating an experience of repetitive action similar to the process of their making.
Reflecting on Devotions
Studio visits are special when art makers and creators connect. It is a well-known fact that artists engage with materials differently. As a creator, my response to meeting with Roslyn Dupré and her work was genuine admiration and curiosity. What techniques do I see? What are the ingredients of her practice? What are her references?
Permission to touch the art, as you know, is a violation of the sacred. Dupré graciously gave me permission to hold her devotionals. Precious and thoughtfully-made, I immediately make a personal connection as I feel the subversive textures and arrangements at play; quilting and sewing—practices long associated with community, care, and memory—take on a new form as they intersect with the concept of deconstruction. Slowly, I notice that, beyond the tactile, words and sentences become conceptual media used as the material. Text woven, sewn, cut, and obscured with fibers change the agency, the structure, and the energy of the pages of Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain, in which top scientists work feverishly to see how to contain a deadly contagion. Sound familiar?
The choice of this novel as a focal text is significant: the novel’s themes of containment, science, and the unknown align with the uncertainties experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dupré’s work, which was started during this time, is a testament to resilience, devotion, and artistic inquiry. Her pieces, shaped by the repetitive use of naturally-aged pages from a paperback edition of this novel, embodies the dedication and the process, fostering a deep sense of the personal exploration of rituals, obsessions, and compulsions. Each page follows its own structural logic, summoning the unexpected and the reward of completion. The medium of fabric techniques—such as cutting, sewing, pleating, and reassembling—quilts together the narrative of a collective human experience defined by isolation, adaptation, and resilience.
The practice, carried out daily, emerges as a form of meditation that transcends the boundary between ritual and devotion, temporal and static. This begs me to question, are ritual and devotion inherently different?
By dismantling and reassembling its pages, Dupré transforms the material into a vessel for contemplation and quietude, shifting the narrative from a purely intellectual exercise into an intimate, embodied experience. Unlike prayer, which centers around communication and supplication, Dupré’s devotionals are rooted in sensory engagement, embodied actions, and focused awareness.
The site-specific installation at Lawndale invites viewers to engage with her artistic process directly and physically. Walking the stairway up and down, one can sense the repetition mirrored in the steps themselves, an echo of the rhythmic action, which immerses the viewer in the tactile beauty of delicately-sewn red and black threads. The mindfulness behind each piece’s formation and red framing conjures up memories of a chapel or sanctuary.
The viewer is prompted to reflect on not only the visual details and red hues but also the feel and associative qualities that the work evokes. Engagement extends beyond the walls, activating the senses and memories, leading upward to a place to reflect and kneel. The work challenges us to not just see but to feel, consider, and inhabit the space where language, repetition, and devotion intersect.
Rabéa Ballin
Roslyn M. Dupré is a sculptor, fabricator and observer. She works with cultural technologies and everyday materials to distort and communicate immediate perceptions of personal sites. Recent solo exhibitions of her work have included “On US” at the LRT Gallery (2024); “Regarding your theories of time and place” at Gallery 1, University of Houston (2024); “Case Study: Sargasso Sea” at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2024); “Southern Gothic” in the Box 13 Back Gallery (2022); and “Savage Bayou” at the Bosque Gallery at Lone Star College (2022). Dupré is a third-year MFA candidate in Sculpture at the University of Houston where she is a Cynthia Woods Mitchell fellow. Her bronze work has been collected by the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs for the Civic Arts Collection – Airport Portable Works Collection.
Born in Germany, raised in Louisiana, Houston-based artist Rabéa Ballin earned her BFA in design at McNeese State University and her MFA in drawing and painting at the University of Houston. Her multi-disciplinary works explore the uniqueness of self-identity, hair politics, and social commentary. She documents these themes primarily through drawing, digital photography and various printmaking practices. In addition to working as an independent artist, she has been a member of the all-female ROUX printmaking collective since 2011. Rabea has served as an artist board member at both Art League Houston and DiverseWorks, and has completed residencies at DiverseWorks, Tougaloo College and Project Row Houses. Rabea currently serves as department chair and assistant professor of art history and drawing at Lone Star College. She currently lives and works in Houston’s historic Third Ward community.
Mission
Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time.
About
Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances.
Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston.
Supporters
Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; The Rose Family Foundation; the Scurlock Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; the Vivian L. Smith Foundation; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico.
Funding for Lawndale’s exhibitions is provided by presenting sponsors, John Bradshaw, Scott R. Sparvero, along with sponsors Jereann Chaney, Alexa Clements, Piper & Adam Faust, Marco Hernandez, Amy Holmes, Mary Catherine & Bailey Jones, Emily & Ryan LeVasseur, Jeryn & Walter Mayer, Meghan Miller & Jeff Marin, Adrienne Moeller, Winnie & Nic Phillips, Teresa Porter, Regina & Frem Reggie, Stephanie Roman, Nicole & Joey Romano, Jessica & Blake Seff, Dr. Andre Shaw and generous gifts from the Friends of Lawndale.
Images and catalogue design by Tamirah Collins.
