Bob Stuth-Wade has dedicated his life to translating the beauty and spiritual essence of nature into his drawings and paintings. His works convey his deep reverence and connection to natural settings, most notably Big Bend National Park, the Colorado River near San Saba, and near his home in central west Texas. A daily practice for over 50 years always begins with his work in the field, capturing the landscape by painting small plein-air sketches. Often, these sketches inspire larger and more involved works that are created back in his studio in Dublin, Texas. While this progression can be seen in various media, there is no hierarchy, as each work stands uniquely on its own.

BOB STUTH-WADE: Capturing Landscapes is generously sponsored by The Charles E. Jacobs Foundation with additional support from Jeff & Susan Jones, Pati & Bill Meadows/TLR, and Anonymous.

BOB STUTH-WADE, Mule Ears in Four, 2025, oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in. Courtesy of the artist and Valley House Gallery, Dallas.

Saba Besier’s sculptural formations are both a celebration of oceanic organisms as well as an acknowledgment of the ecological trauma that is disrupting ecosystems as they disappear. Recent work draws attention to the ocean as a system at risk, struggling to keep pace with human-caused conditions of climate change.

The artist subscribes to the Bauhaus sensibility of combining intense relationship with the process of craft and Fine Art. Each work draws on a hard-earned expertise in the techniques of slab building, throwing, hand sculpting, metallurgy, and alchemy.

Besier is a Pakistani-born, American artist and holds an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York. She is currently based in Dallas, TX and has been an exhibiting artist for 25 years; showing her work both nationally and internationally.

Generously sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, McGinnis Family Fund of Communities Foundation of Texas, and Kathy Webster in memory of Charles H. Webster, with additional support from Jay & Barbra Clack, Joe & Susie Clack, Jenny & Rob Dupree, and Dr. Larry Wolz

On loan from the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, the OJAC presents a series of short films by multi-media artists Liliana Porter and Lenka Clayton. Though their approaches to making films are far from similar, both utilize what’s at hand to make truly curious works that incite a gamut of emotions for viewers—ranging from angst to joy.

Argentinian artist Liliana Porter has often explored the use of everyday objects in her prints, paintings, and conceptual installations. Over time, Porter began to favor readymades with a toy-like appearance, which she represented isolated or in groups in the midst of the empty, undefined background that has characterized much of her work. Porter’s photographs and assemblages shift from still-life arrangements to miniature portraits that endow the depicted figurines, knick-knacks, and vintage toys with a sense of inner life. Through straight-forward stop-action animation, this cast of recurrent characters comes to life in videos such as Solo de tambor, where they perform in humorous, absurd, and sometimes moving vignettes.

In 2013, British artist Lenka Clayton attempted to objectively measure the furthest distance she could be from her toddler son in three environments: a city park, the alley behind their Pittsburgh home, and the aisles of a local supermarket. The trio of videos humorously underlines the challenging judgment calls that parents make about how much autonomy to give their children. Clayton produced these videos as part of a larger project, An Artistic Residency in Motherhood (ARiM), a grant-funded residency she created out of her own home “to explore the…upheaval that parenthood brings and allow it to shape the direction of my work, rather than try to work ‘despite it.’”

Stills from:

LILIANA PORTER, Drum Solo [Solo de Tambor], (still), 2000, edition 53 of 100, 16 mm film transferred to digital video, 19 minutes, 6 seconds. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, 2003.106

LENKA CLAYTON, The Distance I Can Be From My Son, (still), 2013, edition 2 of 5, digitized single channel video, 4 minutes, 35 seconds. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Lora Reynolds and Quincy Lee, 2018.40