A Fine Line features approximately one-third of the 300 drawings in the Old Jail Art Center’s permanent collection. Spanning the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries, this exhibition showcases a broad range of both artists and media.

Works by 71 artists, from internationally recognized Amedeo Modigliani, John Sloan, and Andy Warhol to the talented artists of the Fort Worth Circle, are brought together to underscore the diversity of the collection. A Fine Line also highlights the OJAC’s impressive holdings of works by contemporary artists, alongside those underappreciated in the artistic canon.

While the majority of works are on paper, novel substrates of wax, plywood, cloth, and faux ivory are also introduced. Mark making ranges from conventional graphite, ink, and pastel to the use of copper, soot, and even flames. As such, this exhibition challenges long-held hierarchies and expands our understanding of what constitutes a drawing.

Certainly, drawing is no longer just a precursor to other types of visual art. The singular works in this exhibition offer not only compelling images but creative entry points into meaningful conversations. Drawing’s ability to transcend a fixed set of materials and conventions has ensured the art form’s vitality and power to stimulate change.

Funhouse, curated from the museum’s permanent collection, celebrates the use of humor and levity in art—a much-needed diversion in our lives. Through humor, artists provide a comfortable entry point for ideas, perspectives, and topics that we typically avoid or may never consider. In other cases, works are nonsensical—much like our “normal” realities or unexpected events can be. Works in this concentrated exhibition require the engagement of the viewer. The interaction between object and viewer completes a work, often with surprising, thoughtful, and enlightening results.

Ann Glazer considers the ideas and techniques associated with the centuries-old craft of textile embroidery while employing modern technology and research guided by her “faith in intuition” to create “textiles of our time.” The results are large tapestries containing, what appears to be, ancient symbols and iconography. Motifs of animals, insects, and plants can be easily be identified, while at times Glazer combines or morphs them into abstract shapes and designs. Often details appear to have disintegrated due to age and wear, yet on closer examination the anticipated traditional stitches have been replaced by digital pixel images printed or collaged directly onto rich velvets and fabrics. As a result, Glazer’s “tapestries” offer cryptic meaning along with engaging and intriguing imagery.

Glazer lives and works in Dallas and New York City. She received a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and has been awarded fellowships from the Dallas Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at numerous institution and galleries across North and Central America. 

The 2025 Cell Series of exhibitions is generously supported by National Endowment for the Arts, McGinnis Family Fund of Communities Foundation, and the Charles E. Jacobs Foundation with additional funding from Jay & Barbra Clack, Joe & Susie Clack, Jenny & Rob Dupree, Kathy Webster in memory of Charles H. Webster, and Dr. Larry Wolz.

Patrick Kelly, OJAC Director and Curator, interview with artist Ann Glazer (January 2025)

PK: Can you briefly describe past works, or bodies of work, that you believe directly inform your current endeavors and how?

AG: Context is interesting. Years ago, I created an installation in an extraordinarily beautiful yet utilitarian space, the attic rooms of a 17th century Italian winery. The rooms are still used, as they have been for over 300 years, to dry grapes to make sweet wine. The light, the structure, and the limitations of working in that space, inspired an organic series of wall drawings about aging and the architecture of the mind.Following the exhibition in Italy, I sought out other non-traditional places to show. In a barn in Vermont, I used the stored percussion platforms of a music festival as blackboards to create a series of drawings about time-based moments in music. In a ruin in Mexico City, I filled a room with textiles combining cultural traditions about luck. The particularities of each space inspired the content as well as the form of the exhibits.

The Old Jail’s past resonates through the space: the weight of the walls, the masonry of the floors, and the heavy metal doors. Old places matter. They help us understand the present. Creating art in that context inspires me.

PK: In some regards, I think non-traditional venues make for more engaging and informal environments for viewer engagement with art. The only caveat is anticipating how a single work (discrete object) is perceived outside of the context of the installation. Does that ever concern you?

AG: For me, this type of exhibition provides chance elements of history and architecture that push me to problem solve in ways I might not otherwise pursue. What I make is in direct response to the space. I don’t feel that precludes a work having integrity in a different context, but it is not my primary concern.

PK: Your current work incorporates an approach that mimics the look of centuries-old tapestries. How did you first become interested in tapestries and adapt the “techniques” of their creation and appearance into your current practice?

AG: I have been drawn to textiles my whole life. I still have two appliqued pockets saved from a jumper I loved in kindergarten. In the 1960’s, I was one of those people who embroidered their friend’s jeans. As an undergraduate, influenced by the banners of Norman Laliberté and the weavings of Saul Borisov, I designed an independent study on textiles. Several series of flags followed and then even my paintings, large and unstretched, became tapestries.

A confluence occurred when I was asked to exhibit in Mexico around the same time I came into possession of an embroidered cloth made over a hundred years ago by my grandmother in Eastern Europe. I explored the embroidery traditions of both Mexico and Eastern Europe and the rituals of both cultures to use embroidered borders to create luck and protection through repeated imagery. I became interested in making textiles for the Mexico exhibition that could amplify and celebrate what I discovered. Inspired by the fabrics of Fortuny and Alexander Girard, I investigated commercial processes of printing on fabric. I experimented printing on different materials and found that a type of woven velvet both took the ink well and, in a trick of reflected light, brought the surface alive.

PK: The imagery you incorporate often appears to be plants, insects, and animals. Do these have specific symbolic meaning or personal language?

AG: The imagery is intuitive, though no doubt driven by early exposures to Edward Lear’s The Book of Nonsense, which goes far beyond “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, which makes the case for the animal within, and The Hellstrom Chronicle, a terrific 1971 satirical film about the struggle for survival between humans and insects.

PK: By your reply, I’m getting the feeling your current interest may be in the anthropomorphism of insects in surreal settings or situations. Am I close?

AG: I feel there is a mysticism to the complexities of insect, plant and animal behavior. It is more than just a window into how we know what we know, why we feel what we feel and carry on as we carry on. We really have no choice but to recognize just how tiny we are.

PK: Would you talk about a couple of the major elements you have created for the Cell Series space for visitors to consider?

AG: The installation is site specific and mixed media. The light from the windows is filtered through hand painted plexiglass to create a closed, inward-looking environment. A large tapestry uses design elements of ancient textiles to mimic wormwood patterns. Stages of the hero’s journey are mapped in numbers. A small collage of a beetle with mercury-like wings is displayed in an antique frame. Music is heard from the second room. Through the window of the cell’s locked door a large, in process, papier-mâché sculpture of a beetle is visible. He is playing a flute.

PK: You’ve elected to use the Capricorn Beetle as your inspiration for creating new work for this installation. Can you briefly explain why?

AG: I was missing my father. One of his favorite books was Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, a book about instinct. I recently reread it and was very moved by how the larva of the Capricorn Beetle spends three years journeying through the center of an oak tree to then emerge transformed. Around the same time, I heard the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda talking about a recent project. He said that all of the characters in the film, to some degree, are imprisoned by invisible walls—social norms, manhood, other confines. Collaged together, it became the idea for the exhibition: the larva tunnels through the oak tree to escape the incarceration of his mind. It’s a hero’s journey.