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

Patrick Kelly, OJAC Director and Curator, interview with artist Saba Besier (May 2025)

PK: I often ask artists if they are willing to share a little about their upbringing. Do you mind sharing where you were raised and/or things you believe shaped you as an artist and the work you currently do?

SB: My childhood years were spent growing up in North Dakota and my upbringing involved quite a bit of travel from the US back to Pakistan to visit family. We did this often and visited different countries along the way, taking either the eastern or western route. While visiting new countries, the first thing I would notice is how different the terrain, trees, fauna and even animals were from place to place. Since the plains are very flat, the difference in nature was very pronounced to me. The most profound was a visit to Polynesia where I saw a vivid glimpse of sea life in a glass bottom boat. It shocked me how bizarre, surreal and artistic life in the ocean can be. My fascination has never ceased, and my concern for their survival grew.

My father heavily influenced my growth and interest in nature as a subject for my work. As far back as I can remember, whenever he was off call as a physician, he was developing Cibachrome images in his darkroom of objects from nature in various life cycles and often on an almost microscopic level. When my father retired, we collaborated, until his death in 2014.

Lastly, my aesthetic was influenced by the Pakistani textiles I was often exposed to from my mother’s business. Dubka embroidery, specifically, fascinated me, which is an intricate, tightly coiled technique, achieved by overlapping and interlacing threads. This led me to study textiles in London prior to my MFA later at Pratt Institute in New York.

PK: How did you transition from textiles to ceramics?

SB: At 18, my family was living in the Rio Grande Valley and I interned with Plaz, a prominent fashion designer. He discovered me at a local illustration exhibition and as an intern, I created fashion illustrations and textile designs. Plaz wrote an amazing college recommendation for me and I received an Emilio Pucci full tuition scholarship to The American College of Applied Arts in London, UK (now called The American Intercontinental University). My mother encouraged me to pursue a fashion degree focusing on textile design instead of a fine art degree. At the time, she owned a textile importing business and her hope was for me to join her company after graduation.

While I really did not want to study fashion and textiles, between parent pressure, a full scholarship, and the opportunity to live abroad, I moved to London and completed my associates degree. After my fashion degree, I decided to pursue a BFA in Painting and Drawing at University of North Texas and then an MFA in Painting at Pratt Institute. I spent the first 20 years of my art career creating contemporary paintings with hints of antiquity on wood panels using a variety of handmade natural pigments including tea, flowers, henna, and semi-precious minerals. I studied sculpting while at Pratt and always have had an interest in it. As my topic and commentary began to shift towards nature and climate change, I wanted to explore the possibility of working in three dimensions to best represent my vision. I took a two-year hiatus to learn and experiment with various materials, metals, clay bodies, and sculpting techniques. I eventually landed on porcelain as my primary practice with occasional use of precious metal overglazes.

PK: You’ve mentioned your fascination with ocean animals and plants. Are your sculptures “interpretations” of those living things, a visual copy, or hybrid of the two?

SB: My sculptural formations and textures are from my imagination and are my own interpretations of what may exist in the ocean. I do not reference any photography or footage intentionally because I want to keep the mystery of what might exist that we do not yet know about, what could exist through mutation, or what could exist in the future.

PK: Can you briefly describe your Cell Series installation and what you were considering or thinking when you conceived it?

SB: In this installation, I explore and celebrate the concept of oceanic organisms’ ability to adapt, survive, and build bio-diverse habitats on man-made structures, where natural habitats have been eradicated due to pollution, overfishing, coastal development, and climate change.

In Deep Resilience, I have created large central formations in each room which have organic, oceanic-like growth, flourishing all over unnatural geometric shapes representing artificial objects. This idea is carried out throughout the exhibition in various ways. The back walls of the gallery space have growth emerging from the edges and organisms thriving on small iron fragments.

I also wanted to explore the mysterious nature of ocean life. Since we know so little of what really exists in the most extreme depths, I illustrate the possibilities with various pieces that push what we know to what could be. This is demonstrated in some of the formations that mix metal and organic growth together as well as exhibiting science-fiction-like features.

While conceiving this installation, I was interested in creating a message of hope and an observation of the resiliency of nature within my ongoing commentary about the plight of ocean-life.

PK: A related question would be, how do you think these objects will be perceived within the context of a historic jail vs. that of a traditional white cube?

SB: Unlike a traditional gallery space, the antiquity, history, and features like the heavy cell doors and bars of the jail combine with the stark ivory formations to create a haunting atmosphere, emphasizing the deep textures and brittle state of ocean life. Equally, the natural light and intimate space offer a dramatic close-up view of the intense detail, reminding the viewer how mysterious and resilient these magnificent life forms are.

I was inspired by the space to create organic forms that emerge from the corners of the walls and floors as well as from antique iron fragments. They illustrate nature’s ability to create bio-diverse habitats even in the most challenging environments. In an old jail, the impact is far more  stirring.

Timothy Harding (b. 1983) makes sculptural paintings and installations that meld traditional painting and drawing practices with technology. Harding’s artistic practice begins on the computer creating individual lines, squiggles, and shapes. Using these digitally created forms, he creates vinyl stencils that are strategically transferred onto a canvas and utilized to create layers and layers of paint until a fully realized pattern emerges.

Harding’s works merge the gestural nature of Abstract Expressionism with the flatness of Minimalist painting to explore how a traditionally two-dimensional object can visually and physically occupy a three-dimensional space. He purposefully stretches his finished paintings across ill-fitting supports or builds a substructure under the canvas to make the surface fold, buckle, or protrude, “sculpting” the painting into a unique shape. Harding disrupts our understanding of painting—as he makes the once two-dimensional canvas into a three-dimensional object. In this way, Harding creates a new type of medium, as he combines sculpture with painting.

Timothy Harding lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Tarleton State University. Harding received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Texas Christian University, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Texas Woman’s University. In 2018, Harding was a visiting artist at the Center for Creative Connections at the Dallas Museum of Art. He has received grants from the Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art. Harding has curated four exhibitions, and he was also involved in an artist collective titled Homecoming! Committee. He held residencies at 77Art, the Wassaic Project, and the Vermont Studio Center. Harding has exhibited nationally in Texas, New York, Vermont, and more.

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

OJAC presents over 75 works by Dickson Reeder in the Texas Moderns series. The series provides insight into creative mid-twentieth century visual artists whose works were often inventive or experimental, yet not fully accepted by the general population in Texas more accustomed to traditional forms or styles of art.

Dickson Reeder (1912-1970) was born in Fort Worth, Texas and graduated from Fort Worth Central (later Pascal) High School in 1930. It was then his talent in portraiture became apparent. To further his skills, he relocated to New York City to study with several artists known for their work in the genre. By 1934 he had established his own portrait studio back in his hometown. In 1936, the artist Sallie Gillespie urged him to travel to Europe where he eventually settled in Paris and worked with the Russian theatrical designer Alexandra Exter. Exter made use of non-objective abstract forms for her innovative sets and costumes. It was while working with Exter that Reeder met artist, and future spouse, Flora Blanc. Flora introduced him to the English artist and master printmaker Stanley William Hayter. At Hayter’s Atelier 17 print studio, Reeder discovered his passion for experimental printmaking, creating non-objective abstract prints that were unlike his more formal and traditional approaches to portraiture. Yet, from that point, he developed work in abstraction alongside his more formal and traditional portraiture pursuits.

Dickson and Flora Blanc Reeder married in 1937 in New York City, returning to Fort Worth in 1940 where they became active in the contemporary art community through the Fort Worth Art Association. Eventually, both became associated with a core group of like-minded artists—the Fort Worth Circle. Reeder continued to pursue portrait commissions with many of these works being included in numerous exhibitions and awarded prizes which elevated his reputation as a visual artist. After World War II, Dickson and Flora established the Reeder Children’s School of Theatre and Design in Fort Worth, recruiting artists and musicians to collaborate and assist in producing the school’s plays. For the next 12 years of the school’s existence, Reeder designed all the stage sets, along with hundreds of costumes, masks, headdresses, and props.

Reeder returned to Paris to study with Stanley William Hayter in 1959. During this period, he was developing and creating new work for his 1960 retrospective at the Fort Worth Art Center that would demonstrate the diversity of his artistic skills and interests. He continued to work and exhibit his work throughout the US and Europe until his death in 1970.

(Bio information derived from Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle in the 1940s, by Scott Grant Barker and Jane Myers.)

Generously supported by The Charles E. Jacobs Foundation, Doris Miller & Don Fitzgibbons, Scott Chase & Debra Witter, John & Ginger Dudley, and Margaret & Jim Dudley

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