Hillerbrand+Magsamen, Daniel McFarlane, and Anthony Thompson Shumate MEASURED

The Lawndale Artist Studio Program is part of Lawndale’s ongoing commitment to support the creation of contemporary art by Gulf Coast area artists. With an emphasis on emerging practices, the program provides three artists with studio space on the third floor of Lawndale Art Center at 4912 Main Street in the heart of Houston’s Museum District. This exhibition features residents for the fifth year of the Lawndale Artist Studio Program, Hillerbrand+Magsamen (Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen), Daniel McFarlane and Anthony Thompson Shumate.

Hillerbrand+Magsamen’s videos, photographs, and installations reinterpret the people, activities, and objects of their everyday life and engage the edge between the heroic and tragic. They navigate perceptions of identity, emotion, and family within a uniquely American subjectivity. Their experimental short video, Elevated Landscape, shot on location at Lawndale, looks at suburban lawns as identity for families as well as the social and environmental impact. House/hold is a photographic series of portraits of the artist’s family set in surreal settings and interactions.

Daniel McFarlane will exhibit a collection of abstract paintings completed during the residency at Lawndale. McFarlane’s work explores color space and highlights the relationship between improvisation and control. His paint forms create dynamic tension and balance, as he develops a physical 3D plane of illusion within the 2D picture field.

The new body of work to accompany the group show, MEASURED, by Anthony Thompson Shumate explores the measurements imposed and created by mundane objects and their influence on how individuals are viewed. The works are created through analog translations of drawings that are filtered through a digital medium. The images are 1:1 scale drawings of “tools” that measure an individual through the prism of social norms and expectations. From a wedding ring to a vibrator to a house, individuals relate and equate their stature and station based on what or how they use the items. The work is a mechanical and methodical representation of this process- done so in a digital-analog vocabulary.