Seth Mittag, David Politzer, and Anne J. Regan Prospectors

Lawndale Artist Studio Program Exhibition

May 11, 2012 – June 16, 2012 John M. O'Quinn Gallery

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 sixth year of the Lawndale Artist Studio Program, Seth Mittag, David Politzer and Anne J. Regan.

Making use of his experience in New York as a puppet and set builder in the animation industry, Seth Mittag will be telling a story using set pieces, photographs, and a short animation. Based on events and characters from his own life, he spins a tale of a family’s adventure of buying a home. This journey includes blackmailing a banker, battling el chupacabra and surviving a hurricane.

David Politzer will exhibit video works and photographs from his series, When You’re Out There. For this evolving collection, Politzer uses the tropes of landscape and nature art as points of critical departure. My Beach is a single-channel video piece that confronts our tendency to choose to look at mediated landscapes even when the real thing is as just as accessible. Another video project (currently untitled) addresses the proliferation of landscape photography on the Internet and questions how these images relate to traditional notions of the picturesque.

Anne J. Regan will exhibit a new body of work made while at Lawndale. Her works coalesce the experience of music and the folklore of our national sonic history. Using materials she gleans from specific sites in the American landscape, she seeks to resurrect musical histories, bringing an intimacy to seemingly lost experiences and emotions.