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Heritage Museums and Gardens | April 15 - October 9, 2017

When you think about landscape paintings, do you conjure bucolic images of rolling hills and grazing cattle, majestic mountains and meandering streams? The term “landscape” has taken on a much broader scope since the days of 19th century Hudson River School painters with idealized scenes of the bounty of America’s landscape. Informed by the past and ever-conscious of the styles and movements of art history, contemporary painters craft their own visions of landscape painting as vibrant departures from these antiquated scenes.

Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views features American landscape paintings executed in a variety of media from 49 of the country’s best contemporary painters. The artists use the traditional genre of landscape painting in compelling new ways, addressing contemporary issues of land use, nature appreciation, and ecology through their paintings of the American environment. Each artist featured takes acute notice of the physical world at a time of heightened awareness of the landscape, informed by today’s concerns including climate change, environmental health, conservation and the green movement.

Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views offers a range of styles, subjects and approaches which, when taken together form an intimate, contemporary and startlingly beautiful collection that addresses what landscape painting is today. The styles range from representational to abstract to non-objective and include established art stars, emerging talent, mentors, devotees, students and teachers. All of the work continues a tradition which persists through time and in popularity as artists use their surroundings as inspiration for creative expression and form a unique portrait of our country. Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views shows us America today.

Lauren P. Della Monica is the Guest Curator of Painted Landscapes: Contemporary Views.

 
 

Shakerag Workshops at Sewanee | June 18-24, 2017

Course Description

In two dimensional artwork, line is an important source of energy and compositional direction, serving sometimes to evoke alchemical processes - coagulating, dissolving, transmuting, and sublimating. Colors and line can be separators, or unifiers, or both, as we see in Matisse’s drawn hand suspended over two patches of opposing color. Line can define a thing as shape, or be suspended in a fluid medium, never quite crystallizing into measurable, identifiable forms. In that case, space is no longer quantifiable emptiness, but the residue of the organic exchange between tonal values. Here color comes into play, value, tone, all engaged by the overlay of line work. We will use line in drawing and water-based painting, acrylic, watercolor, on paper or canvas, while looking at the way artists like Max Beckmann, Picasso, Twombly, Mitchell, and more contemporary artists employ line to enliven the whole. The work will include a variety of approaches, from representational to abstract. Visual examples will be presented in class, and various approaches will be suggested and explored, with examples provided.

Artist's Biography
Terrell James lives and works in Houston, Texas. Primarily a painter, she has also worked in clay, bronze, steel, and printmaking. Exhibitions of her work have been in venues such as museums in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shenzhen, China, as well as in galleries and museums in the Middle East and U.S. Her teaching includes the Glassell School of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Rice University, Houston. She sometimes writes and organizes exhibitions. Terrell has been named Texas Artist of the Year in 2016 by the Art League of Houston, and will have solo exhibitions, with catalogues produced, at the Art League September 30- November 14, at Cadogan Contemporary in London October 25 - November 13, and at the Froelick Gallery in Portland, Oregon November 3- December 14. Recently, James has co-curated a traveling exhibition by the NY based collective, French Neon, which will close at Homeland Houston, then travel to Portland and Beijing. Museum collections of James’s work include the Menil Collection, Houston, the Museums of Fine Art, Boston, Dallas, Houston, and Portland, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. To elucidate the role of line in James’s work, we may examine an excerpt from Surpik Angelini’s essay from 2008 here: James’s handling of line is biomorphic, sharing some common traits with Joseph Beuys. She explores a genre of drawing that flows automatically from the subconscious, a technique initiated by Andre Masson and Henri Michaux in the early Twentieth Century. Though the artist speaks frequently of her interest in observing landscape and living organisms, her gestural strokes are rarely representational. Instead, James’s lines evoke, as stated before, a range of processes and essences: mineral (fissures, cracks, break lines), liquid (ripples, waves, drips), growth lines in plants, locomotion in animals, insects.

Artist's Statement
I have drawn rocks, fossils, and bones since my girlhood in Houston. I had two collections, one of shells and one of rocks. I loved the idea that, in any common stone, you hold the history of earth, our home, in the palm of your hand. The crack in rock can suggest the very movement of the earth, plate tectonics, how we evolve. Vast inland seas have advanced and receded many times between 1500 million years ago. Fossils form sediment, and eventually "migrate" from ocean bed to mountaintop as tectonic forces shift, collide, and peel. Since my early study, I have been interested in the fact of a fossil: for me this revelatory meaning parallels self-knowledge through the unconscious: process, games, chance, evocation. As a painter, I have recently shifted my focus from nature and an abstracted, internalized landscape, to a new investigation of shape and form. For the last few years, I have been interested in re-engaging line in my painting, bringing its energy and definition to space, to painted space. My work often refers to the process of painting. The game of chance is also an element in my approach. I value evocation, traces, imprints, over depiction.

Supply List
Some suggestions, none absolutely required:

  • Charcoal
  • Ink
  • Pen
  • Sponges and sponge sticks from the paint store
  • Mark making tools such as brushes and sticks
  • Q-tips
  • Containers for water
  • Paper -- could be gessoed ahead of time, or as is
  • Sized or gessoed cloth
  • Pre-stretched canvas if preferred
  • Palette
  • Pastels
  • Conte crayon
  • Acrylic
  • Watercolor
  • Any water soluble paint


In short, with the idea that we will be working with line and color, bring materials that you want to use, including, but not limited to, the materials mentioned above.

Begin your application process now! https://www.sasweb.org/page.cfm?p=950&LockSSL=true

 
 

Barry Whistler, Sotol View, | February 18 - March 25, 2017

 
 

Art League Houston | 2016 Texas Artist of the Year: Terrell James

Houston, TX (May 5, 2016) — Art League Houston (ALH) proudly announces the selection of Terrell James as the 2016 Texas Artist of the Year, Jesse Lott as the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts recipient, and Poppi Georges Massey, as the 2016 Texas Patron of the Year. Each year Art League Houston pays tribute to those whose work or patronage has had a significant and positive impact on contemporary visual art in Texas.

“We are thrilled to be honoring legendary Houston artist Jesse Lott with Art League Houston’s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts and well known Texas painter Terrell James with the 2016 Texas Artist of the Year Award,” says Michael Peranteau, ALH Executive Director. “Both artists have influenced generations of younger artists and have contributed significantly to the visual arts in Texas throughout their distinguished careers. Both of these artists are much loved by the community where they live and work. We feel honored to have this opportunity to recognize their contributions.”

As the 2016 Texas Artist of the Year, Terrell James will be featured in an exhibition in the Art League Houston Main Gallery from September 30 - November 19, 2016. Art League Houston will also present an exhibition in the Art League Houston Front Gallery featuring a survey of works by 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Jesse Lott. All three awardees will be celebrated at the annual gala, which will be held in their honor at Hotel ZaZa on Friday, October 14. For ticket and table purchase information please contact Jill Nepomnick at Art League Houston, 713 523 9530

 
 

Terrell James is a well-known Houston-based artist whose abstract painting and works on paper are characterized by an expansive vocabulary of gestural mark-making, automatist brushwork and illuminating interactions of form, light, color and density, embodying strong references to the natural world. For the past thirty years, her methodology has been playfully intuitive and intellectually rigorous. The work is grounded in a process of constant rediscovery of what is hers in nature, while integrating with it what she experiences in the more time bound landscape of human artifacts. She has produced an extraordinary body of work which reflects the conviction and knowledge of a skillful painter whose work is an ever-expanding study of the experiential essence of landscape and memory. Additionally the work negotiates the dichotomy between the conscious and the subconscious, while remaining as open to interpretation as possible.

James is a fourth generation Houstonian, and seventh generation Texan. Although Houston-based, she has lived and created work in studios internationally including Soho, Harlem, Long Island, Montauk, NY; Bald Head Island, NC; Bologna, Italy; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Marfa, TX and Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1990’s, she has made trips to west Texas to the Davis Mountains and to the Big Bend region at the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert. On these trips, James fills her sketchbook with line studies, not as notations of what is scenic about landscapes, but rather of what the daunting terrain suggests—free flowing impressions of colors, lines and shapes (Edwards, 2014).

Light and color enliven James’ paintings, which result in a dynamic synthesis of painting and drawing. The act of seeing a landscape, whether it is a desert view or cityscape, is rendered as an accumulation of sensations. There is a generosity in her painting, reflected in her sublime compositions which are open and un-doctrinaire. She is interested in the viewer's participation in her work (Edwards, 2014). “There is the painting, then there is something that happens between the viewer and the painting: a sort of second painting” says James. To gaze at a painting of Terrell James's is to enter into an experience in the making: painting in which the act of painting continues as the eye wanders the finished surface. Each painting is completed by each individual encounter (Stern, 1997).

Walter Hopps, the legendary Curator and Founding Director of The Menil Collection, viewed James as being among the finest gestural abstractionists working in Texas and as one of the best in the country. Hopps stated, “she has mastered a lyrical freedom usually seen in watercolor rather than in oil. Although articulated line is often structurally important, the paintings are primarily built of patches and fluid areas of color.” Hopps, having earlier championed the abstract paintings of Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis in the 1950’s, is eminently qualified to have praised the art of James in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

In addition to her large painted canvases, James began a long-term series of color explorations in 1997 titled Field Studies, which the artist describes as drawing with paint. Over the past decade, she has created more than six hundred oil on vellum works in this series, treating each one like scientific research and cataloging it with a specific number. As opposed to the densely layered surfaces of her canvases, the Field Studies are spontaneous open paintings with floating fields of color. The title Field Studies is a reference the Impressionist technique of color “notes” taken quickly outdoors, as well as a reference to her own process of experimenting with color and form (Froelick, 2010).

Over the past decade, drawing and line have taken an increasingly prominent and deliberate role in her painting practice, allowing the work to explore the dynamics of bodily gesture, along with negotiating a more complex division of space. Inspired by the work of Matisse, Ryder, Cezanne, Bess, Hesse, Bontecou, Mitchell, and Connell, there is a historical narrative told in her lines, which not only reflect James’ own personal narrative but embody how form and meaning come to be transmitted from one generation to the next, and beyond.

In talking about her work, James states:

“I am certain that natural places and living things will always underlie much of what I do. However, as it has evolved, my practice has grown to absorb contexts beyond narrow definitions of “landscape” and “nature.” I now deliberately explore newly available and even unavoidable fields. My work has become engaged with unexpected material. Sometimes it seems that I am simply absorbing and processing everything I encounter. The limitless deluge of the all-enveloping digital world has inspired an expanded palette, to include a vastly larger range of materials, colors and effects.”

Often James’s approach to painting can be site-specific, painted as a mural directly on the wall. Previous work on steel, sometimes collaboratively with artist Ed Wilson, can become a part of “permanent” architecture, or be presented as a site-specific installation with abutting panels. These pieces can be divided, standing on their own, or presented as a frieze, commanding an entire room. These have been done on cold rolled steel panels, chemically manipulated in color, rusting in Rorschach-like patterns; as well as fourteen foot long sections of painted paper, oil and acrylic. Presented in a continuum, the pieces are later separated and placed in various locations, spanning less than 35 feet.

Expanding her repertoire into three dimensions, James also experiments with and creates sculpture. In a statement written in 2003, James talks about her initial explorations into sculpture, in clay, wax, and bronze. “For years I had been wanting to make things, populating the floor, not the wall. In makingthem, a door opened. I saw the unnamed images in my drawings, the recurring curves and language glyphs that have populated my work for fifteen years, with a new understanding. When seen from the corner of the studio, the clay forms seem to belong on the ocean floor, or in the recesses of a cave; and, somehow, I began to draw the objects themselves into new paintings. There is a new solidity, a rigor that has come from the sculptural objects. They are really more aptly described as expressions of the hand in a new material.” The newest three dimensional works are in clay, consisting of multiple vessels made from North Carolina and Georgia clay, created at the invitation of master ceramist Hiroshi Sueyoshi, then director of the Pancoe Ceramics Center at the Cameron Museum of Art, in Wilmington, NC. James considers the vessels series to be a collaboration with Sueyoshi.

In 1977, James received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, with additional study at the Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico (1973), Bellas Artes, Universidad de Mexico, Print Annex, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato (1973) and the School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1978-79).

Early in her career she worked for five years sorting and documenting the work of many artists and museums for the Texas Project of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, preparing for microfilming original source material of artists, collectors, and institutions for future scholarship. James has also curated shows at local, national and international venues including the Houston for the Center for Art and Performance, DiverseWorks, Hiram Butler Gallery, GalleryHomeland, along with Wei Hong and Wang Yiqiong, Songzhang Art Space, Beijing. In addition to her practice, James taught at the Glassell School, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for fourteen years and was Chair of the Painting Department. She has served as a guest professor at Rice University, was one of the originating board members at DiverseWorks, and for over a decade served on the board of Gulf Coast: Journal of Art and Literature, the graduate publication of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.

Over the years, James has had solo exhibits locally, nationally and internationally at venues including Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX (2016, 2013, 2011, 2008, 2007, 2004, 2004, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1998, 1997, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1991); Cadogan Contemporary, London, UK (2016); Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR (2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2008, 2003); Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX (2016, 2014, 2011, 2009); The Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, NC (2011); Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY (2010, 2007, 2004); Fundacion Centro Cultural, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (2003); Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX (1997), and Delgado College Gallery, New Orleans (1992).

James’ work has also been included in national and international group exhibits at venues including Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY (2015, 2011, 2010, 2009); Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX (2016, 2015, 2014, 2013,2012 2011, 2010, 2009, 2001, 1991, 1987); Gallery Homeland, Portland, OR (2012, 2009); Froelick Gallery, Portland, OR (2014, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2006, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1996); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2015, 2011, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1996, 1994, 1993); Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (2011, 2000, 1998, 1996, 1994, 1993, 1987, 1986, 1985, 1984, 1983); Pillsbury Peters (2011, 2010, 2009, 2008); Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM (2011, 2009); Sin Sin Fine Art, Hong Kong (2008, 2006); Portland Art Museum, OR (2010, 2003); Museo Moderne Artes, Trujillo, Peru (2007); Marfa Book Company, TX (2002); DiverseWorks, Houston, TX (2002, 1990, 1986, 1984); Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX (2001, 2000, 1998, 1994, 1993, 1992, 1989); Dutch Triodos Bank, Zeiss, The Netherlands (2010-2001); Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, TX (2001, 1999, 1991); The Old Jail—Art Center, Albany, TX (2000); Hooks Epstein Gallery, Houston, TX (2000); The HK Visual Arts Center, Hong Kong (1999); Mohseni Fine Arts, Limited, Hong Kong (1999); Dutch Triodos Bank, Amsterdam (1999); United States Embassy, Mexico City, D.F. (1999); Shanghai Cultural Center, Shanghai, China (1999); Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, D.F (1999, 1997, 1994, 1991); Galveston Arts Center, Galveston (1997, 1996, 1985); Takara Gallery, Houston, TX (1997); Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX (1996); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (1993); Sally Sprout Gallery, Houston, TX (1993); McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (1989); Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, NY (1988); Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA (1985); Southern California Gallery for Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (1985); Center for Art & Performance, Houston, TX (1982); Art League Houston, TX (1979), and Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN (1976).

James’ work is featured in several public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY; The Menil Collection, Houston TX; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Casa Lamm/Televisa Cultural Foundation, Mexico; Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Museum of University of the South, Sewanee, TN; Portland Art Museum—Gilkey Center Graphic Arts, OR; Rice University—Print Collection, Houston, TX; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA and University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX.

Additionally, James’ work has been written about in publications including Art in America, ARTnews, Art Lies, the Dallas Morning News, Glasstire, The Oregonian, the Houston Chronicle, as well as various books and catalogues. James herself has had pieces published in Gulf Coast, the Houston Chronicle, and Art Lies, along with published artist statements.

In 2013, James joined the No Boundaries International Art Residency at Bald Head Island, NC, and was one of four artists selected by the Joan Mitchell Foundation's 2013-16 Pilot Call Program in Texas, which facilitates comprehensive documentation of artists' works, careers and legacies. Over the years, James has been commissioned to create paintings for venues including Sands Hotel Macao, China; The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas, TX; White Plains, NY; Hilton Americas, Houston; Gensler Architects, Dallas; Avant Garden, Houston; Gensler Architects Houston, and a Royal House in Saudi Arabia. A new installation of works has been installed in its own floor at Solvay America here in Houston.

 
 

On Site in 16 Cities
Bar Babette: January 28 - February 4

 

Berlin Collective is pleased to present, "On Site in 16 Cities", A Group Exhibition consisting of International Artists new works produced specifically for this project.


This project was inspired by Jim Jarmusch's film, "Night on Earth", 1991. Night on Earth is a 1991 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. It is a collection of five vignettes, taking place during the same night, concerning the temporary bond formed between taxi driver and passenger in five cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki.

For this project, each artist was asked to find a location in their city that has a particular meaning to them, create a work in response to that location, photograph it in that exact place, and lastly print it in the format of 10''x10'' to give a unified look to the works as if to have a voyeur experience of peering into the space. All of the works have titles and a one-sentence explanation by the artist of their piece. The individual projects are linked to 16 cities at the same time and connect the artists to their different ways of addressing their particular selection of locations.

ARTISTS: 1. Berlin, Silvia Lorenz, Mira O'Brien, Katrin Kampmann, Bonnie Begusch, Stephan Brenn, Henrike Daum, Alyssa De Luccia, Vanessa Enríquez, Jesse Farber, Aleksandar Jestrovic Jamesdin, Grace Euna Kim, Alexis Knowlton, Wolfgang Krause, Adi Liraz & Sanija Kulenovic, Katharina Lüdicke, Sven Stuckenschmidt, transstruktura, Ulrike Mohr, Tomoko Mori, Konrad Mühe, Johannes Rodenacker, Sabrina Schieke, Sonja Schrader, Aleks Slota, Erik Smith, Max Sudhues, Eva AM Winnersbach & Cornelia Bördlein 2. Amsterdam, Dennis Tremalio 3. Pennyslvania, Gwendolyn Kerber 4. Sun Valley, Idaho, Nicole Kohn 5. Minot, North Dakota, Wednesday Kim 6. NYC, Judy Mauer, Elena Lyakir, Pablo Carpio , Denise Triezman, Alice Garik, Sky Kim , Margaret Edith Arial, Marcie Kaufman 7. London, Sonia Barrett, 8. Melbourne, Kate Shaw, 9. Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jennifer Danos, 10. Paris, Susan Shup, 11. Washington, D.C., Eve Hennessa, 12. Italy-Carlos Solito 13. Taichung, Vincent Cy Chen 14. Los Angeles, Tm Gratkowski Malado Baldwin , Burton Machen 15. Houston, Terrell James, 16. Sydney, Australia, Brad Robson

Berlin Collective press release

 
 


A new edition of June Mattingly's extensive book,
Contemporary Artists in Texas: The State of the Art, has been issued.
Now available on Amazon

 
 

West End Art Garden Tour

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 3:00-5:00 P.M.
SOLD OUT | TOUR DETAILS WILL BE PROVIDED TO PARTICIPANTS.

Starting in the 1970s, Houston's West End, a historically mixed-use, working-class district, became a mecca for Houston individualists and creative people. Their joie de vivre infused the neighborhood with metal-clad houses and small unusual gardens filled with art.

Five such art-filled and art-inspired gardens are included in the West End art garden tour. We will visit a lush native garden with a backdrop of "steel paintings" by artist Terrell James, another garden focused on artist Jim Love's Giant Bird House, and a sustainable garden conceived by architect Robert Morris as the ideal companion piece for his "aboriginal spaceship." At artist Salle Werner Vaughn's, landscape and bungalows merge into an "other world" experience. The tour concludes with refreshments at Hiram Butler's complex, where a bucolic garden is set between Butler's contemporary art gallery and the nineteenth-century cottage where he lives.

 
 

"On Site in 16 Cities"
A Group Exhibition of International Artists Curated by Nicole Cohen

Thursday, September 16, 6-8pm September 16- 20, 2015
Cheri, 231 Lenox Ave., Harlem, New York City
Berlin Collective press release

Berlin Collective
 

 
 

American Summer
12th July - 4th September 2015
Cadogan Contemporary, London
American Summer Catalogue

Cadogan Contemporary present four American artists; Betsy Eby, Chris Gwaltney, Terrell James and Tom Lieber. Well-established in the US we are looking forward to bringing each of their unique work and talent to London.


Featuring these artists:
BETSY EBY
TERRELL JAMES
CHRIS GWALTNEY
TOM LIEBER


https://www.cadogancontemporary.com/exhibition/american-summer/

 
 

Co-Cathedral Music Presents "Projections: Houston - No Limits

 
 
 
 

Houston Artists in an Archive


http://glasstire.com/2015/07/02/houston-artists-in-an-archive/

Studio One Archive Resource announced its official launching as a service organization that will work with members of the Houston arts community to help preserve their history so the stories of those who built the community may be captured and shared. Creating A Living Legacy (CALL) Project is a program of the Joan Mitchell Foundation that, under the sponsorship of Fresh Arts, granted $50K to complete a pilot program of the Houston version of the CALL Project.

Local artist, art educator, and archivist Patricia Hernandez, who will serve as Studio One's Founding Director, named the organization for William Steen's studio and artist-run space in downtown Houston during the early 80s. Steen's Studio One was one of the earliest alternative art spaces in the city, presenting exhibitions, lectures, musicians, performances and inspiring the founding of DiverseWorks. Hernandez explains the genesis of the project:

"When I learned about William's space downtown in 2007 and how it really started something that has grown over the years, I couldn't believe it took me so long to discover. I'd known him since 1992 and knew so many other things about him, but not this. It seemed that it was probably one of many stories that, unless they were collected and preserved, could be lost or forgotten. Starting an organization to help preserve them felt like a good idea. It would provide a valuable and highly needed service to small and mid-size arts organizations who pour everything they have into their current and future programming, there's rarely time, money or energy left to devote to their past. This history is too important not to preserve and share. It accounts for so much of the city's creative energy and has a tremendous impact on, especially, a younger generation of artists and arts professionals."

During the Houston CALL Project's pilot phase, eight local artists, including Rachel Hecker,
Terrell James, Mary Jenewein, Charles Mary Kubricht, Bert Long, David McGee, Beth Secor, and Toby Topek, received assistance with collecting, organizing and digitizing their history.

 
 

Houston, Texas - Recent work by 19 artists including painters, sculptors, photographers, installation artists, and mixed media will be on display at Williams Tower Gallery from Thursday, April 16 through May 22, 2015. Many of the artists will be present at the opening reception on April 22. Viewing hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday or by appointment.

Artists included in the show are the Art Guys, Harvey Bott, Terrell James, Beth Secor, Patrick Renner, Tara Conley, Kelli Vance, Kristen Cliburn, Lisa Qualls, Ryder Richards, Michael Macedo Meazell, Mark Harold Ponder, Steve Murphy, Mike Hollis, Michel Muylle, Bob Russell, Heath Brodie, Emily Peacock, and Abigail McLaurin.

The exhibition's concept, reflected by the title 'WET", is to represent each artist's most recent stage of work. 'Fresh Fictions' refers to these latest installments' place in their ongoing aesthetic "stories". The show includes well-established and mid-career artists, as well as, emerging artists who are just launching their public exposure. The majority of the artists are based in Houston, with Ryder Richards working in the Dallas area and Abigail McLaurin working in Beaumont.

Guest curators Henry Hunt and Donna Tennant organized the show. Hunt is a Houston-based graphic designer who has served as a university art gallery director and independent curator. Tennant is an established writer who is currently contributing to Visual Art Source (an online art magazine) and writing reviews for art ltd, a bimonthly publication.