December 12, 2020- January 3, 2021
Opening Saturday December 12th, Gallery Hours 12-7pm
Regular hours thereafter Saturdays & Sundays 12-5pm
Room 1:
Lily Brooks, Andrea’s House, Gelatin Silver Print, 6.5x8", 2017
Big Stacy Park, no. 2 , Gelatin Silver Print, 8x6.5", 2019
Kealing Middle School, Gelatin Silver Print, 6.5x8", 2015
Under the Moonlight Tower, Hyde Park, Gelatin Silver Print, 8x6.5", 2016
Lily Brooks
Drawing the Moon
In the years 1894 and 1895, the city of Austin TX erected 31 “moonlight towers”. These street lamps were popular across the United States at the end of the 19th Century, and because of their 165-foot elevation, were seen as an efficient source of light (thereby creating a sense of public safety) in cities such as St Louis, Detroit and New Orleans. The height and luminance of these arc lamps remarkably mimicked the effect of full-moon light, giving them their name. Today, 17 of Austin’s lamps are still standing, the only remaining moonlight towers in America. Drawing the Moon describes the city as illuminated by this anomalous light source. Considering the light itself as a kind of witness, these photographs examine Austin as a site of history, ambition, rampant gentrification, and human imagination.
Lily Brooks holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art + Design. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and featured on WRKF/NPR’s Central Standard and in the Los Angeles Times. Brooks is the 2019 recipient of an Archive Documentation and Preservation Grant from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation for her ongoing project, The Spillway. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Southeastern Louisiana University.
https://www.lilybrooks.net/drawing-the-moon
instagram: @lilypbrooks
Room 2:
A Yellow Rose Project
A Yellow Rose Project is a large-scale photographic collaboration made by 105 women all across the United States. Women were invited to make work in response, reflection, or reaction to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The goal of this project was to provide a focal point and platform for image makers to share contemporary viewpoints as we approached the centennial. Our mission in researching the complication of this anniversary was to gain a deeper understanding of American history and culture, from this moment in time, to build a bridge from the past to the present and on to the future.
This traveling exhibition and project was founded by Meg Griffiths & Frances Jakubek and has been featured on NPR, Lenscratch, and Fraction Magazine, among others.
https://ayellowroseproject.com/
instagram: @ayellowroseproject @megsheagriffiths @franciepants
Room 3:
Maxx Sizeler, Nature vs. Nurture, 48x48x2”, acrylic on plywood, 2000
Untitled Still Life #2, 3x5.25” (9x11.5” framed), photograph, 2016
Maxx Sizeler
Maxx’s work is a on-going exploration of subject matters that are close to his heart: being non-binary and living between the gender binaries, and New Orleans changing history post Katrina. He is presently working on an installation about mass-shootings.
Maxx Sizeler is a multi-media artist and fine woodworker who received a MFA from The University of New Orleans in 2001, and a BFA from Parsons School of Design New York in 1988. Maxx’s installations include: Abracadabra :The Art of Gender Illusion (UNO Gallery, New Orleans); Spork In The Road: Pattern Making for a Gender Hybrid World (Barristers Gallery, New Orleans); Katrina Then and Now: Artist as Witness (Holly Cross College, Worcester); From Start to Finish, (Barristers Gallery New Orleans);The Morphing Mobility of Two and Fro, (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans/ Leslie Lohman Foundation, New York/ St. Claude Collective: Prospect 1 satellite exhibition, New Orleans); Working Drawings For Gender, (Delgado University, New Orleans); Questioning the Pink/blueprint of Gender, (University of New Orleans); Picking Up The Pieces, (Barristers Gallery New Orleans/ Femina Potens, San Francisco); and Gender Remix: Working Drawings II, (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans/ Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette).
Room 4:
Augustus Hoffman, There Will Be Another Spike, Gouache and Casein on paper, 16x20”
Esplanade Avenue, Flashe paint on paper, 7.5x10”
Augustus Hoffman
Negative Capabilities
Before 2020, my paintings tried to capture an honest attempt at a visual experience. My paintings were built off of an adrenaline that kicks in during the fog of painting. Many fast actions and bad mistakes were covered up by the accidental good one. I relied on good luck and a light foot to help me arrive at a place of equilibrium, or at least the facade of equilibrium. That largely felt fine. It might have been messy, but there was usually a beginning, middle, and end to the work. I trusted my instincts to create a soft landing.
2020 has eradicated whatever good instincts I once thought I possessed and revealed an infestation of shitty hunches and false assumptions. I don’t know what or how to trust anymore.
My instincts, which I once relied on to find my way through the mystery of painting failed me.
The work in this exhibition is built on the void those instincts left behind. The world is violently lurching towards some untouchable new normal. It sputters towards unseen contours that we will spend the next decades deciphering. I am learning to employ doubt and insecurity in useful ways. My paintings no longer rely upon the confidence of a single session time restraint. There is no longer any clean beginning, middle, and end to my process. My relationship to these paintings often feels like a tortured, never ending affair.
To me, these paintings are locked inside of a room inside of a room inside of dream. Purgatory comes with so many emotions. Afterall, we don’t know which way it is going to end.
But there is also an alertness to the discomfort I find here. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is up in the air. I keep searching for the capabilities I once thought I possessed. Of course, I know that these capabilities are not lost objects to be found, but still I keep searching. And occasionally what I find in their absence is more interesting.
Augustus Hoffman is an artist who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has studied at Bard College, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the New York Studio School. He has taught at Bard Early College, The New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, and The Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans. Augustus has shown his work all over the country most notably in New York City, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. He was recently an artist in residence at the Mount Gretna School of Art. This is his second exhibition at the Front.
instagram: @augustushoffmanartwork