Sandria Hu - Smoke and Ash - Exhibition December 12, 2008

An internationally-known Texas artist and professor at the University of Houston-Clear Lake is bringing her innovative artwork to The Grace Museum beginning September 11 for a four-month exhibit. The exhibit, titled Sandria Hu: Smoke and Ash, includes 16 works of art. “Sandria Hu’s abstract prints, paintings and constructions are both physically and emotionally compelling,” said Judy Deaton, Curator of Art and Exhibits for The Grace. “Her personalized style and technique has developed over many years of artistic work and worldwide travel. The foundation for her collage and painting work comes from fragments of found objects, usually pieces from cigar boxes and scraps of wood or panel.” In 1986, while teaching art in Bratislava (then Communist Czechoslovakia — now Slovakia) with little money and no supplies, Hu began painting on sections of discarded cigar boxes that she broke up and combined with scraps of wood to provide a painting surface. To bring the contraband art to the United States, she simply separated the pieces and stacked them together for transport. Back in Texas, she reassembled and framed the works. The end result was so successful that this became her modus operandi. This constructed grid of rectangular forms becomes the foundation for the subsequent layers of paint and embossed paper the artist uses to build her images of abstracted landscapes. “Her work has been called landscapes of the mind—fragments of memory of places visited and revisited again and again,” added Deaton. “The resulting works are also abstract in approach to art making, yet representational of the artist’s experiences with different places and cultures and the emotions those memories evoke.” Sandria Hu’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, in Mexico, and in Europe. She is a four-time Senior Fulbright Fellow and has received fellowships in visual arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation which have allowed her to study as well as teach art in places as varied as Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, Ukraine and Mexico. Hu received an MFA from Stanford University and MA and BA from San Diego State University. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the DeCordova Museum of Art, Massachusetts, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, and Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium, among others. Hu's work also includes prints from solar plates, a new photo-printmaking medium, used in combination with chine collA(C), applications of collage elements, a technique she will demonstrate in a workshop during her visit to The Grace Museum. Smoke and Ash will open September 11 in Gallery A on The Grace’s second floor. Hu will give an artist gallery talk that evening, and will also host a printmaking workshop on Friday, September 12 in The Grace’s Education Center. For information about the workshop, call the Museum at 325-673-4587. The exhibit is generously sponsored by Greathouse Foundation and the University of Houston-Clear Lake. For more information, call 325-673-4587. ADMISSION: $6 Adults $4 Senior Citizens, Military & Students with ID cards $3 Children (4-12) Free to Members and Children 3 and under Free every Thursday Evening, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.