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Art Influencers
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Delightfully risky, original, and courageous, these 10 vanguards exploit the endless possibilities of art in its myriad forms.
BY CHRISTOPHER BLAY, NANCY COHEN ISRAEL, TERRI PROVENCAL, AND DARRYL RATCLIFF
Life, work—it's all very organic and fluid, a laboratory. I always tell people: whatever your thing is, you just have to be in it. Jump in; you'll figure it out.
–Mark Bradford
David-Jeremiah
Conceptual Artist
The meteoric rise of David-Jeremiah as an internationally recognized artist could be seen as prophetic for someone whose name comes with some theological legacy. It is apropos of the dichotomies that coexist in the artist, named after the weeping prophet Jeremiah, who was known for urging repentance and foretelling the destruction of his people, and David, the improbable slayer of giants and champion to his people. Like David, David-Jeremiah was imprisoned and left to wrestle with his thoughts, which he meticulously inscribed in a series of notebooks. When he emerged four years later, these notes became the source material for a series of monumental works and narratives, which stream across dozens of paintings and sculptures the artist has created in his five short years as a conceptual artist. “It was during my ‘staycation’ that I became a conceptual artist because the physical was very limited, and the material was very limited, so I had to internalize and flesh out concepts. When I came out, I had composition notebooks full of bodies of work, and that’s why I have been able to execute the work versus experimenting and contemplating.”
I worked with David-Jeremiah as curator of his first museum solo exhibition in the summer of 2022 at the Houston Museum of African American Culture. From before and since, the artist’s work has been acquired by the Dallas Museum of Art, been in exhibitions at Project Row Houses in Houston; Celine New Bond Street, London; and at CulturalDC in Washington, to name a few places. He also had a solo exhibition at Meliksetian | Briggs in Los Angeles, where he is represented; he has an upcoming show in July in the recently relocated Dallas gallery.
David-Jeremiah is an artist whose conceptual work is a resounding indictment of white supremacy, with the subtlety of a flying brick. Like his namesake the prophet Jeremiah— also imprisoned—he is fearless and precise even as he works feverishly and on his own timetable to create paintings, sculptures, and performances that both embrace the art historical and carve a path all his own.–Christopher Blay
Dr. Amanda W. Dotseth
Energy, enthusiasm, and intellect combine in dynamic proportions in the newly appointed director of the Meadows Museum, Dr. Amanda W. Dotseth. In March she officially began her tenure as the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair at the Meadows School of the Arts, following an extensive international search. As a specialist in medieval Spanish art with a long history of service to the Meadows Museum, Dr. Dotseth brings to this position a fresh perspective that will especially benefit the newly formed Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture.
Dotseth first came to Dallas to pursue her MA in art history at SMU, to work with specialists in the Middle Ages, and to benefit from the Meadows Museum’s world-class collection of Spanish art. Her first major curatorial project was the 2008 exhibition and research project, Fernando Gallego and His Workshop: The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo. In 2009, she moved to London, where she earned a PhD in the history of art and architecture from the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London). With fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Spanish National Research Council, Dotseth’s intellectual formation reflects three distinct academic traditions: American, British, and Spanish.
She returned to the Meadows Museum in 2016, first as the Mellon/ Prado postdoctoral fellow and then as curator. Working closely with the museum’s former director, the late Mark A. Roglán, and The Meadows Foundation, she organized myriad exhibitions and identified important acquisitions that have broadened the collection’s scope.
A vibrant scholar who has been deeply embedded in the culture of Spain since her youth, Dotseth has assumed her new role with a combination of expertise, vision, and joy. –Linda
P. Custard
There is a moment in the first third of Tramaine Townsend’s breakout film, SALLAD (Dallas in reverse), where a Black man in white shorts and shirt is flipping through the air in slow motion with nothing but clouds behind him. It is an arresting, beautiful shot, and also a metaphor for Townsend himself—a man, alone in rarefied air, solely focused on making the most beautiful and impactful art possible. There is no one more lovingly capturing and representing Black creative life, and by extension Black life generally, in Dallas, Texas, than Townsend. He is an ultimate craftsman, his images dripping in the soft purples and oranges that give Black skin a transcendent glow. His documentary short film SALLAD has been screened at the SXSW Film Festival, received special jury recognition at the New Orleans Film Society Festival, and most recently was screened in New York City at Lume Studios.
Additionally, Townsend’s photographs have recently appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Texas Highways, Patron and D magazines, and his multimedia work has been exhibited at AURORA, Sweet Tooth Hotel, and Tractorbeam. This summer Townsend will have shows and projects at Daisha Board Gallery; African American Museum, Dallas; and Arts Mission Oak Cliff. Townsend also is investing in the next generation of filmmakers in Dallas, most recently as the director of photography on the award-winning student film #BlackatSMU
Tramaine Townsend achieves the rare alchemy of being simultaneously ubiquitous and elusive. He tends to like his projects to be fully complete before sharing them with anyone outside his closest collaborators. What one can bank on, though, is that Townsend is already working on his next mind-blowing project, and on a clear day, if you look hard enough, you can get a glimpse of him soaring amongst the clouds. –Darryl
Ratcliff
In Dallas, it is something of a hallmark of our art scene to have artists also be curators, and perhaps no one exemplifies this more than artist/curator Gregory Ruppe. Best known as the director of exhibitions at The Power Station, Ruppe is also an influential and beloved artist who often works collaboratively.
I first encountered Ruppe over a decade ago during the exhibition Hands on an Art Body at Oliver Francis Gallery, which was produced by Homecoming! Committee, the influential collective he belonged to. He has had exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Untitled Art Fair in Miami, and in Los Angeles, as well as galleries in Texas and around the world. Ruppe often collaborates with Jeff Gibbons, and their 2016–19 curatorial series Culture Hole, in a crawl space underneath The Power Station, made a lasting impact on the North
Texas art scene.
Ruppe’s latest project is hand making surfboards and SUPs out of reclaimed wood. They are beautiful, minimalist, utilitarian sculptures. They also seem like really great surfboards. The poetics of Ruppe opening up a surf shop called Picnic Surf Shapes, in an elegantly designed space he made on the grounds of The Power Station, is enough to make you listen to “Land Locked Blues” by Bright Eyes. This project was subject of a glowing Texas Monthly article declaring it to be “Texas’ newest, punkest, surf shop”; and in a feature in Patron written by Danielle Avram it was hailed as “simply getting back to making art for the sheer joy of it.”
Whether one finds Ruppe helping present the latest exhibition at The Power Station or down in Galveston testing out his latest surfboard, he will always be ahead of the curve. –Darryl
Ratcliff
It is easy—perhaps natural even—to become desensitized by the sheer volume of senseless loss of life in this country. From racial violence to mass shootings, we are bombarded with stories of people going through their normal days and then suddenly, shockingly, losing their life to violence. Ayvaunn Penn is a playwright, director, lyricist, and composer who helps us remember these stories, provides a space for healing, and restores the humanity of the victims and, perhaps equally important, our own humanity.
At the start of the year, Penn presented a staged reading of her latest play, For the Love of Uvalde, which gives voice to the frustrations of parents and loved ones of the shooting victims along with the voices of survivors, politicians, and others who have differing views on how to put an end to gun violence. This continues Penn’s legacy of theater as social change. Penn, a TCU theater professor, was a 2020 finalist for the prestigious Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference for her work For Bo: A Play Inspired by the Murder of Botham Jean by Officer Amber Guyger, and she also founded the #ForBo Initiative.
Penn’s work illustrates how one can create art of the highest quality and address the most urgent needs and issues of society and community. –Darryl
Ratcliff
In a city with world-renowned art collectors, establishing status amongst their ranks can be hard. Yet since the opening of the physical location of the Green Family Art Foundation in the Dallas Arts District, next to the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Green family has done just that. By focusing on exhibitions championing women, artists of color, and LGBTQIA artists, the Green family is helping redefine the type of art and artists that are showcased in Dallas.
The passion for visual art started with the husband-and-wife duo Eric and Debbie Green and extends to their art advisor son, Adam Green. The trio handles the ever-growing family art collection and guides the foundation, which is directed by Bailey Summers. It is truly a family affair, and it is not unusual to see the Greens’ other sons,
Brian and Scott, in attendance at openings. Of note: the GFAF has an Instagram account boasting 31.8 thousand followers, and they are very active on social media. Yet, interestingly enough, Eric is just as likely to be manning the IG account as Adam, and both love the direct access and conversations that can be had with enthusiasts around the world. Whether it is the exciting, museum-quality shows in their own space at the GFAF—including their upcoming Full and Pure: Body, Materiality, and Gender —or their work helping museums such as the Guggenheim; Whitney; SFMOMA; DMA; Nasher Sculpture Center; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth acquire rising and diverse talents, the Greens have truly established themselves at the center of the contemporary art world –Darryl Ratcliff
