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2 weeks ago | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
Ophelia, I feel ya. Caught between the grownups in your life and their impossible demands, it’s no wonder you flung yourself into that river. Blame it on your youth. In The Drowning at Ulterior Gallery in New York City, works by multimedia artist Celia Eberle echo a similar, sinister sentiment. Scores of ceramic fish plummet from the gallery’s walls — gasping and struggling — while a statue of a small winged child squats on the floor, tending to their demise.
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Mar 2, 2025 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
On a recent visit to The Shed in New York City, I managed to relive a brief but bold era from twenty years earlier when Central Park morphed into a saffron-colored sculpture for sixteen straight days. The Gates gave some much-needed oomph to a deciduous winter landscape with thousands of bright orange post-and-lintel frames lining the park’s pathways — not unlike the Torii gates at the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, Japan.
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May 12, 2024 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
There is a stormy femininity to Caroline Wright’s paintings, a soft signaling of chaos through swirls of darkness and light. Call it a kind of birth — Wright says becoming a mother naturally upped the ante of work. “Postpartum was such a shock for me, and it’s something that isn’t talked enough about in our culture — women are just dropped into it,” she tells me.
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Nov 27, 2023 | 
southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Barbara Purcell
José Villalobos’ exhibition Fuertes y Firmas at Big Medium in Austin defiantly extracts beauty from brutality. José Villalobos: Fuertes y FirmesOctober 19–December 2, 2023Big Medium, AustinJosé Villalobos’s work straddles two worlds at once. Born and raised on the U.S.-Mexico border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, the artist explores the role of masculinity and queer identity in a culture steeped in machismo and conservative beliefs.
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Oct 24, 2023 | 
southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Barbara Purcell
If the Sky Were Orange: Art in the Time of Climate Change looks at global warming with a right brain / left brain lineup of scientists, journalists, and artists. If the Sky Were Orange: Art in the Time of Climate ChangeSeptember 9, 2023–February 11, 2024Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at AustinIf the Sky Were Orange: Art in the Time of Climate Change is no longer a hypothetical after the wildfires in Nova Scotia this past summer cast a tawny haze over New York City and elsewhere.
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Oct 16, 2023 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
In Parsley Space Rosemary Time, on view at Texas State Galleries in San Marcos, eight artists offer their personal take on the passage of time, and what it means to measure the infinite with only a finite glimpse. The show moves counterclockwise around the gallery, somewhat ironically, starting with Sev Coursen’s Photo Booth Portraits: 23 pocket-size pictures of a 20-something Coursen, all taken between 1978 and 1980, that reveal the numerous iterations of youth.
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Sep 11, 2023 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains is a strange Holy Land set against the pale veil of the Nevada Desert. If you’re driving along Interstate 15 at some point, do make the pilgrimage to these colossal cairns in Henderson, just 30 minutes from the godless seduction of the Vegas Strip: its candy-colored pillars appear out of nowhere like some hyped-up highway mirage.
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Sep 2, 2023 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
If people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, then the people who own Crystal Bridges shouldn’t be stoned. Regardless of how you feel about the retail giant Walmart, its heirs, the Walton family, have a stellar art collection nestled in the northwest corner of Arkansas. And they want you to come visit, free of charge. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art spans centuries of work and acres of leafy landscape in Bentonville, AR in the very town where Walmart is headquartered.
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Aug 4, 2023 | 
southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Barbara Purcell
Tamara Johnson’s exhibition House Salad at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin examines the absurdity of daily domesticity with mass-produced kitchen items turned into one-of-a-kind sculptures. Tamara Johnson: House SaladJuly 8–Sept 2, 2023Lora Reynolds Gallery, AustinIn Tamara Johnson’s solo exhibition, House Salad, kitchen colanders become the ultimate object d’art, meticulously fabricated and hand-painted to mimic the vintage enamelware of yesteryear.
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Jul 19, 2023 | 
glasstire.com | Barbara Purcell
To read about the San Antonio presentation of this exhibition, go here. The first work that catches my eye at Ruiz-Healy Art’s New York gallery is a small sketch by Teresa Serrano, which vaguely resembles bacchus grapes. Looking closer, little notes indicate otherwise: “leather,” “stainless steel,” “fiberglass.” What exactly am I looking at? “We have a sculpture that relates to this work in San Antonio,” gallery owner Patricia Ruiz-Healy points out.
