Grace Zuniga and Delaney Smith – Conversions: Common and Sacral (Sculpture Month Houston)

The Central Art Gallery at Houston Community College presents Conversions: Common and Sacral, a two person exhibition in conjunction with the first citywide Sculpture Month Houston. A reception for the artists, Grace Zuñiga and Delaney Smith, will be held Thursday , October 6, 5:30 – 8:00, and the show will be in the gallery October 3 through November 3.

Through their distinct and fastidious approaches, Houston artists Grace Zuñiga and Delaney Smith transform otherwise common and unremarkable materials into carefully crafted scenarios, bordering between the familiar and the fantastic.

Grace Zuñiga takes inspiration from nature and the almost otherworldly moments it can produce. Seeking to recreate that same sense of the sublime, Zuñiga attempts to “conjure the visceral”, transforming everyday materials in a creative act of devotion. Her sculptures are intimate in scale, akin to shrines or altars dedicated ultimately to the very materials used in their creation. Shaped and clustered, her assemblages of wood, fibers, resin, plastic and metal are painted or coated, transcending their components’ original functions. Each altar is purposefully situated within a corresponding landscape, suggesting a relationship to an even greater context and inviting viewers to reflect and draw connections to their own spiritual sensibilities.

The industrial and commercial transport of loads on trucks in Houston informs this body of work by Delaney Smith. Old paper, clothing, and decorative fabrics are broken down and integrated into new materials and forms. Smith treats these newly re-manufactured objects as precious cargo to be secured and handled with care, finding creative and tenuously beautiful methods to strap, suspend, and attach them to their salvaged steel supports. Though humorous on the surface, each work is an act of careful problem solving and detailed execution, reflecting the economic and industrial mechanisms that the artist herself mimics so well.

Grace Zuñiga is a professor at Houston Community College, the Artist Liason for Sawyer Yards Creative Campus, and served for several years as the Visual Art Director of MECA in Houston. A former resident of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and Ox-Bow School of Art, Zuñiga received her MFA from the University of Georgia in Athens in 2012 and has since exhibited across the United States.

Delaney Smith is a dedicated artist and educator in Houston, where she is a featured artist at Hunter Gather Projects. Having completed a residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, she is now a resident artist at Box 13 Studios. Smith received her MFA from tUniversity of North Texas in Denton in 2013 and has taught at Houston Community College, Lonestar Community College, and Art League Houston.

For more information, contact Central Gallery Coordinator Alexander Squier at [email protected].

A project of the Houston Community College Center of Excellence for Visual and Performing Arts.

Pictured above: Detail of a work by Delaney Smith.