The TENants 2022
The TENants is the title of an exciting and meaningful artist exhibition in February/March 2022.
“Artists Building Community”
Visual art, media, painting, sculpture and installations by:
Rodrigo Aguilera | Alessandra Albin | Mathieu JN Baptiste | Gretchen Bender Sparks | John Bishop
Deborah Ellington | Andy González | Anne Joëlle Galley | Bogdan Mihai | Miller Quevedo
Valentina Atkinson, Art Director
CLOSING EVENT
Friday, March 18, 2022
5 to 8 PM
East Gallery of Silver Street at Sawyer Yards
2000 Edwards Street, Houston, TX 77007
Exhibition Dates
February 10 - March 19, 2022
Work is on display in the East Gallery of Silver Street.
Studio visits are always welcome.
Visiting Hours: 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Saturday.
Each of the ten artists is a tenant of Silver Street Studios at Sawyer Yards, The reference to “ants” is very appropriate as these artists have a shared focus to further the strength and viability of the arts in Houston through community-building:
“Community is about holding your arms open and assisting in the efforts of others. It is about setting aside your own interests and offering generous listening to what is occurring for others. It is about knowing that what we do as artists is always better when we hold a space for others.”
In this way, the TENants are artists working for artists, as they paint a broad stroke relative to their involvement with the arts. The first TENants exhibition was originated by Valentina Atkinson of Serrano Gallery and Silver Street Studios Administration in February of 2016.
Meet the 2022 TEN-ants
Rodrigo Aguilera | Studio 210
There are many diverse opinions and tastes. Just like there are art appreciators who advocate for the quick, easy, and simple ideas that are prominent in today's art scene; there are art advocates like myself who want to acknowledge the appreciation for the academy. That aesthetic tradition must stay alive.
Although I also develop abstraction, and the fusion with realism “Abstrealism.” I hope with this approach I will transmit the message that detail, academic technique, beauty and the traditions of realism must continue to be valued and appreciated in these so call contemporary times.
Alessandra Albin | STUDIO 322
My family line comes from many different places and cultures: Italy, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia. I was born in Mexico and I moved to Houston a long time ago.Fragments of all these places made the culture I have. Fragments.
I worked as a teacher all my life. I have the need to be my own teacher now. Motivate, push, pressure, and scold myself. What I am is what you see.
We are complete humans until we have to describe ourselves. Then, magic happens! We have to use different words and feelings. We become fragments. We dismember ourselves. I describe myself through the characters I create. I put me in all of them and, maybe you- if you dare. These fragments of life.
Mathieu JEAN Baptiste | STUDIO 326
Mathieu JN Baptiste was born in Port Au Prince, Haiti and is based in Houston, Texas. Mathieu spent his early years in Haiti and St Paul, Minnesota. He studied Art and Photography at Ecole Nationale des Arts (Enarts), in Port Au Prince, Haiti resulting in a Bachelor of Arts in Art History.
Mathieu uses paint and metal as tools to unite the world around him. He states, ‘This world is filled with confusions and misunderstandings as people struggle and strive in this beautifully, complex, maze of life.” Mathieu’s art reflects the good, the hopeful, and the interconnectedness for a better world.
Mathieu is an acclaimed artist specializing in painting, drawing and metal sculpture art and installation whose artwork is displayed locally, nationally, and globally in museums, governmental buildings, educational institutions, healthcare clinics, hospitals, murals, and private art collections. He is a highly sought after art expert, consultant and instructor to educational institution, private penitentiaries and civic organizations. Mathieu’s work has been exhibited in Woman’s Hospital of Texas, Discovery Green, Jung Center, Rice University- Fest Eve, Art Basel 2019-Art Beat Miami, Haiti’s Presidential Palace, museums, churches, galleries, and charity events such as APROFISA and Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.
Gretchen Bender Sparks | Studio 214
I am incorporating the techniques I developed doing field Geology into my art. My art comes from the result of my physical involvement with the landscape/rocks/fossils (field work) interpreted in the studio (lab work). As an artist, I see beyond the physicality and science of the landscape - it becomes a complex and unlimited juxtaposition of texture, color, and pattern. I want to take my viewer to wherever my imagination and creativity takes me - albeit without abandoning my scientific interpretation. I want to expand my work -- to paint the narrative of the landscape.
I find spirituality in wide open and empty spaces. My work attempts to bring these places to an audience that is longing for spirituality. This includes both those who may not have access to wide open spaces, or pass through them but aren’t aware of their spirituality.
I work with photographs that I take on my travels. I love to take road trips where I stop by the roadside to take photos and pick up rocks! My goal is to combine those physical mementos with my feelings of that space, and to blend them into art that tells a story worth seeing.
JOHN BISHOP | STUDIO 108
My art attempts to connect, to bind disparate elements together into new vocabularies, new stories, that are both fresh and archetypal at the same time. I paint, photograph, and write about what I feel, not so much what I see. Don't look to my art for history, but rather for a glimpse into my own emotion, my own symbols, my own stories. Hopefully, you will recognize your story there too, and my art can become your art as well.
I was born in Houston, but have spent much of my life traveling. I graduated from St. Thomas University in Houston, did graduate work at the University of Houston, and obtained my Master’s degree from the University of Texas. I have been involved in photography, creative writing and fine art since college, though I spent 30 years working as a librarian in Texas, New Mexico, California, Romania, The Emirates, New Zealand, and Russia. I returned to Houston in 2016 to help out with my aging parents, and my husband and I now work full-time on our creative business in fine art, video and commercial photography. Since then, I have returned to my passion for creative writing and painting.
DEBORAH ELLINGTON | STUDIO 110
Art is a journey that leads to the discovery of ideas, processes, memories and self. It is exhilarating to discover one's voice and to have others understand and relate to the work, even though they have traveled a different path.
The forces of nature and the feeling one experiences when alone in nature is expressed through the colors and lines that are evident in the work. The work in glass came from a fascination with the process and understanding the chemistry and physics used to create glass work.
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ANDY GONZALEZ | STUDIO 202
Andy Gonzalez combines Abstract and Cubism in his featured Collection titled AGGA, where he produces oil paintings on wood panels and canvas of stories from The Bible, otherwise known as Modern Biblical Art. The shapes, colors and design express the meaning of each inspired piece. This is Modern Art taken to a new level.
Andy Gonzalez's FACES Collection, is an unnumbered collection of New Media Art and Oil Paintings on Di-Bond Brushed Aluminum, Wood and Canvas that depict close up abstract images of human emotions.
Anne JoËlle Galley | Studio 302
In a world whose reality can often be somber, Art brings you a sparkle of hope. Galley’s paintings, monotypes and prints are strongly influenced by intense colors. Color, through its vibrancy, is her signature and the strength of her expression. Throughout the years, colors have amalgamated her style, giving continuity to her work.
Bogdan Mihai
BOGDAN MIHAI | STUDIO 111
Bogdan Mihai was raised in communist Romania, and could not purchase his first camera until 1989. After the revolution, the fledgling free press created many opportunities in radio and television. Bogdan worked his way from radio, to television doing everything from voice-overs, reporting, editing and ultimately producing. His first photo/video exhibition in 2005 was entitled “Memories from Sri Lanka” and documented his own survival story during the 2004 tsunami in that country. Bogdan worked in Romanian television until 2006 when he left to do video and photography work in The Emirates, New Zealand, California and Russia. He eventually settled in Houston, Texas, and dedicated himself full-time to freelancing in support of his photography and film work. In 2016 he published his first photography book, “Road Trip: Romania”. This compilation of portraits, landscapes and cityscapes that compares urban life in Bucharest to that of the countryside, which is largely untouched by technology and modernism. He has exhibited in Romania, Argentina, Switzerland, Hungary, and the USA.
Miller Quevedo | Studio 324
Quevedo is a Colombian artist living in Houston Texas since 2015, dedicated full time to art. His development as an artist has gone through several stages of exploration between the figurative, expressive, and abstract. He has always been interested in the study of the creative process and how our brain works in this area, his taste for research has led him to communicate through his work the importance of developing and training all our senses, especially the visual, auditory and Kinesthetic.
Valentina Atkinson | ART DIRECTOR | Studio 317
Valentina Atkinson was born and raised in Mexico City. She studied Industrial Design at Universidad Ibero-Americana in Mexico, and Textile Design and Communication Arts at the University of San Francisco in the U.S.
The daughter of a painter and an architect, Atkinson developed an early interest the arts that has become a lifelong passion. She has studied with renowned artists such as Manuel Arrieta and Alicia Leyva in Mexico, and Arthur Turner and others, at the Glassell School of Art, the Houston Art League and the Watercolor Society of Texas. As a visual artist, Atkinson is known primarily for her abstract watercolor compositions. Her work has been selected for juried exhibitions throughout the United States and Mexico and is held in dozens of private collections internationally.
Atkinson currently lives and works in Houston, where she is also the owner and artistic director of Serrano Gallery.
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