Belton, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor College of Visual and Performing Arts and the UMHB Art Department are proud to present the exhibition Sedrick Huckaby: Recent Work January 11, through February 4, in the gallery of the Baugh Center for Visual Arts on the UMHB campus. On Thursday, January 14, an open reception will be held in the Baugh Center, and Huckaby will participate in a special interview and gallery talk at 5:00 p.m. in room 125 of the neighboring Isabelle Rutherford Meyer Nursing Education Center. Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public.
The exhibition will feature recent paintings by Huckaby, who is prominent Fort Worth artist. The work is inspired by his family, faith, and heritage. Huckaby is known most recently for both quilt paintings and a series of portraits called The 99%.
Huckaby has made large paintings of family quilts with very heavy applications of paint. His late grandmother made quilts and now the paintings are a type of artist-to-artist dialogue. He views the paintings as a way of honoring the love that went in to making the quilts that kept the family warm.
Another series by Huckaby involved a number of portraits depicting ordinary people in his family and community, which he calls The 99%. The origin of the term is a political slogan used by the Occupy Wall Street movement to refer to the income and wealth inequality in the United States. He creates the portraits of everyday average people to find out what is important to them and to have the paintings act as an extension of their voice.
Huckaby earned his undergraduate degree at Boston University and his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale. He returned to his native Fort Worth to be near his family and to teach at the University of Texas at Arlington. He has exhibited extensively through the south and the East Coast. His many awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. His paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the MFA Boston, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The gallery of the Baugh Center for the Visual Arts is open 9:00 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.
