Belton, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Art Department and the College of Visual and Performing Arts are proud to present the exhibition Margie Crisp and William B. Montgomery: Opposing Currents from Monday, January 9, to February 3, in the gallery of the Baugh Center for Visual Arts on the UMHB campus. A gallery talk and public reception will be held at 5:00 pm on Monday, January 9.
The theme of the exhibit is Texas natural history portraying not just the attractive and charismatic critters, but the iconoclastic, ill-tempered, spiny, and scaly plants and animals that inhabit the state.
Featured works include original paintings, drawings and etchings, some of which were created for book publications focusing on Texas rivers. River of Contrasts: The Texas Colorado authored by Margie Crisp in 2012 is being followed by Crisp and Montgomery’s collaborative work, The Nueces River: Río Escondido due out in April 2017. Their work is also included in the forthcoming Of Texas River and Texas Art.
Crisp has a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and is a member of the Contemporary Texas Regionalists group. Her lithographs, hand-colored linocuts, drawings, and paintings can be found in private and public collections across the United States and Mexico. She was a writer in residence at the Thinking Like a Mountain Foundation in Fort Davis, Texas. Her book, River of Contrasts: The Texas Colorado, received the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters' Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction and the 2012 Ron Tyler Award for Best Illustrated Book on Texas History and Culture.
Born and raised in the piney woods of East Texas, Montgomery studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of New Mexico. A full time painter and printmaker, his images of Texas creatures and their habitats are collected throughout the United States and abroad. He is known in the international herpetological community for his reptile etchings and lithographs that combine exact scientific depiction with the animal’s innate sensuous beauty. Based on the tradition of the early natural history engravings, these scientifically accurate, yet artistically exquisite etchings and lithographs have been commissioned for a variety of publications.
The gallery of the Baugh Center for the Visual Arts is open 9:00 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information visit http://undergrad.umhb.edu/art/ or contact Hershall Seals at hseals@umhb.edu.
