Langdon Review 2007
The annual publication of Tarleton State University is featuring my paintings. Charles Lohrmann wrote a very kind article.
Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center
The Wildflower Center in Austin, TX has chosen my Coneflowers, as the art for 2006. Check their web site:
www.wildflower.org
Austin Museum of Art
Dana Friis-Hansen, the director of the Austin Museum of Art, has included
my paintings in Gardens Real and Imagined at Austin Museum of Art-Laguna
Gloria. The exhibit will be up for a year, ending in the fall of 2005.
www.amoa.org
Tribeza
The April 2005 Issue of Tribeza featured my watercolors.
Art in the Embassy
Two of my paintings were in United States Embassies in Switzerland
and Swaziland.
The Choice Project
I painted five tile murals for the new Planned Parenthood center
in Austin, and they were installed in October 2004 in the courtyard.
Texas Book Festival
I was chosen as featured artist of the 2003 Texas Book Festival.
My acrylic Red Leaves and Cactus was the poster image
for the festival.
Rome Journal
I kept a journal during my month in Rome, and it helped me focus
my thoughts on art. I made myself complete
a page each day, and the ritual of writing (and assembling images)
made me more aware of everything I was seeing and learning. I also
walked through Rome, "shopping" for images that were important
to me at that time. In fact, the title for my McMurtrey Gallery
show for 2003 Artichokes in Ecstasy refers to Bernini's great
sculpture Saint Teresa in Ecstasy.I was also influenced
by Raphael's ceiling design full of vegetables in the Villa Farnesina.
In fact, I got so excited looking at that ceiling that I painted
ten paintings while in my own state of ecstasy.
View Journal
Six Feet of Blood
In episode 28 of Six Feet Under a disgruntled former employee
guns down his boss. His blood is seen splattered across my poster,
Santa Monica Palisades.
Click
here: HBO: Six Feet Under
International Artist
International
Artist featured my work in eight pages of Issue 35 (February/March
2004). On the cover there is even a picture of me painting.
The Governor's Mansion
Four of my paintings were on display at the Texas Governor's Mansion
in Austin as part of a fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Association.
Actually, the art for the event was on display in a circus-sized
tent on the mansion's grounds. Visiting the mansion gave me the
chance to enjoy some of the paintings in the state's collection,
including the work of Texas painters Julian Onderdonk and his father,
Robert. An interesting painting by Robert Onderdonk depicting Davy
Crockett at the Alamo hangs in the entry hall of the mansion. (My
great grandfather talked Julian O. into painting his favorite fishing
hole on the Guadalupe River.)
Wading in Market Square Park: Public Art in Houston
A few years ago, an organization called Diverse Works hired me to
collaborate with a group of artists to design Market Square Park
in Houston. Walter Hopps, best known for his work with the Menil
Collection, and Caroline Huber chose the artists with help from
Bill Camfield and Marti Mayo. James Surls's sculpture was placed
in the center, so I decided my benches would work best on the four
sides of the park. The curved forms of the benches started as a
response to Surls's swirling sculpture, and I left a space between
benches to act as a view corridor to his sculpture.
There are two benches on each street, and each bench is 14 feet
long. I painted images on both the front and back of the bench seats.
In response to the park's name, Market Square, each scene is something
that could be sold in a market: hats, china, flowers, vegetables.
The first of the new fountains is a picnic with paper plates, tomatoes,
knives, forks, napkins, and crackers. The second is a still life
with tons of oranges, apples, figs, and strawberries. I went to
Costco and bought every fruit they had in large bags and arranged
them on the lawn and photographed the whole ménage from an
eight-foot ladder.
http://www.publicartinla.com/other_cities/houston/flato_ceramic_seats_fountain.html
http://www.menil.org/
Le plus simple, le plus art
I've thought about these words of Henri Matisse for twenty years.
Literally, it means, "The more simple, the more art."
I strive for simplicity because, in a sense, simplicity is perfection.
And by the way . . .
Art Museum of South Texas is one of the museums in Texas where
I've had work exhibited.
www.stia.org
My husband . . .
John Taliaferro had a great review in the New York Times
Book Review for Great
White Fathers: The Story of the Obsessive Quest to Create Mount
Rushmore. His new book "In a Far Country" published in 2006 is also wonderful.
Collaboration
My favorite ceramic work in Public Art was a project I did with
my brother and his partner (Lake/Flato Architects) for the city
of San Antonio.
www.lakeflato.com
