Iris Bechtol is an artist, educator, and curator living in Oak Cliff - Dallas, TX. With a passion for sharing the work of emerging and underrepresented artists, her curatorial practice carefully considers exhibition projects as they reflect the community. Creating access through education, her projects present diverse perspectives in a platform that combines exhibitions with engaging discussions, workshops, and lectures. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Intermedia from the University of Texas at Arlington and is currently the Gallery and Permanent Collections Manager at Eastfield College in Mesquite, TX. Bechtol was an integral member of Texas’ oldest artist collaborative, 500X Gallery from 2001-2005. She is founder and curator for Terrain Dallas, a temporary public exhibition space which ran from December 2014 to October 2016 with a focus on exhibiting site specific, temporary interventions by established and emerging artists in and around the conventional landscape of a suburban front yard. Her studio practice is oriented around a phenomenological approach, exploring the relationship between the body and the environment through abstracted forms. Using various materials and methods, her work aims to encourage others to contemplate the idea of “selfhood,” how we are connected to our surroundings, and how that impacts the body’s place in the world.
An early and pervasive paranormal experience guides Leah Flook’s investigation into the ‘Goat Man.’ She creates spaces to evade, lure, misdirect, and ensnare the elusive phantom. Drawing from references of cat and mouse scenarios like Wile E. Coyote, Scream, and Home Alone she is able to explore the relationship of predator, prey, and bait to fit within her own narrative. Flook creates spaces in which physical confines are eliminated and where thoughts can be explored freely. She states, “Here, in this place I bring to life, I can now control my fears; I can play pretend.”
Born in London and raised in Münster, Germany, Francesca Fuchs moved to the U.S. in 1996 for the Core Program at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She makes paintings that consider closely the overlooked intimacies that shape our lives, giving careful attention to family relationships, objects of the everyday, quiet moments, and what art offers when it enters our personal spaces. Fuchs’ work has been shown in venues including The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Suburban, Illinois; and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. She was the 2017 Josephine Mercy Heathcote Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, and Art League Houston’s 2018 Texas Artist of the Year.
Margaret Meehan is interested in the body. Not necessarily in how it works, but more in how it has been perceived throughout history. Born in the 1970s and educated in the 1990s during the emergence of third-wave feminism and the Riot Grrrl movement, she is drawn to cycles of representation—in particular, the tendency for women to be depicted as monsters. Meehan’s work undertakes a research-based, multidisciplinary exploration of difference, acceptance and aggression. While much of the work pulls from film, music and popular culture, it also references folklore and traditional crafts.
Meehan’s work has been shown at ArtPace San Antonio, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, The Dallas Museum of Art as well as Soil Art Gallery in Seattle, Flowers Gallery in London, David Shelton Gallery in Houston, Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas and Ulterior Gallery in New York, NY. Awards and residencies include the Nasher Sculpture Center Microgrant (2015), Artpace, San Antonio, TX (2014), The Lighthouse Works Fellowship, Fishers Island, NY (2013), Bemis Center, Omaha, NE (2009), the Dozier Travel Grant, Dallas Museum of Art, TX (2008). Her work has been featured in the Guardian, Sculpture Magazine, Patron Magazine, Pastelegram and Artforum, among others.
Greg Meza is an artist based in Dallas, TX. His loose approach to painting and sculpture combine a sensitivity to the fragility of found materials and happenstance with an interest in american film and photographic iconography of the 1970-1990s. Meza utilizes a provisional approach to art making in which found materials and formal concerns, based as much in an interest in graphic design as in painting, overlap.
Cassie Phan is an artist and educator working in Galveston, Texas. She received her MFA from the University of North Texas in 2013 and works primarily in multimedia installations of video, objects and drawing. Her work often questions perception, memory and the mechanisms of resilience through subjective experiences. She has exhibited work nationally, with solo exhibitions at venues including Art League Houston, Terrain Dallas, and Beefhaus. She currently teaches for Blinn College and for the Galveston Arts Center’s Art for All educational outreach program.
Brent Ozaeta is a Dallas-based painter/printmaker. His work is known for its flat graphic style influenced heavily by Japanese animation and pop culture. He collages various imagery and fragmented patterns together to produce his paintings and works on paper. He works also on a variety of other projects including zines, gig-posters, and t-shirt designs. Ozaeta was a recipient of the Dallas Museum of Art Degoyler artist award, has been featured in New American Paintings and was included in the Texas Biennial.
Jessica Sinks is a Dallas based artist and educator. She received her BFA from MICA and her MFA from NYU. She has exhibited work in NYC, Dallas and Fort Worth. Currently she is teaching at UNT in Denton and working in book repair at the Book Doctor in Oak Cliff.
Andrea Tosten is a calligrapher and a bookbinder. She has been doing calligraphy for over 15 years and teaching it at Oil and Cotton for over seven years. She has been bookbinding at The Book Doctor for over six years. She has a Bachelor of Science in BioMedical Science from Texas A&M University and a Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from the University of Oklahoma.
Audrey Travis holds an MFA in sculpture from Texas Christian University and a BFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She was most recently awarded the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Fund grant from the Dallas Museum of Art, following her residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany. Her current work explores monumentality through material, scale, and space. Travis lives and works in Dallas/Fort Worth where she is an Adjunct Professor of Art at Texas Christian University.