Lunchtime conversations that feed the mind

Exhibiting artist Anna Mayer (Artist, Associate Professor, School of Art) and Sarah Darro (Curator, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft)

Date:

Wednesday, January 24, 2024 (12:00pm-1:00pm)

Location:

Blaffer Art Museum

Format:

Join us for a discussion between exhibiting artist Anna Mayer and curator Sarah Darro centering on the artist’s work in Intimate confession is a project. The conversation will uncover the concepts, methods, and context for the artist’s work and practice. Afterwards, continue the conversation over lunch, provided  

About the Artist

ANNA MAYER revels in the fact that historically ceramic has been used to create highly functional items as well as intensely symbolic objects. Through projects that enact various kinds of burial and recovery, she points to extractive and exploitative human behaviors towards the land. In the last several years Mayer has made eco-critical artworks out of grief, about mourning, and to chart how influence and mutuality operate between generations of family and eras of art history. Recent solo exhibitions include the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston Jung Center, and A-B Projects (CA). Group exhibitions include Artpace (TX), Blaffer Art Museum (TX), Ballroom Marfa (TX), California Museum of Photography, Hammer Museum (CA), Glasgow International (UK), and Catherine Bastide Gallery (BE). Her work has been written about in X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, Momus, Los Angeles Magazine, and CFile. Mayer is a 2023-24 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and in 2025 will mount a solo exhibition at Rubin Center for the Visual Arts (TX).

SARAH DARRO (she/her/hers) is a curator, writer, and visual anthropologist working at the nexus of contemporary art, craft, and design. She has established an intersectional curatorial vision that is invested in reinvigorating museum spaces as forums for discourse, innovation, action, and engagement through experience. She is the founder of Green Room Gallery, a moveable kunsthalle and dedicated long-form color study. She lives and works in Houston, TX, where she is the Curator and Exhibitions Director of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.

Image:
Anna Mayer
Pale Clay (Unknown Grid 8)
2022
Hooked rug with dyed canvas and inked tips, mounted on wood panel
16 x 12 x 2 1/2 in.
Courtesy of the artist