MEDIA CONTACT:
Vanessa Ormsby, RCA Communications Manager
(361) 729-5519 / vanessa@rockportartcenter.com
ROCKPORT, Texas (Sept. 6, 2023) —Rockport Center for the Arts (RCA) is hosting two new shows beginning in September: To Put it Bluntly, Sept. 22–Nov. 12, featuring the creative box collages by Mary Jenewein, and Let There Be Flight, Sept. 29–Nov. 17, showcasing the lifelike bird sculptures of Spencer Tinkham.
Both exhibitions will be on display and available for collection at the downtown Rockport Center for the Arts galleries. A public reception with Mary Jenewein will be held Friday, Sept. 22, from 5–7 p.m., while an artist talk with Spencer Tinkham will be held Friday, Sept. 29, at 1:30 p.m. with a reception that evening from 5–7 p.m. Leading up to his exhibition opening, Tinkham also will host a Sept. 26 lecture for RCA members; a Sept. 27 Whooping Crane soap sculpting class with commentary from Dr. Liz Smith, Coastal Bend research scientist, conservation planner, and Whooping Crane expert; and a Sept. 28 macro sculpting class on carving and painting a feather. Space is limited for all events and those interested should sign up through the RCA website, www.rockportartcenter.com.
To Put it Bluntly is scheduled for the McKelvey Charitable Fund Gallery featuring Mary Jenewein’s unique boxes, or cages as she refers to them, each making a statement by depicting an event or facet of life.
“The beauty of Mary Jenewein’s shadowboxes veils the sincere and sobering scenes they depict,” said Elena Rodriguez, former curator of exhibitions for Rockport Center for the Arts. “Jenewein uses symbols and allegory to describe injustices that she has seen and experienced in her own personal life.”
“Every artist has something stuck in her craw; she coughs and coughs and sometimes it comes out,” said Jenewein. “I want my art to hit people in the head with a baseball bat. If this is activism, this is what I do.”
Born in Franklin, Tennessee, in 1933 to an Asian father and Caucasian mother, and raised in Savannah, Georgia, Jenewein recalls growing up in the segregated South, surrounded by bigotry, racism, and cruelty. Aware of the unfairness of things early on, she later drew from these experiences to create her art.
“When I was little, my mom and I made peepshows of shoe boxes, magazine cutouts, colored cellophane and a light hanging above. We looked through a hole cut in the side and saw a tiny world. That world became my world and I was at the mercy of the owners of that place. Through all these years of making art, painting, sculpting, collaging, and anything else I could try, I have made boxes. The box gave me the form to hold my content. It is small, confined, claustrophobic.”
Jenewein graduated in 1955 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, with a B.A. in Political Science. She moved to Houston in 1965 and later took art classes at the University of Houston from 1983-85. She has showcased her work in dozens of group and solo exhibitions through the years and has been featured in numerous publications.
With most sculptures made from found and nature-based materials, Let There Be Flight will be featured in the Jeanie & Bill Wyatt Gallery showcasing several lifelike contemporary wildlife sculptures and four incredibly detailed feather macro sculptures of Spencer Tinkham.
“Almost like specimens in a science museum, Spencer Tinkham’s macro sculptures are studies and methodical,” said Rodriguez. “But there is nothing ‘wooden’ about these objects, under Tinkham’s chisel, bird feathers come to life, as whimsical and vivacious as the personalities of the avian from which they come.”
As a child, nothing enthralled Tinkham more than large flocks of hungry waterfowl wintering behind his home in Norfolk, Va. He first discovered his carving and sculpting talents after receiving a pocketknife from his grandfather at the age of 8, creating lasting mementos of his fleeting waterfowl encounters. Completely self-taught with no formal training, by the time he graduated high school, Tinkham was a two-time winner of the Danzer Frazer Youth Decorative Wildfowl World Championship.
“I first started carving and sculpting things I could find around the house, like bars of soap and wood scraps,” said Tinkham. “I then moved on to life-sized duck decoys to lure waterfowl closer so I could critique my work next to wild birds. To this day, so much of my inspiration often stems from sightings while searching for my materials.”
The award-winning Tinkham received his B.S. in Economics in 2015 from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and has since appeared in several solo exhibitions as well as inclusion four years in the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum Birds in Art juried exhibition, with his 2022 entry, “Colaptes auratus” (Northern Flicker), subsequently being acquired for the museum collection. In 2022 he participated in Atrium Artists in Residence with the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, was a 2023 finalist for the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year, and is an Associate Member of the National Sculpture Society. His work is collected and exhibited internationally, including the Dollar Tree, Inc. corporate art collection.
For more information on Rockport Center for the Arts, visit rockportartcenter.com follow RCA on Facebook, or call (361) 729-5519.
About Rockport Center for the Arts and The Rockport Conference Center (The ROCC)
The new 1.2-acre Rockport Center for the Arts is located a block away from Aransas Bay in the heart of the Rockport Cultural Arts District. Designed by the award-winning team at Richter Architects, the state-of-the-art campus features a two-story, 14,000-square-foot, visual arts and education building with four galleries and five classrooms (204 S. Austin St.); a one-story, 8,000-square-foot conference and event center, known as The ROCC, including a 4,400-square-foot ballroom and culinary arts kitchen (106 S. Austin St.); with a 16,000-square-foot Sculpture Garden serving as a visually inspiring transition space between the two buildings. The hours of operation for the showroom, galleries, and gift shop are Tuesday–Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and Sunday from noon–4 p.m. Admission is always free. For information on event space, or to book an event, call (361) 450-8033. For general information and to become a member, visit rockportartcenter.com, follow RCA on Facebook, or call (361) 729-5519.
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