Discover the Intersection of Art, Metal and Technology in Texas

Natural Dialogue at Connemara Conservancy is a series of works created by artists who normally would not consider themselves sculptors. They are professionals engaging in daily commerce activities during the week. The objects presented at Connemara speak to the joy
of their visual sensibility. Every Saturday morning during the spring they gathered at Dallas College Bill J. Priest Center to produce the works for Natural Dialogue.

The metal objects combine raw and recycled materials constructing man-made forms and natural objects. Provocative all their own, they speak to a visual language so accustomed in our urban environments.

Bart Hamlin explores the use of discarded logs and adopts the shape of a grass blade. The seriality of the log and grass seem to reorganize roadside log piles and organized lawns.

Sean Furrh reconstructs canisters used for compressed liquid to resemble trumpet flowers. Against an overgrown tree-line the objects seemly embracing the entropy of both material and craftsmanship.

Laura Freeland guides the participant with two picturesque frame views. At a glance, the first frame favors a vine engrossed in a geometric structure, up close the asymmetrical composition makes no pretense of its exploration of organic shapes. Her second frame, placed in the meadow also examines seriality within the two-dimensional plane, while Furrh breaks the plane with the same material. Both embrace materiality while simulating a folk-art quilt pattern.

Marta Balleste provides an arrangement of volume with reinforcement steel. The structural tension material articulates sound through
texture, an appropriate use for a twelve-foot guitar.

Donald Judd wrote, “Everything made is art.” Consider the aesthetic collaboration of the materials used in each of the objects and how it may resonate with the human experience.
Like the Meadow is a living entity, so too are these objects made by their makers.

Art Garcia, MA, MFA
Curator