Catching up with the Rising Stars Benefiting Turner House

Mary Tomas Gallery welcomes three previous Rising Stars from the Oak Cliff Society of Fine Arts and shows their current work. Part of the proceeds will benefit the Turner House in Oak Cliff.

Juan Cruz is still a student at the University of Texas at Dallas. His mono-prints in sequence describe the sorrow and fear imposed by drug cartels. The image, combining poppy flowers, a serpent (in the form of a question mark), and a woman holding a baby, is printed in different colors with added texture, until the violence breaks out, making the rest less perceptible.

Riley Holloway just completed a solo exhibition at the South Dallas Cultural Center. In that exhibition, he paid homage to Harlem Renaissance. Borrowing compositions including that of Monet, he re-tooled the timeless images of the past with portraits of his circles, stylized in contemporary fashion. As a whole, they are stimulating paintings. One of them is offered in the current show. But I am not totally convinced. What has changed, since the age of Romare Bearden, is our own sense and sensibility. That universality of the human condition re-imagined through a personal narrative of African American culture feels tepid at the best.

Megan Ping continues her exploration with unusual material (duct tape) on political or pop culture themes. A few paintings were lying on a table. I looked down and noticed a female figure holding a gun toward me. Sex, money, and gun violence have never left the American psyche, but what could still remain stirring, after Andy Warhol?