ESR
Artist Biography
ESR is a contemporary mixed media artist who currently lives and works in Dallas Texas. ESR's works are a suspension between painting and sculpture, resulting in semi-malleable three-dimensional forms with pronounced textures and colors.
ESR graduated with a B.A. in Humanities from the Liberal Arts Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. She then received her doctorate from the University of Texas at Houston Medical School. Intent on interweaving the visual with the scientific, ESR trained as a Radiologist at the University of Pittsburgh and obtained sub-specialty certification in musculoskeletal imaging at the University of Washington.
While pursuing her education, ESR won 1st place for photography in the 2001 UT Austin ECHO Literary Magazine competition. During Medical school, she was named as one of the winners of the 2007 Research Illustration Masterpiece Contest, with her work “Genesis”, being selected for permanent instillation at the UT Houston Replacement Research Facility. Pieces from her series “Petals” were showcased in the Texas Sculpture Association Member show in 2018, and she has works in private collections in various cities including New York, Dallas, San Antonio and Birmingham.
Artist Statement
I draw on my training in medical imaging for inspiration, as it emphasizes an appreciation for the fundamental components and relationships that combine to make up an organism. Science is simply a form of art, just viewed on a different scale. In science as in art, we search for patterns and for meaning, so that nothing should be confined to what it seems.
I extrapolate from my training in medical imaging to create avant-garde forms using unexpected, reclaimed and often under-appreciated materials to build pieces that are a transition between the 2D and 3D.
Michael Roth
Artist Biography
As a collaboration with his daughter, Michael Roth started building sculptures from crepe myrtle harvested from properties around Dallas and using other, often reclaimed-materials found locally during the Covid pandemic. He retired from a 44-year career in biological sciences in 2022. As a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center he had explored the underlying chemical biology of diabetes and cancer and the cellular biology of normal tissues. His interest in visual arts began during several years living in Europe and prowling its major museums between 1969 and 1973. After moving to Dallas in 1985, he collected art produced by young contemporary artists so that his two children would grow up surrounded by visual art.
Artist Statement
The early development of our human intellect works against our ability to see and enjoy visual art. When we first learn to talk, we simultaneously learn to label the things we see so that by naming them we can build our vocabulary. However, this has the unfortunate consequence, that we tend to stop noticing the details of something once we have named the object. This is useful on a daily basis because we learn to focus on what is important and ignore the rest. But the cost of this utility is a loss of appreciation for both beauty and subtlety.
For instance, there is beauty in the spaces between the limbs of a tree and not just in the limbs themselves. Furthermore, there is beauty in the underlying geometry of a landscape, a seascape, or a city scape. Cezanne showed us this in his paintings. My artistic inspiration is to help the viewer to unlearn the habit of labeling, to stop them from trying to imagine a narrative or a hidden meaning and thereby free that person to see the simple beauty in the spatial relationships confronting them.
