Tyson Ten: Artists and Scholars In Conversation

Join us for an afternoon of conversation between artists and scholars to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Tyson Scholars of American Art. Each panel features alumni from the Tyson Scholars program thinking alongside artists to investigate historical and contemporary art and culture.

Not a program to be missed, we hope to see you there! Check out speaker and panel details below.

Free, tickets required. Reserve your spot online or by calling Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.

Panel 1, 1 – 2:30 pm | Urban Palimpsest: The Work of Patrick Martinez

Drawing on the metaphorical use and material practice of the palimpsest, a text washed to unveil visible traces of the urban landscape, this conversation with L.A.-based artist Patrick Martinez will unfurl sedimentary layers composing his practice. Each layer crystallizes a resonant topos from which a panelist will comment. By thinking through the “entre” or in-between spaces of his work, different perspectives will illuminate the role of consumption culture, public art spatial politics, inter-ethnic collaboration, and neon-keyed pathways toward social transformation.

Robb Hernandez, Associate Professor of English, Fordham University (Tyson Scholar 2018)
Breanne Robertson, Education Specialist, National Archives Museum (Tyson Scholar 2014-2015)
Lesley Wolff, Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa (Tyson Scholar 2020)
Patrick Martinez, artist

Panel 2, 2:30 – 4 pm | Edges of Indigenous Materiality: The Work of Anna Tsouhlarakis

Anna Tsouhlarakis works across a diverse array of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, and performance. She has described her practice as challenging and redefining the boundaries of aesthetic and conceptual expectations with Native American art. While each panelist will bring to the conversation their own perspectives as curators, practitioners, and scholars, this panel will explore and engage with the concepts of borders and boundaries in Tsouhlarakis’ work, particularly as they relate to issues of materiality, land and land use, embedded histories of place, and the complexities of identity and gender roles.

Marin R. Sullivan, Independent Art Historian and Curator (Tyson Scholar, 2018)
Klinton Burgio-Ericson, Assistant Professor, Art History, Texas Tech University (Tyson Scholar 2016-2017)
Matthew Limb, PhD student, University of California (Tyson Scholar 2022-2023)
Anna Tsouhlarakis, artist, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder

Panel 3, 4:14 – 5:45 pm | Documented Threads: The Work of Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, 4:15-5:45

How does a project start? How do you know when it’s finished? In this panel, three former Tyson Scholars, in conversation with artist Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, reflect on individual process and the act of making. While the outputs of a given project may vary—a publication, an exhibition, a weaving—thinking about creative process across categories offers new insights. With Underwood’s work as a guiding focus, this panel will center on themes of process, materials, and the multivalent meanings of documentation.

Amy Torbert, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of American Art, Saint Louis Art Museum (Tyson Scholar, 2015-2016)
Susan Rather, Meredith and Cornelia Long Chair of Art and Art History, University of Texas at Austin (Tyson Scholar, 2012-2013)
Julia Silverman, PhD candidate, History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University (Tyson Scholar, 2021-2022)
Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, artist

Patrick Martinez

Patrick Martinez maintains a diverse practice that includes mixed media landscape paintings, neon sign pieces, cake paintings, and his Pee Chee series of appropriative works. The landscape paintings are abstractions composed of Los Angeles surface content; e.g. distressed stucco, spray paint, window security bars, vinyl signage, ceramic tile, neon sign elements, and other recognizable materials. These works serve to evoke place and socio-economic position, and further unearth sites of personal, civic, and cultural loss.

Anna Tsouhlarakis

Anna Tsouhlarakis received her BA from Dartmouth College with degrees in Native American Studies and Studio Art. She went on to receive her MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. Tsouhlarakis has participated in various art residencies, including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at Colorado College for the 2019-2020 academic year.

Tsouhlarakis’s work has been part of national and international exhibitions at venues such as NEON Foundation in Athens, Greece; White Frame in Basel, Switzerland; Rush Arts in New York; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts; Utah Museum of Fine Arts; the Heard Museum; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. She has upcoming exhibitions at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; the University of Denver; and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. She is a Creative Capital Award recipient for 2021. Other recent awards include fellowships from the Harpo Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work appears in several anthologies of Native American art, including the recently published Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices from 1950 to Now.

In the fall of 2022, Tsouhlarakis will be part of the National Portrait Gallery’s Portraiture Now: Kinship exhibition in Washington, DC, and will also have performances throughout the year in the NPG as part of the IDENTIFY: Performance Art as Portraiture series.

Tsouhlarakis is Greek, Creek, and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and lives and works in Colorado.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood was born in Sacramento, California, the daughter of migrant agricultural workers, a Chicano mother and a father of Huichol Indian descent. Consuelo’s work ranges from delicate miniature tapestries to monumental fiber and mixed media installations juxtaposing the natural beauty and ecological destruction along the US/Mexico border. Consuelo has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally for more than thirty years. Her work is part of the permanent collections of museums such as the Smithsonian American Museum of Art, Museum of Art & Design in New York, the National Hispanic Center for the Arts, New Mexico, the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. She was awarded the 2017 Master Artist Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture and was elected to the Council of Fellows of the American Craft Council in 2018. She was a 2021 recipient of the James Renwick Alliance for Craft Masters of the Medium Award.