WT Art Professor Hopes New Exhibition in Lubbock Sparks Conversation

Copy by Chip Chandler, 806-651-2124, cchandler@wtamu.edu

CANYON, Texas — A West Texas A&M University art professor will explore the intersection of environmentalism and feminism in an upcoming exhibition in Lubbock.

Misty Gamble, an assistant professor of art in WT’s Sybil B. Harrington College of Fine Arts and Humanities, will open “Of Flesh and the Feminine” on Sept. 1 at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, 511 Avenue K in Lubbock.

The exhibition will be on view through Oct. 28, and LHUCA will host receptions at two First Friday Art Trail events on Sept. 1 and Oct. 6.

Gamble’s exhibition will include eight life-sized feminine ceramic busts, which will boast fantastical baroque hairstyles and work as pedestals for a bouquet of animal fragments. Atop each head will sit a woven cage festooned in symbols of conspicuous consumption.

“For artists, there is nothing more currently pressing than engaging in discourse about the earth and all its inhabitants,” Gamble said. “We must look to art, activism, our stories and our knowledge to help others in future generations survive this planet.”

Gamble said art is a particularly democratic way of creating conversations.

“Honestly, I feel like it’s important for me to move beyond myself to bring about change, create conversations, expose new ways of seeing in an attempt to do better personally and for the environment and the animals,” she said. “Art has this unique way of getting people to express themselves as viewers and makers while creating multiple points of entry for others to see and think and know things beyond the literal.”

Gamble, who also serves as 3D area head in WT’s Department of Art, Theatre and Dance, won a Killgore Faculty Research Grant from WT for the exhibition, which she plans to exhibit statewide and beyond.

She has been awarded long-term residencies and fellowships at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, New Harmony Clay Project and the Armory Art Center and short-term residencies as an invited artist at Watershed, Project Art, C.R.E.T.A. Rome, SACI Florence, Woodstock Byrdcliffe, Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences, University of Montana, Buffalo Creek Art Center, Rowan University, Wildacres, and Vermont Studio Center.  

Gamble is the Founder of Studio Nong: International Sculpture collective and residency program and the TAMUS Women of Ceramics. She exhibits her work both nationally and internationally. 

Fostering an appreciation of the arts is a key component of the University’s long-range plan, WT 125: From the Panhandle to the World.

That plan is fueled by the historic, $125 million One West comprehensive fundraising campaign. To date, the campaign — which publicly launched in September 2021— has raised more than $125 million and will continue through 2025.

About West Texas A&M University

WT is located in Canyon, Texas, on a 342-acre residential campus. Established in 1910, the University has been part of The Texas A&M University System since 1990. WT, a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2016, boasts an enrollment of about 10,000 and offers 59 undergraduate degree programs and more than 40 graduate degrees, including two doctoral degrees. The University is also home to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, the largest history museum in the state and the home of one of the Southwest’s finest art collections. The Buffaloes are a member of the NCAA Division II Lone Star Conference and offers 14 men’s and women’s athletics programs.

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