Texas Artists Today by Catherine D. Anspon

This lively, lavishly illustrated volume offers a fresh take on the mid-career players (plus a few up-and-comers) upon the rich canvas of Texas’s art scene. Sixty-two artists are surveyed—none of whom have been represented before in a monographic book—via insider studio tours, portraits, and examples of their work, accompanied by concise essays that elucidate each talent's intent, inspiration, and working methods. The first book in a decade to highlight the visualists who create at the epicenters of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, Texas Artists Today also ventures to lesser-known locales, including Lubbock on the plains of West Texas (meet The Wheeler Brothers and William Cannings) and Nacogdoches, deep in the state's piney woods, where Mary McCleary makes her obsessive works on paper that resemble Roman mosaics more than contemporary collages. Important and prominent artists such as Dario Robleto and Franco Mondini-Ruiz—both Whitney Biennial–exhibited—are explored, as well as those who deserve to be more widely known, including Sharon Kopriva of the epic mummy installations; Sharon Engelstein, whose sculpture exists at the intersection of art and design; Neva Mikulicz, whose extraordinary animated drawings are both nostalgic and futuristic; and Ludwig Schwarz, who devises wry interventions in commerce and global production. Texas Artists Today provides the reader tantalizing—and unprecedented—access to these protagonists and more. Published in a collectible, limited edition of 3,000 hand-numbered copies, this memorable survey is presented in an oversized format, producing an art tome as big as Texas.