STEPHENVILLE (July 16, 2018) — Tarleton State University associate professor of art Chris Ireland is the featured artist at a solo photographic exhibition at Texas Tech beginning in late August.
His collection of works, Ordinary Time, will be shown at the SRO Photo Gallery in Lubbock, beginning Aug. 25.
“I am excited and honored to show at Texas Tech University Photo Gallery this summer,” he said. “They have a great program and faculty in their photography area, and I will be traveling through Lubbock this summer to put up the show.”
The one-man exhibition features work that is extremely personal to him.
“The genesis of my current photographic exploration of the family came from great tragedy,” he said. “My mother recently passed away after a long bout with brain damage due to injuries sustained from a fall while vacationing in 2015.”
After her accident, Ireland returned home several times to see how his father and brother were adjusting to their inevitable life changes.
“Taking my camera along as always, I began to document my home and my family,” Ireland said. “My brother and father are continuing their lives in the face of change, but they also face a unique set of circumstances due to their own health.”
He’d tackled a similar project a decade earlier when he left home to pursue his master’s degree at Washington State University.
“The photos I had taken in 2006, combined with images taken 10 years later, reveal that the daily patterns and rhythms of life do not change but adapt to the new family dynamic that has been created.”
Besides his solo show in Lubbock, Ireland’s summer includes visits to Colorado, Southeast Texas, the East Coast and the Metroplex.
He’ll travel to Snowmass Village in Colorado to work with photographer and Yale Professor Lisa Kereszi at a workshop at the Anderson Art Ranch later this month.
Ireland also is invited to participate in the 36th Annual Juried Membership Exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography, where he is one of 38 artists chosen from more than 200 worldwide submissions.
The event runs from July 20 through August 26.
Other group exhibitions featuring his work this summer are Absence or Essence, hosted by the Specto Art Space in Bridgewater, Va., which began July 12, and the Members Exhibition at 500X Gallery in Dallas in August.
“All year I maintain an active studio practice,” he said, “but summer can be the best time for research, and to make work and get it out there. Hopefully, that is a positive example for my students to follow as well.”
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