The work of artist Ethel Shipton continues on exhibit through June 3 at the Laredo Center for the Arts in a collection called “Los Dos Laredos y Más.”
Shipton, a native Laredoan now working and residing in San Antonio, is one of the first three artists on board with the LC4A’s Art Acquisition Project to develop a permanent collection of art by local and regional contemporary artists.
The Shipton exhibit opened with a reception on April 8.
According to the artist, her practice is informed by a strong conceptual base that encompasses a variety of expression through painting, installation, photography, and text. She said she spotlights instants of clarity that flit by in the comings and goings of daily life.
Her past works have centered on ideas of urban scenes, language, and attempts to process information.
“Space and time, movement and place I see going hand and hand. These two elements continue to be groundwork for my artwork. We all continue to move between time and space on a moment-by-moment basis,” Shipton said.
A 1981 graduate of Nixon High School, Shipton earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas – Austin in 1989. She worked for the Texas House of Representatives as a photographer for more than eight years. She lived and worked in Mexico City in 1990 and 1992, and then returned to Texas.
She is represented by Ruiz-Healy Gallery in San Antonio and New York and has exhibited at numerous galleries, including Artspace in San Antonio; Museum of Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM; Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum, San Antonio; Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Beach, CA; Austin Museum of Art; Women and Their Work Gallery, Austin; Sala Diaz, San Antonio; and Studio Santa Catarina, Mexico City.
In 2011, Shipton was awarded Artist Honoree of the year at Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum.
The Museo del Barrio in New York City recently acquired her work for its collection.
The public is invited to view the Shipton exhibit at 500 San Agustín. For further information, go to www.LaredoArtCenter.org or call (956) 725-1715.
Artist Statement
Los Dos Laredos is a space from my past. It conjures the border towns of my youth, Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. This place, now so changed, lives on in my memories and in the stories my family chooses to tell. It is a magical place, and a large one with a combined population of 775,481. Together the two towns spread over 786.26 square miles. There, people moved freely back and forth across a river, between two cities, between two countries, and between two languages.
My being comes from Los Dos Laredos. Where you see both sides and you listen twice. Where anything can happen, and the things that we are told are opposite like good/bad, ugly/ beautiful, dark/light — exist within and for each other, in close relation. Much like an accordion, Los Dos Laredos moves in and out, producing a unique and ever-changing sound.
The vantage point I occupy – of the two sides within a single experience creates a layered, complicated picture. I act as witness to these two worlds that once were one, and as a witness to this space of in-between: the border/ la Frontera. The in-between, where life-changing events have and continue to happen. Events that forever alter the way the world is seen. This intertwined history has become the present-day reality and rhetoric of borders, which echoes globally.
I am grateful to be not from the edge of one place, but from of the outer boundary of two places.
This perspective allows views that most don’t get to see: Los Dos Laredos has given me and those who inhabit this place a view of the world in all its true complexity.
