Travis Somerville

Travis Somerville is an American artist (b.1963) based in San Francisco, California. Known for tackling Southern racial issues, Somerville’s works incorporate collage, painting and sculptural elements, as well as site-specific installations.

Contents

Biography

Travis Somerville was born in Atlanta, Georgia to white civil rights activists—an Episcopal preacher and school teacher—and grew up in various cities and rural towns throughout the Southern United States.[1] He briefly studied at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, finally settling in San Francisco in 1984 where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, CA. Since 1994, he has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.[2]

Somerville’s Work

Somerville’s work simultaneously tries to reconcile his personal struggle with his own Southern Christian upbringing and the overt tumultuous racial politics of then with the mixed messaging backlash of now.[1] Using collaged and painted pictorial elements, he summons imagery and words from the past, politics, popular culture, art, and the vernacular into prodigious combinations that challenge conventional lines of history and social perceptions.[3] For example, his piece, Boy in the Hood, 2000, portrays Malcolm X wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. According to theartist in an interview with Nathan Larramendy, “My southern identity will always play a part in my work because that is who I am... I feel the overall theme [of my work] is oppression and greed. I want the oppressed to be validated and the oppressors to be guilty. I want people to realize that we are all connected in some way and we are responsible for each other.”[1]

Awards

2000 The Art Council Grant Artist in Residence, University of Houston–Clear Lake — Houston, Texas (USA)

Public collections

21c Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
The Achenbach Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California
di Rosa, Napa, California
Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California
Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield Village, Ohio
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Solo exhibitions

External links

[/>http://www.cclarkgallery.com/artists/somerville.html]
http://www.otis.edu/public_programs/ben_maltz_gallery/upcoming_exhibitions.html]
http://www.carengoldenfineart.com/exhibition/view/1274]
http://www.landfallpress.com/somerville.htm]

References

  1. ^ a b c "The Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to present the exhibition:Travis Somerville: Dedicated to the Proposition… October 3 – December 12, 2009" (Press release). June 2009. http://www.otis.edu/assets/user/Ben%20Maltz%20Gallery/SomervillePR(1).pdf. 
  2. ^ "Travis Somerville biography presented by the Catharine Clark Gallery". http://www.cclarkgallery.com/dynamic/artist_bio.asp?ArtistID=27. Retrieved August 5, 2009. 
  3. ^ Janku, Laura (2003). Travis Somerville: A Self Determined History. pp. 3–12