HOUSTON, TX.- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston´s Core program awards residencies to highly motivated, emerging visual artists and art scholars. Overseen by the Core Program´s associate director, Mary Leclère, the Core fellows annually present an exhibition that showcases work made during that year´s residency. This year´s edition opens Friday, March 6, with approximately 15 works on view in the Laura Lee Blanton Gallery at the Glassell School of Art.

Each nine-month fellowship (renewable for a second year) gives the eight artists and three critical studies residents studio space or an office, a stipend, and access to the school and museum. These resources allow the fellows to further their artistic practice within a dynamic arts community guided by Glassell School of Art director Joseph Havel, and to engage in creative dialogue with each other and with a host of visiting artists and critics. Since the 1980s, Core fellows have added a vibrant presence within the Houston art scene through teaching, engaging in community projects, interacting with other artists, and sometimes making a permanent home here. The Core program has also established itself as an internationally regarded platform, and Core fellows have gone on to show at such prestigious, international venues as the Venice, Whitney, Istanbul, and Lyon biennials or to assume positions at prominent national art publications, amongst other achievements.

The 2009 Core Artists in Residence Exhibition features work by Natasha Bowdoin, Jillian Conrad, Lily Cox-Richard, Kara Hearn, Andres Janacua, Lauren Kelley, James Sham, and Sergio Torres-Torres. Core critical studies residents Jennifer King, Kurt Mueller, and Rose Oluronke Ojo contribute essays about aspects of their independent research to the Core 2009 Yearbook publication that accompanies the show. The exhibition will be on view through April 17, 2009.

Natasha Bowdoin (first-year resident) received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and her work has been featured in exhibitions at Extraspazio Gallery, Rome, Italy; Julie Chae Gallery, Boston, MA; the Cue Foundation, New York, NY; and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In the 2009 Core Artists in Residence Exhibition, Bowdoin will include two large-scale works on paper exploring the idea of language and the act of transcription.

Jillian Conrad (first-year resident) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, and her work has been shown in exhibitions at Clough Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN; Bronx Museum, New York, NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; and the Bronx River Art Center, NY. Conrad´s work uses the physicality, imagery, and processes of geology to suggest how the external world we move through every day is connected to our internal, private lives. Works on view in the exhibition include magnified rocks and miniaturized mountains, made from materials such as foam, wood, paper, and felt.

Lily Cox-Richard (first-year resident) received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, and her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Terminal, Richmond, VA; Civilian Art Projects, Washington, DC; the Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; Kompact Living Space, Berlin, Germany; and Area:Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas, Puerto Rico. Cox-Richard´s new body of work, Rapt, takes the form of shrouded obelisks — but without the obelisks. Ghost-like and slightly clumsy, the remaining shrouds cover, reveal, and outlast the monuments they once draped.

Kara Hearn (second-year resident) received her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley, CA, and her work has been exhibited at DiverseWorks, Houston, TX; Dunn and Brown Contemporary, Dallas, TX; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Luckman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; UC Riverside California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England; Vertexlist, Brooklyn, NY; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; White Columns, New York City, NY; and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, CA. In this exhibition, Hearn will feature The Need for Grand Emotion, a half-hour experimental video based on actual and imagined dreams and nightmares that adults have had about being back in high school, investigating issues of existentialism, anxiety, and the search for and the creation of heroic dramas.

Andres Janacua (second-year resident) received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University, and his work has been exhibited at Schalter, Berlin, Germany; Peggy Phelps Gallery, Claremont, CA; and Galeria Perdida, Michoacan, Mexico. Janacua will exhibit three sculptural works in different forms, attempting to reconstitute history by examining the inevitable shifts throughout time and the inherent loss in meaning brought upon by these movements.

Lauren Kelley (second-year resident) received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX; The Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX; Anya Tish Gallery, Houston TX; Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX; Spellman College Museum of Fine Arts, Atlanta, GA; the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; and Project Row Houses, Houston, TX. Kelley will exhibit Wild Seed, a stop motion animated portrayal of the moments before and after utopian landscape is overturned.

James Sham (first-year resident) received his MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, and has exhibited his work at Area Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas, Puerto Rico; Appetite Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Ellensburg Film Festival/PUNCH Gallery, Seattle, WA; and Delaware Center of Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE. Sham will be exhibiting a three-channel video installation, Wave, which depicts crowds attempting to orchestrate themselves into a wave and is looped variably and indefinitely.

Sergio Torres-Torres (second-year resident) received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and has exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions at venues such as Sixteen:One Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; Atelier als Supermedium, The Hague, Netherlands; Phantom Galleries, Los Angeles, CA; MAK Center, Los Angeles, CA; Postartum, Long Beach, CA; and Charim Klocker Gallery, Vienna, Austria. Torres-Torres will present an installation with two video projections blending onto a double-sided screen with a map of the projection diagramed onto the floor, creating a relationship between virtual, historical, and present space.