Past Exhibitions
Duane Zaloudek was born in 1931 in Texhoma, Texas, on the Oklahoma border. His father had lost his farm in the Dust Bowl and gone to work at a feedlot owned by a railroad company. Duane’s parents and another couple had made homes in adjoining boxcars provided on a siding by the railroad, and Duane was delivered by the neighbor, acting as a midwife. As soon as his mother was able to travel, the family drove in their Model T to the grandparents’ farm north of Enid, Oklahoma.
Two years after returning to Oklahoma, Duane’s mother died after childbirth complications, and subsequently Duane was raised by his grandparents until he was nine. He was exposed to traditional country music at an early age — his grandmother, although she had lost her hearing to rheumatic fever, sang and played the piano, and his two youngest uncles sang throughout the day while doing chores.
At nine years old, Duane went to live with his father and new stepmother, who were sharecropping in the area. Through seventh grade, he was educated in one-room prairie schoolhouses, often riding his horse Midnight to school. At thirteen, he moved with his family to Oregon, where his parents worked in the shipyards during WWII. After graduating from high school in 1948, he attended the Portland Museum Art School on a scholarship. At this time, he also began playing guitar and singing folk and topical songs at union-organizing rallies. His scholarship was not renewed after the second year of art school, most likely due to what were considered his leftist activities (this was the McCarthy era).
In 1950, facing the draft, he joined the Air Force and spent a year in Thule, Greenland building a SAC (Strategic Air Command) base. In 1952, he returned to an Air Force base in Washington State, taking night classes at University of Washington Seattle in painting. After discharge, Duane returned to the Portland Museum School and completed his course of study in 1956 on the G.I. Bill.
From 1956-59 he lived and worked in New York, first on Broadway and 11th St., and then on Bond Street near the Bowery. In 1959, Duane returned to Portland and built a studio, teaching part-time and painting full-time. During the 1960s, he became aware of sensory deprivation (aka black box) experiments conducted by Eric von Bekesy at Harvard, as well as Tibetan Buddhism via Brancusi and the early writings of John Cage. Beginning in the late 60s, this awareness precipitated a major change in the direction of his work.
In 1973, after a short stint as a guest artist at UC Davis, Duane returned to New York to continue painting. During the 1980s, he was the lead singer in a country band that performed in downtown bars and at gallery openings and other art-world events. He also recorded demos for the artist Tom Wesselman, a friend who also wrote country songs. Duane has continued to pursue his work in the same East Village studio since 1983.
Born in 1978, Mexican artist Pancho Westendarp earned a BA from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Queretano and received an MA in Documentary Production in 2005 from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. In 2009 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to attend Stony Brook University and received his MFA in 2012. In 2015 his work was included in the 1st Landscape Biennial, Museo Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City and in 2016 his work was included in the XVII Photography Biennial at Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. He lives Mexico City and maintains studios in Queretano, Mexico and Mexico City.
In over 50 years of studio practice Jerry Walden’s (1941-2019) work has been exhibited across the US and around the world, including these institutions: The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; the Mississippi Museum of Art, MS; the Columbia Museum of Art, SC; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, AL; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, TN; Palazzo Vagnotti, Italy; Nam-Do Fine Arts Center Gallery, South Korea, The Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC; Alaska State Museum, Juneau, and The Mississippi Pavilion at The Louisiana World Exposition, New Orleans; among others. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including: the Columbia Museum of Art, SC; Capitol One Bank; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; West Point Pepperell (Now West Point Home), New York, NY; Greenville National Bank Collection, MS; Delta State University, Cleveland, MS; The Meridian Museum of Art, MS; and others. He earned his BFA from Auburn University, Auburn, AL, in 1968, and his MFA from the Univ. of Georgia in 1971.
Noah Loesberg received his MFA in 1994 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL and his BA in 1990 from Bennington College, Bennington, VT. He has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, a residency from Dieu Donne Papermill and was awarded CAAP grant from the City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs. He lives and maintains his studio in Brooklyn, NY.
