Throughout the month of May, patrons can explore history in a new light with the Patrick Heath Public Library’s first-annual No Blank Canvas artist exhibition.
The exhibition, titled “Their Absence is Our Presence,” features work from artist Isaac Grigar, including six multi-media works of art created in the last year, exploring the people, landscape, and histories that make the Texas Hill Country home for us all.
“I would like to pay homage to the people who first called this landscape home and speak to how their appearance shaped it for the next groups to inhabit it, making it is what it is today,” Grigar said. “How in their absence a presence is still felt and how in our many shapes, colors, tongues, and faiths have come to build a better society together.”
No Blank Canvas is a program of the Patrick Heath Public Library’s Memory Lab, supported by the Hill Country Council for the Arts, with funding from the Mellon Foundation.
In this four-year community art experience, the library and HCCA will feature an artist(s)-in-residence on a yearly basis, providing access to the Dietert Historical Archives, the Hill Country artist community, and the knowledgeable historians and artists within our area.
The goal is to spotlight under-told histories. Where primary documentation and historical research are scarce, art can help fill in the blanks of the people, families, landscape, and industry that created space in our beloved Texas Hill Country.
Grigar, the program’s first artist in residence, is a sixth-generation Texan from the Houston area, who now lives and works in the spaces between San Antonio and Boerne. He holds a Master of Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he now teaches art courses for undergrad students to help them succeed in the competitive art world.
Opening Reception set for May 8
An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Friday May 8 at 6 p.m. at the library, 451 N. Main Street in Boerne.
The public is invited to attend, but space is limited. If you plan to attend, please RSVP by email.
