Austin College Hosts Art Exhibit

Austin College | Sherman, Texas | December 5, 2014

The Austin College Department of Art and History hosts an exhibition by artist Nestor Topchy now through January 23, 2015, in Dennis Gallery of the College’s Forster Art Complex. The Forster Art Complex is located on the north side of campus at 1315 E. Richards Street. The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, call 903.813.2048. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

A native of Somerville, New Jersey, Nestor earned a bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1985 and then a master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Houston. He also has studied Buddhism, Taoism and Gnosticism as he developed his belief system.

His work, he said, is influenced by his history as a first-generation Ukrainian-American raised Greek Orthodox. He said his work interweaves paradoxical strands of thought, incongruous painting techniques, disparate artistic traditions, and antithetical pictorial attitudes to express a coherent and pantheistic vision of reality.

His work has been exhibited and performed at the Museo de Nacion in Lima, Peru; the Evergreen Museum at John Hopkins University in Baltimore; Arlington Museum of Art in Arlington, Texas; The Art Museum of South East Texas in Beaumont, Texas; and in Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Contemporary Art Museum, Hiram Butler Gallery, and Project Row Houses, among many others.

Topchy said that in his early years, he started studying the art of Pysanky, Ukranian Easter egg decoration based on ancient geometric and non-discursive symbolic designs. Then in the 1980s, he began working collaboratively with artists, architects, entrepreneurs, writers, and scientists, and came up with the idea of “inhabitable art.” He is the founder and creative director of HIVE, located in Houston, which he describes as a “living space and an art form that can encourage social and cultural interaction between people.”

“We propose to create a dynamic village for thriving cultural exchange and enterprise, Topchy said of HIVE. “Inspired by artists, creative professionals, and environmentalists, we will work in partnerships with individuals and organizations to experiment and discover the next generation of responsible building and living practices.”

“This idea is based on a physical structure to build a social structure of collaboration and interaction,” Topchy said. “The principles of geometry inherent to cultures become the basis of their habitats. Civilizations and cultures in the post-modernist era are evolving into virtual social hierarchies while physical interaction seems to be becoming less of a real thing. This unique phenomenon is global, spreading across the Americas and Western cultures.”

“My work in part is an attempt to understand the fundamental aspects of such social structures and initiate improvement by changing physically the environment in which such an interaction could take place,” the artist said. “In one of three concurrent mutually supportive ideas I have conceived, I aim to change and advance social/cultural interaction by creating a habitable hemispherical – helicoidal structure, similar to a truncated Pysanka, and made from ramped, stacked, steel shipping containers, set within a community context.”

Austin College, a private national liberal arts college located north of Dallas in Sherman, Texas, has earned a reputation for excellence in academic preparation, international study, pre-professional foundations, leadership development, committed faculty, and hands-on, adventurous learning opportunities. One of 40 schools profiled in Loren Pope’s influential book Colleges That Change Lives, Austin College boasts a welcoming community that embraces diversity and individuality, with more than 36 percent of students representing ethnic minorities. A residential student body of 1,350 students and a faculty of more than 100 allow a 12:1 student-faculty ratio and personalized attention. The College is related by covenant to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and cultivates an inclusive atmosphere that supports students’ faith journeys regardless of religious tradition. Founded in 1849, the College is the oldest institution of higher education in Texas operating under original name and charter.