Sky Buddha by Sidney Lawrence. Courtesy of the artist..
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 29 from 10am to 11am
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Among works to be discussed are Becoming Giacometti, a self-portrait sketch exaggerating age lines, Sky Buddha, a print of the seated sage in psychedelic colors, and World, 2015, a contemporary figure in oil based loosely on a 16th century Mannerist portrait at the National Gallery.
The show also includes Brasilia, a colored-ink aerial view of this midcentury modern capital framed by vegetation-like plastic shreds. This piece is shaped like an airplane, as the city’s designers intended, but also resembles Rio’s mountaintop Christ figure.
“This show is about the variety of adventure–outdoors, in the studio, in the world, and privately, in my head,” Lawrence writes in an exhibition brochure.
Born in San Francisco and educated at UC Berkeley and Davis, the artist has been active in Washington since the early 1980s. His works have been shown by Gallery K (a longterm venue now closed), the National Portrait Gallery, the Katzen’s American University Museum and numerous other locations including Georgetown’s Il Canale restaurant, which recently installed his 8 x 18 foot cityscape mural (a vinyl banner).
Lawrence is also represented in the New Britain (CT) Museum of American Art and the Longwood (VA) Center for the Visual Arts. The Society of California Pioneers in San Francisco has his ink panorama of the 1906 fire in its collection.
Lawrence served for many years the public information officer of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. This is his third show at the University of California Washington Center, also known as “UCDC.”
This eleven story facility houses the University of California’s system-wide residential, instructional and research center that provides opportunities for students and faculty to study, research, work and live within the capital’s rich cultural, political and international environment. It is located just west of Scott Circle.
UCDC’s “Alcove Gallery,” on the ground floor, is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Weekend entry is by door buzzer. Admission is free for the exhibition’s entire eight weeks.
The Alcove Gallery, University of California Washington Center is located at 1608 Rhode Island Ave. NW. For more information, visit sidneylawrenceart.com or ucdc.edu.
