Terra Firmament
Image (left) Breach, Jana Swec, Acrylic on wood, 55" x 38", 2021
Image (right) Sentinels, Matt Rebholz, Acrylic on panel, 18” x 24”, 2021
Matt Rebholz & Jana Swec
Exhibition Dates: Sept 24th – Oct 23rd, 2021
Terra Firmament presents an array of emotionally charged paintings by artists Matt Rebholz and Jana Swec. Both artists channel their personal histories into landscapes steeped in narrative and individual mythology. Detached from human chronologies, a sense of geologic or sidereal time pervades these environments as they ruminate on intersections of earth, water, and the firmament.
Matt Rebholz is an artist, illustrator, and educator from Austin, TX, where he teaches at St. Edward’s University. He received a BFA with a concentration in Drawing and Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000 and an MFA with a concentration in Printmaking from the University of Texas, Austin in 2008. He has shown nationally and internationally, recently exhibiting work at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, TX, the O Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and the Bulgarian Triennial of Graphic Art in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is currently working on a psychedelic graphic novel titled The Astronomer.
Jana Swec was born in Berkeley California in 1978. She received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2001 with a focus in Studio Arts. She moved to Austin in 2001 and converted a shared warehouse space with a few other artists, called Bolm Studios, and started making collaborative artwork with Shea Little and Joseph Phillips under the name SODALITAS. The three artists mainly focused on the process of working with each other and included performance, painting, community collaborations and temporary/permanent installations. In 2002 they co-founded the artist-run organization, Bolm Studios, now known as the non-profit Big Medium, which provides programs such as the East Austin Studio Tour, West Austin Studio Tour, and the Texas Biennial. Jana Left Big Medium in 2014 but still sits on the Board. Jana currently works primarily as a sign painter, muralist, and studio painter in Austin. In 2019 shebecame a member of the ICOSA collective.
Jana's work presents a unique balance between the two painting styles of formal abstraction & representational landscapes and lifeforms. The primary source of imagery for her work is drawn from the natural world. Using visual subjects such as coral, trees, water, fungus, & whales, she explores the beauty and heartbreak of nature, relationships, life, & death.
