Students Shine

By Kelly Klaasmeyer

When it came time for Rice Gallery director Kim Davenport to find a curator for the gallery’s 2006 exhibition of graduating art majors, she thought of artist Christian Eckart. Eckart had been an instructor at Rice University, but what was especially interesting was the professional practices class he had designed and taught at Rice as well as at the University of Houston and the Glassell School of Art.

Davenport says Eckart has a tremendous interest in students. “I could tell from the way he related to them that he would be able to give Rice students a professional experience, which is one of the aims of the student exhibition,” she says. And Eckart knows what he’s talking about. “He is an internationally renowned artist,” Davenport explains. “We are so fortunate that he is living right here in Houston.”

Eckart came on the New York art scene out of the East Village in the mid 1980s, the decade of the art star. His contemporaries were the likes of Peter Halley, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince. Since that time, his work has been shown in more than 70 solo shows and more than 150 group exhibitions all over the world, and his work is included in the collections of institutions like the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, Austria. His abstract, wall-based work straddles the line between painting and sculpture and is designed on the computer and executed in materials like mirror-polished stainless steel or aluminum plates sprayed with lush glistening coats of auto body lacquer.

Eckart moved to Houston on New Year’s Eve, 2002, and he was immediately impressed by Houston’s flourishing contemporary art scene. From his new Houston base, he has continued his studio practice and busy exhibition schedule, but he also contributes to the local artistic community. In New York, he taught at the School of Visual Arts for eight years, and he decided to continue his teaching in Houston art departments. Curating Shine: Rice Gallery Student Exhibition 43, was yet another way to work with young artists.

The seasoned artist became a mentor for Rice’s graduating seniors during their final semester, asking them to “dream as big as they would like to dream about how they would like to be represented in the show.” After they presented their ideas and he helped them determine the feasibility of their projects, he assisted them in finalizing what they would show and explored the formal and technical issues of presenting their work. Finally, he helped them prepare their artist statements.

Explaining how he works with students, Eckart says, “You walk into a studio cold, and you have one or two minutes to know more about what the artist is doing than they do. You figure out where they are headed, and then you can help them objectify their work and see it from the outside.” Having a better grasp of what their work is saying to other people helps students make positive changes and clarify their focus.

Megan Sandler had been taking straight black and white photographs of children at Yellowstone Academy, a free private school in the Third Ward. Working with Eckart, she decided to juxtapose her photographs with the children’s drawings, creating a more multidimensional view of her subjects. Meanwhile, Matthew Crnkovich’s photographs of decaying industrial buildings had an emphasis on abstract form cut with a kind of romantic melancholia. Eckart saw parallels with the paintings of Mark Rothko and recommended his work to Crnkovich. The student responded by exploring and increasing the level of formal abstraction in his photographs over the semester. In other cases, like the hanging fabric pieces of Thomas Hardin or the self-portraits of Dustin Haynes, Eckart encouraged students to explore ways of combining what they had previously considered to be separate works.

According to Davenport, the selection of Eckart proved to be a very good choice. “The students responded to him,” she says, “and gave him credit for guiding them in new directions.”

Eckart is more modest about his contributions. “I can’t take any credit for it; it’s just about helping people understand their own predilections.”