Archway Gallery Upcoming Exhibition Calendar
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February 1 - 27, 2025 Reliquaries Featuring new works by Chris Alexander and guest artist Deborah Ellington Opening Reception Saturday, February 1 5 – 8 p.m. Artists' Talk at 6:30 p.m. Complimentary Valet Parking and Light Refreshments |
This exhibition by glass artists Chris Alexander and Deborah Ellington delves into the paradox of glass as a medium. Glass can appear transparent and opaque, solid and fractured, protective and delicate. It is a substance that holds within it the memory of its creation, reflecting the process and the hands that formed it. This complexity forms the heart of “Reliquaries,” an exhibition having to do with the nature of art, memory, and human experience.
A reliquary, traditionally a vessel for sacred relics, is a container that holds something revered and significant. In this exhibition, Alexander and Ellington reinterpret the concept of the reliquary through the lens of glass. Their works are not only physical containers but also metaphors for the sacred human impulse to create. The art embodies emotion and the passage of time, reminding us of the changing nature of the world and our attempts to find our place within it.
The creation of this body of work involved a unique investigation of media, process and intent. Attention was focused on determining how the glass could best express the artists’ narratives. The pieces invite the viewer to contemplate the shifting nature of reality, our collective history, and the intimate experiences that shape us. Chris Alexander and Deborah Ellington’s works offer an opportunity to connect with the sacred, the precious, and the ephemeral in our own lives.
Chris Alexander has been working in glass over thirty years. She learned traditional stained glass through a three-year apprenticeship with master glass artist Patricia Vloeberghs in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds degrees in architecture from University of Virginia and Georgia Institute of Technology. After working in commercial architecture for a number of years, she now focuses her studio art practice on work in stained glass, fused glass, and mixed media. She is the resident artist at Harmony Stained Glass in Pasadena, Texas, and has been a member artist of Archway Gallery for four years.
Deborah Ellington graduated from Albion College with a degree in Art Education, later obtaining an M.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Ceramics from Sam Houston State University. After college, she taught K-12 in Michigan. She later took on significant roles in higher education, serving as an art professor and department chair at Lone Star College North Harris. She eventually transitioned to an instructional dean position, at Lone Star College Montgomery. Deborah has never stopped teaching. Even after retirement, she teaches fused glass workshops at Harmony Stained Glass in design, color, painting, and mold making. As a working artist, Deborah shows her art at Silver Street Studios, a part of the Sawyer Yards studio complex, in Houston, Texas.
A reliquary, traditionally a vessel for sacred relics, is a container that holds something revered and significant. In this exhibition, Alexander and Ellington reinterpret the concept of the reliquary through the lens of glass. Their works are not only physical containers but also metaphors for the sacred human impulse to create. The art embodies emotion and the passage of time, reminding us of the changing nature of the world and our attempts to find our place within it.
The creation of this body of work involved a unique investigation of media, process and intent. Attention was focused on determining how the glass could best express the artists’ narratives. The pieces invite the viewer to contemplate the shifting nature of reality, our collective history, and the intimate experiences that shape us. Chris Alexander and Deborah Ellington’s works offer an opportunity to connect with the sacred, the precious, and the ephemeral in our own lives.
Chris Alexander has been working in glass over thirty years. She learned traditional stained glass through a three-year apprenticeship with master glass artist Patricia Vloeberghs in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds degrees in architecture from University of Virginia and Georgia Institute of Technology. After working in commercial architecture for a number of years, she now focuses her studio art practice on work in stained glass, fused glass, and mixed media. She is the resident artist at Harmony Stained Glass in Pasadena, Texas, and has been a member artist of Archway Gallery for four years.
Deborah Ellington graduated from Albion College with a degree in Art Education, later obtaining an M.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Ceramics from Sam Houston State University. After college, she taught K-12 in Michigan. She later took on significant roles in higher education, serving as an art professor and department chair at Lone Star College North Harris. She eventually transitioned to an instructional dean position, at Lone Star College Montgomery. Deborah has never stopped teaching. Even after retirement, she teaches fused glass workshops at Harmony Stained Glass in design, color, painting, and mold making. As a working artist, Deborah shows her art at Silver Street Studios, a part of the Sawyer Yards studio complex, in Houston, Texas.
FEBRUARY 2025 EXHIBITION EVENTS
February 1 (Sat) |
Opening Reception (5 - 8 pm) and Artists' Talk (6:30 pm) |
February 14 (Fri) |
Louis-Marie Fardet, Cello (7 - 9 pm) |
February 16 (Sun) |
Carya String Quartet (6 - 8 pm) |
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March 1 - April 3, 2025 Intimate Geographies Featuring new paintings by Becky Soria Opening Reception Saturday, March 1 5 – 8 p.m. Artists' Talk at 6:30 p.m. Closing Reception Saturday, March 29 5 – 8 p.m. Complimentary Valet Parking and Light Refreshments |
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Traversing the territory of the body, Becky Soria’s paintings exhibited in Intimate Geographies, a show at Archway Gallery, come into focus not as objective and impersonal but rather as intensely personal and intimate. While preparing for this exhibit, Becky Soria was aware of her involvement in an evolution that had become real throughout all her years of creating art. Concerned with sensitive issues about women and the world we all live in, she strove to represent the vast territory that is human experience through images that map those experiences to the topography of the physical and energetic human body. Her bodies are the surface below the surface of both the physical body and the body visualized by the Ego.
This collection of abstracted but viscerally real figures grapples with her and our collective experience that is a culmination of all her years that connect art, our travails, and concerns for life itself. Soria dedicated herself to representing her journey of 40 years as an artist in these works of intimate geography.
Her artistic journey also interweaves explorations of humanity’s cultural history, nature and the evolution of feminine archetypes. Soria fuses prehistoric art, mythological themes, with the influence on her as a young girl of her father’s collection of pre-Colombian art. She also draws on historical goddess figures as archetypal representations of an increasingly empowered postmodern woman. In the works of this show, Soria has used mostly acrylic paints, some charcoal, and in certain works, incorporated cardboard, rope, and paper.
Becky Soria, an American born in Bolivia, began her artistic career in the 1980s. She studied painting in the studios of South American artists, and with the artist and philosopher Dr. Fernando Casas. She also attended The Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. Her works are included in corporate and private collections in the US, Europe, Canada, and South America.
This collection of abstracted but viscerally real figures grapples with her and our collective experience that is a culmination of all her years that connect art, our travails, and concerns for life itself. Soria dedicated herself to representing her journey of 40 years as an artist in these works of intimate geography.
Her artistic journey also interweaves explorations of humanity’s cultural history, nature and the evolution of feminine archetypes. Soria fuses prehistoric art, mythological themes, with the influence on her as a young girl of her father’s collection of pre-Colombian art. She also draws on historical goddess figures as archetypal representations of an increasingly empowered postmodern woman. In the works of this show, Soria has used mostly acrylic paints, some charcoal, and in certain works, incorporated cardboard, rope, and paper.
Becky Soria, an American born in Bolivia, began her artistic career in the 1980s. She studied painting in the studios of South American artists, and with the artist and philosopher Dr. Fernando Casas. She also attended The Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. Her works are included in corporate and private collections in the US, Europe, Canada, and South America.
MARCH 2025 EXHIBITION EVENTS
March 1 (Sat) |
Opening Reception (5 - 8 pm) and Artists' Talk (6:30 pm) |
March 2 (Sat) |
AURA of University of Houston (6 - 7 pm) |
March 16 (Sun) |
Bob Henschen Jazz Trio (6 - 7 pm) |
March 29 (Sat) |
Closing Reception (6 - 8 pm) |
FUTURE FEATURED ARTIST EXHIBITIONS
April 2025 |
New Visions, New Voices featuring work by Archway member artists Rhonda Radford Adams, Michael Angell, Jennifer Claussen, Gozde Kaya, and Eric Stiles |
May 2025 |
donna e perkins |
June 2025 |
Barbara Able and Jim Adams |
July 2025 |
Archway Gallery's 17th Annual Juried Exhibition |
August 2025 |
Jennifer Claussen |
September 2025 |
Jim Hill |