Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to announce a one-person exhibition of works by Annette Lawrence. A native of Queens, New York, Lawrence's work flows from her experiences as an African American woman and integrates personal notions of culture, gender, family, race and the natural cycles of life.
The front room of the gallery will display eight pieces from Lawrence's music-inspired 2001 series, Theory. These pieces, created on a base of brown paper using her classic muted acrylic tones, echo the distinctive musical notation drawn from the lessons in her third grade music book.
The main space of the Gallery will honor the many years of Lawrence's work with her distinctive medium of pale cotton string. Across the upper region of the 25 ft. rear gallery, Lawrence will extend a new, site-specific string installation composed of a field of horizontal lines textured by connecting knots. Along the walls of the back gallery, Lawrence will exhibit 95 balls of cotton string. These balls are the final state of Lawrence's many string installations over the course of her career, and they will be hung for the last time in this show.
Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of several institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her solo exhibitions include a recent show at Testsite 04.4 in Austin, in collaboration with writer Annette Carlozzi; The Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Sweeny Art Gallery at the University of California at Riverside; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; and the African- American Museum, Dallas. In addition, Lawrence was featured in the 1997 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Lawrence was recently the Artist in Residence at both the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the Greenhill School, Dallas. She received the 2000 African American Art Advisory Association Award from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the 1996 Skowhegan Camille Cosby Award for African American Artists; and the 1994 Dallas Museum of Art Award to Artists Kimbrough Fund.
Annette Lawrence is currently an Associate Professor of Painting/Drawing in the School of Visual Arts at the University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
