Gilbert named Great Plains Art Museum artist-in-residence

"Lucky" by B.C. Gilbert

The Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will host B.C. Gilbert as the 2016 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist-in-Residence. During his residency Aug. 2-6 and Oct. 11-15, he will use the museum’s lobby to create an artwork that will become part of the museum’s permanent collection. Visitors are encouraged to see the artist in action during his lobby working hours.

Gilbert’s woodblock prints and sculptural paintings are on display in the museum from July 12 through Oct. 29 in an exhibition titled “Flat Land, Flat Water.” By incorporating iconography of the High Plains of Texas, Gilbert’s work reveals his experiences growing up in West Texas.

He depicts the West in a manner reminiscent of pop artists through his multimedia constructions that merge painting with unconventional materials such as leather, metal siding and found objects. The exhibition depicts the stereotypical view of Natives and cowboys as pictured in Western cinema. Such images don’t reflect the reality of the American West, but instead portray a fiction perpetuated first through pulp fiction, then in Wild West shows, and later in film and television.

Great Plains Art Museum Curator Melynda Seaton describes Gilbert’s sculptural paintings as “presenting a unique perspective of the contemporary American West.”

The Rubendall Artist-in-Residence program, supported by the Elizabeth Rubendall Foundation, is celebrating its 10th year. The program gives museum visitors and school groups the opportunity to witness an artist in action.

Gilbert’s lobby working hours will be from 10 a.m. to noon and 2 to 4:30 p.m. Aug. 3, 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. Aug. 5 and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 6. From 5 to 7 p.m. Aug. 5, during the First Friday Artwalk, visitors will be able to meet the artist and grab a treat at the UNL Dairy Store cart in the lobby, with a short gallery talk at 6 p.m.

For more information on the Rubendall Artist-in-Residence program, click here. To schedule a tour, call 402-472-6220.

The Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St., is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free.