San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts

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Permanent Collection

The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts has endeavored to create a permanent collection of high quality art works to be used for study, scholarly research and exhibition. The collection was established for the purpose of providing the community with a greater understanding of aesthetic and artistic traditions and human achievement in the visual arts.

The Museum's collection continues to grow and expand. There are currently 276 objects in the Permanent Collection. Through some recent generous gifts the Museum has acquired a significant number of works by Texas artists, especially works created since 1945. This is one of the areas of focused interest for the museum's Permanent Collection, as well as American crafts created since 1945, with an emphasis on the ceramic arts, and American painting and sculpture of all eras as well as Mexican and Mexican-American art of all eras. For opportunities to learn more about the Museum's art and collections visit Journey of Pots, an educational presentation focused on our Ceramics collection and our Collectors Society page and watch our Events page to learn when exciting lectures take place at SAMFA.

Among its areas of concentration, the Museum has established a distinguished collection of contemporary American ceramics, many purchased from the National Ceramic Competitions held at the Museum. A unique feature of the Museum is its visible storage facility for the ceramics collection, which is always available to visitors of the Museum.

Born in Fort Worth in 1943, Vernon Fisher is one of Texas' most acclaimed artists. He was a graduate student in the 1960s and first experimented with the concepts and techniques of Abstract Expressionism, but later began to explore new artistic expression such as narrative, language and the use of mechanisms. Working in a variety of media he is widely recognized for his blackboard paintings which often combine elements of image, text, and maps. Fisher's works function as visual stories. He tells his stories through synthesizing various media: painting, drawing, photography, found and fabricated objects, and text. These stories come from daily experiences, observations, childhood memories and musings he jots down in a notebook. The core of his work is about the process of interpretation.

One of Texas' foremost African American artists, Emma Lee Moss is included among a group of recognized American folk artists. Her paintings tap her rich imagination and memory, and are characteristically bright and optimistic. She is best at capturing the spirit of the day with busily populated urban and rural landscapes painted with a naïve lack of perspective and innate attention to intricate patterns and composition.

Bror Utter was born in Fort Worth. Between 1931 and 1936 he worked in his father's lithograph plant while attending the Fort Worth School of Fine Arts. He also studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. About 1951 he became a fulltime and accomplished painter and is associated with the Fort Worth School of Artists, which was most active as a group between 1945 and 1955. The group cannot be defined by a common aesthetic, but by their support of one another and their development of an art community in Fort Worth. Utter was also an accomplished teacher and taught at Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth and at the Fort Worth Art Center.

Harding Black Untitled, 1956 7.75" x 2" Stoneware, purple chun glaze 1996.1.3	Harding Black Untitled, 1986 6.75" x 2" Porcelain, rutile slip, flame glaze 1996.1.2

Harding Black of San Antonio, was the invited artist at the Tenth Annual San Angelo National Ceramic Competition in 1995. At the time Black was 84 years old, a self-taught master potter whose career spanned more than six decades. Described as an "American Treasure" he began experimenting with glazes in 1932 and gained experience in this field by making thousands of tests on clay bodies and glazes. One of the major breakthroughs in alchemy came just before his eightieth birthday when he began combining classical Chinese porcelain glazes with the crystalline.

As early as the 1930s he began teaching children's ceramic classes at the Witte Museum in San Antonio and his own work was wheel thrown earthenware pots finished with uranium glazes. In the 1940s and early 1950s Harding continued to teach at the Witte although with a better financial support he was able to move into works made of high fire stoneware and porcelain. After retirement from the Witte Museum in the late 1950s and early 1960s he continued to push the parameters with large coil and slab-built vessels and sculptures. His was a major contribution to the ceramic world.

Harding Black's works have been exhibited in many institutions including the National Ceramic Exhibition at the Syracuse Museum of Art; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the San Antonio Museum of Art; the Houston Museum of Art; and the Martin Museum of Art at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, among may others.

Harding Black passed away on May 2, 2004 at the age of 92.

Selected Examples of Works
in the Museum's Collection

Phillip Maberry Handled Vase Glazed Earthenware 1999.8.14 Gift of Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio	Susan Budge Eros II (coral) Red Clay, cone 6, low-fire glaze, cone 1 2001.2 SAMFA Collector's Society
Chris Gustin Vessel Stoneware 1998.5 SAMFA Collector's Society and Donations	Gina Bobrowski AS Ceramic, multi-fired, fired mixed media 1994.8 SAMFA Collector's Society
Oriental Ceramics Famille Rose Jar and Cover 19th Century Thailand Famille Rose Enamel 2002.4.25 Bequest of George Weldon Sheffield	Olga Quezada de Ledezma Untitled (Mata Oritz Pottery) Ceramic 2002.2.7 Gift of Jack and Marian Bleakley
Gary Richardson Dead Bird on Floor in Birdhouse Acrylic on canvas 2003.13.12 The Barrett Collection, Gift of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston	Margaret Stites Untitled (double portrait) Oil on canvas 2005.2.2 Gift of the family of Margaret Stites
Ruth Wilson Natasha F. Whittage Raku clay, hand-built 2003.7 SAMFA Collector's Society	Art Guise Tower 1999.1.1
Tom Bartel Masque Man 1997.1	Veme Funk No Smoking 1999.1.3
David Furman Safe at Home 2006.12	Margaret Israel Large Cup 2006.1.10
William Melstrom Single Stage Fluvialic P.Ig. 1996.3	Julio Eloy Mesa No Pasaran 2005.16.4

René Alvarado was among artists recognized by The Texas Commission on the Arts and the Texas Legislature. In the May 28th ceremony at the Texas State Capitol, State Senators and Representatives announced the honorary Texas Artists appointments for 2009 and 2010. Alvarado was selected as the 2009 Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist.