Dallas Quilt Show

David Collins: Clearstory at Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden

This is the first Dallas exhibition for NYC-based Collins, who grew up in Dallas and graduated from Jesuit High School.  You’ll find his work very personal and autobiographical.  He creates spaces with paint for his viewers to explore – spaces we’ve never seen before, but may have dreamed about.  His works are atmospheric and deep and inhabitable.

These spaces – I interpreted them as interiors, cityscapes, even rural landscapes – appear to burst out of Collins’ interest in design, architecture, flight and public spaces. Evidenced in every work is incredible engineering and architectural drawing skills.  Clearstory is a play on the word “clerestory” – those high-up architectural windows especially popular during the mid-twentieth century. Who knew that “clearstory” is also an acceptable spelling?

Do you remember line tape from pre-digital graphic arts days?  David does – his work is full of flawlessly rendered lines – some painted, others drawn with ink or pencil.  A signature motif is patches of perfectly spaced and drawn parallel lines.  His work often includes ladder or derrick-like shapes – often leading to nowhere, sometimes as negative space.

Did you ever use those translucent-green drawing tools that allowed you to draw perfect circles, French curves, and angles?  I’ll bet David did – perfect circles are everywhere in his work and I saw a French curve or two as well.  Vanishing point perspective?  He mastered that lesson, too.

These paintings often contain triangular planes and parallelograms, but only some of the works appear fractured or splintered like glass.  Some of the triangular plane shapes are like silently smooth stealth bombers, others are stratified layers of clouds.

Collins paints in blues and vibrant yellows – I’d call both signature colors.  He knows how to use black – but ever so sparingly, so that when he does use it you feel the gravity or punch of it.  Add pink and corals into some of the paintings for a triad that is contemporary but overall reads cool and sophisticated. His use of positive and negative space feels so natural you barely notice the technique.

The quilt

Dallas, the making of a modern city

Dallas, a history of "Big D"

The show, the inside story of the spectacular Los Angeles Lakers in the words of those who lived it

The Quilt