Editor’s note: Students in COMM 2311.001, Newswriting on the SPC Levelland campus contributed to this story. Students Hannah Ballejo, Madeleine Davis, Elena Hart-Deleon, Gracie Harvey, Alec Leos, Emma Martin, Kristin Ortiz, Jeremiah Quigley, Taylor Reed, Trista Stanley, and Rebekah Trejo participated in interviewing, helped choose quotes and organize paragraphs. Now, they’re ready to repeat the process on their own.
It’s an easy spot to miss. Tucked away to the left just as you enter the lobby of the Christine Devitt Fine Arts Center on SPC’s Levelland Campus, there’s no big, marquee sign to advertise it’s there.
It’s the SPC Fine Arts Main Gallery. It was added on to the fine arts building about 20 years ago.
“It was an add on with the continuation of the lobby,” says SPC Fine Arts Gallery Director Kristy Kristinek. “The mosaic was formerly the outer part of the art building.”
Some students don’t know the SPC art gallery exists.
Student Alec Leos says he’s been at SPC almost two years now and he didn’t know about it. Is he surprised to find out?
“Yes, and no,” he says. “No, because I just actually recently found out there is also a pool on campus too so nothing really surprises me now.”
Those who have never visited the SPC art gallery might be missing out.
As Kristinek explains, it is unique.
“Oftentimes, when you walk into a gallery, it’s pretty set,” she says. “The walls are already there.”
But the SPC gallery, she explains, has four movable walls on castors. And what you notice as soon as you walk in the door is the whole space is divided in two.
On the left is the permanent Marjorie Merriweather Post Art Collection. On the right, somewhere within the movable walls, the art exhibit often changes.
“We invite two different either local artists, Texas based artists, or just U.S. based artists to come in and do a solo exhibition,” Kristinek explains. “And we usually have at least two a semester.”
She says the solo artist usually comes a week or so before their exhibit opens to “feel the space”.
“Oftentimes, they’ll be inspired by the Post collection,” she says, “and they can move the walls around to kind of rethink how they want their show to look.”
The permanent Post collection could be described as “inspiring” for a number of reasons.
The eight-painting collection includes oil paintings from the 18th century to the 20th century that were loaned and then gifted to South Plains College by businesswoman and art collector Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1960s. Most of the pieces are huge and feature heavy, gilded frames.
Kristinek explains that Post, heiress to the family that founded Post Cereal from Post, Texas, wanted the paintings to stay at SPC.
“So, she wanted that kind of rooted feeling of her family and her existence in West Texas,” Kristinek says.
Kristinek says most of these paintings are basically priceless.
“The rest of her collection,” Kristinek says, “is owned by the Smithsonian so it’s pretty bizarre that we have some of them here in Levelland, Texas.”
Kristinek says the most famous piece in SPC’s Post collection is “The Earl of Gower” which was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in about 1760.
“If you Google him as an artist,” Kristinek says, “he’s a very famous 18th century portrait artist that specifically focused on history documentations.”
The earl’s likeness stands more than 7 feet high in the back of the gallery.
Further down the wall is another massive canvas called “Bacchanalian Feast”. It is an 18th century Italian painting that’s more than 9 feet wide. Gallery pamphlets say it features the Roman god Bacchus interacting with humans, satyrs and other mythical creatures. Some of the faces look slightly distorted.
Kristinek says this painting has an almost “other worldly” type feel to the interaction of the characters. That, she says earmarks it as coming from the Renaissance period. It’s also in sharp contrast to Reynolds’ style.
“Catherine the Great” stares back at “The Earl of Gower” from across the gallery in her portrait just inside the gallery door. Gallery pamphlets describe her portrait as a “pastiche” made in the first half of the 19th century.
Kristinek describes that as a technique that is an imitation of another style or technique. She says you can see it used in the crown Catherine the Great is holding in the portrait.
At least one of the Post oil paintings currently in the SPC signs of restoration. “Dutch Painting”, a Flemish oil painting that hangs next to “Catherine the Great”, has small spots in an upper corner.
“So, those little patches, they are the removal of kind of the staining of the varnish itself,” she says. “What it does it makes this kind of yellowy antiquey type approach to the color and that’s where some of those layers have been removed.”
She says it would cost a “ridiculous” amount of money to have the painting restored to its original state partly because, she says, the painting has extreme cracking that has developed over time.
In the gallery space to the right of the permanent Post collection, on the other side of those movable walls, solo artist Abed Monowar’s work is on display from the end of January through Feb. 26. His exhibit is called “Horizons”. It features many smaller, groupings of West Texas landscapes.
“He is a local artist,” Kristinek says, “who kind of thinks about his repositioning of landscape here in Lubbock, Texas, in comparison to Syria where he grew up.”
A meet and greet reception for Monowar is scheduled for Feb. 22 at 5:30 p.m. in the gallery.
The SPC Fine Arts Main Gallery is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8 to 4 p.m.
There is a page devoted to the SPC Fine Arts Main Gallery and Current Exhibitions featured on the SPC website. It describes the Post Art Collection and gives information about the current visiting artist exhibit.
Kristinek says she brings her art students to the gallery at least twice a semester both to talk about the Post collection and talk about the contemporary works that are in the space.
“So, it gives us a chance to look at real artwork,” she says, “talk about the elements, the principles, the basics that go into making a work of art and how you can see the differences. How art history can still live with the contemporary and they still feed off each other, right? We can always find the similarities there.”
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