Helen Altman 
Firewalls

Talley Dunn Gallery
July 9 – August 27, 2011

DALLAS, June 30, 2011 – Talley Dunn Gallery is pleased to announce Helen Altman: Firewalls on view July 9ththrough August 2 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, July 16 from 6pm until 8pm.

For this exhibition, Altman will create an impressive site-specific installation, covering the Project Gallery walls with over one hundred works of art. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be an installation of ninety of Altman’s extraordinary torch drawings of animals. In addition, the exhibition will include Altman’s wire birds, paintings, and other mixed media works.

Since the early 1990s, Altman’s work has featured everyday materials and found objects to celebrate the beauty of the natural world and to create a moment for contemplation about our relationship with nature. Her paintings of trees and landscapes find beauty and intrigue in the commonplace and document our changing experience of the natural world.
With her ongoing series of torch drawings, Altman has become adept at controlling the flame as she draws with fire on wet paper to create both large and small-scale works of domestic and exotic animals. Fire and simulated fire have a long history in the artist’s works, as Altman uses it both as a tool for mark making and as a reference to the experience of our natural spaces that have been ravaged by the recent fires in the western areas of the country.

Altman (b. 1958, Tuscaloosa, Alabama) received a B.F.A. from the University of Alabama in 1981 and an M.A. from the same institution in 1986. Later in 1986, Altman entered the graduate program at the University of North Texas in Denton and studied with Vernon Fisher until she earned her M.F.A degree in 1989. Altman’s work can be seen in public and private collections around the country, including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, and the Grace Museum in Abilene. The artist is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Engelhard Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Altman currently lives and works in Fort Worth, Texas.