Blind Alley projects
Press Release
Celia Eberle, godhead
November 17 thru December 22, 2023
Location: 3317 West 4th Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76107
Hours: daylight
Blind Alley projects is pleased to announce Celia Eberle’s godhead, opening Friday, November 17 with a meet-the-artist event Saturday, November 25, 3 to 5pm. Celia Eberle brings her witty intelligence and material attentiveness to luminous handformed wasp nests attached to a metal grid in the shape of a generic human-like figure with a proportionately large head. These elements collectively give shape to godhead, which is suspended in midair within the vitrine space of Blind Alley to be received and considered by visitors and passersby.
Eberle grew up in the Piney Woods of East Texas, a place more Southern Gothic than many people would imagine Texas to be. She believes that, “in spite of our love of technology and progress, the basic nature of the human experience remains essentially unchanged.”
In relation to her Blind Alley installation, the artist explains, “My work is a philosophical pursuit. It's my observation that certain images and ideas consistently appeal to us. It's my intention to repeat or recombine these ideas as a way of exploring the universality of human experience across time. Wasp nests are a symbol I have repeatedly used to contemplate the origin of the concept of god. Some cultures describe the beginning of the world with a god or gods creating form from chaos. Chaos theory states that the appearance of chaos is actually part of a larger order we can't see, or whatever is chaotic evolves to an order. I imagine the wasps gathering their material from the chaos of the world around them and creating a geometric order. This observation could give rise to the idea of a larger mind or hand controlling all existence. I make art about this falling, failing state we live in. There is beauty, fear, and absurdity to it. As far as I'm concerned, there can be no other subject.”
Artist’s bio:
Receiving a BFA with honors from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1974, Celia Eberle was a member of the historic Dallas co-op 500X from 1987-1992. Awards include the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Individual Support Grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nasher Sculpture Center Microgrant, Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art, and M-AAA/NEA Fellowship. Eberle was selected for the Nasher Public program with her installation Waiting for Robot showing at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas in 2022. In 2017 she was included in Commanding Space: Women Sculptors of Texas at the Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth and To See is to Have at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. In 2014 she had a solo exhibition at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont. Her work is in significant public collections including the Dallas Museum of Art, the J. Wayne Stark Gallery at Texas A&M, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the San Antonio Museum of Art, as well as many private collections.