The Lawndale Artist Studio Program is part of Lawndale’s ongoing commitment to support the creation of contemporary art by Gulf Coast area artists. With an emphasis on emerging practices, the program provides three artists with studio space on the third floor of Lawndale Art Center at 4912 Main Street in the heart of Houston’s Museum District. This exhibition features residents for the eighth round of the Lawndale Artist Studio Program, Jim Nolan, Shayne Murphy and Emily Peacock. In an attempt to better understand his own art making process, Jim Nolan will remake and reinterpret three of his older sculptures that were destroyed in moving from the East Coast to Texas. Shayne Murphy presents new work focusing on the creation of invented spaces that combine the real and imagined. The spaces represent a hyper-reality; a place where dreams, memories, and the future converge. By combining different visual languages, he seeks to explore the relationships between abstraction and realism through paintings, drawings, and installation based works. Imagery is often distorted and manipulated taking on a fantastical quality while still maintaining a connection to the physical world. The occupants or figures within these spaces embody different roles including that of transient, protector, destroyer, or at times remain unknown. Through photographs, videos and small installations, Emily Peacockexplores her relationship with her sister through staging gestures and examining elements of the environments, objects and routines associated with shared personal histories. Drawing on her close family relationships, this exhibition of new work plays with modes of portraiture and the various ways we interact with photographs as personal objects. Jim Nolan’s website Shayne Murphy’s wesbite Emily Peacock’s website