Prairie Dog Companion: Robert Bellamy Designs

The man who everyone in Dallas knows for his creatively quirky landscaping talents, Robert Bellamy of Robert Bellamy Designs, offers a teasing look at an upcoming exhibit featuring “encaustic paintings” by Marfa artist Jason Willaford.The private opening, takes place July 17 in Marfa, 6:00 to 9:30 p.m. This is the first event hosted by Bellamy’s latest Marfa venture, Prairie Dog Imports. And if we thought Robert was on the edge of quirky-beauty in Dallas, just wait to you get down to 1810 N. Prairie Avenue, Marfa.

Be ready to open your eyes and senses.

Included in the exhibit will be work from Willaford’s, “More Abstract Linear Evolution” series. The paintings individually play as a word or a component of something larger. While each painting maintains individuality, in a grouping they form a narrative. A series of lines reveal organic tributaries that run across a hard edge surface of primary color. The individual paintings become rhythmic, often the opposing lines play off one another depending on the arrangement like a quatrain or haiku.

Then there’s the ball of string.

Also included is a preview from his most recent series,

systemic group of paintings exploring the evolution of the line and how we see

things, “The fact that I can drop a wet piece of string on the floor and watch it

transform into a beautiful line mimicking that of a horizon leads me to believe

there is an ultimate connection between everything,” says Willaford.

Willaford’s use of string is a humorous ode to a “string theory” of aesthetics in

which the visible world is connected by fibers so small that they are not

perceptible to the human eye. Here, seeing is about what’s not visible as much as it

is about color and

To further explain his intent, Willaford quotes a line from Herman Melville’s Moby

Dick. “Whiteness is not so much about color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors.”

“Melville understood that white is truth,” says Willaford. “That when everything else is stripped away in nature we are left with white.”

Willaford was born in 1969 in Tampa, Florida. He received his BFA from Florida State in 1992. He is in over 300 private and public collections in the U.S.Galleri Urbane Marfa represents emerging and established contemporary artists,Painting, Photography and Sculpture, With works available by: Bret Aaker, MichaelBerman, Gail Peter Borden, Kate Carr, Munson Hunt, Julie Speed, Peter Voshefski,Andrea Zuill and Adreon Henry.

Galleri Urbane is located at 212 E. San Antonio St /Hwy 90, one block east of The

Ballroom, Marfa Texas.

To view the gallery or to see work by the gallery artists, please visit

www.galleriurbane.com or call 432.729.4200.

light. The series is a continuum of exact specs (32×2x96). Each piece is white with wheat pigment lines that convey energy.

“Refracting all but one”, a