ArtCentre of Plano to Host "The Art of Collecting" Seminar

The Art of Collecting Panelists

Amy Darrow, Art Collector
Darrow has been passionate about art since she was a child. It is a passion that she now shares with her husband. Together they have amassed a collection of modern art that focuses on local or Texas artists. “When I began purchasing art I found that I wanted to buy everything. After attending a discussion on art collecting, I decided to narrow my focus on Texas artists. In that way I could both support my local art community and fulfill my other criteria of meeting and liking the artist as well as having them in our home for dinner.”

Amy is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a B.S. in Communications. She serves on the Board of Directors of the ArtCentre of Plano and is a member of Leadership Plano Class 33.

Patricia Meadows, Noted Art Connoisseur

Meadows is best known for her support of regional artists. She was co-founder of Dallas Visual Art Center and co-founder of the Emergency Artists’ Support League. She has been listed in “Who’s Who in American Art” since 1984 and served as president of the Dallas Art Dealers Associate. She served four years on the Dallas Museum of Art’s Acquisition Committee and on the board of the Dallas Arts District Management Association and the Mid-American Arts Alliance in Kansas City, MO.

Under her supervision and as the senior art curator for Hall Financial Group, more than 165 works of art have been selected and installed in publicly accessible locations in Hall Office Park in Frisco, TX. The park’s signature section is the Texas Sculpture Garden, a four acre indoor and outdoor site at the entrance to the development, which showcases contemporary sculpture by 40 well-know Texas artists. (TVAA Visual Arts Association Website).

Morse joined the staff of the Nasher in 2002 as Assistant Curator where he has organized, overseen, or assisted with numerous exhibitions, including Rodin to Calder: Masterworks of Modern Sculpture from the Nasher Collection (2003); Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier (2004); Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions (2004); Bodies Past and Present: The Figurative Tradition in the Nasher Collection (2004); an exhibition and corresponding international conference entitled Variable States: Appearance, Intention, and Interpretation in Modern Sculpture (2004); Frank Stella: Painting in Three Dimensions (2005); David Smith: Drawing and Sculpting (2005); Minimalism in the Nasher Collection (2005); The Women of Giacometti (2006); On Tour with Renzo Piano: Selected Projects from the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (2006) and more.

Mr. Morse received his B.A. with honors in art history in 1994 from Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. Prior to receiving his M.A. in Modern Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001, Morse served as curatorial intern at the National Museum of American Art (now Smithsonian American Art Museum) in Washington, D.C.

John Pomara, Noted Artist and Educator

John is a Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. John Pomara’s teaching and research are on the visual arts with a focus on current theoretical concerns of contemporary art and culture. His own research the past few years has focused primarily on issues addressing the current state of painting and picture making with the rise of new media and digital technology. Pomara explores and formats computer stenciling of magnified digital images. These pictorial distortions are then painted in an analog fashion, pulling industrial enamel paints across aluminum surfaces.

In 2006 and 2007, he had solo exhibitions at the Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas, Texas, as well as being included in an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art titled, Capturing Motion. In 2005 he received the Legends Award from the Dallas Center of Contemporary Art coinciding with a Fifteen Year Survey of his paintings and digital pictures. He has also exhibited his work and has lectured at the Dallas Museum of Art in a solo exhibition; Concentrations 39 and the group show, Crossing State Lines, at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston with work being acquired for their permanent collections (2001). He has shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles and London, U.K. Most recently his work has been shown at the Tucson Museum in Arizona in the exhibition, Paint on Metal, and at the Meadows Museum in Dallas in Texas Vision: The Barrett Collection. He has given lectures and appeared on panels at the Smart Museum in Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Missouri, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, and various universities. His work has been written about critically in major art journals and magazines such as Flash Art, ARTFORUM, and Art in America, Art News, Art Papers and The New Art Examiner.

Pomara has taught as a Visiting Artist and Lecturer at the University of North Texas, East Texas State University and Brookhaven College. He was awarded the UT Chancellors Award of Teacher of the spring of 2007. John received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Texas State University, participated in the Study Fine Arts Program at Empire State University, and a Master’s of Fine Arts from East Texas State University.

Cris Worley is a graduate of the University of the South with a BA in Art History, and Southern Methodist University with a master’s degree in Art History. Established in 2010, she owns and operates Cris Worley Fine Arts in the Dallas Design District, an art advisory firm and gallery dedicated to providing clients with the finest consulting services and to building the careers of artists of distinction. The gallery specializes in innovative Texas artists in all states of their career and selected national artists of note.

The ArtCentre of Plano, Inc., formerly known as the Cultural Arts Council of Plano, Inc., was founded in 1981 as a private non-profit organization to promote growth and development of emerging community arts groups. The mission of the ArtCentre of Plano, Inc., is to encourage, support, and promote excellence, diversity, and vitality in the arts and arts education in the Greater Plano area. The ArtCentre provides educational programming through outreach to schools and youth groups, and hosts outstanding art exhibitions. It is currently housed at the Cox Building at 1517 H Avenue and will move in 2017 to the Saigling House, currently under renovation by the City of Plano.