Brown Foundation Gallery

November 21, 2020 – February 28, 2021

*This exhibition will be temporarily closed January 4 - 19 while the building undergoes renovations.

This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.

Steve Parker
Day is Done

Day is Done features sound sculptures by Austin-based artist Steve Parker. His work explores communal experiences that examine history, systems, and behavior. The exhibition features a new work inspired by Guy Taylor’s public performance of Taps each evening in downtown Galveston and the tradition being carried on by Constable Clint Wayne Brown. Parker’s site-responsive sculpture for Galveston is made from salvaged brass instrument bells that play a composition of collected recordings of the lyrics of the well-known Taps tune. This work reflects on its roots as a call to retire for the evening and metaphor for life and death. The exhibition also features Parker’s 2018 work Sirens in the second-floor vault, which reimagines the function of the contemporary civil defense siren. Rather than projecting conventional warning tones, Sirens plays intermittent recordings of songs of distress as a call to action.

Click below to listen to an excerpt from Day is Done:

You may also dial (409) 292-6612 to listen to the recording on your phone.

Special thanks to the individuals who participated in the creation of this work, including Coby Cagle, Roy DeGesero, Claire Drennan, Mary Lee Eneberg, Judy Friesen, Allison Johnston, Maria Molteni, Leslie Moody Castro, Alese Pickering, and Cathy Power.

Steve Parker is an artist, musician, and curator in Austin, TX. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Parker works with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets to investigate how communal listening can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. His projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles.

Parker has exhibited and performed at institutions, public spaces, and festivals internationally.  Highlights include Art Basel Miami Beach, the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Fusebox Festival, Tanglewood, Los Angeles Philharmonic inSIGHT, SXSW, the Stone, Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin), the Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia), The Contemporary Austin, Bowerbird, and the Gene Siskel Film Center (Chicago). As a soloist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works.

Parker has been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the Copland Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Mid America Arts Alliance. He is the Curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum of Art, Executive Director of Collide Arts, and a faculty member at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.

steveparkerartist.com

Click here to download a PDF that includes the exhibition checklist and artist’s resume.