Husband-and-wife artists Dana Younger and Felice House have shown their works together before, but never in their hometown of Austin. "I think our first debut as an artist couple showing together was in Houston in 2013," House says. "Since then, we've gone to Michigan [and] we've had a show in New Mexico."
Though there is, in Younger's words, "no good reason" why they haven't done a joint show in Austin before, they're excited to finally do so. "We wanted to show a relatively new body of work, so this work is new to 2016," Younger says. "And we have a bunch of new pieces for it, so we're really excited."
Titled Sum You, Some Me, the new joint show will feature House's oil-on-canvas paintings paired with Younger's sculptures. "Our work is different," House says. "But both of our works in this show deal with gender."
House's paintings for Sum You, Some Me focus on female portraiture while Younger's sculptures are of fragments of the male body. "It was somewhat intentional and somewhat unintentional that I'm representing the head and shoulders of women and Dana is representing really just the bodies of men," House says. "So I'm sort of handing women power... while Dana is almost removing a little bit of power from the male figure and making it more poetic by just offering a fragment."
"There's a way in which our joint shows are a bit of a mirror for our relationship," Younger says. "We share ideas and we form our ideas together, and then we go separately and we generate work and then we bring it back together and put it in relation to each other. And I think as humans in a relationship with each other, we have to do that. We have to be whole and complete ourselves... and then we bring that to the relationship and are better able to relate to each other."
