Landmarks announces Autobiography: Circles, a major new work by artist Howardena Pindell. Commissioned for the College of Education, the large-scale composition will be installed on the glass façade of the George I. Sánchez building⎯the main entry for the college⎯where it will be viewed by approximately 15,000 students, faculty, staff, and visitors each day. Landmarks will celebrate the work with a free public lecture on April 23, led by Valerie Cassel Oliver, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and curatorial contributor to the project. Event details can be found here.
Pindell’s commission reflects her unique approach to abstraction, with dots organized in layered, constellation-like patterns that create depth, movement, and an interplay of colors. It draws on the artist’s rich personal and political narrative, blending recurring themes and borrowing visual elements from works made throughout her career. Colored circles recall the Pindell’s signature use of hole-punched dots⎯a practice informed by her appreciation of the shape as found in nature, and her experience seeing dots on dinnerware designated for Black customers in the Jim Crow era. Numbers represent the tags that tracked enslaved Africans as well as the artist’s interest in mathematics. Arrows symbolize flight, social mobility, transformation, and scientific equations and calculations.
The art is integrated into the renovated building façade – designed by McKinney York Architects – through a digital print process in which ceramic ink is fused to the glass panels and carefully lit from the interior. Measuring approximately 25 by 50 feet, and spanning multiple stories, the installation evokes the luminous quality of stained-glass.
Autobiography: Circles builds on Landmarks' dedication to commissioning artists whose varied perspectives enrich the campus landscape. It also creates curricular connections across disciplines, fosters new programs for the University and broader community, and invites opportunities for self-examination and personal growth.
This project was supported, in part, by the Still Water Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
