Scrappy: By Any Means Necessary | Curated by Jennifer Moore | Dec 13th, 2025 - Feb 7th, 2026
Open Reception: Saturday, December 13th, from 7:00 - 11:00 pm
Closing on February 7th, 2026, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Gyan Shrosbee
"Artists embrace scrappiness for a multitude of reasons and in as many ways....They tip their paper hats to Duchamp..."
- Jennifer Moore
Participating Artists: Hollie Brown, Ellen Crofts, Lisa Guevara, Julia Hungerford, John Le, Elisa Lendvay, Niloofar Mofrad, Hilary Nelson, Gyan Shrosbree, Jim Shrosbree, and Narong Tintamusik
MotherShip Studios announces their exhibition, Scrappy: By Any Means Necessary, a group exhibition opening Saturday, Dec 13, 2025 through Saturday February 7th, curated by Jennifer Moore.
A scrappy individual will accomplish their objective by any means necessary with resources at hand. This exhibition is a celebration of the many ways this quality of scrappiness might manifest in the artist’s studio. The word can be used pejoratively to describe an end product lacking polish and finesse – where the preferred final form would rebuke evidence of its process and the hand that shaped it but risks sacrificing meaning and warmth. Artists embrace scrappiness for a multitude of reasons and in as many ways: as a means to acquire affordable art supplies and fodder, to avoid waste, to reference or recontextualize an object or material’s imbued meaning, to hasten or simplify their process, to access the improvisational spirit of readymade and autoconstrucción, or as an indexical shorthand for the body. They tip their paper hats to Duchamp, Braque, Stockholder, Cruzvillegas and Lucas, but also to the history of craft(quilting, scrapbooking and papier-mache).
Join us for the opening on Saturday December 13th from 7pm - 10pm, where handpainted artists merchandise, complimentary drinks and music will be present. Many thanks to our 2025 sponsors such as City of San Marcos Arts Commission, San Marcos Film Lab, Texas State University, Fast Signs, Spellerberg Projects, Cult of Happy, Topo Chico, Tito's Vodka, Austin Beer Works, Middleton Brewing, Carabuena Tequila, and Twin Liquors.
Artist Bios
Hollie Brown (b. 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Abilene, TX. Brown received her BFA in Painting from Texas State University (2012) and her MFA from The University of California, Riverside (2017). From 2018-2020 she lectured on Art and Design at Texas State University and Austin Community College. She currently lectures at ACU and McMurry University, and runs the business “Little Shop of Hollies” which she founded in 2020.
Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions nationally including, Cluley Projects, TX; San Jacinto College, CA; Human Resources Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Spellerberg Projects, Lockhart, TX and Icosa Gallery, Austin, TX. Brown’s work was featured in the 144th issue of New American Paintings.
Artist Statement:
My newest work centers on candid states of fragility, insecurity, and vulnerability. I primarily pull imagery from television, a cultural echo of chaos, fear, pressure, humor, etc.. While chronicling my own fears, shortcomings, and moments when everything feels heavy and on edge, these paintings are deeply human and aim to highlight absurdities in the communal instability and fear we all experience.
The use of reality television, the antithesis of genuineness*, is a nod to the dramatic futility of life. While I, somewhat shamefully, experience this device as a temporary lobotomy, I’m also interested in how shared culture shapes our insecurities, expectations, and inner narratives. The people in my paintings are fragile, sensitive, permeable to the forces around them.
The textured surfaces give form to rough edges and raw feelings. Tangled strings carry the tension of short-circuiting when things get overwhelming. The net gives a sense of being trapped or boxed in, whether by gender, age, or the expectations tied to both; it is also a symbol of safety. Dualities like these can be found throughout the work.
Now as a form of research within my practice, these borrowed moments serve as a diaristic record that might aid in untangling my own contradictions and pressures, while trying to understand and find humor inside the mess.
*except in cases of real survival
Ellen Crofts is a visual artist based in Austin, Texas. Crofts studied studio art at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon after completing her bachelor's degree in Linguistics and Anthropology from Reed College. She continued painting when she relocated to New York City, taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League of New York. Returning to her native Texas, she joined the community at Austin Community College, taking classes and working as a Gallery Assistant at The Art Galleries at ACC. Crofts is currently working towards her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.
Artist Statement:
Ellen Crofts creates constructions out of paper and cardboard that embody the joy of creation and destruction. Her sculptures exist in the space between 2D and 3D: She uses drawings and sketches to guide her sculptural forms as well as actual material which she tears up and glues together to create her constructions.
In her work, Crofts approaches her materials with a spirit of playful experimentation–puncturing, tearing, cutting, painting, and gluing paper and remnants of previous drawings. She aggressively engages with the physical world of her materials, discovering the effects she can impose. The resulting artwork proposes an unmediated, interactive approach to the physical world, as a means of pleasure as well as power. Tension arises from the contrast between the weakness and delicacy of the paper and the violence and forcefulness of cutting, puncturing and gouging.
Lisa Guevara received her Bachelors in Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2015, and an Associates in Web Programming from Austin Community College in 2023. She has been included in shows hosted by Petshop Gallery (Omaha, NE), Plug Projects (Kansas City, MO), Centro de Artes (San Antonio, TX), and Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos (San Marcos, TX). She has curated a number of shows in Tugboat Gallery (Lincoln, NE) and Spellerberg Projects (Lockhart, TX). Lisa currently lives and creates in San Marcos, Texas.
Artist Statement
The root of my work stems from anxiety brought on by external forces that prompt internal dialogue. Am I still experiencing a “class struggle” if I’m making enough to contribute to a 401k? Am I guided by current events, politics, feminism? Or am I responding to my day-to-day, going as far as my astigmatic eyes take me? In an attempt to control my mind, I focus on controlling my body.
My work becomes a means to understand and assert my own agency through a continuous examination of self. I mimic the movements of my own body using painted images and collaged items—stretching, folding, opening, and bending. I personify objects using personal valuables like used clothing and prescription glasses combined with an array of excess materials, such as plastic and product packaging. I seek to transform anxiety into a structured, tangible form, offering both a reflection and a resolution to the struggles within.
I rely on my physiological responses to guide my creative decisions. Processes like braiding, painting, and knot-tying help me achieve a flow state, while materials like glittery paper, acrylic paint, and clay focus my attention. Mark-making becomes a coping skill, processing the material in front of me to maintain a grounded awareness of my reality. I embrace improvisation and reject the notion that a work is ever truly finished.
Julia Hungerford: b: 1980, Knoxville, Tennessee
Currently in Austin, TX
Other: drums
Artist Statement: I have made a lot of sandwiches. Most only exist for a short period of time, until someone eats them. Then I made a sandwich that could last forever. Well, it could shatter and turn back to dust pretty quickly, but the oldest piece of pottery is about 20,000 years old.
Then, I made a clay newspaper for the clay sandwich because it needed a plate or a to-go wrapping or something. Sometimes it felt like a spell or a hex, drawing all the letters of the headlines, as I thought, is it all bad news? Will it last forever? Is this even a newspaper or a sandwich? No, and nothing lasts forever. Take care of each other and make art not war. Bon appetit!
John Le (1994 - 2023) was an artist born in San Jose, Ca. John worked in painting, sculpture, collage and textiles. He held no biases when it came to material or medium and his DIY sensibilities led him to create with anything from Golden to Crayola, oil paint to toilet paper, embedding his ideas and images into intuitive layers of beautifully organized chaos. He attended Texas State University for painting, and his work has been shown in San Marcos, TX, Austin and Oakland, Ca.
Elisa Lendvay (born 1975, Dallas, TX) is an artist living and working in NY. She received an MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, and a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin, and Bennington College. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in New York City at Sargent’s Daughters Gallery, Underdonk, Jason McCoy Gallery, V&A Gallery and Moti Hasson, and in New Haven, Connecticut, at Fred Giampietro Gallery. Her work was recently on view at the Drawing Center, NYC, PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance, Chatham, NY, Ratio 3 Gallery, San Francisco, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY, the Albany International Airport, and the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery at the University of Dallas, Form+Concept, Santa Fe and The Hudson House, Hudson, NY, curated by JAG projects. She has been included in group shows in New York including Klaus Von Nichtaggend Gallery, Kansas Gallery, Asya Geisberg Gallery, Daily Operation, Lesley Heller Gallery, TSA and other venues across the country.
Her work has been included in Art Forum (Critic’s picks), The NY Times Style Mag, Time Out NY, Two Coats of Paint, Maake Magazine, and the Huffington Post. She is the recipient of awards and residencies including Edward Albee Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space Residency, New York Foundation of the Arts Artist Fellowship, Sculpture Finalist, The Dallas Museum of Art’s Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough Award and the Dallas Museum of Art’s DeGolyer Award. She was a finalist for the Ida Applbroog Grant and nominated for the Joan Mitchelle Foundation. She teaches at Marist College and has been a visiting art faculty member at Bennington College.
Niloofar Mofrad is a visual artist from Iran, now based in Iowa. Her work currently is focused on drawing, collage and painting. She holds an MFA degree from Maharishi International University (MIU) and a BA in Consciousness and Sustainability from MIU.
Her focused studies in learning and practicing visual arts began in recent years since 2019 when she took directed drawing lessons with the generosity and mentorship of artist Jim Shrosbree. Prior to this, while having deep appreciation for art she mostly was exposed to it through film and music in her upbringing environment in Iran and through her few years of living in Malaysia and the US.
As part of her BA program in MIU, Niloofar also took a digital photography and a video making class, a tip toe of her interest in learning visual languages. She finds that her fascination and studies in Maharishi Vedic science found a framework in expressing her inner dialogues, through drawing/painting.
Along with her room space and herself as subjects of her drawings, she gathers different stills from films and music videos as references for making her work. She yet returns to and is moved by Morandi’s approach of a limited subject, as she explores working on iterations of paintings/collages. In this frame, her work perhaps engages in the exploration of cravings in a limited appearance.
Artist Statement
My room, myself, what I observe through the window, and film stills set the stage in making my paintings and collages. I perceive the isolation of a moment of a film into a still, as a theatrical stage of its own. In this arrest of perception within the constraints of a still or within a section of my room, I find curiosity in shapes, colors, edges and composition. The unfoldment of my work allows me to be surprised by my ways of seeing, my ways of perceiving and this keeps me excited as a means of seeing myself.
When working on drawings or paintings, I find myself in an amateur state of not knowing the how to, thus relying on perception when control is subdued by inhibitions of skills. This amateur state in my experience allows me to notice how I make the most of limitations and a departure from the original perception to an unexpected language of my perception. This amateur experience in making paintings, reminds me of my brief experience in taking images with a click and shoot camera, when I mostly relied on my ways of looking and framing, while having less control of functions, the resulting images were surprising and further away from my initial perception.
While working on drawings and paintings, I seem to play with ‘importance’ as my attention reduces its frame of focus within a still. I might perceive the still in terms of lines, shapes or colors. In this, what is important shifts and varies at different moments. I explore this shift of significance through making iterations from the same reference.
I seem to also consider the movement between positive and negative shapes, in which lies for me a kind of scrutiny of emotional closeness and distance. In a recent collage/painting that emerged from a dancing scene, what initially began as an exploration of a dancing scene, evolved as a dialogue with horizontal and vertical shapes. I explored motifs such as multiple figures next to one another, through their reduction to shapes. I am curious of the irrelevancy of these shapes to one another and their unexpected entanglements to each other.
When collaging or painting, I seem to engage with this sensed notion of intimacy and distance. What is foreign and what is familiar? What’s ordinary and familiar may become foreign when not spent time with. I explore this sense of foreign, in picking stills that seem ordinary or trivial in an attempt to find another familiarity.
Hilary Nelson is an artist living and working in New Mexico. Her work combines ideas of the familiar and alien through sculpture, installation, and drawing. Material exploration acts as a foundation to confront the paradox implicit in the idea of something being “finished”. When does “usefulness” end? They have had solo exhibitions in New Mexico, Iowa, and Wisconsin and have been in group exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Taos, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Portugal. Nelson is an Assistant Professor at Maharishi International University and Adjunct Instructor at Santa Fe Community College.
LAUREN MICHELLE PETERSON is an artist-philosopher, curatorial collaborator, and educator currently pursuing a PhD in the School of Art at Texas Tech University. Her research focuses on forms of cognition and aesthetics emergent within the posthumanist condition. Her artistic practices include drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Since earning her MFA in 2015, Peterson has served as the Studio Coordinator of Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and held faculty positions at Georgia State University and Valdosta State University. Peterson was named a 2019/20 Aspen Art Museum Fellow and her work was included in New American Paintings 150 and Caddisfly Project Vol. 4. She has been an artist in residence at Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Jentel Foundation. Recent curatorial projects include Garage Projects, a local DIY space for creative interdisciplinary experimentation, in Lubbock, TX.
Artist Statement
I make site-specific installations that repurpose and reconfigure found object assemblages alongside video, sound, photographs, natural elements, and performance. Collecting objects is a central aspect of my practice, a survey of the places, interactions, and economies I inhabit. I construct the assemblages using discarded and thrifted household items, furniture, electronic devices, toys, partyware, and construction materials. Working with devalued objects allows me to question the lifespans of objects beyond a human time scale, how objects orient a sense of self, and how objects form shifting ambiguous networks of value and purpose. The works temporarily convene together in iterative installations through tying, clamping, taping, stacking, wrapping, adhering, stapling, or embedding. The attachment method and the objects act as mark-making tools with which I collaborate, encouraging forms to succumb to gravity or mistakes of my own hand. I think about the installations as three-dimensional collaborative drawings that crudely assemble into speculative encounters that suggest how materiality might coalesce in a way that theorizes beyond human logic.
Gyan Shrosbree received her B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and her M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Laisun Keane, Boston, MA; JEFF, Marfa, TX; Wrong Gallery, Marfa, TX; Ola Studio, Pound Ridge, NY: NX.IX Gallery, Detroit, MI; Haus Collective, San Antonio, TX; Grapefruits, Portland, OR; Grand View University, Des Moines, IA; Yellow Door Gallery, Des Moines, IA; Ripon College, Ripon, WI; Lovey Town Space, Madison, WI; and The Iowa Arts Council and State Historical Museum, Des Moines, IA. Her work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Tappeto Volante, Brooklyn, NY; Personal Space,Velejo, CA; Drake University, Des Moines, IA; Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Glen Ellyn, IL; Ground Floor Gallery, Nashville, TN; The Woskob Family Gallery, State College, PA; NYSRP, Brooklyn, NY; and Artstart, Rhinelander, WI. Gyan has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, The Vermont Studio Center, Two Coats of Paint, and The Maple Terrace. Recent publications featuring her work include Yale University Radio, Two Coats of Paint, Hyperallergic, New American Painting, Egomania Magazine,The Coastal Post, Inertia Studio Visits, Precog Magazine, and Maake Magazine. Gyan is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Maharishi International University. She lives and works in Fairfield, Iowa.
Artist Statement
“The closet is my safe space
my home base
my fashion place
my positivity chamber
my reflection pool
my field of all possibilities
I find my power in clothing. My emotional landscape has always manifested in dress. I arrange things in the language of outfits: dressing the canvas/dressing the body.
We dress our bodies for many reasons: need, practicality, personality, expression, protection; clothing as armor—protection from the elements, promoting empowerment, strength and confidence.
My work is rooted in painting and its history. I am strongly influenced by twentieth century painting and modernism, but I am actively reconstituting that history through a contemporary, intersectional feminist lens. I use humor and the body as tools for communication and a container for that conversation. Body language, as well as costume and clothing, can take the edge off while remaining powerful. Repetition functions as a means to accumulate visual information and escalate the dissemination of the images. Flattening the space of the painting opens up the possibilities of abstracting the recognizable. The more you say something, the more it creates new information, the more you introduce the possibilities of translation. Memory plays a role in all of this whether it be memory from another time or a memory from a previous mark on the wall.
Through the act of making, the ideas emerge. A low stakes, generative attitude results in a feeling of freedom and allows the work to take shape in an unattached, delightfully free space. The result is the accumulation of many works that can meet up in a modular way allowing for many iterations and fluidly shifting compositions.”
Jim Shrosbree received an MFA in Ceramics at the University of Montana, Missoula. His work has been exhibited widely and is in the collections of such as the Detroit Institute of Art, Des Moines Art Center, Los Angeles County Museum, Edythe and Ely Broad Museum, University of Iowa Museum of Art, Mint Museum and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art.
Shrosbree’s awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Fellowship (2019), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2017), National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowship (1994), Iowa Arts Council, and NEA/Idaho Arts, and Humanities Commission (1974).
Artist residencies include, Watershed Center for Ceramic Art (2000),
MacDowell (2016) and Yaddo (2012 ,2015, 2019), American Academy in Rome Residency Program (2023), Knox College, 2025.
Shrosbree has been a visiting artist and guest lecturer at numerous
universities and art institutions. Among those are Cranbrook Academy of Art, University of Washington, UC-Davis, Bard College, Penn State
University, Alberta College of Art, NYU, and University of Iowa.
His work is represented by Paul Kotula Projects in Detroit, MI.
Artist Statement
I work between sculpture and painting, using various materials to navigate the play of an interior landscape and a language of visual form.
Conditions of working space, tools, materials and a vocabulary of form fluctuate to become an extension of who I am at the moment.
Discovery comes at different rates and with uneven timing. These conditions dictate a cycle of expansion and contraction that is, in itself, an interactive relationship of knowing and not knowing.
I think of these constructed events, whether painting or sculpture, as driven by the process of drawing. I find myself pulled into a process of looking and not looking, which could be correlated with covering and revealing, destroying and creating – things come apart and cohere at the same time. Largeness is compressed into small spaces.
Out of that situation emerges new forms and events that help me grow. It’s a good reason to continue.
About the Curator
Originally from Kyle, TX, Casie Lomeli studied Art History and Business at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Over the past decade, Casie has immersed herself in the Contemporary Art community in San Antonio. She has held positions at Ruiz-Healy Art gallery and Artpace San Antonio, and has collaborated with organizations such as Luminaria, Clamp Light Artist Studios & Gallery, Planned Parenthood South Texas, and more. She also serves as the Exhibitions Manager at Sala Diaz, a local non-profit art gallery, and is a dedicated Board Member and Co-Chair for Contemporary Art Month San Antonio. Currently, Lomeli is the New Media and Communications Coordinator at Contemporary at Blue Star.
Casie’s practice is centered on creating meaningful conversations that explore the complexities of the human experience, particularly those that involve identity, memory, and ancestry. At times her work is focused and centers on communications strategies for arts organizations, and other times it’s more poetic and curatorial, providing another avenue of storytelling. At the end of the day, Casie’s practice is centered around the artist, the stories they’re bringing to life, and the importance of sharing that with the community and documenting that work for future generations to expand on.
