The Wilcox Space, located at 824 Exposition Avenue, no. 9 in the heart of the Fair Park district in Dallas, is the loft where John Wilcox lived for the last fifteen years of his life before his death in 2012.
Wilcox always painted in the spaces where he lived. Whether in an old bunkhouse in California, a loft in New York, or in Texas, Wilcox’s spaces were subtly changing arrangements of art, objects, and works in progress. They always included an array of found objects, a rich library, esoteric cultural or historical ephemera, and the work of other artists he held dear. At any one time one might find an ever-changing collage of old pieces of paper laid out on a small table, fossils, drying flowers or seed pods, feathers, or small unique pieces of metal or wood found on the shores of the Red River or Lake Texoma. These spaces took on a life of their own not unlike the slow, rhythmic ebb and flow of salinity in a tidal river.
The Wilcox Space continues this tradition. After Wilcox’s death in 2012 The Space hosted six curated installations of Wilcox’s work from April 2013 to July 2018 in partnership with the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. In September 2018 The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History took over stewardship of The Space for the exhibition, study, and documentation of the work of painters whose practices, like Wilcox’s, bring together the craft of painting and exploration of the nature of the medium itself.
The Wilcox Space and The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History
THE ART OF JOHN WILCOX 