Meet the New Dallas 9

Announcing the winners of the first-ever D Art Slam at f.i.g.

Dallas has lately been abuzz with the arts. Yet this growth comes at a perilous time. Galleries are struggling to survive, and artists are fighting to be shown. To provide a public environment for area artists to exhibit their work, D Magazine, along with John Sughrue and f.i.g., produced a juried art show in May called D Art Slam. Of the 150 artists who exhibited, the jurors honored nine, designating them the New Dallas Nine.

The name recalls the 1930s and ’40s regional artists who believed that local art can speak universally. The original Dallas Nine—Jerry Bywaters, Thomas M. Stell Jr., Harry P. Carnohan, Otis M. Dozier, Alexandre Hogue, William Lester, Everett Spruce, John Douglass, and Perry Nichols—shaped the Texas centennial exhibition and Dallas’ new art museum. Working on murals, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and drawings, they depicted Texas’ landscapes, labor, luminaries, and tribes. They followed their own style, nodding but not kowtowing to New York and Europe, exhibiting alongside each other and national and international artists. As World War II ended, the Nine disbanded and moved elsewhere. Their work can still be seen at the DMA and other museums.

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