Robin Davidson and Sarah Fisher

Mrs. Schmetterling Unframed is curated on the structure of Mrs. Schmetterling, a book published in 2021 by Robin Davidson. Mixed-media artworks by Houston artist Sarah Fisher provide images that collaborate with and expand the mode of twelve of the book’s twenty-two poems. This O’Kane Gallery interdisciplinary exhibition provides another format with which to experience the musings of the book’s protagonist, Mrs. Schmetterling. All twelve of Sarah Fisher’s artworks will be exhibited in the original next to its companion poem printed on an adjacent panel. In addition, recordings of excerpts from the poems by author Robin Davidson will be heard variously in the gallery and associated with each of the poems they are taken from.

Robin Davidson was honored as the City of Houston’s second Poet Laureate and is University of Houston-Downtown Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing, In addition to Mrs. Schmetterling (Arrowsmith Press, 2021), other publications include Luminous Other (awarded the Ashland Poetry Press's 2012 Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize), Kneeling in the Dogo (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and City that Ripens on the Tree of the World, (Calyspo Editions, 2013). Davidson received a Fulbright professorship in Poland and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2019.

Sarah Fisher has exhibited artwork extensively in Houston and around the state of Texas in painting, printmaking, and mixed media. In addition to over 20 group exhibitions since 2017, solo exhibitions include You Won't See It Coming, Museum of East Texas, Lufkin, Texas, 2022; Decisions, Michelson Museum of Art, Marshall, Texas, 2022; It's No Small Thing, Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock, Texas, 2021; The Second Yes, Front Gallery, Houston, 2019; and Seen, Art Palace Gallery, Houston, 2017. In 2021 Fisher received the Wendy Wagner Foundation Summer Trio Grant Grand Prize.

Sarah Fisher, The Cold Place, 2019, Oil, graphite and dry cleaning identification stickers on Arches paper, 71 x 51 inches