MEDIA CONTACT:
Vanessa Ormsby, RCA Communications Director
(361) 320-2064 / vanessa@rockportartcenter.com
EXHIBITIONS MARK LAST DAYS OF SUMMER AT ROCKPORT CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Diverse forms of art create much to explore and enjoy
ROCKPORT, Texas (July 31, 2025) — “A Field Guide,” featuring life-like ceramic souvenirs and seashells by Jessica Ninci, and “Nepantla: In-Between,” offering interdisciplinary works from printmaker Moira Garcia, will be on display from late summer into early fall at Rockport Center for the Arts (RCA).
The Jeanie & Bill Wyatt Gallery will house Jessica Ninci’s sculptures, on view and available for collection, from Aug. 19–Oct. 12, and Moira Garcia’s embroidered prints, woven paintings, and more will be on display Aug. 22–Oct. 5 in the McKelvey Charitable Fund Gallery. A public artist reception with Ninci and Garcia will be held Saturday, September 13, from 5–7 p.m., coinciding with the monthly Austin Street Art Walk, a free, alfresco, walkable art experience in downtown Rockport. The exhibitions and receptions are free to attend and open to the public.
“This exhibition cycle is visually diverse, with the Ninci and Garcia exhibitions joining the Shawn Camp exhibition to provide guests a great deal of incredibly creative work to enjoy as we head into fall,” said Catey Arnold, Barrow Foundation Curator of Exhibitions for RCA.
Having frequented Galveston as a child and now as a resident, Jessica Ninci has a connection and reverence for the island and has been collecting “souvenirs” from its shores for about three decades. “A Field Guide” features carefully sculpted recreations of these gathered objects set within a backdrop of abstracted dunes covered in native, Gulf Coast flora.
“A Field Guide is a collection of ceramic sculptures inspired by the Gulf Coast,” said Ninci. “Collected objects and beach-combed shells are mimicked in clay in a kind of echo. When I find an object to re-create, there’s a shift of importance — no longer a mass of forms along the coastline or in a shop, but this particular shell, or bit of rope, or book, or postcard…it’s an exercise in careful observation.”
A Houston native, Ninci earned her MFA from the University of Houston and is currently an instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Glassell Junior School. Her work has been exhibited in various spaces, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, as well as Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Blaffer Art Museum. She has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Texas, and in 2017, she completed a seven-week residency at The North Set studios through Bea Ying Projects in Houston.
“Nepantla: In-Between” by Santa Fe-based artist, Moira Garcia, is a showcase of printmaking, painting, and fiber artworks that express multilayered narratives rooted in Mesoamerican visual culture and cosmologies. Through symbol, color, and materials, Garcia weaves themes of creation, history, sacrifice, and revival–connecting ancestral imageries to the present day.
A multidisciplinary artist and native of New Mexico, Garcia holds a BFA in Studio Arts with a focus in Printmaking from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, and a MA in Latin American Studies with concentrations in Art History and Indigenous Studies from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is a visual arts and museum educator in the Santa Fe Public Schools and her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications throughout New Mexico.
Garcia’s interest in Mesoamerican art developed from early childhood experiences in Mexico and continues to be a primary inspiration in her work. “Based on my study of Nahuatl language and Mesoamerican traditions, I create works that are in conversation with the large body of pre-Hispanic and colonial manuscripts, cartographies, and codices of Central Mexico,” said Garcia. ”By means of recreating the aesthetic qualities, materials, design, and iconographies, I am interested in ‘revisibilizing’ Mesoamerican artistic practices that were destroyed during Spanish colonization and remain largely unrecognized in contemporary culture.”
For more information on “A Field Guide" and “Nepantla: In-Between,” visit rockportartcenter.com follow RCA on Facebook, or call (361) 729-5519.
About Rockport Center for the Arts
The 1.2-acre Rockport Center for the Arts, the Coastal Bend’s first multidisciplinary arts organization, is located a block away from Aransas Bay in the heart of the Rockport Cultural Arts District. Designed by the award-winning team at Richter Architects, the state-of-the-art campus features a two-story, 14,000-square-foot, visual arts and education building with four galleries and five classrooms (204 S. Austin St.); The Rockport Conference Center, a one-story, 8,000-square-foot conference and event center, known as The ROCC, (106 S. Austin St.); with a 16,000-square-foot Sculpture Garden serving as a visually inspiring transition space between the two buildings. The hours of operation for the showroom, galleries, and gift shop are Tuesday–Saturday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday from noon–4 p.m. Admission is always free. For information on event space or to book an event, call (361) 450-8033. For general information and to become a member, visit rockportartcenter.com, follow RCA on Facebook, or call (361) 729-5519.
About Austin Street Art Walk
Austin Street Art Walk is a collective effort of the Rockport Center for the Arts and Moon Over Water Gallery in partnership with Rockport galleries, restaurants, and businesses located along Austin Street in the Rockport Cultural Arts District. Scheduled the second Saturday of each month, April through December, from 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Art Walk is a free, alfresco, walkable art experience featuring an ever-changing mix of participants and art mediums such as paintings, ceramics, jewelry, photography, textiles, as well as live music, artist demonstrations, food and more. Follow us on Facebook for more information.
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