Thursday, September 4-Saturday, November 22, 2025

Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery and Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery

Free

Dana Frankfort and Josephine Halvorson explore the role of text in painting — its potential as both language and image. Their approaches diverge sharply: Frankfort invents language on the canvas, while Halvorson discovers it in the world.

Frankfort’s energetic works feature single words or phrases painted in gestural, layered washes of color. But legibility is not the point — her letters dissolve into painterly marks, blurring the line between reading and seeing. Frankfort's use of language is emotional, open-ended, and performative; words become shapes, tones, and even moods. Working primarily in oil, she embraces the medium’s viscosity and unpredictability — dragging, layering, and scumbling the surface into what Halvorson once described as “the prettiest mud you’ve ever seen” in a press release for Frankfort’s 2023 show at Olympia in New York. Frankfort has likened her paintings to landscapes — vast, weathered spaces shaped by color, gesture, and atmosphere. Her words drift like clouds, hovering at the edge of meaning and visibility.

Halvorson, by contrast, paints at the scale of encounter. Her subjects are observed on-site — objects and surfaces that bear the traces of time, labor, and use. A collapsed wooden sign with fragmented lettering, a rusted potbelly stove partially obscured by encroaching plants, or a carved 18th-century tombstone where autumn leaves have gathered at its base: she renders each with fidelity and care, capturing not just what the object says but how it has aged, weathered, and endured. If Frankfort’s paintings evoke the atmosphere of the horizon, Halvorson’s are made at arm’s length; both offer a kind of landscape, but from entirely different vantage points. Working with acrylic gouache on absorbent grounds — materials inspired by fresco painting — Halvorson preserves the immediacy of each brushstroke and the shifting effects of daylight. Her works are portraits of presence, marked by deep attention to material, time, and mortality.

Together, Frankfort and Halvorson reflect on what it means to look, read, and interpret. Whether text is conjured in the studio or found in the field, each artist shows that words as images carry not just meaning — but memory, place, and feeling.

About the Artists

Dana Frankfort

Dana Frankfort (b. 1971, Houston, Texas) received a bachelor's degree in art history from Brandeis University in 1995 and a master of fine arts from Yale University in 1997. Frankfort attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, also in 1997. From 1999-2000 she was an Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Core Studio Art resident. Solo exhibitions include Southwest School of Art, San Antonio (2018); James Harris Gallery, Seattle (2011); Inman Gallery (2012, 2010, 2007); Sorry We're Closed, Brussels (2008); Bellwether Gallery, New York (2007); and Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles (2006). Frankfort's paintings are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Rice University, Houston; St. Edward's University, Austin; and the Jewish Museum, New York. Frankfort lives and works in Houston.

A portrait of artist Dana Frankfort, a middle aged white woman with dark brown hair and black framed glasses. She smiles and stands in front of a black and white artwork.
Artist Dana Frankfort
A detail from Dana Frankfort's "Magical Marker," the word "magical" visible in purple with a swath of transparent white paint across the text. A detail from Dana Frankfort's "MORE THAN WORDS," 2013, the word "More" loosely visible in yellow paint on a blue and pink background, similar to the sky at sunset. A detail from Dana Frankfort's "Space Heater". The words "space heater" are spelled out in warm tones over a blue/purple background. A detail from Dana Frankfort's "Welcome My Friend". A wash of pink and orange across the canvas, white outlines of a word or phrase visible but illegible.

Josephine Halvorson

Josephine Halvorson (b. 1981, Brewster, Massachusetts) grew up on Cape Cod, where she first studied art on the beaches of Provincetown and with Barnet Rubenstein at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Halvorson attended the Cooper Union School of Art (BFA, 2003), Yale Norfolk (2002), and continued her interdisciplinary education at Columbia University’s School of the Arts (MFA, 2007). Recent solo exhibitions include On the Ground at the Ogunquit Museum of Art, Maine (2022) and Contemporary Voices (2021) at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, where she was the museum’s first artist-in-residence in 2019. Other notable solo exhibitions include the Foster Prize Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2019) and Measures at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York (2016). In 2015 she presented her first museum survey exhibition, Slow Burn, at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, curated by Cora Fisher.

Halvorson has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2021); Moly-Sabata in Sablons, France (2014, 2017); the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida (2016); a Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship at the Fondation des États-Unis, Paris (2007-2008); and the U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to Austria (2003-2004). She was a recipient of the 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant and was the first American to receive the Rome Prize at the French Academy at the Villa Medici, Rome, Italy (2014-2015).

A portrait of artist Josephine Halvorson, a middle aged white woman with dark brown hair and hazel eyes.
Artist Josephine Halvorson
A detail of Josephine Halvorson's "5 Acres," 2024. A weathered wooden sign for five acres of land. "Acres," "24,500," "500" and "480" are visible in shades of blue. A detail of Josephine Halvorson's "Underpass Road," 2023-2024. A wooden directional sign with several green painted panels. Parts of the word "Rd." with an arrow pointing right and part of the word "market" are visible. A detail of Josephine Halvorson's "Army Cannon Heater," 2022. A rusted metal army heater is nestled in the branches of a rhododendron bush. A detail of Josephine Halvorson's "I Help You," 2024, showing several papers posted on an old plywood bulletin board. At right, a blue sign reads "I help you learn to speak French — Private tutoring, $20/30 minutes, online sessions." At bottom left is a postcard with a red border reading "You're Invited! Reflections on Democracy — The WEB Dubois Center for Freedom and Democracy, Thursday, July 11, 2024, 6:00 pm. RSVP Today"

This exhibition is supported in part by a gift from Ms. Deborah L. Brown.

Images

Dana Frankfort: 1) Magical Marker, 2017 (detail); oil on linen over panel; 48 x 48 inches; courtesy of the artist. 2) MORE THAN WORDS, 2013 (detail); acrylic on linen over panel; 48 x 48 inches; courtesy of the artist. 3) Welcome My Friends, 2024 (detail); oil on canvas panel; 72 x 78 inches; courtesy of the artist. 4) Space Heater, 2024 (detail); oil on canvas panel; 18 x 24 inches; courtesy of the artist.
Josephine Halvorson: 1) Roadside Memorial, 2021 (detail); acrylic gouache on panel; 22 x 24 inches. 2) 5 Acres, 2024 (detail); acrylic gouache on panel; 35 x 42 inches. 3) Underpass Road, 2023-2024 (detail); acrylic gouache on panel; 63 x 44 inches. 4) Army Cannon Heater, 2022 (detail); acrylic gouache on panel; 50 x 32 inches. 5) I Help You, 2024 (detail); acrylic gouache on panel; 36 x 31 inches. All works © Josephine Halvorson, courtesy of Sikkema Malloy Jenkins, New York