Clint Willour, Galveston Arts Center, about Randall Reid from the exhibition "Inside the Box" I find myself attracted to artists who are intensely concentrated, and Randall Reid certainly fits the bill. He has found a structure that fits his needs, the modestly sized, nearly square rectangle. He continues to mine it for all the content it can yield to the inquiring mind.In the modern era we have been constantly challenged to think outside the box. Randall's self-imposed challenge is to think and work inside that box. The result is a constant re-thinking and re-working of the various possibilities, and re-thinking and re-working is what Reid does best. From the found materials he has scrounged, scavenged, salvaged, and spirited away for four decades, he succeeds in making magical intimate worlds in a box. Reid's worlds are alchemical wonders, small cabinets of curiosities, beauti­fully crafted and thoughtfully (and caringly) constructed. Each implies a narrative, begs for an accompanying story. His is an architecture of dreams and visions, little glimpses into the imagination, little forays into the psyche. He allows us, the viewers, to complete the sentence, to provide the denouement, to finish the dream. Reid is a subtle colorist who manages to be bold. He is a formalist who avoids the formulaic. His strength is in his ability to wring every possibility out of the parameters of size and materials that he has placed on himself.

Lately he has gone more deeply still, using materials that actually include text and thus pushing the narrative even further, but continually giving us only part of the picture teasing and taunting us to fill in the blanks, to connect the dots, to write the last chapter. Recurring encounters with Reid's work embolden me to imagine that I am an archaeologist uncovering fragments of some not-so-long-lost civilization forcing me to envision who the inhabitants of this place and time were, conjuring up visions of villages, towns and cities filled with craftspeople who lovingly built for permanence and stability.Randall Reid is ever the artisan, crafting whole concepts within a measured rectangle, but he ultimately thinks outside the box in his art. He is a magician, a conjurer, an alchemist, an architect. He is a weaver of tales, a maker of worlds within a box.

Randall Reid's work can be seen at the following galleries: Costello/Childs Contemporary Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona; Davis Gallery, Austin, Texas; Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; d. m. allison art, Houston, Texas and the William Campbell Contemporary Art Gallery, Ft. Worth, Texas, d. m. allison art Houston TX.

His work is represented in numerous private and public collections including: The American Embassy, Kuwait, The Arkansas Art Center, The Austin Museum of Art, The Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, The Masur Museum and The Muscarelle Museum of Fine Arts (College of William and Mary). Select Solo Exhibitions: 2013 “Randall Reid: Full Circle”, Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, NM “Reshaping the Past”, Costello/Childs Contemporary, Scottsdale, AZ “Resurrected Memories: Cowboys, Aliens and Espionage, William Campbell Contemporary Gallery, Ft. Worth, TX “Resurrected Memories: Cowboys, Aliens and Espionage, Dan Allison Gallery, Houston, TX 2012 -Resurrecting the Past, Davis Gallery, Austin, TX -Evidence of a Society, Texas State University at San Marcos, San Marcos, TX -Redirecting the Past, Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2011 -Evidence of a Society, Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2010 -Hidden Stories, Grace Museum, Abilene, TX -Artists Looking at Art, McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX -In Times Past, William Campbell Contemporary Art, Ft. Worth, TXAdditional Public Collections: Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX 2013 Powers Energy, North Dakota 2013 River Crest Country Club, Ft. Worth, TX 2012 Moncrief Cancer Center, Ft. Worth, TX 2012 Martis Camp Clubhouse, North Lake Tahoe 2011 Hyatt Regency Hotel, San Antonio Hill Country, San Antonio, TX 2011 Undergraduate Academic Center, Texas State University at San Marcos, San Marcos, TX 2011 Select Energy, 2011 Nursing Center, Texas State University at Round Rock 2010 Austin Public Library, Twin Oaks Branch, Austin, TX 2010Randall Reid is a professor of Art & Design at Texas State University-San Marcos'm a paragraph.