There’s a lot of art out there now but here’s a quick overview of the good, the great, and the pretty darn respectable on view in some of Houston’s galleries. Isabella Court Building Bryan Miller Gallery “Soft Math” runs through January 7th at Bryan Miller Gallery and it’s got a lot of great work. Leigh Ruple‘s [...]
Houston’s first art fair opens tonight from 6-9 with a $100 a ticket fundraiser benefiting the Core Program. I swung by the George R. Brown Convention Center yesterday as the Houston Fine Art Fair’s participating galleries were unloading and setting up. A lot of manual labor goes into making art and a significant amount goes [...]
Last week I wrote about Houston’s dueling art fairs coming up this fall. Scheduled one month apart, each has a New York area organizer. It got me thinking about Dallas’s two art fairs last April, held on the same weekend and each locally organized. The fledgling Suite Art Fair debuted at the Belmont Hotel while [...]
So you may have heard, Houston is getting an art fair. Um, actually two art fairs. There has been a ridiculous amount of controversy surrounding these fairs, a classic tempest in a teapot involving leaked email, competing fair organizers and collectors and galleries picking teams and various board members from the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, [...]
I love Galveston. But, like Houston, it’s an acquired taste. It’s got lovely old buildings in various states of decay interspersed with not-so-lovely and downright crappy structures. It’s gritty, with a deserved air of melancholy and if it were located on a less hurricane prone coast it would have been wholly gentrified and cutesified by [...]
Two Friday’s ago the Texas Biennial hosted a Curator’s Meeting in Austin. The event, supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Linda Pace Foundation, sought to bring together curators and other arts professionals from around the state. It was held at and co-hosted by Arthouse, the organization which had just decided that [...]
Lawndale Art Center‘s annual market/design event has evolved into something very, very cool. It started out life 16 years ago (if my math is correct) as the “20th Century Modern Market.” Always a big event, it was packed to the gills with dealers offering vintage objects, furniture and clothes. In true Lawndale spirit, it had [...]
As part of the 2011 Dallas Art Fair, artists will invade the downtown Neiman Marcus, creating installations in seven windows. Will the results be exciting, subversive, co-opted or contemporary art outreach to luxury goods shoppers? Check it out and let us know what you think. Our new Newswire accepts comments – just click on the [...]
XYZ Collective, a new artist-run space in Tokyo, is holding a benefit show for the Japanese Red Cross. For FAXINATION JAPAN, artists from all over the world are invited to fax a photo, drawing or message to the collective. (The fax number is +81-3-5799-4912 and fax is preferred. If you are unable to get through [...]
I don’t know how this stuff gets out into the collective creative unconscious but I think I like it. Adam Silverman’s amazing pottery at Peel Gallery is apparently channeling diseases of the skin from a 1940’s medical textbook. It’s like mid-century art pottery run amok. The effect is both repulsive and attractive and I wish [...]
Am I intolerant if I don’t like Tolerance? Houston’s new public artwork by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa was unveiled last week in a ceremony that included the artist, Mayor Annise Parker, former Mayor Bill White, Mica Mosbacher (Honorary Consul to Iceland ?!) and the Aga Khan Foundation’s Dr. Mahmoud Eboo, representing the Aga Khan, who [...]
Patricia Hernandez’s Parody of Light opened last Friday at DiverseWorks. The show, an elaborate Thomas Kinkade spoof, got a ton of advance press, including a pick in GT’s Spring Preview. The show’s premise made for great copy and, thankfully, the exhibition didn’t disappoint. Hernandez created an elaborate environment in which to present her Kinkade “paintings” [...]
Aldo Chaparro: MORE THAN THIS Gallery Sonja Roesch September 18 – October 30, 2010 If I had an extra $1500 bucks lying around, I’d totally buy Aldo Chaparro’s little silver plated sculpture Puta, (2010). It’s a wicked, smartass riff on Robert Indiana’s sappy “LOVE” sculpture. LOVE was originally designed as a MOMA Christmas card. I’m [...]
Receipts, parking stubs, old newspapers, plastic bags, crumpled cans, worn down slivers of soap and hotel-size shampoo are the stuff of Gabriel Kuri’s art. Kuri has a particular fascination with cast-offs and the ephemera generated by the commerce of daily life. Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab at the Blaffer Art Museum [...]
The Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas opened last weekend after an epic remodel by architects Lake|Flato. I never saw the building in its pre-remodel, circa 1963 state but in listening to accounts and reading descriptions of it, it sounds about as esthetically appealing as a Supermax prison. No natural light, all-fluorescent, all [...]
Less than a month ago, two murals in Texas Southern University’s historic Hannah Hall were destroyed. The works were painted in 1970 by Harvey Johnson. After artist, TSU alum and Glasstire blogger Robert Pruitt broke the story on Glasstire, the initial word from a university spokesman was that the destruction was accidental, that some painting [...]
Maybe you watched the reality TV show “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.” Maybe you enjoyed it, or maybe you want Bravo to give you those years of your life back. Maybe you won’t even admit to watching it. I could make a vociferous argument both for and against the show, but ultimately, despite [...]
Bless his heart, Dallas “wildflower artist” Chapman Kelley has a problem, er, lots of problems, with the Dallas Museum of Art. The DMA wound up with one of Kelley’s paintings in 1960 when he won a Texas State Fair competition. That painting, Sand Dune, (1960) was included in the “Coastlines: Images of Land and [...]
Seth Alverson’s show at Art Palace is getting all kinds of great coverage and with good reason. Alverson’s an amazing painter, producing evocative “realist” work with a disturbing edge. The show includes images that could have come from innocuous family photos: a grandfather changing a baby, a lone single bed neatly covered with a quilted [...]
Yes, it’s a 1000 degrees outside but if you can just make it through the parking lot, these Houston spaces have great air conditioning – and great art. Lordy, lordy, Texas Gallery is forty. Their current show called, shockingly, “40” has been extended through August fourteenth. It’s got an eclectic array of work and some [...]
