The Program Will Begin Shortly… Silence is Toby Kamps’ first major exhibition at The Menil Collection since becoming curator of modern and contemporary art two years ago. You should not miss it. It’s been too long since you visited the Chapel anyway. But silence can be hard to find. We arrive at the Rothko Chapel [...]
I’m a lucky guy. I’ve already outlived Doc Holliday by twenty-four years and just the other day I came upon a new Randy Wallace piece, Postdimensionalman, at Trinity University in San Antonio. More and more, Mr. Wallace seems like some sort of metaphysical signpost, standing at an invisible point of observation from which he conducts [...]
Just days after Chuck Ramirez’s death in early November 2010, Glasstire approached me to write a remembrance of him. My first impulse was that this should be told in group voice, so I asked a number of people if they would like to contribute. Many did. And many who wanted to just couldn’t. It has [...]
For The Trees Matthew Ronay’s Between The Worlds, at the Hudson (Show)Room, Artpace, appears alternately rooted and nomadic. Yurt, grotto, hall of mirrors, night wood, it beckons a walk through corridors darkened by low light and black curtains. An opening reveals a total world, a forest to get lost in. The curtains, which serve as [...]
Next morning in Marfa I mail a sixth postcard to Jens Hoffmann. A funny ratio you might say to the two postcards he kept, especially considering that I also sent him the Texas Lady VHS tape and a photograph of Will Rogers & Soapsuds in Lubbock, but his postcards were vintage, half a century old. [...]
I can sense the Hermes assist as I cross into New Mexico. Out here they call him Coyote. He’s a kind of fellow traveler for me and has provided joy, insight and a lingering sense of loss as I drive these days. It’s Friday afternoon after the nearly tearful tumbleweed release — evidently I loaded [...]
Thursday morning Jeff and I head into Lubbock in separate cars. He’ll go east to Dallas for a Texas Artists Today book signing and I’ll go north, but first we roll over to the Buddy Holly Center. I’ve got the autographed John Wayne photo, which I’ve amended a bit. The image appears to be from [...]
Fell asleep last night thinking how I had the Lone Ranger flashlight with me and didn’t think to use it. As if it were a different sort of object, than say, the case for my shades, in the truck with it. It’s value as “art” has somehow rendered it out of mind as a light. [...]
The lucky key continued to influence my time yesterday as I wound down from writing. I turned on the TV about one am and found John Ford’s silent film, The Iron Horse playing. This movie is about the building of the transcontinental railroad — surely one of the most emblematic expressions of Manifest Destiny. I [...]
This is day one of One Kind Favor, a trip I’m taking around the state and into New Mexico, reversing the route taken by Jens Hoffmann, Director of the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco and curator of On The Road , an exhibition that took place last summer in the Hudson (Show)Room at Artpace [...]
…what living in the country means: It’s sitting in a little bitty restaurant, looking out the window at a cow, but you only have powdered creamer for your coffee. — Dave Hickey Just last night… As is often the case when you get around people who have gone to art school or read art magazines [...]
The following text served as the script for a performance, Beyond post To Kellogg’s, given at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, October 12, 2002. As part of a new lecture series, Artists Looking At Art, I’d been asked to give a gallery talk about a piece in their collection in relation to my [...]
Two seconds. The average length of time a spectator spends looking at a painting. A statistic that has received more than its share of reiteration, more than its fifteen minutes of fame.
