Two recent films made by two very different directors have accomplished something a bit rare for a mainstream Hollywood production: They not only bring to the screen glimpses of American history, they are timely commentary on contemporary American existence. The wizardry of Spielberg and the ridiculously superb performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln” made me [...]
M’Kina Tapscott’s installation New Soil: Tessellations of Dark Matter is part of STACKS, a group show at Art League Houston curated by Robert Pruitt. Tapscott’s installation is refreshingly immersive and cohesive, so much so that this post can’t do it justice: it is meant to let you step in and be saturated. It’s a shame [...]
Austin hosted its second International Film Festival Summit December 3 – 5, bringing together film and music festival organizers and industry folks from coast to coast. Staff from Sundance, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and distributors like Warner Brothers rubbed shoulders with directors and programmers of small to large-sized festivals, cross-pollinating and [...]
On Black Friday, while millions were buying iPads for their six-year-olds and guns for their holsters (handgun sales broke an all-time record this year), I was staring at art in Los Angeles. Since most major galleries were closed that weekend, I visited the Geffen Contemporary, LA MOCA and LACMA and ate local fare including frozen [...]
How can good people appreciate despicable behavior? What can it seriously tell us about the values we hold? These questions are repeatedly addressed and challenged by artists and filmmakers, to be sure, but if you’ve been to see The Comedy, you’ve surely asked them as well. The Comedy isn’t really a comedy, but if you [...]
This letter appeared in Raid the Archive: The de Menil Years at Rice. I was told it would make me cry with disappointment at what could have been. At the Rice Media Center that evening I also saw Chris Sperandio, who I know I can count on for untempered criticism of art in Houston, but he also [...]
I had an eyeball exhausting fun-filled weekend at this year’s Cinema Arts Festival. Because there was so much of it, and because I don’t have credentials to know much more than my own gut reactions, the good and the bad quickly separated for me. The first film I saw was The Connection, and this was [...]
PART II: Interview with Tommy White (for the Part I interview with Hilary Harnischfeger, click here.) Husband and wife Tommy White and Hilary Harnischfeger are currently featured at Front Gallery (brainchild of artist Sharon Engelstein and her artist husband Aaron Parazette). While at first their work appears quite divergent due to their respective media (Harnischfeger: [...]
Husband and wife Tommy White and Hilary Harnischfeger are currently featured at Front Gallery (brainchild of artist Sharon Engelstein and her artist husband Aaron Parazette). While at first their work appears quite divergent due to their respective media (Harnischfeger: ceramic constructions, White: oil paintings), Front Gallery highlights the artists’ shared sense of process, a [...]
The future of painting is smart and sincere, is deft with a brush and a punch line, knows its talking points and keeps to them, asks questions to which it has given forethought, and holds potential answers in reserve. And while such an artistic multitude will hardly bear a strict and singular profile, as [...]
The end of September hailed the 25th anniversary of the Dallas Video Festival. Changing the venue to the Dallas Museum of Art proved to be a smart move. Despite the bad storms, attendance was up from the previous year at the Angelika. Artistic Director Bart Weiss outdid himself yet again. The programming combined innovative, edgy [...]
Francesca Fuchs just blew my mind. It was a low key Friday afternoon, I was back in Texas for the first time since my move from Houston to Los Angeles. I was driving my rental car through Dallas, past sites that hold memories as varied as high school make-out sessions to the suburban gastroenterologist’s office [...]
I had the pleasure to travel to Mozambique this summer to visit some friends, who had recently relocated there. We stayed outside the capital city Maputo in the town of Matola. In researching Mozambican art, I found information on the two most renowned artists—sculptor Chissano and painter Malangatana (both have museums located in their former [...]
David Holzman (L.M. Kit Carson), the protagonist and “filmmaker” of Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary (1967), is nestled in his West 71st Street apartment between movie posters and art reproductions, windows and mirrors, Eclair 16mm movie camera and Nagra sound recorder. In a mode of direct address he confesses to us—his absent yet implied future [...]
Director Matthew Akers screened Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (2012) before a packed house during his Austin stay as a Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund juror. While detailing the internationally acclaimed Yugoslav-born (1946) artist’s past, the HBO documentary charts not only the time leading up to the eponymous retrospective exhibition and new performance in 2010 [...]
So episode three of “Gallery Girls” starts off with the girls of Eli Klein Fine Art, which is good for the purposes of this blog because that’s where I have the majority of problems with this episode. As per usual, Liz is shown picking at her nails and vaguely clicking away at her computer (aka [...]
Glasstire intern and University of Houston MFA candidate Lauren Moya Ford heads back to Austin… Domy Books Austin is currently displaying Matt Lock’s “Hammer of Power”. Though the small drawings are meant to evoke a complex cosmology of menacing warriors, these haphazard 80s-style cartoon rascals and goofy booties are too dull to threaten us with [...]
This is the last of four video profiles Glasstire is hosting featuring the finalists from last year’s Austin Eyes Got It!. 2011 Eyes Got It! winner Hollie Brown’s solo show at grayDUCK Gallery opens August 24 from 7-9 p.m. and runs through September 9, 2012. Eyes Got It! is an open call art competition inspired by American [...]
This is the third of four video profiles Glasstire is hosting featuring the finalists from last year’s Austin Eyes Got It!. 2011 Eyes Got It! winner Hollie Brown’s solo show at grayDUCK Gallery opens August 24 from 7-9 p.m. and runs through September 9, 2012. Eyes Got It! is an open call art competition inspired by American [...]
This is the second of four video profiles Glasstire is hosting featuring the finalists from last year’s Austin Eyes Got It!. 2011 Eyes Got It! winner Hollie Brown’s solo show at grayDUCK Gallery opens August 24 from 7-9 p.m. and runs through September 9, 2012. Eyes Got It! is an open call art competition inspired by American [...]
