Inevitable Starchitecture: Romero’s Mexic-Arte Museum Maquette at the Guggenheim
The proposed big wheel/Aztec calendar design for a new Mexic-Arte Museum building on congress Ave. in Austin by Fernando Romero was part of the architect’s “You are the Context” exhibition and book launch held at the Guggenheim Museum on Dec. 12. Though widely criticised as stereotypically ethnic (with the Aztec calendar projection), too expensive, or [...]
We Knew You Cared: Inaugural Glasstire Auction Raises Over $100K
Last night’s inaugural Glasstire Texas Auction raised over $100,000 for Glasstire and Texas artists! Net proceeds were reportedly 90% higher than the old, silent-auction-and-outrageous-but-expensive-party style gala. Over $26,000 of the artwork proceeds will be distributed back to Texas artists. A crowd of supporters gathered at the Knoll Gallery at Pennzoil Place, nibbling canapes and absorbing [...]
TX Contemporary Art Fair: Let the Load-In Begin!
Loading dock doors open this morning at 8am at Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center to admit the soon-to-be-fevered installation crews for the second Texas Contemporary Art Fair. In addition to the 65 galleries participating, the installation work includes upholstered decoys by Ann Wood, a kinetic forest by Jules Buck Jones, an interactive photo booth [...]
R.I.P. Artnet
Artnet magazine, the 16-year old online art magazine, ceased publication Monday. The widely-read magazine, which carried the words of Charlie Finch and republished Jerry Salz, was closed by Artnet, whose business is art market tracking, because it was not, and had never been profitable. A statement from editor Walter Robinson said, “This difficult decision is [...]
Show and Tell: Chupacabrona (semi-) undocumented
There’s been a grave interruption in my tour reporting, I realize. Rigoberto Gonzalez Facebooked me thusly the other day: WTF? (I’m paraphrasing). Here’s what happened: from January through May, I amassed more than eight hours of video footage, about that many hours of audio field recordings, including interviews and some highly trippy bits of RGV AM [...]
The Chupacabrona Tour, Part 2: On South Texas Identity, or The Wild Nudes of McAllen
Basketball season brings out the aggrieved San Antonian in me. I am a Spurs fan, of course. Not a basketball enthusiast, necessarily, but a Spurs fan. This is a congenital condition. It’s brought on not just because San Antonio has no other major league sporting teams to diffuse our ardor, but because San Antonio is [...]
Art Narc: Vildelife
My former landlord in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a sphinx-like Teutonic manchild who sublet me one of the ad-hoc drywall sleeping lofts in the colossal warehouse he leased near the Bedford Avenue subway stop—still owes me $1200. It was my security deposit from 2008 and I don’t expect to get it back. I don’t mean this story as revenge [...]
End-of-2011 recommendation: Justin Boyd’s boids at Artpace
Justin Boyd’s Window Works installation at Artpace is called “Natural Black, Sprinkled With Cosmic Iridescence.” This title struck me as maybe unnecessarily long when I first heard it, but after “seeing” the installation several times and talking to Justin Boyd about it, it’s won me over. Because not only does ”Natural Black, Sprinkled With [...]
Our 10th Anniversary Farewell: John Perreault on Robert Rauschenberg’s Glass Tires
Back in 2001, our founder Rainey Knudson named this site in honor of Robert Rauschenberg’s cast glass tire sculptures. The glass tires were made at UrbanGlass, a nonprofit glass center in Brooklyn, where critic, curator, poet and artist John Perreault was the Executive Director. He has graciously let Glasstire reprint his 1998 article,”Don’t Tread [...]
Chupacabrona World Tour! (…Of South and West Texas)
Hi again, Glasstire readers! This is what I think y’all look like: And also like this: Hello to you all. This December, I embark on The Chupacabrona World Tour (of South and West Texas). Over the course of five months, I aim to make ten two- and three-day trips from SATX to urban centers [...]
The Chupacabrona World Tour (of South and West Texas)
Hi again, Glasstire readers! This is what I think y’all look like: And also like this: Hello to you all. This December, I embark on The Chupacabrona World Tour (of South and West Texas). Over the course of five months, I aim to make ten two- and three-day trips from SATX to urban centers [...]
Queer State(s) at the UT Visual Art Center: Out of Nowhere
My friend Rebecca watches ”RuPaul’s Drag U” with her six-year-old daughter, who’s a big fan. The six-year-old, her mother believes, doesn’t understand that Jujubee, Raven and the other drag queens are not biological women. The little girl watches for more or less the same reason her mom does — for the kitschy glamor (although the kiddo [...]
Texas Contemporary Peeves and Qualms
So, the Texas Contemporary Art Fair is over. (Which gives me an excuse to post the above image. This particular Rachel Hecker piece is impactful and funny in-person, too.) So I’m still processing everything I saw, PLUS I’m recovering from a bout of dog-days writer’s block, which I blame on 9/11, heatstroke and having watched [...]
TX Contemporary Fair Countdown: CAMH Benefit Preview in 2:56
Enormous aisles, enormous booths, enormous art, all surrounded by a fortification of shipping containers: the TX Contemporary Fair promises already to be a whopper. From a warren of bare bones, mostly unpainted walls yesterday morning to a grid of gleaming art-filled cubicles today (with the occasional harried electrician scurrying around overhead). Be sure to visit [...]
Glasstire founder waves the online arts journalism banner in new NEA blog
Glasstire founder Rainey Knudson’s has been invited to blog on the NEA’s website; in her first post she explains the alarming decline among print journalists who have been, like dinosaurs, suffering a mass extinction over the past half-decade. Continuing her fatalistic thought into the future, she foretells the doom of even mildly discursive writing online: [...]
Arts writers in hard times: notes from the chopping block
Elizabeth Kramer, an arts journalist who writes for the Gannett-owned Louisville Courier-Journal, escaped massive layoffs on Tuesday, when the paper shed ten percent of its workforce. Kramer wrote on Facebook, “Layoffs today at The Courier-Journal were just awful. Out of 50 at the paper, half were from the newsroom, with several in features. I’m still [...]
Glasstire regionalism report
To mark our 10th anniversary, Glasstire is bringing a star-studded group of thinkers to the region to think about regionalism next Saturday. Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art and curator of the 2007 Venice Biennale; David Pagel, Los Angeles Times art critic and associate professor of art at Claremont Graduate University; [...]
SATX-ATX Manifesto with the strength of a thousand demons!
Since I titled this post thusly, I sort of want to write the whole thing in ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS. But I won’t. Hello! I’m Sarah Fisch, a fresh out of the box Glasstire blogger. I’m obsessed with contemporary art, sharks, and Julie Andrews, I hate mayonnaise, I’m a born and bred San Antonian who [...]