Art

The New Temporary

2010-02-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

- Genesis by Terry Suprean
- Vince Shlomi's Bidden Tongueby PERSUASION
- Planed Debris: Texas Noise and Ambient (environment #2)
organized by Chin Xaou Ti Won

the temporary space
1320 Nance
Saturday, February 13th, 7 pm – 11:30 pm
Performance begins at 8 pm
thetemporaryspace.com

the temporary space is pleased to announce their 2nd exhibition project, a collaboration with Chin Xaou Ti Won. Our series of collaborative exhibition projects focuses on visual and experimental engagements; #2 features installations, experimental sound, performance and special projects.

Genesis is a group of multi-faceted works by Houston artist Terry Suprean. Suprean investigates his personal relationship with his father as a discussion of the symbolic presence of “god” in patriarchal society.

Vince Shlomi’s Bidden Tongue is a video assemblage work by curatorial collaborative PERSUASION.

Planed Debris: Texas Noise and Ambient (environment #2) will feature 7 experimental music bands selected by Chin Xaou Ti Won. Planed Debris spotlights ambient, drone and noise musicians creating sound collages and musical environments. Artists include: Zer0-sum, Concrete Violin, Endless Blinding Sunshine, Chin Xaou Ti Won, Bret Shirley, T.E.F and Bonus.

+ Review and critique session will be scheduled for further critical engaging discussions. Please inquire @ thetemporaryspace.com

Persuasion

2010-01-06T16:32:00.000-08:00

Persuasion opens January 15, 2010, 8-10 pm, at the Temporary Space, 1320 Nance, Houston, TX 77002.
After the opening reception the exhibition will be open by appointment until February 5, 2010.
For viewing appointments contact Keijiro Suzuki, cell: 832-867-9207, manager@thetemporaryspace.com

Persuasion is a series of exhibitions curated by Tex Kerschen and Erika Thrasher.
The inaugural exhibitions are Michael Dee: Song of Myself and Domokos Benczedi: Collagen and Prototypes.

Michael Dee is a Los Angeles based artist who works in sculpture, video, painting, and drawing. His videos investigate cacophony and overload with regards to the hasty reassembly of culture. Through excessive volume, claustrophobic framing, imagery that is often intentionally degraded from repeated transfers from bootleg sources, and visual content drawn from the world of rock music, ballistics tests, medical process, and aeronautic engineering, his videos attempt to create an experience as viscerally powerful as that of someone attending his or her first live rock concert.

Here he will be exhibiting two video works: Song of Myself and Here It Comes Again.

Michael Dee, Song of Myself, still from dvd loop 2008.

Michael Dee, Here it Comes Again, still from dvd loop, 2005.

Domokos Benczedi is a Houston-based artist and musician. His collages, in part inspired by the art of Damon Edge of Chrome, futurize dada techniques. Familiar objects are highjacked and transformed into fetishes for unspoken states of astonishment and desire. These new images, derived from everyday sources, suggest human rituals amid alien landscapes.

He will be exhibiting large-scale collages as well as prototypes for new sculptures.

Domokos Benczedi, Blondes Multiplex, collage.

Domokos Benczedi, Untitled, collage.

About Persuasion.

Hybrid Moments:
“When new creatures rape your face
Hybrids open up the door.”>

We will be displaying works by various artists according to a system of self-applied rules and limitations.

First of all, no begging from corporations, individuals, or institutions.
Begging has put art in a sorry place.
For that reason, original works are de-prioritized. Multiples, copies and bootlegs are ok.
cf., Walter Benjamin “Art in the age of Mechanical Bull-riding.”

We take courage in the samizdat tradition of self-published literature during the Soviet and other totalitarian regimes.

About us:
Erika Thrasher is a Houston-based musician, artist, and graphic designer.
Tex Kerschen is a writer, musician, and former chief curator of the Station. Exhibitions he has organized have been reviewed favorably in Art in America, Art Lies, the Christian Science Monitor, the Houston Press, and the Houston Chronicle among countless other publications.

About the Temporary Space
The Temporary Space is a new project space managed by Keijiro Suzuki.
http://www.thetemporaryspace.com

--
// PERSUASION //
http://persuasionart.wordpress.com

Like The Ear Cut Off: A Tribute To Jacob Scanlan

2009-11-17T11:12:00.000-08:00

A Tribute to the Life of Jacob Scanlan
Like The Ear Cut Off

Opening Friday, November 20th
6 – 9 pm

On View by Appointment November 20 – 29, 2009

Apama Mackey Gallery
628 East 11th Street
Houston, TX 77008

Join us in celebrating the life of artist Jacob Scanlan this Friday, November 20, 2009, from 6 – 9 pm at Apama Mackey Gallery, curated by Sean Carroll and Mark Hougham from the collection of the Scanlan family. Through Scanlan’s poems, paintings, origami and photographs we hope to reveal the intense zeal and creative mind that touched his family and friends.

Untitled

Artist and writer Jacob Scanlan, aka JKOP, was born in Houston on November 29, 1979, and studied philosophy and poetry at the University of Houston. He delved into street art and public paintings that were bold, bright, and passionate. As a regular on the punk scene and with a keen ear for early hip hop, he quickly immersed himself into a chaotic lifestyle, making friendships with the most infamous graffiti writers in downtown Houston. Gaining insight and experience, he set out to make a name for himself on many fronts. He folded intricate origami and painted graffiti-influenced expressionism. He took thousands of photographs of his life, his friends and his environment. After a near fatal bout with Encephalitis, writing was one of the many catalysts he used to express the turmoil he felt deep inside. All of his poetry was written during the aftermath of his illness. An avid reader, he was influenced by the works of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Riding-Jackson. His studies in philosophy have given his poetry and art a rare and vibrant perspective.

Untitled (Burning Bible)

For Scanlan art was an emotional force. He viewed artistic creation as the freeing himself from society. He felt that art was rooted in daily experience; that it grew into something beautiful and personal. This collection portrays Jacob’s life; full of love and romance. Scanlan was a guest poet on The Spoken Word, a Rice University radio show and had poems published by Our Time Is Now, Poetry Motel, Rag Shock, Lone Stars magazines, and Poetry Junction website. His poems "Physiognomy" and "Equation" were featured in the anthology The Great American Poetry Show by Muse Media Publishing.

Self Portrait with Twombly

Scanlan died on Tuesday, September 23, 2008, at the age of twenty-eight, of residual complications of encephalitis. During the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, the stress of living in those conditions and the strain of his medications took its toll on his body, and he succumbed. A friend found him the next morning. Over the next several months his parents gathered dozens of poems, paintings and delicate origami sculptures along with thousands of photographs that detailed his life in the past decade. At the opening we will release Scanlon’s book of poems and essays, The Grammar of a Nightmare. A portion of all sales will benefit a fund set up at the Menil Collection in Scanlan’s name.

Free Press Summerfest and The A/V Swap

2009-09-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Wrought Park, Video by Sean Carroll Audio by Thousands

filmed mostly at Summerfest, Eleanor Tinsley Park, Co-Lab Artspace in Austin, the joanna Gallery and BOX 13 Artspace.

Johnny and Paul / Flash Yo Grill, Video by Michael Rodriguez Audio by Kanude

Where will you see a country song about Paul Wall and Johnny Dang turned into a love story about hipsters eaten by monsters? Where else but The A/V Swap?

Come check out the Best Of The A/V Swap 2009 tonight at Rice Media Center at 8 pm!

This fall The A/V Swap is back with a bigger and badder group of films, this time from both Texas and New York! For our screening Friday, September 18th at 8 pm, The A/V Swap presents the Best Of 2009, a selection of collaborations from Houston, Austin, Buffalo and New York City created this summer. The screening will start with an artists reception at 7:30 pm and conclude a Q & A with participating filmmakers and musicians.

A/V Swap projects are collaborations that begin with a film or song that is traded between artists to complete; we hope to provide a forum where artists can showcase their talents by manipulating audio and video they would never otherwise encounter. In this "swap" we anonymously pair composers and filmmakers, hoping to expand their creative horizons. Over 70 artists participated in this year's swap.

This year the A/V Swap is proud to be screening films at the Rice Media Center, founded in 1969 by Dominique de Menil and an evolving haven for experimental film for 40 years. Many inspired events have happen at Rice Media Center; Andy Warhol premiered Lonesome Cowboys, Dennis Hooper performed the Russian Dynamite Death Chair Act and Spike Lee was hosted for a screening of Do The Right Thing followed by a "spirited debate" with the crowd. The founders' intent was that the Media Center provide a channel through which different peoples of the world could communicate- and for four decades it has lived up to their vision. The A/V Swap is pleased to be working with another exemplary innovator to bring you this event, KTRU, Rice Radio.

Push It

2009-09-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Untitled (Sisyphean Task), 2009

by Divya Murthy

While Devin the Dude performed on the main stage at Summerfest, Frank Olson, Johnny DiBlasi and Matt Keller were attracting a significant audience toiling away in the sweltering heat. While festival-goers tuned in, turned on and dropped out, at the top of the hill Olson and Keller endlessly repeated a performance piece referencing the unyielding absurdity of an endless chore.

Set under the shade of a tree and surrounded by teeming crowds, Untitled (Sisyphean Task), attracted onlookers, cheerleaders and catcalls. While one performer unsuccessfully attempted to move an old heavy television with broken wheels up a 12-foot ramp, another made lackadaisical loops around the structure. In case there was not enough emphasis on cyclical behavior, Keller and Olson both painted purple Os on their back; their sweat washed the paint down in rivulets. As they continually exerted themselves, jocks in polos and hippie girls in flowery dresses looked on, their minds spinning with circular humdrum. A video looped on the television, playing video of CDs spinning in the players, scenes from action films and screensaver-ish self-generating computer images.

Was it really necessary to be so didactic and push so many literal ideas of circular logic at a redundant pace? Considering the references to Sisyphus (who endured a never ending, ineffective act), a durational performance art piece (that lasted at least two hours), and the overcrowded venue (a park teeming with hipsters looking for music not art), I would probably say yes. As Sisyphean Task endured at Summerfest its audience filtered in and out; their quickly recognizable visual markers made the performance accessible to any person passing through, pausing in wonder or finishing their beer before leaving to see a band play on the main stage. DiBlasi and Olson made a courageous effort at creating a lengthy time-based piece, with a fair concept and delivery for the brutal temperatures during the heavily trafficked festival. Performance art still seems to be one of those largely under-represented mediums in a contemporary art world that accommodates the obsession with ownership of images. Durational pieces are rarely utilized in fine arts venues, especially in Houston. Sisyphean Task, tweaked with a bit more subtlety, would blossom in an art space where it is one of the main events. I believe many art lovers, who didn’t want to go to Summerfest, would appreciate its earnest bluntness.

Human Nature Political

2009-08-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

by Dean Liscum

Whether or not the end is near, its close enough. Charity in the billions is doled out to the über-rich by their own underlings. The poor live and die without air conditioning or basic medical care. If the pundits won’t profess it, at least artists will paint the picture. The installation Human Nature Planted does not present itself as overtly political, but it plays out that way. Curated by June Woest and Claudio Franco of Urban Artists at the Nature Discovery Center of Bellaire, Planted is a group sculptural installation by twelve innovative Texas artists. The official theme of the show is to “explore the human handprint in the natural world and how it positively and negatively influences the environment,” but the show resonates with current socio-political-economic turmoil. Nathaniel Donnett’s Myke’s Clubhouse captures the crisis from the vantage point of the forgotten poor and vulnerable; Cornell West accusing Obama of neglecting those most in need. Merging fantasy with nightmare, Donnett constructed a tree house and foreclosed it, with a red sign and a foreclosure listing in the paper. June Woest’s Pharmacy Domesticus forms a field of bamboo-like columns out of plastic prescription bottles, makes a visually stunning side-effect of our fascination with better living through pharmaceuticals. Lucinda Cobley’s tree+cipher proposes a vibrant new taxonomy for nature that makes one cry out for a new political discourse. Amie Adelman’s untitled, Mari Omari’s Gifts and Orna Feinstein’s Eco-librium enhance or alter the existing environment; binding, weaving, and clumping leaves, stems, branches, and grasses; regulating nature in quirky, unanticipated ways. Kathy Hall’s I say Poaceae, You say Poaceae introduces non-native grasses into the park and forces us to confront the unpredictable nature of complex systems.

Recessions depress but they can inspire innovation and reinvention, every tool becomes a weapon when held just right. Kathy Kelley’s The birth of destruction deconstructs automobile tires and fashions them into boulder-sized spheres that remind one of objects of play or meditation. Andis Applewhite’s Soul distills man-made and natural fragments to serve as objects for meditation. Jason Dean Moul’s Water, Seed, Pollen, Leaf hints at moving away from Christian salvation through salary and inserts customer designed stain glass windows in the intersections of the pecan tree branches. The trees etched on plexiglas in Keith Hollingworth’s Arboretum may serve as a memento mori for the park in anticipation of a coming environmental crisis. Michael Crowder’s frozen birds will have melted before this exhibit even ends, but you could find yourself, decades from now, peering at the two glass ones-- wondering how quickly the next ice age will come.

click HERE for pics from the exhibition

Performance Art!

2009-08-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

That was a hell of a day... more today too...

Nancy Douthey

Cleanin' the loo in style

City health inspector Jerry Bradshaw
(who has a twin brother named Terry Bradshaw, no joke)
wrote Nancy a commendation for her performance art

Daniel Adame

Matt Keller

Johnny DiBlasi's video getting pushed around

Frank Olsen

New Artwork by Robin Kachantones at The Record Ranch

2009-07-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

Get up close and personal with many of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century at the Face the Music exhibition to open at The Record Ranch Gallery inside Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth, on August 1st. All works were recently created despite Robin’s busy schedule of teaching at Texas State University and creating images for clients such as Coca-Cola, Hasbro, Fisher-Price and others.

The exhibition of prints includes striking images of groundbreaking female rockers Patti Smith, Deborah Harry, Annie Lennox and Tina Turner. A series of prints featuring Texas blues legends Blind Lemon Jefferson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddie King is included as well as work by pioneer rockers such as Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix and more.

The pieces range from digital prints on archival paper to one-offs. using mixed media included digital and hand drawn images on 1940's original music sheet paper which are limited pieces.

“I grew up around live music and incredible musicians- - my dad, Ray Shipman, toured with Jerry lee Lewis. And Dad’s still out there playing gigs! Though I can’t sing or play an instrument, I can make colorful music through my “rock and wail” portraits. “Face the Music” is my tribute to those who, like me, have a profound passion and tremendous talent for doing what they love.”

“"Face the Music" is also more than a simple tribute for me. My body was pretty torn up and my psyche shaken after a car wreck. The recovery last year was slow, painful, and difficult. I had to face the music myself, so to speak. When the opportunity to do this show came up, I grabbed it like a life line. Making the art for this show and all the incredible and positive support of the Record Ranch, my husband, family and friends has been a salve to my soul. I have faced the music--and am uplifted by it.”

“My creative process is to do my research on the artists - both photos and instruments then listen to their music while I draw. Making sure I get a clear photo references of the eyes are which is key to portraits. You miss the eyes, you miss the entire thing.”
- Robin Kachantones

A reception with the artist, which is open to the public, will be held from 7 – 10 p.m. on Saturday, August 1st. The evening also will include a special live musical performance and a live Rockabilly DJ session by Clint Broussard of KTRU’s Blues in Hi-Fi. Refreshments will be provided by The St. Arnold Brewing Company.

The exhibition is free and runs through October, 2009.

Nasty Pictures: Twisted Film from Houston Artists

2009-07-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 11 is Free Film Night at Frenetic Theater, 5102 Navigation Blvd, Houston. Sean Morrissey Carroll has curated Nasty Pictures: Twisted film from Houston artists including Travis Kerschen, Julia Wallace, Skeezer, Sharad Patel and Jenny Schlief and a preview for Too Much Cake, filmed in Austin at SXSW 2009. Disturbing, sexual, fanatic, and FREE! 8pm.

Out-Zoning Houston

2009-06-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

Buffalo Sean

Perhaps there is a cabal out there who would like to edit our Wild West urban landscape into a cohesive order. It is possible that the acceleration of Houston’s growth demands a stronger hand to guide the city’s coursing veins of concrete and commerce-pumping engines of steel and glass. Wild, unwieldy burgs have been tamed before and tempered into hardened tools of self-organization, and we’re unlikely to be an exception. The Contemporary Arts Museum’s current exhibit No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston may be a talisman of this emerging meme, but a cultural uproar threatens to derail this celebration of the city’s mélange.

As rich and chewy as menudo, as accepting as paella, as deeply flavored as gumbo, the hot guts of the Bayou City have Expressionist roots and unpolished edges. From the origins of Texan culture in German, Mexican and African-American communities Houston has inherited blood, pain, pride and earnest low-brow tendencies. Unlike Dallas, Screwston has no artistic foundation in Modernism, no hard-edged clarity, no easy divinity. Toil, sweat and tears are the currencies of Expressionism and Surrealism—both of which grew in the fertile soil of East Texas, Louisiana and Mexico and migrated to Houston. Our cultural orbits are not as ‘New York-centric’ as the rest of the United States, and the distinct combination of Mexico City’s Humanist influence and Southern outsider Expressionism pushed completion, simplicity and objectivity further from the artistic mood. The Menil Collection’s founding director Walter Hopps called Houston art “Imagist”; he lauded it as a third way between abstract and representational art. For No Zoning curators Toby Kamps and Meredith Goldsmith have gathered 25 years of Houston art, using the economic downturn in museum finances to celebrate the peculiarities of local installation and performance work. Their parsing of the best from the rest is debatable, but the presentation of the exhibit is less beholden to the whims of subjectivity.

Young artists have soundly criticized No Zoning for being lukewarm, sanitized or confused. Their issues stem from both omitting the old standbys of Houston art and not paying attention to newer artists. They wonder why The Flower Man is outside on the front lawn and how Notsuoh, Jim Pirtle’s bizarre barroom creation on Main Street, can be half-heartedly recreated in the gallery space. Nestor Topchy, former denizen of the utopian urban colony Templo, is coolly represented by architectural drawings. Some disparage the complete lack of painting, long a staple of Houston Expressionism. Others were searching for a truly living culture and were disappointed by works stripped of their context.

Some artwork seems irrelevant; Knitta Please has done large amounts of their work in every hip city in the world other than in Houston, and the “collective” is racked by internal molting that has left them a bad reputation among many a young artist. If Knitta has responded to Houston, it must have been a bad reaction. I cannot tell why Lauren Kelley, despite her strong body of work, is included in No Zoning. Her stop-motion animation tales of growing up and navigating our conflicted American social mores has little to do with the specificity implied in the show. The performances of Mary Ellen Carroll and films of Andrea Grover evaporate when there is not a scheduled event; during museum hours visitors are left wanting, staring at an empty stage.

For all the good intentions of No Zoning, its presentation leaves much to be desired. If nothing else the large amount of chatter around it is a positive development, bringing dialogue to the community where there previously was none. One can only hope that it leads to all the intriguing alternative spaces and artists across the city that more accurately portray Houston’s sprawling, metastasizing culture.

The Swappiest Swap of Them All

2009-06-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

By Jacob Mustafa

Everyone can appreciate a little distortion, the need for chaos. Turmoil lends itself to the breeding ground for peculiarity that is the annual A/V Swap, Houston’s very own Exquisite Corpse. In a flurry of creation that leaves behind the usual anxiety of collaboration, the A/V Swap allows talented filmmakers, regardless of practice or method, to work with musicians who want to score their films-- albeit in a roundabout manner. Essentially, the swap fosters strangeness for whoever wants a little.

Participants prepare the content they want to submit, and after submissions are in, the A/V Swap Team assigns filmmakers and musicians the pieces they will place together. The process allows the anonymity and diversity of the artists to shine through the work, with Houston serving as the perfect backdrop for such a jumbled assortment of talent. Every day, Houstonians almost have to interact with who or whatever may be on the opposite end of one’s cultural spectrum, and while that may build tension, it also increases the chances for social empathy and weirdness (in other words, all-around awesomeness). In a city that seems to be perfectly at ease with the endless myriad of things that it is and represents, the A/V Swap remains a symbol of the kind of blind recognition that should be given to whoever makes great art.

In the Swap’s short history, the swath of Houston artists that have involved themselves in this exciting trade of divergent content shows exactly how fun the Swap has been. In its world, parachutes soar to the stabs of electronic music, while Pak’s Food Store acts as the backdrop for highly choreographed social interaction. The scores used in the A/V Swap span the larger part of the world, both musical and literal. Year after year, the Swap continue to facilitate amazing collaborations that would have never been given a thought otherwise, whether it be because of the appeal of a particular artist or total lack of similarity between filmmaker and musician. It may even act as an online dating service for a lonely artist looking for that special idea to help create and mold, and the A/V Swap has established itself as a staple of the Houston art culture because of that.

This year the swap invites submissions from all genres and subcultures in Buffalo, New York City, Austin and Houston. Whatever your idea is, if it can be filmed or recorded, it should probably already be submitted to the swap. Submission, contact and further information on the A/V Swap can be found at theavswap.com.

If you’re wandering this gigantic, grey stew of a city and wondering who the hell all of these people were, the A/V Swap would not be a bad place to start. Represented by a small group of people using their fantastically particular skills to do such different things, it’s a special event that weirdly yet accurately portrays the beautifully mixed bag Houston can be.

Every Way but the Right Way___No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston

2009-05-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

Opening Friday, May 8, 7–10 pm
On view May 9 through October 4, 2009

It’s a mess out there, and nothing demonstrates the relentless and grinding change and upheaval in Houston every few years than the fate of the Human Tour. Land Art in an urban setting, Michael Galbreth’s Human Tour, 1987, mapped the inner city of Houston, marking limbs with bronze plaques from Frost Town in the 5^th Ward through downtown south to the Astrodome. His attempted anthropomorphization of the city streets was an attempt to reach the public in a new way. At first the dozens of markers spelled a clear path through the city’s core, but the city’s relentless growth has overgrown the map drawn onto it. Streets have changed; plaques were removed by construction workers and vandals. A few markers remain, giving curious pedestrians strange proclamations, like “You Are at the Right Hand of The City” along with directions to seek Human Tour maps at your local library. Today Galbreth’s project is a relic, a ruin only two decades after its creation.

A member of The Art Guys, Galbreth came to Houston from Tennessee. Open to the laissez-faire culture and open source urban planning dominated by developers with enough money to grease the wheels, he came to treat the glorified bayou of Houston as a landscape to by pushed and prodded, legally or illegally. Free from the zoning ordinances that shape other large American cities by separating residential, commercial, and industrial areas, Houston allows an approach where bizarre juxtapositions of architecture and sweeping concrete and steel overpasses multiply every year. In this chaotic urbanity, many Houston artists have been able to take to the streets, abandoned and unused lots and their own properties to transform banality into sustainable creativity. No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston considers the efforts of diverse artists working in this unique environment to grow mutated vines in the concrete soil of this toxic town.

Participants include The Art Guys, who will marry a tree; Mary Ellen Carroll, who is reconfiguring an abandoned tract house in Sharpstown; and Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses, who will celebrate residents of the Third Ward in billboards. Also included is work by curator and artist Bill Davenport, Houston Chronicle muckraker photographer Ben Tecumseh DeSoto, sculptor Sharon Engelstein, outsider artist Cleveland Turner, aka The Flower Man, The Fundred Dollar Bill Project by Mel Chin, Andrea Grover, collaborators Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, photographer and art car documenter George Hixson, CORE member Lauren Kelley, graffiti crew Knitta Please, Eric Leshinsky, Lee Littlefield, avid boaters and bikers Benjy Mason and Zach Moser, Notsuoh proprietor and performance artist Jim Pirtle and utopian designer Nestor Topchy.

The catalogue for No Zoning will include examples and documentation of city interventions and visionary structures from the punk rock days of the budding art car movement and the Lawndale Annex in the 1980s, 90s experimental art spaces like CSAW, Templo, Sharon Engelstein’s mini-gallery and The Artery as well as current alternative spaces like Bill’s Junk, Westheimer Block Party, The Aurora Picture Show and The Flower Man’s house. The exhibition will incorporate performances, lectures and video screenings during the museum's extended Thursday evening hours to enliven the exhibition throughout its run. Throughout the city, the CAMH will sponsor educational, historical and artistic events—seriously, this is a call to anyone who’s been to those parties in underground warehouses, Montrose bungalows, parks, streets and festivals—you’re the blood that makes this artworld flow.

Sunday SOUP!

2009-04-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted an arts grant?

Does jumping through hoops not excite you?

Well, apply for the art grant funded by artists! Sunday SOUP!

Submit a short proposal, three sentences to a 1/2 page (w/ an image on the other half) to sundaysouphouston [at] incubate-chicago.org by Saturday, April 4th and come to the voting Sunday, April 5th at =SKYDIVE= from Noon til 4pm.

http://www.theskydive.org/

Take a minute, just jot down that idea you've had in the back of your mind that you never had a chance to execute. Draw it- wherever you are- and scan it, take a picture or draw it in Microsoft Paint. Write three sentences. Send them to Sunday SOUP.

DEBRIS: Lions and Lambs

2009-03-08T13:39:00.001-07:00

by Buffalo Sean

In lean years the strong get weak, and the weak get weaker. As the US and the rest of the world descend into the doldrums of a long recession I figured it was as good of a time as any to examine the state of the art state. Artstorm Gallery, formerly the best party-throwers on Caroline Street, is no more. In the East End, BOX 13 continues on strong, hosting the best of the University of Houston’s photography and painting departments March 28th through April 30th. The Contemporary Arts Museum is settling into more local shows, thawing to Houston artists this May with No Zoning, throwing in the kitchen sink too. Mel Chin, Bill Davenport, Ben De Soto, Sharon Engelstein, Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, George Hixson, Lauren Kelley, KnittaPlease, Jim Pirtle, Nestor Topchy, Zach Moser and Benjy Mason are all gonna do some shit. Should be a good party. The Museum of Fine arts seems fine; it won’t go the way of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, which had to merge with the more solvent Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They are looking to the home team though, with a mid-career retrospective of photographer Amy Blakemore. Project Row Houses continues to grow its influence, reaching out to international artists as Rick Lowe travels the country speaking about community activism and saving neighborhoods based on the art and activism project in the 3rd Ward. Finesilver Gallery closed late last year down on Main Street, but there is no doubt that Midtown’s popularity will trump any other losses in the area in the short term. If the short term looks bleak, the long shot seems rosy.

A myriad of galleries throughout Montrose, Kirby and the Heights can’t be happy about belt tightening, R. Allen Stanford’s $50 million dollar swindle, and the continued low price of oil or high price of rent. It feels like some of them are going to go down, just like the early 80s when the “donut hole” carved downtown out of the city’s vernacular. Many of the galleries lost then sold second-generation Impressionists, and for all the bad Abstract Expressionism I’ve seen around I won’t be surprised when the end is near. The Menil might have to postpone some of that massive construction, but if the Richmond rail line gets going I doubt they will slow down at all. The Bayou City Art Festival will shrink, just like the Houston Press has. Domy won’t go anywhere, I hope the Big Block at 4411 Montrose stays full, and the Art League probably restructured and expanded at just the right time to cruise through the recession. March 6th The Art League will host WEAH, ACK!, Raiko Nin, and Alex PR!MO Luster for their first show of taggers, across Montrose a block down on Drew Street are some great pieces by WEAH and ACK!

Dwindling ranks of newspaper critics scream that art, in its physical body, will soon cease to exist. Soon enough the critics won’t be there to talk about it, that much is for sure. The definition of an artist is breaking down, and the next time the next big thing rears its head it may be impossible to tell if it was anything more than a daily experience. Eating toast. Walking in the park. Meeting a new computer. Artstorm Gallery, with its emphasis on outsider art and illustration, recognized the issues with following the direction that academic art is going and fought against it with Americana. Both indomitable spirits and unequaled enthusiasm permeated the place, its artists and its events. If in its short run there is anything to regret it is only that it left so soon. Then again, I’ve been in art collectives that have been shorter. The appetite is out there for well thrown art parties that for sure. Who’s gonna pick up where they left off?

Interview: Christy Karacas

2009-02-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

By Shelby Hohl

FPH had the chance to chat with animator Christy Karacas about his new cartoon Superjail which is currently airing on Adult Swim. We picked his brain on everything from gaining artistic exposure to new wave punk band Les Savy Fav. Read on fellow scribes, within lie magnificent secrets to creative justice!

Where did you get the idea to do a cartoon about a hallucinogenic jailhouse run by a Willy Wonka-style warden?

I had an old pitch that was a reality jail show. When we had our meeting with adult swim I brought it up and it wasn't really what they were looking for so we were like, how about the most insane, crazy, jail in the universe? A 'superjail'? Little did we know that there are real 'superjails'...without all the psychedelia of course. Also, it was kind of constructed to be a place/show where anything could happen giving us the freedom to do whatever we want creatively.
How large was the crew it took to produce the cartoon?

About 25 people on staff, 4 sound people, the composer of the score and a ton of interns.
The crew is extremely talented and hardworking-I can't say enough good things about them! If any animation people are reading this--if someone’s resume says 'superjail' on it HIRE THEM IMMEDIATELY cuz it means they are great-hahah.
It’s made at Augenblick studios in Brooklyn entirely in house which is also pretty cool.
Your student film Space War, garnered you a lot of attention and even was featured on MTV's Cartoon Sushi. Did you produce the whole project yourself? If so, how long did it take you to make it, start to finish?

Yes. That was my degree project I did my senior year at Rhode Island School of Design. It took about 6 months maybe? It was A LOT of work as I did it all myself-drawing, animating, sound etc...plus that was all hand drawn-no computers. Ha.

Are we expecting a season 2 of Superjail?

Yes! (I think so...cross your fingers)

Can we expect any Superjail merch? shirts? DVDs?

Definitely. Not sure what exactly, but definitely DVDs. the rest is up to adult swim. I hope there are action figures. That would be awesome. I want the warden troopers from season finale more than anything.
Suggest a book and a band!

The stars my destination (a.k.a. tiger! tiger!) by Alfred bester. It’s amazing. It was written in the 50's but reads like the newest coolest craziest sci-fi adventure...kind of a 'Count of Monte Cristo' in space. A band-Les Savy Fav-they are one of my favorite bands-they are also amazing.

Do you think it would be of benefit to Mr. Spock to have a handlebar moustache?

Only if it was logical.

Superjail, Bar Fight, and Space War are notorious for their very graphic and intense fight scenes. What kind of stuff inspired you to go the route you did?

I love the cartooney violence in the fights but it’s also about the movement and the challenge of the 'choreography' of the fights-trying to keep them intense and interesting. Influences are obviously classic cartoons like Popeye and Looney Toons, but also weird psychedelia...kung fu movies, action, anything cool really.

What do you think about the current state of animation --- where do you see it going/ where would you like it to go?

When you say 'current' I’m assuming you mean TV/movie animation entertainment right? I’m not the biggest fan of 'current' animation. I would love it if it went in a more hand drawn looking and more importantly cartoony fun visual direction instead of 'scripted sit-com' direction. Seems like that's the only thing the networks want. I’d love a show that was purely visual with no talking...i'm not huge into the whole '3-d' thing either. I do love the Pixar movies-they are amazing. Maybe it’s a love or nostalgia for what you grew up loving? I dunno. There’s also tons of crazy independent animation that’s really cool but doesn't really exist as 'popular entertainment' so most people don't even see it. I like a lot of that kind of stuff. Festivals are great way to see that kind of stuff-and the Internet, even though watching stuff on the computer kind of sucks.

If you could pit any two cultural icons against each other in a skin shredding death match --- who would it be? And who would win?

I think I’d rather watch two cultural icons get drunk together. Jim Morrison and Harry Nilsson would be pretty cool.

You play guitar in a band out of New York called ‘Cheeseburger’. Any particular reason to go with that name? Planning on touring anytime soon?

The name is iconic-its fun-classic-all American-badass. What’s better than a cheeseburger? We are working on our second record right now. If it is on time--we're kind of behind schedule right now--we were supposed to tour spring 09-so i'm not sure if we'll wait till next fall or what...you can stay posted on our my space page (myspace.com/cheeseburger)
Do you have any recommendations for aspiring artists to help them further expose themselves?

Work hard, be productive, and to expose yourself to many different things. Also don't worry too much about being 'current' or 'selling'. You have to be true to the kind of stuff you want to make. The short film Barfight that we made is what got us on Adult Swim's radar. The funny thing is that it was rejected from every film festival we entered it into and there was a three or four year gap until they contacted us (we made Barfight in 2000!). Kind of insane when you think about it.

DEBRIS: View From the Window at Le Gras

2008-12-03T08:39:00.000-08:00

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 1826

the first permanent photograph

Buffalo Sean

It is a holistic world today, but we are mostly unaware of making decisions without deconstruction. New relationships among physical science, biology, mathematics, physics, free will, determinism, and the character of intelligence have emerged. Jettisoning the past century’s obsessive categorization might never become conscious, but the functions of culture are changing. Organic, fluid corporate planning is catching up with American employment’s ever-shrinking job security and rapid career changes. Social networking allows for differentiation of mutualistic relationships, for once taking a bite out of cronyism and corruption. All in all, we should be more prepared for economic instability than we would have been five years ago. Plugged-in people may make more hay than the baby boomers relying on old networks, but only time will tell if any of us get to retire before we’re 85.

the first photograph ever- of a painting, 1825

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

As organic systems demonstrate the irreducibility of complexity and chaos theories, things are going to change rapidly. We won’t have computers in our homes in just a few years- their power transferred to handheld electronics. Old age facilities will utterly fail in their ability to care, reforming along social networking lines. Art will be completely redefined, ephemeral and populist. Immersion is the holistic response to objecthood, and even an object can be immersive and fascinating when included in an easily googleable network of contexts. As Google develops its own meta-regulatory systems, alerting the government to spikes in “flu” searches and selling satellite photographs across the world, even that revolution (that put one on a conversational basis with the internet) will be codified and eventually obsolete.

Frank Olson, Net of Indira, 2008

I hope that an exhibition of technologically complex artwork can demonstrate how our views are changing in the 21st century. Artists and scientists have always advanced each others’ agendas- notably in the concurrent inventions of the photograph in 1839 by English scientist Fox Talbot and French artist Louis Daguerre. Mike Field + Frank Olson have made new technological processes work aesthetically, at a time when art is open to new veins of inspiration. Mike Field is a professor of mathematics at the University of Houston. This American/English/Australian artist constructs his own Linux computers and software to manipulate complex visual equations and construct aesthetic variables. Frank Olson is a pseudonymous artist intensely interested in the 20th century development of the study of consciousness, especially the work of Terence McKenna, Ramana Maharshi and Ram Das.

Mike Field, Neural Net, 2002

This December 13th at the joanna Gallery (4014 Graustark) join the American Wandering Club for an experimental exhibit between art and science. Coming from radically different philosophies, both artists have advanced fractal computer-based art by applying aestheticism and shamanism to an impersonal medium. Their surreal landscapes and textural abstractions hum with energy, echoing the building blocks of science and the structures of microscopic organisms. Field and Olson both exude passion through color, form and composition in much the same way that early Modernists like Wassily Kandinsky explored emotion through abstraction. Kandinsky’s abstractions look terribly related to biological diagrams, DNA structures and celestial formations that give them dual meanings as both emotional explorations and science-fiction. Appropriately our contemporary art may be simply an unconscious advance on a future reality, proving perhaps for once and all that constructing the world is a human endeavor, not an absolute.

Thrive at Diverse Works Friday the 14th

2008-11-11T14:54:00.000-08:00

Curated by Mary Ross Taylor, Thrive includes work by 16 notable artists from Houston, including Lauren Kelly (who is featured in a ton of shows throught Texas this month), Ellen Berman, Suzanne Bloom, and Charles Mary Kubricht, to name a few. Organized in conjunction with the conference "Gender, Creativity and the New Longevity" at University of Houston, this exhibit and accomanying programs are a co-presentation of DiverseWorks and the Women's Studies program at University of Houston.

DiverseWorks
1117 East Freeway
Houston, TX 77002
Phone: 713-223-8346

DEBRIS: You and I should meet.

2008-11-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

by Buffalo Sean
You and I should meet. I’m writing this on October 20th. You are reading this on or around November 4th. If every anxiety that is tearing me up today continues unabated, please come find me at Ben Taub. I’m addicted to the news. I can’t sleep and I drink a lot of coffee. I feel like Tweak from South Park, really. No amount of calm and soothing tea and progress is able to squash the horrible aches and pains of my hysteria. Tell me what happens. No, no, don’t, I’ll find out myself. This is horrible. It’s exciting.

Politics, culture, time, space and entertainment aside, there are a good art shows that should be fun this November. Rice Gallery is letting Michael Salter create a giant styrofoam robot; the Museum of Printing History an exhibition by aboriginal Australian artists from Mua Island in the Torres Strait and The Station Museum has contemporary work by Iraqi artists in exile. As Houston grows by leaps and bounds there are art spaces opening everywhere. The two newest opened in October, Optical Project at 11th and Studewood in the Heights and =SKYDIVE= (the name comes with wings), just stop on the ninth floor and knock on 907 before you head up to Skybar (3400 Montrose Boulevard). Optical is showing Brit painter Maggie Hills through November, while the Dive= has an LA exhibit about sprawl through two weeks after the votes are counted (I’m freaked out about the context you reading this in right now) and the day before Thanksgiving A.J. Liberto of Supreme Court death metal band “Penultimate Justice” will curate the next show. But what about old things, you say? Well, The Museum of Fine Arts has a new Rembrandt. The Menil has 75 Max Ernsts for a festival of mid-afternoon acid tripping on the distorted memories and mesmerizing hallucinations of a mind going though international and personal trauma. You can always drive out to Katy and see all those terra-cotta guys if you need something older and crazier.

Well, it will be nice and cool in the afternoons in November, and it may be very lovely where you’re at, I just don’t know yet. I know I’ll be out on November 22nd for the Artcrawl on the eastside of Downtown (artcrawlhouston.com). It’ll be a nice, cold day and I can walk in and out of buildings, take a bike ride, sit on street corners and take pictures. Until then I’m not sure if I may melt my insides with bile or suffer a massive aneurysm. Well I hope the Phillies win. And a couple more good people too.

DEBRIS: Black Eye

2008-10-06T12:30:00.001-07:00

by Buffalo Sean

Burning through a twelve pack of beer by candlelight or a bottle of vodka in the dark was par for the course on September 12th, 2008. Waking up the next day would be hard no matter what you had done the night before. A storm the size of Texas, literally, passed over Houston and took Galveston’s Bali Room along for the ride. A cargo ship’s engines broke down off the coast, and the MV Antalina floated adrift in the Gulf battered by hundred mile-an-hour winds. Gasoline shortages began to spread through the South, reaching North Carolina and Virginia. By the next week 30,000 people far away in Quebec lost power due to the storm. If you’re reading this I hope that your power has turned back on. If not then go call Centerpoint Energy again. You just need to be a little *forceful*… Defy Bill White. Return to the streets (whether they’re lit or not) and get back into a groove. If you don’t know where to go let me drop a few hints for ya.

Friday, October 3rd at 2337 Bissonnet put your vodka drinking skills to the test with some artists from Saint Petersburg at Caviart Gallery. 8 o’clock throwdown! Same night, same time, Bohemeo’s at 708 Telephone Road in the East End will present 1930s short films by Len Lye and an early 60s work by Jim Henson- Time Piece. Saturday and Sunday at 7 pm Charlie Chaplin kills his rich wives over and over at the Museum of Fine Arts, spilling blood in Monsieur Verdoux so that his poor family can eat. Sunday is free day at the museum too! The MFAH has provided public urinals with bright red targets on them.

October 11th, the Farmer’s Market at La Strada kicks things off at 9 am; the Westheimer Block Party will rock out with cocks out from noon until late at night. Look for performance and installation art spreading throughout the Montrose neighborhood around the intersection of Westheimer and Taft. Satin Hooks will be all up in Numbers- I’ll sure as hell be there! The Menil Collection will have New Mexican Pueblo Indian dancers performing by The Rothko Chapel reflecting pool at 1 pm; Da Camera offers performances at the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum, Cy Twombly Gallery, and The Menil Collection from 2:30 to 4:00 pm and a jazz performance on the deck of The Menil Collection Bookstore. On the same day Gallery Row, at Richmond and Kirby, will have their latest round of exhibits of view for closing (instead of opening) parties from 6 until 8 pm.
Drag your ass out of bed on Sunday the 12th for D.R.U.M. at Discovery Green, perfect for daytime drinking and riding bicycles through downtown. Looks like the Texans will be trying to field dress the Dolphins that day, so make sure to get out before the show starts at 3 pm to avoid drunken football fans. If Houston potentially losing to the worst team in the NFL last year isn’t depressing enough for you, just wait for Thursday, October 16th, when the Holocaust Museum will screen Shmal'tsovniki: Bounty Hunters in German-Occupied Ukraine at 7 pm. Like most typical Holocaust Museum fare, this one will make you hope that the human race was wiped off the face of the earth. Bring popcorn!
Ready to die yet? No? Well then The Rothko Chapel has the cure for what ails you, as the suicidal minimalist expressionist gets the star treatment from his own son, Christopher Rothko. Think he might swing the pendulum the other way? Be a little joyful and carefree? Sorry, but this guy has been editing his father’s morbid philosophy for the last decade- check it out in print form in The Artist’s Reality. Chilling. Lecture begins at 7 pm, a half-hour before Über-serious U Theater of Taiwan will be at the Miller Outdoor Theater in Hermann Park banging drums and acting all dramatic and shit. There’s a lot of good stuff going on, and I hope to see you out at the Block Party. As long as the power comes back on I’m happy.

DEBRIS: Honey Pot

2008-09-08T16:37:00.001-07:00

by Buffalo Sean

Seeing a lot of attempts to eviscerate the Lawndale Art Center for this summer’s Big Show makes me happy. Go ahead, talk about it! Complain that worthy artist were left out, and how below-grade artwork made it in. Scrutinize, criticize, ridicule and spit on others. Anyone whose work was in the show will call you out on your territorial pissing. They may even cite a few inaccuracies in your story, note contradictory statements out of context or stake their own claim to relevance. Maybe you guys should just blog about it you know. If everyone forgets your little drunken rant at Boondocks then where do you go? The dude who wrote “quite possibly one of the most horrific group shows I have ever seen” squandered his chance to elaborate, why should you? Positive and negative it all goes into Google, the modern melting pot- since this century isn’t any closer to national reconciliation. Sharpen your boots and bludgeon your eyes, y’all. Start something and unless you’re in the street slingin’ wheatpaste you’re not doing enough. We can’t hear you.

Why don’t you take a shot at taking down the Psychedelic Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich store front facades at Lawndale this month? Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand would appreciate it. These two have been pumping out video and experimental work for the last decade, a husband and wife duo with a penchant for transcendental smoothies. If you’re actually into that kind of stuff, take a whack at Judith Cottrell and Alex Lopez’s minimal sculpture and shaped canvasses. How the hell can minimalism survive in the 21st century? could be your title. Come on, take it. It’s free.

Whatever you do don’t even think of criticizing (Re)vision by Shannon Duncan. What could you have to say about documenting the destruction of history in Houston’s inner loop? Are the mementos of crushed livelihoods not heart wrenching enough for you, you heartless bastard? Anyway, she’s already got you beat to the interwebs, having documented twenty-two zip codes worth of territory already at communitywalk.com/revisionhouston. Besides, she has tons of Polaroids, and that’s cooler than school. All exhibits on view through September 27th at 4912 Main Street. Lawndale is open Monday through Saturday during the day until 5 pm.

The school of thought that keeps capitalism percolation is democracy. We can always pull on them bootstraps to even out the playing field right? Well the same thing goes for elections and electives y’all, and art is a smoky back room game if there ever was one. Want to learn, grow and evolve? Get writing. Take pictures. Learn a little HTML. It’s not so hard and it’ll always be there for ya. In fact I am hooked up intravenously to electrical currents 24-7 that give me painful shocks if I forget to post something on the internet every three minutes. It really hurts and I want to kill myself, but at least I’m ahead of the curve, right?

Understanding Poverty | Opens September 12th at Diverse Works

2008-09-04T15:00:00.000-07:00

by Omar Afra
Ben Tecumseh DeSoto says he likes to bring to light the “broke and the broken.” Well, the number of those that fit this category has grown disproportionately in recent years in Houston and the rest of the country. Gifted photojournalist DeSoto revisits this exhibit that he initially did in 1992 at Diverse Works. He has been studying the phenomenon of homelessness in Houston for some 20 years and his photography shows a marked insight. He began in 1988 by building a relationship with two homeless Houstonians, Ben White and Judy Pruitt. DeSoto’s experiences with the two allowed him to document their incredible stories of hope and sorrow while “exposing the self-perpetuating cycle of poverty, trauma and hopelessness that afflicts thousands of citizens living in the shadows in America’s cities.” This dynamic has no doubt changed here in Houston with the continued lack of attention to homelessness here, the sudden influx of thousands of Katrina refugees, and municipal policy of criminalizing the homeless.
“The streets of Houston have been a regular “beat” I worked with my camera,” says DeSoto, “and I want others to see what I’ve seen, and understand what I’ve come to understand, the role of the trauma in magnifying the drama of poverty.” DeSoto’s populist “punk” aesthetic comes through in his work to exemplify such drama. With his work will be hand written interviews with Ben and Judy, ‘work-in-progress’ film shorts, and a light installation made from negatives with artist Sarah Watley Ayers. The Project has become a joint effort and collaborators include DiverseWorks, the Houston Endowment, Que Imaging, and others including the photography subjects.
This will the first show in the new season for Diverse Works and precedes by just a week a night of musical performances by Jana Hunter, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, and Wicked Poseur on September 17th.

September 12 - November 1, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, September 12, 2008
6-8pm
Curated by Clint Willour
www.diverseworks.org
1117 East Freeway

DUAL Opening 8.29.08

2008-08-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Opening August 29th at Aerosol Warfare
Friday, 7 to 11pm

New DUAL!

Red Bull: Can of Bullshit

2008-08-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

by Buffalo Sean

Now it doesn’t bother me that they cost twice as much per ounce as any other energy drink. Or that they have introduced a new and legal high to America. No, it bothers me that Red Bull decided to throw their bullshit Art of the Can in Houston.

Haven’t heard of it? Seen the billboards of bauxite pterodactyls? Or their web ads with a shiny tin cowboy boot? Hmm… then you must not be one of the five hundred artists who submitted to the exhibit. Pardon me while I tell those artists FUCK YOU YOU GOT HOSED. Excuse me, but I had a feeling one of them might read this and I couldn’t resist the urge to publicly insult someone. If you are sitting next to someone who entered the show tell ‘em for me. Their ridiculousness is only eclipsed by the willingness of advertisers to use, exploit and degrade you. Three things strike me as particularly stupid in this endeavor, an artist’s willingness to forgo one’s judgment of materials, the inestimable monetary cost of the project and the complacency and triviality of the artworld.

Materials, malleable objects and ideas, are explored through trial and error and practice. Conceptual artists screaming in a dark room go through the same shtick as a watercolor artist painting on a Sunday afternoon. Exploring materials, finding what you like to work with is a big part of artistic identity. Warhol had silkscreens, Rauschenberg had ink transfers and Oldenburg had cloth. Robyn O’Neil has pencils, Bert Long has ice and the Art Guys have their bodies. Why would you limit yourself to a prescribed, corporate material? Barring an intensely enlightened group working together for a very long time I would not believe an exhibit of one material could ever be justifiable. The fact that the show looked like a high school hallway on parent’s night was unavoidable, but shame on you guys for getting duped into thinking this could ever be worth it beyond that navel-gazing moment of delight that comes with being included. On the team.

By the way, in getting on this team, how much did you guys spend on those cans you’ve woven into dragons, moustaches and the Statue of Liberty? Didn’t think about it did ya. Or maybe it just blew by; you were so high on fructose syrup and guarana. No entry fee for the exhibit? What a crock of bullshit. It’d cost you $200 to construct a spaceman out of your product’s encasement. Maybe it only cost a hundred bucks to cover that guitar in $4 eight-ounce cans. It’s kind of like usury. Does it seem stupid to enter yet? Or would you like to hear about Arthur Vaisvilas’ piece? The hapless son-of-a-bitch drew The Ramones wearing Red Bull t-shirts as they rock out in a stilted colored pencil attempt at thankfulness. Unless you’re in high school Arthur, you should be punched in the face. You might be big so I’m not gonna do it- but The Ramones deserve better. The oodles of cash Red Bull throws around all over the country on fun, stupid shit is reprehensible if you’re not having fun, but if you’re part of the crowd you may feel some sense of elation, like there’s something new happening and you’re in the thick of it. Shut the fuck up. It’s all the caffeine.

The jittery feeling you get sometimes, when it seems like there is a comprehensive, wide-ranging spectrum of artists out there and possibilities for advancement; that means that someone should back over you with a truck. Don’t assume that those collectors and critics at the opening spell validation. I am terribly surprised at the ability to bend over backwards and lower their standards that many jurors demonstrated, as well as the media outlets and even well meaning artists. Oh, I mean that I’m so surprised that they can do that when there is money involved. Did that slip my mind? Woops. As one juror stiffly said; “don’t take it so seriously, they’re not artists.” I was staggered. I kind of hoped that they were artists. I kind of believe that they are, even Arthur, and they shouldn’t have to go away when the money leaves. The kvetching that went on when the Hunting Prize patronized to artists sent the community into an uproar, but no one takes this seriously? Damned bull, I would have preferred a pinewood derby or an air show, and this will not do. At least it has proven that corporations have an extensive reach in the artworld, and to resist it is futile. I’m not drinking a can of that shit. I’ll drink the Kool-Aid.

Last chance for Red Bull Art of Can

2008-07-23T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, we all know you can't step over a pile of shit lately without hearing about Red Bull Art of can or a related event. Our own site here is splattered with their links and the city is abuzz with the hype. The exhibit ends this Friday and it it your last shot to see all the creations. Nonetheless, let us know what you liked, how you feel about whether this uber-corporate event has been overdid, or whatever.

ArtStorm to Host Green Drinks at Beaver's on July 30

2008-07-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, July 30th, ArtStorm will host a Green Drinks Night at Beaver's. Every Wednesday throughout the summer, Beaver's features a happy hour featuring drink and appetizer specials from 5-10pm, $4 appetizers, $3.50 beer and $5 cocktails.

25% of all proceeds from the special green drinks and appetizer menu will go to ArtStorm. Support visual art in Houston! Come and meet the friendly ArtStorm crew that keeps enthusiastically bringing you the work of innovative artists, live music, and fun, art-inspired events!

Beaver's Icehouse
2310 Decatur Street
Houston, TX, 77007
713.864. BEAV (2328)
www.beavershouston.com