DEBRIS: Cannibal Ross

The University of Houston art department has really been engaging this spring, stocking large amounts of lecturers and visiting artists into the last few months. If you missed the Intermedia Lab exhibit at G Gallery in the Heights check out the Collaboration projects on the third floor of the Lawndale. Hurry up! New things like this never stay up for long. The Intermedia Lab was composed of artists with one notable writer (who sold all of her drawings opening night); Collaboration is composed of teachers and students of many departments working in small cells. Both exhibits excelled in energy and depth, boding well for the school and the city’s future.

Speaking of the city, they’d better put that rail line right down Richmond. Sorry to be insensitive but you can’t pay attention to a few landowners when Houston needs a spine. Uptown Galleria needs congestion relief, Downtown Montrose needs an audience. Hell, imagine a 24 hour rail line about ten blocks from most shit you’d want to go to? It’s not like people would ignore it, the short line they have now carries 40,000 people a day. I want to be able to quit driving.

Rice University’s “Art for Profit” is going to have a tough time living up to last year’s great show, the Art Guys curated this one though, and its funny that the press release has a whole paragraph on their history. Hmmm…

Down at CSAW, I Love You, Baby is back in circulation, filling their iloveyoubaby.org site with creamy nonsense for the first time this year. Lots of it involves guns.

Thank you goes out to William Betts after holding down the fort as Interim Director of the Lawndale Art Center as they searched far and wide. After Christine West settled in as Director Betts bowed out as Chair of the Programming Committee, where he forced more than fostered but succeeded in starting a resident artist program that will be a lasting legacy; and also opening two third floor galleries, outdoor spaces and hallways as new places to exhibit in the Lawndale. He will be missed but never forgotten by that building on Main Street.

Sunday, May 6th, Leslie Hewitt joins the subjective circle of speakers who have made “The Artist’s Eye” talks at the Menil wildly different with “On Andy Warhol (3:00 pm). May 11th opens an exhibit of great mid-century painters that was bequeathed to the Menil Collection by David Whitney. With seventeen precious Jasper Johns drawings at the heart of the exhibit, look for the not-too-shabby fringes to be full of seldom seen Oldenbergs, Lichtensteins and Warhols.