Well Lookie Here

Traci Matlock and Ashley Maclean, tethered to the sun

Gallery 1724 Re-Opening!

ArtsHouston is sponsoring the re-opening of Gallery 1724! After a one year hiatus, the salon/gallery is back with new work by Traci Matlock and Ashley Maclean. Check out their website and view the gallery on the ArtsHouston website. Those of you who came to the openings know how much fun they are! Gallery 1724 is an independent salon/gallery in the Museum District. Opening December 8, come out and celebrate with us (free drinks and treats!) and make an appointment to cut that damn hair, hippie! 1724 Bissonet, 7-9 pm. Call 713-523-2547 or email gallery1724@mac.com.

Upstairs from Gallery 1724 is a hair salon, so we recommend coming with buzz cuts. Formerly the curatorial domain of Frank Rose- who now runs the revived Artshouston magazine- his wife Kara Duval will now be at the helm for this converted home on Bissonett between the Museum District and the Rice Village. Go Kara!

How To Spend Money on Stupid Things

"The price tag for an unmanned aircraft ranges from $30,000 to $1 million each and HPD is hoping to begin law enforcement from the air by June of 2008 with these new aircraft."



Article HERE.

Aisen Chasin sez:

I need the participation of people who are intrested in performance art, and or Venezuela.
My idea is the following:
I will have 3 rolls of canvas streched on the floor.
People whom are intrested to help with the project (including myself) will begin to paint the Venezuelan flag ... Yellow.... Blue.... Red...
There will be 7 buckets of red paint forming an arch on the blue portion suggesting the stars.
Then someone will bring an eigth bucket of red paint and place it to make the eigth star. (Chavez added a star to the Venezuelan flag). There and then another person will want to take the bucket out and begin a "tug of war".
The red paint will fly everywhere covering the people and the flag iniciating a war between everone. The people and the flag will end completely covered in red, suggesting many open perspectives about the political climate in Venezuela today.
The blood spilled by the soldiers whom fought for liberty and freedom.. Like the actuall meaning of the existent red on the flag.
The color of the Bolivarian Revolution.
The color of communism.
etc...
What do you think? Would you like to participate?

Please help me spread the word to all your friends of all ages and nationalities.
I plan to have the performance Sunday Nov.25 or Monday 26th.
Thank YOU!!!
Aisen C Chacin
PS: I'm waiting for your response! Don't give up the chance to participate in some performance Art!

Solo necesito la participacion de personas interesadas.
Mi idea es la siguiente:
Voy a tener tres rollos de canvas alargados en el piso.
La gente que vendra a ayudar en el proyecto (incluyendome) empezara a pintar la bandera de Venezuela ... Amarillo.... Azul.... Rojo...
Van a haber 7 pipotes de pintura roja en forma de arco en la franja azul sugeriendo las estrellas.
Luego una persona va a traer un octavo pipote de rojo y colocarlo como la octava estrella. Alli entonces otra persona va a querer quitar el pipote y comenzara un "tug of war".
La pitura roja se derramara por todos lados iniciando una guerra entre todos. La gente terminara cubriendose y a la bandera completamente de rojo, sugenriendo muchas perspectivas sobre el clima politico de hoy.
La sangre derramada por la libertad.. como ya es el significado del rojo en la bandera actual.
El color de la Revolucion Bolivariana
El color del comunismo
etc...
Que te parece? Te gustaria participar?
Mientras mas Venezolanos mejor! Ya que nosotros somos los que sentimos estos eventos.

Por favor hasle llegar este mensaje a tus amigos de todas las edades. Si consigues a amigos interesados que no sean Venezolanos tambien estan invitados.
Estoy pensando hacer este poyecto el domingo 25 de Nov. o el Lunes 26.
Chao!
Muchas gracias,
Aisen C Chacin

PS: Espero tu respuesta..

713.444.5139
Email	aisencc@gmail.com

Thanksgiving!

DEBRIS: Kill All Elves

Angela Fraleigh, but that would come later, 2007

December, like all great disasters, comes with a promise of new beginnings, hope and goodwill. When that promise starts in October through asinine Best Buy commercials and glitter and glam displays at Walgreens all I want to do is hang myself by the fireside before Thanksgiving is even here. For all those who feel like the holiday season should be drowned along with that new Disney movie and Rudy Giuliani; cheer up! The Ballad of Sexual Dependency photography exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (running through February 12) is a haunting document of addiction and depression, squalor and sadness set in New York City before the Republicans had a chance to scrub it clean that will bring your holiday cheer back down to earth. Nan Goldin ran away from her home at a young age and grew up in foster care all over the east coast. At 20 she had her first exhibit examining the gay and transvestite communities in Boston. In the punk and new-wave vibe of New York she found the vibrant but disturbed hard drug culture of the Bowery, where she focused her attention on relationships in snapshots of bedrooms and hotel rooms. Most of her subjects in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency were dead by the 90s, victims of violence, AIDS or drug overdoses. Her work was recently seized by the British authorities when it was exhibited as part of the collection of Elton John in London. Critics have lambasted Goldin for making heroin use glamorous, and she has credited her photography with saving her life and helping her through the traumatic life she has endured. Happy Holidays! I hope you drown in the punch.

The brooding paintings of Angela Fraleigh and the enigmatic, silly-ass sculptures of Michael Jones McKean will be on display though the month at Inman Gallery (3901 Main). These two former CORE Fellows at the Glassell School came through Houston on their way to the big top, and they have been exceedingly successful since they left the bayou for greener pastures. Fraleigh’s emotional life is played out in tearful embraces and wild-eyed terror as lush and realistic figures hemmed in by thick, dark brushstrokes and bleeding drips of oils. Her protagonists, always her own visage, are informed by her life journeying from a trailer park in New Jersey to Yale and beyond; following the heartbreak and fear that her eyes show forcefully pleading to the viewer a deep reading of feminist and feminine dichotomies may produce a shudder in all but the most hardened misogynists.

After the Young Republic’s Friendzgiving at the joanna Gallery (4014 Graustark), look for a hallucinatory exhibit of paintings and installations by Jeanne Cassanova and Reggie Rechuba. These New Orleans transplants have kept their candy-coated exterior through Katrina and losing a lot of their former lives only weeks after moving to Houston to try their hand at breaking into the Houston scene. Catch their brand of post-pop decadence from December 1st through Christmas, and if your Mom likes thinking about the Toxic Avenger covered in puff paint or monsters popping out of her head then bring her too.

Miercoles Morning Cartoons

A little Jeanne Cassanova for ya!

Somehow Inside Opalescent, 2007


In the wake of awake, 2007


Rain In My Eye, 2007


Fish Market, 2006



Full of Empty, 2007


Customer Needs Assistance, 2007


sketch, 2007


untitled, 2007

Waiting for Godot in the Lower 9th Ward

Actors J. Kyle Manzay, left, and Wendell Pierce appear in
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.
Courtesy of Creative Time

Of all the appropriate times for Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, this is most convincing American one I have ever heard of. On a street corner in the decimated New Orleans neighborhood at night, two men waited for something to happen. They spoke, and decided to wait some more.

I'm pretty late in seeing this, but Review HERE. Artforum HERE. NPR HERE.

A.S.S.

Some shots from the Association of Student Sculptors (A.S.S.) from the opening at Commerce Street Artists Warehouse last Saturday, November 17th.

Pope Day: Scott Stapp/Harry Anslinger/Erin Hombres/Your Boss/George Bush(George Washington)

Pics from a failed parade! I really tried to put together an effigy to parade around at Artcrawl, but trying to run the frigging event at the same time came first. The newspaper man and his plinth were brought to Superstitious Studios around the corner from CSAW, where people painted and decorated him and I asked everyone who (s)he should be. We wanted to bring him though the streets but we didn't make it too far. Haha... maybe if he wasn't sixty pounds of dead weight it would have been easier.

Pope Day: Scott Stapp/Harry Anslinger/Erin Hombres/Your Boss/George Bush
(George Washington)

Kimmers sez:

LOVE LOVE LOVE the Art crawl!Big UP!

And after being the Art Car Director and Artistic Director at the Orange Show for the past five years - truly appreciate the art car smooches - but ...

Seriously, "Bayou City Art Festival seems to deal in trinkets and country-themed fare." Have you been lately?

I am the new Executive Director charged with producing both the Downtown and Memorial Festival - and I can say, weather is better for both fests than summer events - we have beer and margaritas mmmmmm!

AND both are top rated national fine art festivals - not a craft or trinket fair in the lot.

With only 300 slots per festival - we get over 900 applications. The jury is held at MFA and this years judges included:

Memorial Park Jurors – 2008

1. Bart Truxillo, ACA Board Member
2. Nancy Kopriva, Artist
3. Adrian de la Cerda, Program Manager, Orange Show Center for Visionary Art
4. Carolyn Rich, Artist
5. Julie Farr, Center for Contemporary Craft, Executive Director
6. Cindi Strauss, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Decorative Arts and Design
7. Sharon Kopriva , Artist
8. Karen Rezai, Booker Lowe Gallery

Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park is the Number 3 Fine Arts Festival in the nation - and the food and entertainment makes for quite the day!

Where have you been? ;-) Do come out!

As ever, thanks for playing!

Happy Day!

kim stoilis

the only thing is... what about what's on your website? are there any trinkets?



hmm.... any country themed fare?



well I do understand that y'all only let 300 artists in to the festival, but what the fuck do you judge them on? It sure doesn't make sense to me.

Top rated? Is that from AmericanStyle Magazine? I've never heard of it.

and what about the tents and crafts? This just doesn't seem like the way one should present art- it looks worthless piled up on top of itself. No galleries or artist-representatives? You're breaking up the only people who may be able to bring better art to the festival. Relying on who responds to festival open calls means you get festival art and that is a pretty populist group- looking to sell to suburbanites. Charging artists between $575 and $1525 to show in the Bayou City Festival is bullshit too. Buying a booth is for chumps DON'T PAY TO PLAY. There is no reason to subject yourself to the humiliation of "do you have this in teal?" or "honey, this'll look great over the couch."

Is it any better selling in galleries or at festivals (fairs) that are gallery driven? Well, at least you don't have to do the song and dance yourself. The Bayou City Arts Festival is the half-brother of the Westheimer Block Party- both grew out of the Westheimer Art Colony shows in the late 70s and early 80s- but where one has kept up with the conceptual artwork (and totally screwed up the selling part) the other has cornered the market on people driving from Kingwood to buy art with a $20 bill.

I imagine that the Bayou City Art Festival brings money to the city. I don't believe it helps Houston artists. How many of the BCAF artists are from Harris County? Out of that #, how many are doing anything that can be excluded from the bad-abstraction-faux-folk-art-handbags-and-necklaces genre?

The Bayou City Art Festival is neither good for Houston, nor Houston artists. It has no credibility and charges $10 to get in.

Valiente Award goes to MEL CHIN

Every year, Voices Breaking Boundaries (nonprofit arts organization) honors artists who have shown consistent courage and integrity in their artwork. This year’s recipient of the Valiente (Courage) Award was artist Mel Chin.

Revival Field, Mel Chin, 1990

On Saturday, November 17^th, 2007, The Station Museum was packed with artists and artists supporters; all fans of Mel Chin’s work. As we listened to James Harithas latest trip to Iraq, and his encounters with some of the artists there, Mel questioned his own Courage Award: now those people do have courage! Well, we all do our part, I guess, but is it ever enough? There were many people in that room that night that I know for a fact have continue, very courageously, doing their work with consistency and integrity. In a way, it was kind of a familiar feeling. We see each other at different events, usually with a drink in one hand and a plate of food on the other. I see people I admire, like Sehba Sarwar and Marcela Descalzi, co-founders of Voices Breaking Boundaries, Emily Todd, who is now the Mayor’s Assistant for Cultural Affairs, Mark Yzaguirre, Board president of VBB, who I always see from afar-at anything that matters- and Michael Peranteau and Oskar Sonnen, who very inconspicuously make sure that everything that really matters actually happens. -and that is just the people I know personally.

I know that they are all overworked and overbooked, but is it ever enough? I don’t want to go into a horrifying storytelling of the atrocities that the artists in Iraq are enduring; so let me leave it at that. I just look forward to sharing my glass of wine in one hand and the plate of food on the other with the Iraqi artists that will be coming soon to show their work at the Station Museum. I would love to be able to make them laugh so hard that we might even share a tear or two. Now, that would be courageous! But for now, I raise my glass for a toast: the Mayor of Houston has declared November 17, to be Mel Chin Day! -as reported by elia arce

Valiente Award Recipients:

Farnoosh Moshiri 2005-06
Ruben Martinez 2004-05

Voices Breaking Boundaries’ Valiente (Courage) Award was created in 2004.

Bill and the Future of the Artcrawl

Is he right? Can we be "some kind of un-juried free-for-all art fair, drawing hopefuls from all over the world?"

"Aidan Owens was playing his horn again in front of Mother Dog Studios. A year older, and a year better, he embodied the improvised, low budget gaiety that can make each year's endless odyssey of bad art OK, even fun."

An endless odyssey of bad art? Good grief, at least Bill makes bad art too.

Still Standing

Show at Elder Street Lofts by Derek Shumate...

DUAL

American Consumer Consortium down on Navigation...

Louis Vuitacos

Flower Man!

Green Eggs and Ham for Lunch

Natali's 'art crawl' involved crawling through two Volvos, voguing on a runway and running through a slalom while holding paintings. typical Natali madness.

BigC85 on Laura's wall