Hope that rain doesn't come through til tomorrow!
Itinerary:
Bering & James: Holiday Yard Sale Art Box
Friends in a big group show! Proceed go to DePelchin Children's Center, bring a toy to donate.
3900 Block of Main
Inman brings Angela Fraliegh and Michael "I Wasn't in Spinal Tap" Jones McKean back to Houston; MKG, CTRL and Finesilver too.
The Big Block
Joan Wich has spun gold from the conventional wisdom straw- committing to selling art by U of Houston graduate painters and selling a lot of it... group show 2-5pm...
The Station
Bombastic video from Russian group AES+F
always a good party and good margaritas
The Joanna
I saw Jeanne and Reggie making a tree out of paper boobs last night...
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Lots Going On!
CSAW resident Kathy Kelley sez:
Maggi Battalino no longer consults CSAW members or board members as to new artists coming into the building. You can be sure that she is carefully handpicking artist to try to counter her future removal from office.
Maggi in spite of having sent the by-laws to committee this past year has decided they are not valid. Though she regularly makes statements saying something is against policy, she refuses to disclose what that policy is.
She claims if we un-elect her and elect new representation she will have the owners give us 30 days notice.
Additionally Maggi claims to have been the sole rescuer of CSAW after previous member artists incurred a large debt to the owners of our building. Yet this is not true. The board and artist members chose to increase their monthly fees in order to pay back CSAWs debt. Each artist who stayed or joined helped pay back this debt. Artist members maintained the building. Maggi still collects the excess we agreed to pay (to pay off the previous debt) and uses it however she pleases with absolutely no accountability.
Because her behavior is unethical, illegal, eradicate, and hostile she is a liability to the owners as well as the current members. She should be removed from office. Unfortunately, the owners believe based on Maggi’s evaluation that it is the current set of artists (whom Maggi helped select) who are the problem.
It is not mutiny to expect an elected official to uphold their duties and account to the body that elected them. We have tried to handle this internal. It seems to me it is time to involve lawyers.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Train Wreck
haha! that looks fucking retarded.
Citizens for Animal Prevention Celebrity Pause Gala chair Ratfink Regan couldn't stop smiling, and it wasn't just because of the massive amount of Botox in her face .
The joy came from disgracing the biggest CAP gala to date, with 8 million guests raising more than $500.
Ratfink Regan and animal haters took over the bathrooms of the Hilton Americas-Screwston, where "10 Rich Cocaine Addicts" were presented with their pets in "Châteaux des Paws" vignettes created by expert Chinese slave-labor designers. The pets were euthanized for their own good after their traumatic experience.
Each year, the honoree heavy petter spending the most money on cocaine is the winner, while the designer garnering the most votes from judges is allowed to leave their Chinese labor camp for a two day vacation in Belize. Celebrity Heavy Petter of the Year honors went to Lisa "Don't Call Me Shirley" Massey's mixed-breed Weezie McNasty. Jill "I'm Not on Probation" Gracely's severely handicapped Maltese, placed second.
The Elite Honoree competitors included Gracie "Roe" Cavnar, Debby "Longhorn Leghorn" Leighton, Carolyn "Fuck Farb" Mann, Iris "Tipple" McWilliams, Bruce "The Moustache" Padilla, Karan "The Linebacker" Robinson, Shawn "Frosted Tips" Stevens and Susan "Pit Bull" Vick. Serving as junior honorees were several people who didn't pay enough for me to mention them.
For as many years as we can remember, designer Xiao Peng again took the top "Châteaux des Paws" award, winning for his "My Dick in the Ruff" château for Elite Pornstars McWilliams and Cavnar. Peng faced competition from others at the camp, but managed to shiv several women and cut out Lee Wong's left eye.
The evening, which included a seven-course dinner of rare and endangered meats, herbal supplement auction and surprise entertainment by the Aristocrats, honored Diane and Jim Mattel, Ellen and Barney Kotex, Brenda Love and The Colonel and Barry Sanders. Channel 13's Don Nelson served the meal, introducing the endangered South Africa Quail wrapped in albino Bison bacon and the Haddock stuffed with Tiger penis. Vikki "Ben Dover" Vines took up the gavel as auctioneer.
Out of Context Amiri Baraka Quotes
From the classroom session by Amiri Baraka, November 17th. Video on view in Otabenga Jones' installation at the Menil Collection.
"I don't know about American Gangster, I want to see Harriet Tubman's life- make that exciting!"
"Whenever I say [Al] Gore I think of Gorey Island, a slave island off the coast of Senegal..."
"the artist is the ideological reflection of the world in the mind of the artist..."
"the colored secretary of state is there so they can threaten other colored people"
"Abstract painting is safer than showing blood pouring out of the chest of the worker"
"In the history of America there has never been a white man convicted of raping a black woman"
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Muckraker Extraordinaire
Ooh, the Houston Press writer Chris Vogel really hopped on this story, and it's a juicy one! From violence to cronyism, threats and armed guards to fake corporations and the FBI, this 7 pager is a good read...
"Someone had dumped university payroll records inside the truck, complete with names, university ID numbers that consisted of employees' social security numbers, and salaries. The students took the records back to Hudson's apartment and began poring over the documents."
"Ultimately, Slade was indicted for allegedly spending more than $500,000 of university money on a lavish personal lifestyle. Among other items, prosecutors accuse Slade of purchasing a $9,000 sleigh bed, an almost $5,000 mattress set and $4,000 in silk bedding, a $50,000 security system with a panic room inside her million-dollar home in Memorial Park, an approximately $100,000 bar tab at Scott Gertner's Skybar and Grille, spa treatments, and a 25-place dinner set from Neiman Marcus worth nearly $40,000."
""At that point, I just looked at Justin and thought, 'Man, those are big balls.' I was even scared for him at that point. I was thinking, 'You are about to get slapped in here.' I started panicking and I was like, 'Tell her what needs to be done on campus.' And Justin goes, 'Nah, resign and leave, that's what you can do.' And he held his ground. Then he said, 'Thank you for your time,' got up out of his chair and walked out.""
"Hudson and Jordan's arrests were what Jordan calls "just the wake-up call we needed to start getting smart." The trumped-up criminal charges scared the three students, and they knew they had to get what they felt was really happening at the university on the record. So, Brown and Jordan started tape-recording their phone conversations with TSU officials."
"How did Slade truly get busted?" says Brown. "Well, there was a regent who was a supporter of ours and was feeding us information. That regent told us about the conversation Griffin had with Slade and about the emergency meeting the board called together one night to discuss it. We then told the DA, and the media never would have known if guess who hadn't of called them. That's right, it was us."
The John Biggers mural Nubia, Origin of Business and Commerce, completed in 1999, was inspired by Priscilla Slade, and in an unwholesome twist the artist's beloved animals (which feature prominently in other works) are reduced to gold figures used to weigh monies...
What the Hell is Going On?
CSAW is fixin' to have some changes... Maggi Bataliano voted out as representative of the collective... refuses to leave... removes tenants' money from account... lawyer says that collective agreement is invalid...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Friday School Explosion!
“The exhibition is intended to produce a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect, where viewers are constantly shifting between being an observer, and being the subjects of their own observations,” said Meredith Goldsmith, curator for the show and a critical studies resident in Glassell’s postgraduate Core Program. “The visual and linguistic frames represented in each work are so familiar that I find that in addition to the artists’ self-explorations, they entice the viewer’s own projections.” circular, 'eh?
November 30, 2007 at the Glassell School of Art, artists Beth Campbell, Leslie Hewitt, Shana Lutker, and Peter Lynde variously re-orient visitors in the gallery space. The artists hail from both coasts—Campbell and Hewitt from New York and Lutker and Lynde from Los Angeles—and find common ground in their creative approach. All use everyday framing devices—flowcharts, newspaper layouts, domestic snapshots, mirrors, and windows—as starting points from which to explore aspects of their own psychology and invite viewers to do the same. The exhibition is on view through February 10, 2008.
Campbell contributes the video Some Things Change (2005) to You Are Here. The work comprises four 12 ½ -minute videos that run back-to-back on a continuous loop. Each segment follows a woman who interacts with various familiar objects in her home, but the details and the sequence of events vary in each version, leading viewers—and, seemingly, the main character—to question their perception and memory. Campbell also presents two drawings from her ongoing project My Potential Future Based on Current Circumstances.
Robert Pruitt sez:
jena 6 members Bryant Purvis and Carwin Jones at the BET Awards
Living Room Art 1 / Remembering Jena 6
Home of Robert Pruitt, 2218 Arbor, Houston TX 77004
Admission: free
Remembering Jena 6 will bring together artists of various disciplines to explore the events and issues surrounding the racially charged and motivated events that took place in Jena, Louisiana one year earlier. By utilizing the first anniversary of the infamous criminal charges brought against six African American teenagers in Jena, VBB is opening the dialogue on these events in and outside the home of artist Robert Pruitt to feature: Everett Taasevigen’s photography of the march on Jena and much more. This event is cosponsored by KPFT Pacifica Radio 90.1 FM.
http://vbbarts.org/calendar.shtml#50
jena what?!?
1907 * 2007
an Art History Lecture
of the University of Houston Art Department
next to the Blaffer Gallery
opening Friday November 30th from 7-9pm
stop by before you get your Cheese on for the weekend!!!
12222221 (((((((((((((( THE KLAW ))))))))))))) 12222221
2 2 2= 2:22PM
2= level 2
1= Galleria 1
K L A W =
"walk" backwards
!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Little Pay Big Reward
Ever worked in a museum? Not in an office near a museum but standing in the gallery for hours and hours, watching people's hands when they inch up to a sculpture and sweating with every space cadet parent and hyperactive kid who eagerly enter the gallery like they've just gotten off the bus at Candyland. Passing the time is difficult, but the rewards of being forced to experience the same artwork for weeks or months on end are worth it. Even if you've been making things your whole life or researching and studying art history for years you'll be missing something if you never watch a painting change over time as you notice the little things that come to the fore only after hours or days; titular jokes and signs, detailed handiwork, symbolism, texture, curatorial relationships and the effects of light and atmosphere.
Plus you get to see all the collectors that make up museum boards in your city, and even if they don't know who you are you'll have the upper hand on them when you do finally meet. I very much enjoyed working as a guard in a museum, and even if the pay was horrible it was a good 'vacation' from work that gave me a lot of time to think and argue, write and draw. One day they snapped shots for a Matthew Ritchie catalogue- three years later that one pic has been all over the world and back- featured in books and as I found out this week- even a calendar! Cop out way to say I was featured in Art Now, but fuck it!
that's me up at the top on the right!
Monday, November 26, 2007
Free Movie Seeks Free Time
for the last few years while yearning to make a feature length film."
"The Hole Story"
a film by Alex Karpovsky
trailer <
Thursday, november 29th
5pm
Dudley Hall, School of Art
University of Houston
Director will be present
www.theholestoryfilm.com
Sneaky Video
AES+F will exhibit their Last Riot video from the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale at the Station Museum (corner of La Branch and Alabama) opening this Saturday night. Don't miss concurrent openings at Inman, the joanna Gallery and Magdalen Celestino at New! You could make it a real bike crawl if you know Montrose and Midtown!
Bloggerroll
Now, I'm lazy enough to steal the list of Texas blogs off of Modern Art Notes, but I think there are a few missing from the list... here's my Houstocentric list of blogs worth reading and some other ones too.
Dallas Artcast
Podcasts and more! Not quite Bad at Sports, but good!
Art Motel Radio
Dallas blog with only 7 posts under its belt but a good bit of graphic design!
MAMFW
An intern at the Fort Worth Modern who somehow got the address modernblog.org and wasted it with between one and five posts a month... not that they're badly written.
ezimmerman
Smarty pants from Austin who hangs out in Dallas with a lot to say and a lot to write about (taking trips to Houston and all) -the blog seems to read like the artforum blogs, name dropping people and artworks interchangeably.
Chris Jagers
Pictures of dogs and drawings of anatomy, he couldn't find much else in Dallas.
'Bout What I Sees
A curt Austin blog.
Border Art Dialogue
Want to know what's on exhibit in El Paso? This would also be a great title for a blog from the Valley...
Glasstire Blogs
Three blogs for the three big cities in Texas (sorry San Antonio)
Emvergeoning
This San Antonio blog beats the rest of our sorry asses for profession and topical posts.
ACTS
Anthony Thompson Shumate writes a blog once in a while...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdHnf0TvGUA5yNzOlZIqzvgojsOJOeqKqHn-p7sEFtxPx7BthOGgaOtAww5iGsjSMQLqGHNEz-_G6NHKilr0hyphenhyphenKU765uQYwxC7n5lwWgXoWiQnLmDZY5MkSAQneSciGPLnxsxbQnOQE9k/s400/bodypainting7.jpg)
Julia.In.The.Rye
Artist Julia Wallace gets in her two cents about her own art and others.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFyQJz0exnuHdXTssjfd8yZ8MTm4odmfJPX59JoFBYlgxbmYlKeEe9xWcY9iUbHUeTNk6dbJQ02NDI70EIkn6iDxp6oKosDmNroCeSJnbgWe-SEEQvb8OxIhtWB1aTmlXQpqJgh8xAnU/s320/selfportrait3orthemostawesomepartyever.jpg)
Young Republic
Jenny Schlief and friendz spill their guts in search of pink revolution! partyarefun!
Behind The Screens
Participation Art
Gentle Ride Van
Andrea Grover and Co at the Aurora Picture Show and University of Houston have three blogs going, this ball of energy also has to tame a methhead and a drunk in her spare time!
WhinyBabyLand
Laura Lark kept this blog cranking out bile for years, and now it's back!
That's One Way To Do It
I wouldn't hold my breath for the windfall that Xnihilo Gallery will provide you, but for anyone out there wanting to put SOMETHING SOMEWHERE....
Xnihilo Gallery is looking for Artist to show in the gallery. If you are interesting in showing or want to be part of a group show, please leave you submission with the Barista at Taft Street coffee to be put in the Gallery's mail box. Submissions need to be in by December 1st and should include a CD with 10-20 images of current work in JPG format, Artist statement and proposed pricing for current body or work, Resume with art background & Exhibition Record, and a brief letter of show intent. All submissions are reviewed anonymously so please leave your name off all submitted documents and include a separate sheet with contact information.
Email Curator@Xnil.org with any questions.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Screw Tanksgiving
Friendzgiving is better!
is that a food fight breaking out?