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

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.

at the CC

Chiahui Nahui-Aztec Art & Performance

Youre invited! Come out!

When:
This Sunday Nov. 22, 2009
1pm - 6pm

Where:
The Ripley House
4410 Navigation
Houston, Texas 77011

Admission: Free!

Please help us spread the word for our show by forwarding to other friends!

Thanks & Peace be to you!

www.skeez181.com
Sent from my iPhone

We Love Parkour

This weekend come visit the Westheimer Block Party for TWO DAYS full of great bands on stages at Avant Garden, Mango's Cafe, Austin Layne, La Strada and Numbers inside and out. See great sculpture and performance from the Northside, Museum District, Montrose and East End. The weather in Houston is rarely so beautiful as 70 during the day and 50 at night, get out and enjoy it!

Plus come visit me outside Numbers (300 Westheimer) Saturday and Sunday at Melange Creperie, where I will make you awesome crepes. I have a sweet Krampouz crepe maker and quick hands. We'll have crepes with Nutella and bananas, roasted zucchini, Parmesan and pesto, ham and cheddar and more! Oh yeah, and galettes (buckwheat crepes) are vegan and gluten-free.

What should you see? Chin Xao Ti Twon play at noon Saturday at Austin Layne; Defend the Ghetto will be outside at Numbers at 4:10 or so; at 5 you've got to pick between Young Mammals at Numbers and Muhammid Ali in Mango's; if you like metal go see PLF at 7:15 at Mango's or if you like hip hop check out Perseph One at Austin Layne at the same time. At night there's a show at Numbers with Dead Prez and The Eastern Sea on Saturday ($15) and Japanther too! Sunday the Texas Southern Jazz Ensembles played an extended set at 2:30; Ben Wesley is on at 5 upstairs at Avant Garden; at 8 pm head back over there to Avant Garden for Two Star Symphony at 8 pm! Come out to the Block Party. Its a party.

Info at freepresshouston.com

DEBRIS: No Room For More

It feels like Houston is a small town outside of Detroit in the artworld; no jobs and no satisfaction. For too long this town has been a producer, not a consumer, and now as fortune turns away from us a black heart is revealed as the oozing center of the scene, the structure and the soul. For all the cats and kittens gobbling cheese and slurping wine at openings their shallow agendas suck the air out of the room. In like fashion even a purchase is a strong-armed exchange of influence perpetuating bourgeois respectability that simply makes me sick. The navel-gazing bored wives and ex-wives who open galleries operate on this exchange and drag their circle of friends into the money pit of art, like the Avon lady gunning for a pink Cadillac, without a shred of decency. For every big wig buying his way into the echelons of Houston’s plastic surgeon elite or cementing his place as a cuntbag with too much money to spend there is a gallerist willing to suck their toes- and an artist ready to lick their balls.


If our alternative spaces insist on selling off their spaces to bad artists with bank accounts, if our minor museums persist in spinning bullshit out of New York halfwits, if the MFAH dumbs down their programming and reaches into the history museum for content, if the CAMH doesn’t wise up and start a collection- then I don’t want any part of it. In a moment of weakness I relish the work on the walls, the game of aesthetic b.s., the meandering society of artists ducking in and out of shows, but soon enough I am reminded of the dark heart of the whole thing. I’ve been working crap jobs for too long and applying for too many art jobs to be happy about it all. I’ve had three art jobs in the past few years and they have all imploded in short shrift. I worked for a gallery for a week before the owner lost his backing and cut me from the payroll. I wrote online for a site for three months before the budget wasn’t there for me anymore. Last month I was offered a job at a non-profit that disappeared before I even started. I can’t help it that I’m crushed. Maybe I am just unemployable. Maybe I write and speak too frankly to maintain the glassy-eyed stare necessary for artworld sustenance. One way or another I’m sick of it. Curating, writing, painting, blogging, buying art and bullshitting are still my favorite hobbies- but that’s all they’ll ever be. Screw this shit. I’m gonna go be a street vendor.

DEBRIS: Next To What I Believe

You can’t run before you walk and you can’t have a cultured city without street culture. Why was Houston turned down for an Olympic bid in 2010? Because a bunch of people got sick on street food a century ago. In 1901 dozens were sickened by tamales in Market Square downtown. The city quickly passed strict health regulations that sent food culture indoors up to this day. The surge of taco trucks in the last decade- and the subsequent connoisseurship of their fare- demonstrates the confluence of needing more gastronomy in Houston and a desire for quick, good food eaten on your feet. Some of the best barbacoa and lengua around comes on a paper plate with tomatillo salsa in a squeeze bottle. Finding the diamond in the rough is like navigating the back alleys of New Orleans- even if you need “beware of pickpockets and loose women” it’s usually worth it. Despite the proliferation of quality Mexican food on wheels, the myriad of cultures in Houston is not represented in street food like it is in the restaurant world. Where are the falafel trucks, the crepe stands, the hot dog vendors and meats-on-a-stick popular the world over? We need to take a serious look at our jaded approach to street food and our city’s regulations on them. Austin is experiencing an explosion of street food, borne along by a maturation of their quirky identity, plentiful festivals and tourists. Why can’t we?

Since that fateful day in Market Square street food has been a bust in Houston- but what about other vendors, buskers and performers? Even in Los Angeles immigrants sell oranges on street corners and Spiderman tries to goad you into dropping five bucks for taking a picture with him. Not here on Buffalo Bayou. The presence of police surely has an impact, but the ambition- or desperation- doesn’t seem to be there. Festivals are always a good place to tinker with peddling wares, and I would like to encourage any artist reading this to show up and set up at the Westheimer Block Party this November 14th and 15th to see what it’s like to put your work in front of the public. I guarantee it won’t be what you expect. Start a jug band and take over the street corner. Put little paintings in a suitcase and set up in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. Execute a performance piece in the middle of a gallery’s opening-- if you dare. Leave a sculpture in your front yard-- hopefully something that will stop traffic. The more things to see on the street, the more people will get out of their cars to see them. Or buy them. Or eat them. There’s no way to go but up for Houston’s street culture- and there’s nothing holding you back from creating it.

DEBRIS: The Left Bank

Houston is known as the major supplier of automatic weapons for street wars in Mexico, a key hub for sex slaves in America, a conduit for counterfeit goods, warehouse and distributor for the drug trade, flashpoint for religious fervor, haven for illegal labor, producer of massive amounts of pollution, center of overcrowded and discriminatory jail practices, cesspool of the unwashed masses and purveyor of “screw”- a wholly deviant and dangerous subculture. Throw in a serial killer with a colorful nickname and you’re in London in 1888. Swap Codeine syrup in a styrofoam cup for absinthe in a sugared glass and we’re in Paris in 1849. These metastasizing burgs were known as unholy hells in their salad days, and Houston has nearly reached the heights of disreputable notoriety each of these cities experienced before blossoming into icons of the modern age.


We’ve always had an identity problem, mostly stemming from the fact that Houston is simply new; only a little over 50 years ago that the population climbed above a million people. We’re nearly a century behind New York City, Paris housed a million people on the day the Allen Brothers landed in Buffalo Bayou and London had a million people before they even got around to taking a census during the American Revolution. We share a lot with these forbearers, but one thing has to change- every great city has had a model to aspire to, a paradigm to create.
Built with a set of freeways like the spokes of a monstrous concrete wheel, dappled with parks and green spaces, fiercely liberal in the center and rabidly conservative at the fringes, Houston has a lot more to do with Paris than you may think. We have a bayou running west through the center of town, they have a river running east. There is a boisterous self-identity that comes with living on the north or south side of this boundary in both cities. Prussians gave Parisians the bistro, they gave us the kolache.


A lot of the lore of Paris is centered in the Left Bank, packed with cafes and parks near the river and housing a cluster of universities. It is known as the seat of intellectual life for the city, attracting scholars, painters, writers, daydreamers and hustlers. On the south side of Buffalo Bayou sits Houston’s left bank, with Montrose as the heart of its intellectual life. The bars, galleries, bookstores and garden parks draw students from the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, St. Thomas and Rice. In the 18th century the universities of Paris served different communities from all over the country, seasoned with a dash of foreigners all too eager to embrace the shaping of their adopted city. Today Houston’s universities served different communities in the same way, but they collide in the streets along Westheimer every weekend at night. There are no cobblestones to tear up in revolt against the world, but nonetheless form follows function in the exploration of any cultural analogies. More than Napoleon III’s deputy Haussmann could tame the populace of the urban world with grand boulevards, Houston’s centralized freeway system, triumphantly efficient in its ability to move massive amounts of people and goods into or out of the city, has blunted the effects of radical thought- but has not prohibited the organic growth of a culture that proves Houston, in the midst of derision, is something to be proud of.

REALly

Arsgratia Artis sez:


blaffer has canceled the student show but the students have not. large scale guerrilla installation. all volunteer. one nite only. you must take responsibility for your own work or actions/interventions. curate your own show. invite anyone. work together!

Type:
Causes - Protest
Network:
Global
Date:
Friday, December 4, 2009
Time:
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location:
120 Fine Arts Building Houston, TX 77204

please send this event through your networks, in order for it to work we need to have an audience + participants. it would be great if all floors are open and the courtyard/hallways filled with art/activities. if there are any musicians or performers interested please invite them as well. Lawndale had Black Flag play back in the 80's when it was still part of U of H

Click It

2010 Exhibition Call for Artist and Curator Proposals

Box13 Artspace is currently accepting proposals for the 2010 calendar year (January, May, July, September, November 2010) for exhibitions in its two downstairs galleries (~1000 sf each), the window box gallery, and an upstairs gallery. Media artists interested in the Green BOX should contact Michael Henderson at michael@box13artspace.com. Artists and curators are invited to submit recent (or proposed) experimental works not previously shown in Houston.

Exhibition and performance proposals will be reviewed and selections made by a committee of artist resident members of BOX 13 and potentially guest curator(s) for exhibitions/performances.

BOX 13 will accept proposals twice per year to discuss and make programming decisions for the BOX for no more than 18 months into the future from the meeting date. The next upcoming submission deadline for review is October 16, 2009. This is a postmark date.

BOX exhibition/performance space floor plans can be viewed and downloaded as pdf.

All proposals must be submitted in digital format on CDs and DVDs only. Additionally all requested material may be posted to a single page on a website and the link may be submitted. No paper materials will be reviewed. The BOX is committed to the reducing our environmental impact when possible and streamlining the application and review process.

For more information, to make an appointment to view the galleries or to inquire about proposal drop off please email Elaine Bradford, our exhibition coordinator, at e_bradford@yahoo.com.


Submission Criteria

1. Letter of intent or exhibition proposal in a Word document or PDF file. In 500 words or less. Please be sure to include:
a. Contact information
b. Title and description, concept and physical details
c. Requested gallery space and any requests for equipment or special installation requirements*
d. Any budgetary concerns*
*BOX 13 does not have a budget for assisting artists with expenses at this time..
2. Resumé(s) or CV(s) for all proposed participating artists each in its own Word document or PDF file.
3. Images. NO MORE THAN 15 digital images in jpg format. Numbers should be used in the file names beginning with 01.jpg. Each image must be 1MB or SMALLER. Any files not meeting these requirements may not be viewed when considering your proposal.
4. Video. Video samples may be submitted on DVD or CD. Videos must be ready to play on a computer using Windows Media Player or Quick Time.
5. Corresponding numbered list of submitted images and/or videos in a Word document or PDF file.

Submissions may be mailed to:
BOX 13 ArtSpace
Attn. Exhibition Proposal
6700 Harrisburg Blvd
Houston, TX 77011


BOX 13 Artspace
Address: 6700 Harrisburg Blvd, Houston, TX 77009
Website: http://box13artspace.com/
Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 1-5pm, and by appointment

Umm... Sorry

Sorry to be AWOL... I've been taking care of Tish after her surgery and my computer crapped out at the same time... a week without the internet... I've got the sweats and the shakes...

:)

Annise Parker for Mayor and against Art

WTF?

skip to :21...

"I won't fund museums we can't afford..."

If this hardass is elected we can expect a tough few years for local arts funding; after hearing from people that she only wanted to fund permanent public art (and was specifically against other, more temporary forms, development grants, etc) I was skeptical of supporting Parker- but her involvement in the Wayne Dolcefinko hubub last year was not a fluke. She's taking her art-hatin' to the airwaves in an effort to sew up outer-loop support that may not like her position as a prominent LGBT politician.


Weak!

Thievery

Have you seen this art car? Last week it was stolen from it's home in Garden Oaks.

Art Cars are always a labor of love and this one especially. AC-8 was built by Johnny Rojas for his wife Cynthia.

via HeightsBlog