Outposts on the Range

Christian McClain + Lauren Kelley

Houston has two new advocates, courtesy some of those ex-pat artists that flow like blood from this city. Up in Chicago Sam Duncan and Vicki Fowler have opened Motherland to explore their love of artists from Texas and the Pacific Northwest- and to try to reach the collectors, artists and students of the Windy City. Opening recently, plywood drawings by Christian McClain and video by Lauren Kelley.

Texas Firehouse

Up in Brooklyn Wyatt Nash has led the Texas Firehouse from a warehouse overlooking the Washington Bridge into "the best rooftop BBQ view in town". Houstonians Jason Villegas, Seth Mittag, Allison Hunter, Scott Calhoun, Peter Precourt, The Sugarbeats and God's Temple of Family Deliverance round out the Texas-fried lineup along with former Press writer Lance Scott Walker.

Guitars in Backyards

A little get-together behind the house...





thanks for the videos Derek!

The Real (Art) World

Woe is me, I didn't get into Diverseworks' Big Brother-style art residency this year. Oh well. Guess its back to the drawing board. At least I can watch this year's guinea pigs on the 24/7 webcam starting July 16!

congrats to:
Rachelle Vasquez, Mindy Kober, Keijiro Suzuki, and Patrick Phipps
who all recieve $500 and one month of air conditioning!!!

People!

Thanks to Elaine, Joann and Vanessa for holding it down at Andy Taylor's karaoke birthday party at CSAW last night!

Channel 13 weatherman Ed Brandon was there, but I don't know which Andy he was showing up for... maybe just having a beer after this weekend's mixed-up batch of thunderstorms.

Teaching children to put their fingers in light sockets since 2003

Every summer, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston's Teen Council organizes an exhibit of work by local high school students that provides invaluable insight into what interests young artists today. This is the last day to check out the kids in the basement! "Impulse" strays far from traditional artwork — a sign of the ingenuity and impulsiveness of Houston's young artists.



Read more about it here and here.

Femininity: Many Reflections (Salli Babbitt)
LIT. FIG. (L. Brandon Krall)
Deborah Colton Gallery
through June 30

Deborah Colton’s austere third-floor gallery vibrates with energy this month as two artists take on femininity and language with a highly subjective eye. As more art businesses open in the warehouse on Summer Street, Colton has become the axis of a growing center next to David Addicks’ foundry. The two artists featured here demonstrate in turn a commitment to Houston’s talent, and projecting influence on the community with international artists relevant to our local trajectory.

Salli Babbitt has focused her sculpture on the flashpoint image of the Barbie doll for years, literalizing an American bipolar relationship with the action figure that has lasted through three generations. Her mutilations, humiliations and disfigurement don’t quite take the extra step of being gory, softening her critique of the forlorn idol. In rows across a canvas or wrapped around a cone in an ad-hoc altar Barbie’s are alternately red, gray or glittery, gold and other colors creep onto other paintings as well. Wall sconces are a favorite of the artist; The Three Graces, Pompeian Orgy and others occupy the well-lit gallery overlooking David Addicks’ gigantic Beatles statues in the parking lot next door. Too awkward to be Pop, too minimal to be teenage angst, Babbitt charts her own awkward course working with molded plastic females. Babbitt has also included disjointed abstract paintings, some with scrawled handwritten letters scratched into wet paint. Owing much to her charitable work with Multiple Sclerosis patients and physically disadvantaged persons, these works are a labor of love for the artist but take away from the show overall.

Half of an all-out assault on Houston by New Yorker L. Brandon Krall, LIT. FIG. dovetails with QUA, concurrently at G Gallery on 11^th Street in the Heights. Krall has been in town working with Deborah Colton many times, including the significant exhibit WORD last September. Her solo work this time around also demonstrates the artist’s interest in the enigmas of wordplay. Opening with a series of short videos from several dinner parties Krall threw in her apartment, artists act out popular idioms with everyday items; walking on eggshells, writing “IT” on someone’s face and wearing too many hats. These videos are part of an ongoing series improvised in many locations. The straightforward camerawork makes for a screen test atmosphere- like Warhol’s but a bit more fun for the audience. Among others, sculptor William Stone, literary critic Fillipo LaPorta and Valeria D’Andrea sit in front of a fixed spot while a party goes on all around them. Mostly known by the din on the soundtrack or a figure darting in and out, the relaxed atmosphere transferred well to the video, and the context for the rest of the exhibit is laid. After a short physical demonstration the riddle is spelled out on the screen; “starting with a blank slate”; “poring over a book”. Props are displayed around the room, absurd collections and juxtapositions. As part of the collection GLYPT, from the Greek for ‘carve’, a glass vitrine contains metal readymades engraved in a delicate script with the artist’s figurative literalities in Latin and English. Working with The Art Guys, Jack and Mike, Krall ambitiously constructed a large wheel to take for a hike- an old wagon wheel pivoting on two Live Oak branches. The version here, Wheel for Walking in Texas, is the sixth in a series. The artist has made and used several of these contraptions to occupy herself on walks through the city; a smaller one is included in QUA, where the wheel’s relation to the I-Ching is more pronounced. As distinct halves of an artist’s output the two exhibits are coherent alone, but they are more illustrative of a creative process when taken together.

Red Velvet

an excerpt from a draft for the catalogue of RED VELVET: Making a case for domestic tranquility.

The first and last portions are from the essay, but the central parts about Bill, Kelly and Donna are from the original draft- longer and a little disjointed but I really wanted to compare Davenport to a Lord of the Rings character and put it out somewhere. It seemed too good!

Opening Friday June 23, 6 - 8pm and on view June 24 through August 18, 2007 at Vine Street Studios.

Featuring Matthew Bourbon, Thedra Culler-Ledford, Bill Davenport, John Hartley, Donna Huanca, Kelly Klaasmeyer, Nancy Lamb, Nancy O'Connor, Whitney Riley, Tim Stokes, Anderson Wrangle and organized and curated by the kids at Rudolph Projects Artscan Gallery.

The blood red of a velvet cloth is an accomplice to arousal, never an inert companion to one waiting, watching or wanting. Red Velvet embodies a reevaluation of tranquility from a notoriously fleeting state into an internal harmony in the face of superficial strife. We are not afraid of sex and violence, loneliness and fear. Our most familiar and universal environment- the home- brings a vibrant reality to these paintings and installations while maintaining a façade of populism, and comfortable with it. Fragmented everyday references are expressed through images and materials; the inverse of Blue Velvet, which sought to insert a new, horrific image into the world of the white picket fence. The 1986 film by David Lynch takes the cleanliness of the American dream as nothing but a cover for violence and vulgar eroticism. He breaks down his characters, emotionally and physically beaten into submission. No one here desires to lay themselves naked; they are in complete control of their opportunities as artists.

[...]

Feeling the disparity of post-modernism’s flaws deeply, several artists in Red Velvet attack the tradition of materials and images at once, simulating the real world and the art world. Houston’s Tom Bombadil, Bill Davenport has focused his conceptual work of late upon fake stone and wood. In installations referencing the Disneyfication of our environment Davenport constructs interior spaces out of foamcore, these contrived walls, supports and structures juxtaposing the cleanliness of the white gallery with a clean imitation of dirty, gritty, authentic reality. As J.R.R. Tolkien said of his characterization of Tom, “if you have… renounced control, and take your delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and to some extent knowing, then the questions of the rights and wrongs of power and control might become utterly meaningless to you, and the means of power quite valueless…” The same lightness of being resides in Davenport’s sporting take on life and art.

A new mother and artist and writer to boot, Kelly Klaasmeyer’s proximity to the materiel of childcare has intensely altered her view on the world. She presents Huggies and Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, hand painted oversized cardboard boxes of consumer products. Klaasmeyer dryly twists humor out of these amusing titled and images; the transformative process of rearing a child compliments the artist’s Pop sensibilities with easy targets for manipulation. [...] Klaasmeyer dryly invokes a surreal twist on the overwhelming accoutrements of modern life, referencing both famous hand-painted Brillo boxes and feminist documentation of a woman’s trials and tribulations.

Working with felt, fabric and found objects, Donna Huanca can hardly step back from her collage murals without stepping back from her own life; she balances her creations between family portraits and characters of her own imagination. Her scenes of familial bliss are so jarring to the viewer these fractured figures are nearly abstract, save for detailed and recognizable faces. Their personal meanings cohabitate with her father’s role in the Bolivian military pursuing Che Guevara through the Andes and Huanca’s identification with the heroic struggle between the two contextualized in the epic search for meaning in the 20 century. These narratives and the scraps of culture that become live materials in her hands are proper fuel for her rash, bursting compositions.

[...]

The case for domestic tranquility’s existence is a precarious one, as these and many other artists demonstrate, perhaps the solution is in the admittance of discord into the expected solution. The artists exhibiting here at Vine Street are aware of their distance from reality; they find worth in their materials and images regardless of their purity in morality and tradition. Reversing a comment about Blue Velvet, perhaps here in Red Velvet we have a pragmatic reconciliation; harmony without quiet, serenity sans silence. “This is not American darkness; --- this is lightness without a happy ending.”

Big Freakin' Deal

Since the days when the Lawndale was holding Black Flag shows and Smurfs came on Nickelodeon, The Big Show has done something about the summer slump. It may be 90 degrees outside but at least it’s not over a hundred. August sucks. Bring your artwork to the Lawndale on June 27^th and 28^th to be included in Houston’s long-running open call. You can find info and print an entry form here . It’s kind of like taking the city’s pulse, but it is open to all artists in Angelina, Austin, Brazoria, Brazos, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Grimes, Hardin, Harris, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Newton, Orange, Polk, San Jacinto, Trinity, Tyler, Walker, Waller, Washington, and Wharton counties. I don’t know where half of those are.

@the 2006 California Biennial; artist Kate Pocrass. (Photo: Andrew Berardini) Right: Biennial artist Kianga Ford with 2006 California Biennial curator Rita Gonzalez. (Photo: Carla Rhea, courtesy OCMA)

There’s a hell of a lot of artists inside the loop anyway, and they’d better all come out and represent all the groups and genres out there. Art students, outsider artists, graffiti kids, photographers, Sunday painters, drawers, painters, sculptors and designers all get equal time in front of guest juror Rita Gonzalez from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Picked out of three stories stuffed with artwork Rita has the unenviable task of constructing a show out of Houston’s massive artistic output in just two days. Last year there were nearly 400 artists, which isn’t all that there is out there, let’s make it hard for her this year and give her an accurate picture of what we have to offer while we’re at it.

$30 entry fee, or ten bucks a piece if you bring three works, $50 for entry and membership; members and entrants last year get 5 bucks off. Lawndaleartcenter.org

Extra bonus points for installation work- most submissions are paintings and there is more floor area than wall space so do yourself a favor and stand-alone. Submit them deconstructed with a pic of the installation for ease of use. All entrants notified by June 30^th, everyone is invited to the opening this July on Friday the 13^th 6:30 to 8:30pm!

A Moderate View

In admitting appropriation and pastiche into the canon of acceptable strategies, “materials”, we have regressed as a culture to the mental age of adolescence- emulating as a defense mechanism for half-baked outright invention.

The postmodern is mannerist. We are walking down a blind alley with the explosion of globalization and cross cultural acceptance. We have walked into a trap that we have lived through before. With the recent explosion of the net worth of Chinese contemporary art the assumption of the mannerist role is complete. The trends and media of abstract and figurative work have become shadows of their former selves since the 1990s and a reevaluation of the means and goals of art is necessary. We were supposed to be moving faster. We were supposed to be past this sort of thing. Guess not. Much as the Mannerist period in Italy in the 16^th century relied upon the imitation and re-configuration of the Renaissance masters, postmodern art has garnered the valued attributes of appropriation and pastiche to fill the space since a truly original individual has labored in the name of art.

Where the two differ is in historical respect to allegory- Mannerism differed not from the previous era in their use of the strategy, whereas postmodernism’s allegory is the invention or resuscitation of a method seen little in modernism’s graveyard of symbols.

DEBRIS: Hunting for Bullshit

Sounds like international oil company The Hunting Group LLD, with some deep pockets and silky ties, is a little insecure about their new position in Houston. Moving their headquarters from London meant leaving posh digs in the UK's capital for McMansions in Sugar Land, but it has also relieved these suits of their scruples as well (let's assume they had some at some point). In a windfall for Texas artists they brought their $50,000 Hunting Prize with them to the Lone Star State, and the hundreds of people who signed up to enter the competition this year were starry-eyed with promises of recognition and prestige. When this year's strangeness started with a 'short list' of 104 artists; it appeared the corporation couldn't get their shit together and make a decision. No biggie. When they sent out an email requesting entrants to wear a blazer and tie to the award ceremony April 28th it only rubbed a few people the wrong way, last year's winner Francesca Fuchs did look a little funny in all those pictures surrounded by Armani suits wearing her "I'm not an Artist" tee shirt. Whatever. The same email asked artists to arrive an hour before the event; here the little things came into focus quickly, exposing the event as a sham publicity stunt free from critical thought or respectability.

Now it's tough to say a big prize and a big check are bad things; these guys can do whatever they want right? They just have to live with themselves, that's all. Unfortunately the class conflict that came with this year's prize was a bit too much for me to respect these bastard nouveau rich and their representational painting prize. Arriving an hour early at the Decorative Center Houston, a furniture store on Woodway with an excessive lobby, artists were led upstairs to a separate hall where they dined on chicken fingers and macaroni and cheese before being asked to return downstairs and stand next to their paintings, hung in a hallway, for the duration of the event. This degrading display of strength by the Hunting oil company was only compounded by the immense spread of hors d'oeuvres, crab and shrimp in the lobby provided for guests. Unraveling the bullshit, with or without credible jurors, begins with the massive 'short list' provided for the event which served as a show of force by the corporation, compounded by the order to 'stand by your painting'. Shilling for rich people and shuffling your feet for quarters is not the way to ingratiate yourself to anyone except patronizing facelift victims and their whiskey-addled cheating husbands. Most artists try to let their artwork speak for itself, but the ingrates at Hunting decided a mouth stuffed with macaroni and cheese speaking through clenched teeth at the indignity of it all could do it better.

Michael Tole, Untitled (2006)

When the prize was announced, given to unknown 28 year old Michael Tole of Dallas, it was the creamy icing on a bullshit cake for The Hunting Group, The Decorative Center, and Houston's newest art award. Although I do not know whose bright idea the whole debacle was, the utter disrespect displayed by all involved leaves the artistic community in need of a spine and the Brits at Hunting in need of a good kick in the ass. Treating artists like shit just means that shit artists will enter your competition next year. Seeing as the Prize seems to go to representational painters, perhaps this is what Hunting is looking for- a diminished impact and a good 'ol fuck you from anyone worth his salt in Houston. Give the prize to idiots, it's yours to give away- but don't think many people will want to put up with your crude condescension for very long. Tole's photo-realist paintings of Faberge eggs promptly went on sale in May at Conduit Gallery in Dallas, where they should stay, surrounded by mediocrity in a culture of egotistic materialism.

John Biggers at Texas Southern University

The distinctive work of John Biggers emerges after the artist traveled to West Africa, digesting the geometric folk artwork of the culture he first experienced on an UNESCO trip in 1957. The Web of Life, completed in ’58, did not benefit from this new influence- befitting the plodding timeline of mural painting in America after the singular influence of Diego Rivera, the most visible of the Mexican muralists. Biggers’ iconography is taken literally from Rivera, with lanky worker figures (sparse versus Rivera, echoing the rural environment of African-Americans) as well as symbolic fetal figures and smooth, illusionistic rounded limbs at home with Leger’s cylindrical figures. A feminine biomorphism breathes mystery into the painting, as Lee Bontecou may have done twenty or thirty years later. This emerging characteristic of The Web of Life, after the wooden early attempts under the tutelage of regional muralists, is cut short by the cultural introspection of the artist’s identification with West African abstraction. Quilting Party (1981) is a dense and symbolic work, a reconciliation with Precisionism, Op Art, Hironymous Bosch, and Pattern and Decoration; as well as a refined taste for nocturnes and chiaroscuro. The symbolism of the triptych panels is as mythological as a ceiling fresco of the Carracci, albeit drawn from an altogether different history. Executed in conte crayon, the wax medium lends itself well to the dark tone of Biggers’ mood. The artist’s influence may well be measured in his dedication to Texas Southern University and the generation of painters currently working in Houston; Bert Long Jr., Rick Lowe, and Robert Pruitt.