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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2007 > March
March 2007
Bats at the opera?
Will Austin’s famed Congress Avenue bats be getting their 15 minutes of fame next May with Austin Lyric Opera? Bat lovers everywhere can only hope.
The writers of comedy troupe Esther’s Follies have been tapped to collaborate with Austin Lyric Opera on a new “Austin-tatious” production of Johann Strauss’s comic opera “Die Fledermaus.” “The Bat,” as it’s being called, premieres next May at the new Long Center for for the Performing Arts. ALO officials made the announcement Thursday.
Other productions announced for ALO’s 2007-2008 season include a November concert called “Simply the Best: An Opera Concert” at the Riverbend Centre. Then, as ALO’s first show in the Long Center, they’ll do Bizet’s “Carmen” in April.
The $77 million Long Center will have its grand opening March 28, 2008.
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Zach Scott stage to be named for Karen Kuykendall
When Zachary Scott Theatre builds its new facility in a few years, one name for sure will be in lights: Karen Kuykendall.
Zach Scott director Dave Steakley announced that the stage in the new building, destined for the green space just to the west of the theater’s current location, will be named for Kuykendall, long-time Austin actress, patron of the arts and major arts leader for the Austin community.
In addition to her lauded roles in Zach shows such as “The Rocky Horror Show,” “Nine” and “Angels in America,” Kuykendall is on the Board of Ballet Austin, and has served on a number of boards in the past, including Conspirare, the Austin Musical Theatre and the Girl Scouts. A longtime member of Actor’s Equity, she has been a diligent fundraiser for many Austin nonprofit organizations. She has also delighted audiences as an expressive and entertaining cabaret singer.
Kuykendall was named to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2004.
(Kuyendall and Gerard Lebeda perform in “Zach Divas Live” on New Year’s Eve 2001.)
Zach Scott has plans under way for a new 500-seat theater now that the organization received bond money in the last election. No word on a timeline for the new venue.
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Pebbles Wadsworth announces retirement
Pebbles Wadsworth, long time director of UT’s Performing Arts Center, announced Monday that she will be retiring from her post January 2008 after 15 years.
Wadsworth says that it’s time for the next generation of arts leaders to plan the future of the PAC, arguably Austin’s largest arts organization.
Read the story on Wadsworth’s announcement **here
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McAuley, ‘Animations’ delight
Owen McAuley intrigues with his new drawings and paintings at D Berman Gallery. Who knew Web cams trained on ordinary corners of America could provide such rich fodder for scenes both alluring and terrifying?
At Arthouse, “Animations: Nathalie Djurberg, Brent Green and David Shrigley & Chris Shephard” features some lovely narrative video work. Too bad the inattentive installations makes it so hard on viewers.
You can read full reviews of both shows — along with Joey Seiler’s take on “I Am Not Tartuffe” — **here
(“McKinney, Texas” by Owen McAuley)
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‘American Fiesta’ Off-Broadway bound
Austin playwright and actor Steven Tomlinson will take his award-winning one-man show, “American Fiesta” to an Off-Broadway theater next month. The show will open April 26 at New York’s Vineyard Theatre. The Vineyard produced such Tony Award winners as “Avenue Q” and Pulitzer toppers such as Edward Albee’s “The Goat.”
Winner of the American Theatre Critics Association Osborn Award for Best New Play last year, “American Fiesta” humorously and poignantly explores America’s political divisiveness through the lens of an obsessive collector of brightly colored vintage Fiestaware ceramic dinnerware. The play opened at Austin’s State Theatre in 2005.
Congrats Steven!
Steven Tomlison at home with ‘Big Red’ the Fiestaware salad bowl.
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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Austin Music Memorial gets green light
Excerpts from a March 15 City of Austin news release:
The Austin City Council and the Long Center for the Performing Arts have authorized the Austin Music Commission to proceed with the creation of the Austin Music Memorial at the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
The Austin Music Memorial Task Force was selected with support and contributions from the Austin Music Commission and the local music industry. The volunteer Task Force will meet regularly and expects its work to be completed by July 2007.
The Austin Music Memorial will consist of round metal disks embedded in the outdoor City Terrace at the Long Center. Each memorial will honor the specific inductee, a deceased person who was instrumental to the development of the music industry in Austin. Persons memorialized need not be musicians.
Diversity of persons, musical styles and areas of contribution will be commemorated in the memorial. It is intended that 5-10 inductees will be added annually to the Austin Music Memorial at an induction ceremony at the Long Center. The first inductees will be memorialized at the grand opening of the Long Center on the weekend of March 28, 2008.
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Make that FIVE Biennial winners
Apparently, not just one, but five artists in the Texas Biennial 2007 have one Juror’s Choice awards. We had incomplete information when we previously announced that William Hundley netted the $1,000 prize.
He isn’t the only one. Frances Bagley, Peat Duggins, Virginia Fleck and Brad Tucker also got $1,000 kudos from the Biennial jurors.
Biennial organizers say they plan a juror’s panel discussion and possibly a more formal celebration for the winners on March 31.
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Blanton gallery named for Kleins
Saturday night at the Blanton Museum of Art, an invited crowd of about 80 lifted glass of Champagne as director Jesse Otto Hite made a surprise announcement: The initimate Workspace gallery has been named for patrons Jeanne and Michael Klein.
The Kleins have taken an impressive leadership role in developing the Blanton’s contemporary art collection, donating more than 30 major works of art in the last few years. And what a collection it is. Believing that contemporary speaks the language of today’s students, the Kleins have carefully chosen some of the most provactive art on the scene today. And their choices have been savvy. On the cover of this month’s Art in America? Painter Marilyn Minter whose eerie painting “Crystal Swallow” the Klein’s just bequeathed to the Blanton.
‘Crystal Swallow’ by Marilyn Minter
The Kleins have also been instrumental in supporting the Workspace gallery. The smallish, white cube of space on the museums second floor is devoted to temporary installations by emerging artists — almost an artistic laboratory of sorts where creative experiments are staged.
On hand to toast the Kleins was a mix of UT supporters and arterati, all close associates of the couple. Veteran newsman Dan Rather* was there as was Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith. Museum namesake Jack S. Blanton and his wife made the scene as did former UT President Larry Faulkner. Texas character and artist Bob Wade was on hand; so was the intense and prolific painter Trenton Doyle Hancock who is in the process of collaborating with Ballet Austin’s Stephen Mills on a new multimedia ballet for Spring 2008.
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‘Gyre’ spins a complex tale
Andrea Ariel and her collaborators take on a tough topic with ‘Gyre,’ a multimedia dance theater work. How to give human shape to the North Pacific Gyre, the confluence of oceanic currents at the center of which is a Texas-sized floating island of trash?
Ariel and company did it with aplomb. And that’s largely because it’s a group effort. Multiple creative minds are always better than one.
Composers Peter Stopschinski and Graham Reynolds delivered a score that vascillated deftly between action movie fury and poignant melodies.
Nick Keene, Leilah Stewart, Colin Lowry and Natalie George created a moody atmosphere, littering the stage with plastic bags and lighting it with an almost tense glow. A video segment at the beginning sets up the story of four lost individuals nicely. And the shimmering seascape video backdrop rippled through its own course of emotions.
Cyndi Williams’ minimalist, absurdist text stepped in to give shape to the story in between the danced segments and deepen the central characters, all of whom have landed on the trash island after personal tragedies.
Ariel and Steve Ochoa demonstrated some capitivating partner sequences full of unusally crafted lifts and almost pretzel-like couplings that followed captivatingly together. (Ochoa’s polished atheleticism is a welcome addition to Austin’s indie dance scene.)
If there was one weakness, it was the ensemble choreography: uninterestng standard modern dance moves that didn’t seem to add much to the emotionally or narratively.
In the end, though, ‘Gyre’ spun a complex tale that touched on both the personal and the global, and wove it nicely together with a collaboration of creative talents.
‘Gyre’ continues at 8 p.m. today through Saturday at the Off Center.
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Arthouse expands hours for SXSW
Because they know film groupies will be filling Austin streets next week, Arthouse is expanding it’s hours, breaking the never-open-on-a-Monday museum code.
In fact, the free-admission Congress Avenue art venue will be open Monday, March 12, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. so folks can enjoy the current exhibit, Animations: Nathalie Djurberg, Brent Green, and David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd.
Regular downtown-friendly Arthouse hours prevail for the remainder of the week: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, Thursday until 9 p.m., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Check out “Animations” to see, among other funky works, Brent Green’s kitchen table rendition of Santa Claus as an existential outsider and David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd’s doodles and line drawings of “Pete” a character who lives in the woods instead of within polite society.
(David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd)
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Welcome back Gallery Lombardi!
After rising downtown rents dislodged it from its West Third Street digs, the little gallery with the indie spirit has set up a new shop. And to celebrate, Gallery Lombardi hosts a show that, in turn, celebrates that most fundamental of all art mediums: drawing. More than a 150 young and up-and-coming artists are featured, many coming from the tattoo, design, illustration, skateboard and music milieus.
“Draw” opened in New York last fall at hip Fuse Gallery and is making a stop here before going to London and Tokyo.
DJ Subspace Freakquency spins at the opening reception, 7 to 10 p.m. Friday at the gallery’s new home at 602 W. Seventh St.
Then, pencil in “Drawn From Life: A Curator + Artist Panel Discussion” on Thursday, March 15 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
Talking the talk will be Rusty Mills (animator of Pinky & the Brian); Erik Foss (“Draw” Curator, Fuse Gallery NYC); Curse Mackey (“Draw” curator, Action Arts Agency); Daniel Upton (tatoo artist, Austin); Lance Bradley (visual artist, Austin)
(drawing by David Hochbaum)
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Hundley wins Texas Biennial Prize
Austin artist William Hundley snagged the Texas Biennial 2007 Juror’s Choice award. Hundley won $1,000 and at the Biennial reception at Bolm Studios Saturday night, was handed a big ol’ honkin cardboard check in true “You’re A Winner!” style.
Hundley crafts otherworldly scenes of floating poofs of fabric that hover playfully — or menancingly? — in quotidian urban landscapes. They’re creepy cool, odd and lovely.
“Meteor,” by William Hundley.
Happy Birthday Texas — Biennial
What better way to celebrate Texas Independence Day than with the Texas Biennial?
Spirited, independent, gutsy, proud — what’s not Lone Star headstrong about an artist-initiated, indie-operated statewide contemporary exhibit?
Most importantly, the Texas Biennial offers a spot-on portrait of this state’s diverse creative culture.
Take Iranian-born Houston artist Soody Sharifi. Her compelling series “She/He” offers a riveting take on life in contemporary Iran. The Texas Biennial features two photos from the series. Both are on exhibit at the Dougherty Arts Center.
“Mr. and Mrs.”
“Honeymoon.”
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Biennial begins with a bang
The Texas Biennial begins with a bang tonight. Head to the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road, where from 7 to 10 p.m. you can get your arty party on.
Actually, there were be two more bangs this weekend as the multivenue show has multiple opening parties. Friday night, head to Okay Mountain and Site 1808. Then Saturday, night it’s party time at Bolm Studios.
After all, what’s a buzzy biennial without the buzz-making parties? I mean if this were, say, Art Basel Miami, it would be about nothing BUT the parties.
But thankfully, the Texas Biennial organizers know what’s what: It’s about the art, stupid.
David Chien, “Yuppie Graffiti Tagger.”
On view at Bolm Studios.
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