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Visual arts
March 9, 2010
Arthouse scores the love with micro-giving campaign
Combining recession-era austerity and social media cleverness, Arthouse launched a micro-giving fundraising campaign that was promoted solely through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Throughout February, Arthouse used Twiiterverse and Facebookverse — and yes, conventional old email — to seek $5 donations from 2,000 people, or a total of $10,000 . Dubbed ‘I Heart Arthouse’ — ‘I <3 Arthouse’ in Twitter-ese — didn’t quite make its goal, but it did garner the downtown Austin visual arts center a lot of attention for its clever low-overhead approach to fundraising.
Arthouse director of development Jennifer Wijangco reports that the campaign netted a total of $3,560 from 279 donors representing 19 states. Gifts ranged from $5 to $100.
“We’re looking at conferences to present at about our ‘I <3 Arthouse ‘experience, since there seems to be a lot of demand for this idea,” says Wijangco.
See the campaign’s virtual donor wall at www.arthousetexas.org/valentine/donors.html.
Arthouse is currently in the midst of a major $6.6 million renovation to its downtown Austin home. More than $5 million has already been raised. Arthouse is set to re-open in late October.
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March 4, 2010
Testsite launches 'Just Because' series, and more
The energetic, inventive indy micro-gallery testsite is gearing up for a new a exhibit series.
‘Just Because’ is a new series of solo shows slated for the gallery cum Central Austin residence.
Opening the series on Sunday is ‘Elizabeth Chiles: Book of Praise.” The reception is from 3 to 5 p.m. The exhibit continues through March 28.
‘Karl Marx says that the problem with beauty is that it doesn’t talk back; that is its strength in fact. Its silence reminds us about grace,’ says the Austin-based Chiles whose work is included in FotoFest 2010 and has been exhibited here at Okay Mountain.
Continuing the ‘Just Because’ series June 6 to 27 will be ‘Ben Ruggiero: After Icebergs With A Painter,’ featuring the new photographic work by the Texas State University art professor that riffs on the 19th-century Hudson River School group of painters.
Before the Ruggiero exhibit though, look to testsite for what promises to by a slyly smart project by Jay Sanders and the irrepressible Michael Smith. Opening in conjunction with the Fusebox Festival, Sanders and Smith will transform testsite into their version of fraternity.
We can wait for Sanders’ and Smith’s kegger.
Image: ‘Aboo,’ 2009 .Elizabeth Chiles. Courtesy the artist and testsite.
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February 26, 2010
Big Medium art gallery/artist studios garage sale Saturday
The art group responsible for the East Austin Studio Tour, the Texas Biennial, and which operates an art gallery and 16 artist studios is having a collective rummage sale Saturday.
Up for sale are only-at-an-art studio finds such as artwork, art supplies and building materials are up for grabs along with the usual garage sale paraphernalia.
9: a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday
Big Medium Studios, 5305 Bolm Rd. #12
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February 25, 2010
Chinati Foundation director announces retirement
Attention all fans of Marfa, Texas and its arts scene and Donald Judd africiandos: Marianne Stockebrand, founding director of the Chinati Foundation, has announced her plans to retire.
The Chinati Foundation is 340-acre 32-building former US Army Fort D.A. Russell. During his lifetime Judd transformed the site into a laboratory for his ideas about the permanent installation of contemporary. Now, the Chinati feautures monumental outdoor concrete works by Judd and 100 aluminum works by Judd housed in two converted artillery sheds. Former army barracks house one large-scale work in colored fluorescent light by Dan Flavin and a building in downtown Marfa display 23 sculptures by John Chamberlain. Other artists represented at the Chinati include Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; Ilya Kabakov, Carl Andre and John Wesley.
Stockebrand, who was Judd’s companion in the years before his death, was appointed by the artist in 1993 to be the director of the non-profit Chinati:
From the Chinati comes this statement:
The Board of Directors of The Chinati Foundation, in Marfa, Texas, has announced that its director, Dr. Marianne Stockebrand, has expressed her intention to retire as soon as a successor can be found. Stockebrand, who was appointed to the position in 1993 by the museum’s founder, the artist Donald Judd, and who has been responsible for its development since his death in the following year, plans to continue residing in Marfa and will assume the title of Director Emeritus. The search for a new director will begin immediately.
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February 24, 2010
Consider artists, architects at work on public projects
AIA Austin Emerging Professionals and Art Alliance Austin are co-sponsoring a casual exhibit and informal discussion on the convergence of art and architecture. It’s a prelude to the Austin Arts Week and Art City Austin events coming up in April.
The free event, ‘A Conversation About Art & Architecture’ is from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday. It’s open to the public. Members of Austin’s art and architecture communities are encouraged to attend.
The work of artists Bridget Quinn, Jared Theis, Joseph Philips and the Sodalitas collective is all up for discussion. The talk will be lead by Salvador Castillo.
It all goes down in an empty retail space near City Hall at 233 W. Second St.
The evening will also present the opportunity to stike up dieas for the international Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space — aka TOGS — Ideas Competition. The project, now in its third year, challenges designers to come up an radical new alternative to the typical art fair tent.
The ‘Fort,’ from ‘July Transplants’ project. Organized by Bridget Quinn. Photo by Stephanie Becker.
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February 19, 2010
And the People's Choice winner is...
James Tisdale’s other-worldly sculpture ‘Squirrelly’ has been voted as the 2009 People’s Choice selection to join the permanent collection at Austin City Hall.
Tisdale’s sculpture was one of more than 100 artworks on view at Austin City Hall last year as part of the annual People’s Gallery Exhibition that features work by Austin-area artists. Each year visitors to City Hall vote for their favorite artwork.
The announcement was made tonight at the opening of the 2010 People’s Gallery Exhibition, the newest iteration of the public art program.
Vincent E. Kitch, Cultural Arts Program Manager for the city of Austin, said ‘Squirrelly’ proved so popular with visitors that they left nuts and other objects at the sculpture’s base. Those items will be incorporated into the artwork, Kitsch said.
Photo courtesy Cultural Arts Program,
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February 17, 2010
People's Gallery Exhibition 2010 opens
What to do with an architecturally interesting city hall? Fill it full of art of course.
Several years ago, the city of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division started the People’s Gallery Exhibition, a year-long juried show in Austin City Hall. Artwork in all media is considered by artists from the greater Austin area.
This year some 350 artists submitted more than 1,300 entries for consideration in the new exhibit. The three judges in the selection panel for the 2010 exhibition were: Sean Gaulagher, artist and co-founder of Cantanker Magazine; Andrea Mellard, assistant curator, Austin Museum of Art; and Risa Puleo, assistant curator, Blanton Museum of Art.
The opening reception is 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 19. Austin City Hall is at 301 W. Second St.
The event will also feature the unveiling of the “2009 People’s Choice” selection by public vote from the previous exhibit. The artwork was selected among top voted works and will be added to the City Hall permanent art collection.
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February 11, 2010
Woodcuts blocks only -- hold the prints
Canadian artist Lisa Brown loves the woodcut print medium. But hold the printmaking process. Brown makes the woodcut blocks only.
Using 100-year-old salvaged Douglas fir, Brown creates Pop Art-inspired images. Her latest works celebrate icons of American popular music.
A solo exhibit of her work opens Saturday at Yard Dog Gallery, 1710 S. Congress Ave. The opening is 7 to 9 p.m.
Brown, who will be at Saturday’s opening, says of her practice:
“I have been making woodcuts for over 20 years since I saw the woodcuts from the printmaking department at art college. I was in the drawing department and am self-taught at woodcut. I don’t make prints, but prefer to paint the woodcut blocks themselves.”
“I am interested in expressing appearance, character, warmth and feeling with the greatest economy of line.”
“I collect photographic references that I think will translate beautifully into woodcut and there are so many of them I never use the same reference twice. The finished woodcut blocks are three times removed from the photographic reference in that I first sketch the image, then I carve the drawing, then paint the carving.”
Image: ‘Honey, Why Are You So Sweet (Dolly Parton)’
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New paintings by Denny McCoy at D. Berman Gallery
Never mind the cold and rain. Opening tonight at D. Berman Gallery is ‘Release,’ colorful new paintings by Austin artist Denny McCoy.
The opening is from 6 to 8 p.m. tonight. The exhibit continues through March 27.
And in a nice change of pace from the usual artist’s gallery talk, next week award-winning Austin classical guitarist Steve Kostelnik well give a mini-concert, a musical response to McCoy’s paintings. The mini-concert is at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 20. It’s free.
Says McCoy of his vibrant, new palette and new body of work:
‘Many artists describe their work as an exploration that may reference a particular subject matter or idea, created in a way that reflects a thoughtful and studied approach. I try to work at not knowing what I’m doing. During many years of painting I have gained a certain pattern of understanding and judgment that is at odds with my hope of exploring unseen areas. It is the letting go of this accumulated knowledge and decision making process that I find necessary to be in that place where I am most capable of not knowing what I’m doing. To separate myself from my experience is foolish, but to see it as not relevant to making future judgments is required.’
‘Answers to Hard Questions,’ Denny McCoy. Photo courtesy D. Berman Gallery
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February 5, 2010
Arrivederci Petrobelli Altarpiece, hello 'Desire'
It took art historians 200 years — and a good measure of serendipity — to put reconstruct the Petrobelli Altarpiece after the gorgeous 16th-century massive canvas by Renaissance master artist Paolo Veronese was chopped apart in 1788 when the Northern Italian church it was created for was destroyed.
And Sunday is the last day we’ll have to see the Petrobelli Altarpiece at UT’s Blanton Museum of Art. Actually it’s the last chance we’ll ever have to see the reconstructed monumental painting.
On a visit to the Blanton in 2006, British scholar Xavier Salomon realized that a small Veronese painting of St. Michael from the Blanton’s Suida-Manning Collection was actually a missing piece of the Petrobelli Altarpiece.
Salomon’s discovery led to the unique reconstruction of the fragments of the Petrobelli Altarpiece.
And when the exhibit closes Sunday, the fragments will go back to their respective homes at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario, which also hosted the exhibit, and to the National Gallery of Scotland.
So this is the last chance, ever, you’ll see the Petrobelli Altarpiece as a whole. Get to the Blanton!
And read the full art history mystery story here.
While you’re at the Blanton this weekend you can also catch the first weekend of ‘Desire’ the intriguing new exhibit featuring more than 50 works in all media from the likes of Bill Viola, Glenn Ligon, Mairly Minter, Isaac Juilien and many others. ‘Desire’ examines desire in its myriad creative manifestations.
On Saturday at 2 p.m., join Ligon and Minter in the Blanton auditorium for a talk moderated by ‘Desire’ curator, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi.
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February 2, 2010
Michael Dell's $100 million purchase of Magnum Photos archive to live at UT -- for five years
The University of Texas’ Ransom Center will be home for five years to nearly 200,000 original press photographs taken by the legendary staff of Magnum Photos, the long-standing international agency, the university announced Tuesday.
The Magnum Photos archive was purchased last year by MSD Capital, the $10 billion private investment firm for the family of Michael Dell.
Officials from MSD Capital and Magnum Photos would not disclose the purchase price of the private sale. But UT officials said that the Ransom Center insured the collection for $100 million.
The Magnum collection contains photographs dating from the 1930s through the 1990s and includes images of major world events, celebrities and startlingly candid shots by famed photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Leonard Freed and Bruce Davidson.
As part of the arrangement, the Ransom Center has agreed to catalog and preserve the entire photo archive as well as host exhibitions and public programs. The Ransom Center will also make digital scans of every image. However, the cost to UT and the Ransom Center for the Magnum archive’s care and cataloging has not been determined, said Ransom Center spokeswoman Jen Tisdale.
Magnum and its photographers retain the copyright and licensing rights to the images. Dell’s MSD Capital will retain ownership of the photographs.
A spokesman for MSD Capital said that both the investment firm and Magnum Photos are making financial contributions to the Ransom Center to support the care and archiving of the collection, but he would not disclose the amount of those donations.
Cataloging, digitizing and publicly exhibiting an archive ultimately adds to its value.
The agreement between the Ransom Center, Magnum Photos and MSD Capital comes as the university is facing budget cuts including the controversial move to shut down the Cactus Cafe and cancel the UT informal classes program.
With the purchase of the Magnum archive, Dell himself joins an exclusive club of high-tech titans who have purchased important photography collections. In 1995, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, through his privately owned digital stock photo company Corbis Corp., purchased the Bettmann Archive, a collection of some 19 million prints assembled by German collector Otto Bettman.
And this is not the first time that MSD Capital and its members have gotten involved in the art market.
Co-managing partners Glenn R. Fuhrman and John C. Phelan both collect contemporary art.
Fuhrman’s Flag Art Foundation in New York — which presents exhibits of contemporary art — co-produced a recent exhibit at Austin’s Lora Reynolds Gallery that featured the work of Noriko Ambe.
The Flag Foundation’s next exhibit for its Chelsea gallery? ‘Size Does Matter,’ a show curated by basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.
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February 1, 2010
Blanton Museum re-organizes management staff
After seven months on the job, new Blanton Museum of Art director Ned Rifkin has re-organized some of the senior staff.
Said Rifkin: “When I arrived, the Blanton had vacancies in a few important areas: museum education, Latin American art, and then, most recently, administration. My decision to create two deputy director positions to be filled by current talented and qualified staff members was an obvious move.”
Here’s a run down from a release sent over the weekend:
- Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, curator of American and contemporary art and also director of curatorial affairs, will become the Deputy Director for Art and Programs, and will oversee curatorial, education and collection management areas of the museum.
- Simone Wicha, director of development, will become Deputy Director for External Affairs and Operations, supervising fundraising, membership, communications, admissions, the cafe and museum store, as well as other financial and operational aspects of the museum.
- Jonathan Bober, who for more than 20 years served as both curator of prints and drawings and also curator of European paintings, will now focus primarily on works of European art, including works on paper. Multiple curators, according to their specific expertise and research areas, will now oversee works on paper.
- Ursula Davila-Villa, interim curator of Latin American art will be promoted to associate curator of Latin American Art.
- Sue Ellen Jeffers, registrar will become manager of collections, overseeing all art handling and preparation within the museum. Meredith Sutton, associate registrar, will become the registrar.
Carlozzi’s promotion means that the Blanton will soon be seeking a curator in the area of modern and contemporary art once they get the go-ahead from UT administration.
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January 27, 2010
Anybody want some prime gallery space?
After nine years of presenting exhibits in the East Austin arts warehouse known as Flatbed, UT’s Creative Research Laboratory will be moving out in June this year as UT’s art department gets ready to open its new Visual Arts Center next fall.
The VAC will occupy 22,000-square-feet of space left behind in the Art Building when the Blanton Museum of Art got its new building across campus. A new venture for UT’s art department, the VAC will be home to changing exhibits of student and faculty work as well the work of visiting artists. It will also include some badly-needed graduate art student studios as well asa new home for the Mesoamerica Center.
The VAC is hosting an open house this Friday with tours from 6 to 8 p.m. You’ll need to RSVP to the free event. Click here for more info.
In the meantime, Flatbed is looking for a new tenant for the 4,000-square-feet of gallery space CRL is leaving behind. Any takers? It would be great to see an adventurous contemporary art effort take over.
On E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Flatbed was one of the earlier pioneers to stake out an arts destination in East Austin.
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January 26, 2010
Tonight: Arthouse Visiting Lecturer Series
Tonight, the Arthouse Visiting Lecturer Series continues with Hou Hanru, director of exhibitions & public programs and chair of the exhibitions & Museum Studies program at the San Francisco Art Institute. Hanru was also curator of the 2009 Biennale de Lyon.
The lecture is free.
7 p.m. tonight
George Washington Carver Museum & Cultural Center, Boyd Vance Theatre, 1165 Angelina St,
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January 23, 2010
Review: 'Dying City' at FronteraFest
The war in Iraq and Afghanistan may provide the framework of Christopher Shinn’s tidy and forceful Pulitzer-nominated drama ‘Dying City,’ now getting its regional premiere courtesy of Capital T Theatre as part of FronteraFest.
But the war is just a shadow to Shinn’s deceptively complex story. The battle here is really about love and truth — and the passive aggressiveness that permeates the lives a young widow and her husband’s twin brother.
About a year after her literature-loving Harvard-grad husband Craig has been killed in the Iraq war, Kelly (Liz Fisher) is holed up in her Manhattan apartment when Peter, Craig’s identical twin, (Mark Scheibmeir) shows up unexpectedly for a long-forsaken reconciliation.
When Craig materializes in flashbacks to the night before he left for war, Scheibmeir plays him too. That double-casting is a bit gimmicky on the playwright’s part, but it works, and Scheibmeir dexteriously and convincingly handles both roles.
Gay, an actor and a creator of complicated personal situations, Peter is the polar opposite of his controlling brother. Or so it seems. Shinn’s script reveals the truth about the weird, dysfunctional emotional triangle between Kelly and Craig/Peter through a kind of neat, almost formulaic unraveling. But Shinn’s skillful, realistic dialogue nevertheless saves ‘Dying City’ from being utterly formulaic and thoroughly trenchant.
Well-directed by Derek Kolluri, this success of this Capital T Theatre production relies on solid, intense performances from Fisher and Scheibmeir.
If not wholly provocative, ‘Dying City’ bears attention for its accurate snapshot of contemporary emotional life.
‘Dying City’ continues 2 p.m. Jan. 24, 9 p.m. Jan. 28, 7 p.m. Jan. 29 at Blue Theater, 916 Springdale Road. www.capitalttheatre.org
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January 22, 2010
UT commissions David Ellis video for new Visual Arts Center
The University of Texas has commissioned New York artist David Ellis — known for his stunning motion paintings — to create an original video for the university’s new Visual Arts Center, slated to open in September 2010.
The VAC, which will be run by the Department of Art & Art History, will be in the existing Art Building in the former space once occupied by the Blanton Museum. Designed by Lake Flato Architect, the VAC is slated to offer greatly expanded exhibition space, student studio space and a new home for the Mesoamerican Center.
The Brooklyn-based Ellis merges an almost street art/graffiti sensibility to his sprawling paintings, installations and videos. Terrifically influenced by music, his multi-media work has a vibrancy to it, both literal and figurative. Artifice doesn’t try to hide in Ellis’s work either; He embraces the ersatz.
Daily from David Ellis on Vimeo.
The commission is being administered by UT’s Landmarks public art program officials form which wouldn’t report the exact amount of the commission. But according to the 2005 policy statement for UT’s Art in Public Spaces program, one to two percent of the capital cost of new construction and major renovations of UT building is to go to public art. The new VAC facility has an estimated construction cost of $7 million. We suppose that would make Ellis’s commission $70,000 to $140,000.
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January 14, 2010
Saturday night? Exhibit hopping time
‘Kia Neill: Terrain’
Chicken wire, papier-mâché, lumber, plaster, paint, glitter, polyurethane foam, flocking fiber, Spanish moss, CDs, blinking colored lights, tinsel. It’s all fodder for artist Kia Neill to create her enveloping, gallery-filling installations that evoke otherworldly — though unbashedly — fake micro-worlds.
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Exhibit continues through Feb. 27.
Women & Their Work, www.womenandtheirwork.org
‘Christine Gray: Into the Light’
In her second solo exhibition at Okay Mountain Christine Gray continues to explore, as the press release says, ‘the frenetic play between real and unreal created using sculptural arrangements as the basis for her paintings. This new body of work takes its inspiration from American mythological tropes, often revealing surreal landscapes, crude shelters and objects suggestive of rituals with mystical significance.’
Opening reception: 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday
Exhibit continues through Feb. 13.
Okay Mountain, www.okaymountain.com
‘Jim Torok: Clowns and Portraits’
Brooklyn based artist Jim Torok paintings on panel and paper as well as new small-scale portraits in oil on panel.
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday; artist talk begins at 7 p.m.
Exhibit continues until March 6.
Lora Reynolds Gallery, www.lorareynolds.com.
Image: ‘Geode’ by Kia Neill. Courtesy Women & Their Work.
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January 7, 2010
UT's Blanton Museum raises admission prices
The University of Texas’ Blanton Museum of Art has just announced that it’s raising its admission prices.
The raise is effective immediately. Or really retroactively as the Jan. 7 announcement says the new prices are effective Jan. 1, 2010.
Also, the museum’s monthly B Scene arty party scales back to a bi-monthly schedule.
Update at 3:20 p.m.: A spokesperson for the Blanton adds this: ‘Like most cultural institutions, the Blanton has been affected by the downturn in the economy. While admissions have remained steady, the costs of presenting exceptional exhibitions and public programs has risen. In our effort to continue providing the very best programming for the community, we are raising prices to a range that is more in line with museums across the country.’
The following information is from the Blanton’s press release:
Admission remains free on Thursdays, and is always free for Blanton members, UT students, faculty and staff, and for children under 12.
New General Admission Prices:
Adult Admission $9 (was $7)
Seniors (65 +) $7 (was $5)
College Students with Valid ID $5 (was $3)
Youth (ages 13 -21) $5 (was $3)
Children 12 and under FREE
Blanton Members FREE
Current UT students, faculty and staff FREE
B scene (first Friday of every other month) $5 members/ $12 all others
Free Third Thursdays
Beginning in January, the museum’s free Third Thursday evenings (5:30 - 9 p.m.) will enjoy augmented programming. In addition to the popular yoga in the galleries and Blanton book club, artists’ talks and screenings of rare artist videos/films will be added to the mix. Additionally, The Blanton Café will offer a “happy hour” special, with a slice of gourmet pizza and glass of wine for only $5 all evening.
B Scene
B scene, The Blanton’s popular monthly art party will move from a monthly to bi-monthly basis. To be held the first Friday of every other month (beginning with February), the event will last from 6:00 - 10:30 p.m. Local bands and DJs will still be featured, as well as free savory appetizers, a cash bar, and art tours and activities. The Blanton Café will offer themed dinner menus in conjunction with B scene, which will include special tapas and wine pairings.
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Ready for some football? Or art?
Perhaps the gap between sports and art and their attendant fans isn’t is vast as it seems.
After all, couldn’t the spectacle of sports be considered an art form, and isn’t the spectacle of the art world as much of a sport of anything else?
Pablo Vargas Lugo’s video installation ‘Eclipses for Austin’ at UT’s Blanton Museum of Art through Feb. 21 suggest as much. And suggests much more.
Photo by Santiago Forero.
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January 6, 2010
Photography captures fading world of Eastern European Holocaust survivors
Fort Worth-based photographer Loli Kantor — the daughter of Holocaust survivors — will exhibit her documentary photographs of the small and disappearing population of elderly Holocaust survivors in Eastern Europe, once home to millions of Jews before World War II.
The exhibit, ‘There Was a Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today,’ opens this Saturday at Austin’s L. Nowlin Gallery.
Kantor juxtaposes sepia-toned palladium prints with super color-saturated pigment prints.
Born in Paris, France and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel and Buffalo, New York, Kantor’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States, and internationally in Ukraine, Poland, China, and the Czech Republic.
‘There Was a Forest: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today’
Opening reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday
Exhibit continues through Feb. 27
L. Nowlin Gallery, 1210 W. Sixth St.
www.lnowlingallery.com
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December 18, 2009
Frida Kahlo self-portrait to stay on view until March 2010
UT’s Ransom Center, which has Kahlo’s “Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” (1940), has announced that it will keep the painting on display until March to coincide with the exhibit “¡Viva! Mexico’s Independence.”
The Ransom Center’s Kahlo painting — which has been on almost continuous loan since 1990 — had been scheduled to come down off view on Jan. 3. “¡Viva!” goes on view Feb. 9 through Aug. 1. The year 2010 marks the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain and also the centennial of the Mexican Revolution.
‘Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird’ has been featured in exhibitions in more than 25 museums in the United States and around the world. In 2010, the painting will travel to Berlin and Vienna.
‘Self-portrait’ travels by personal courier in its own special carrier and the case gets its own seat on the plane.
Where in the world was this Frida Kahlo? Check out the Ransom Center’s interactive map of where the Kahlo painting has been.
Image: Frida Kahlo. ‘Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird,’ 1940. © 2009 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av Cinco de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtemoc 06059, Mexico, DF
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December 17, 2009
Review: Noriko Ambe: Artist Books, Linear-Action Cutting Project'
There’s a kind of irreverence to Noriko Ambe’s cut paper artworks now on view at Lora Reynolds Gallery. Slicing up artists’ catalogs - no matter that the end result makes for delicate art objects - bears an impiousness, however impish, that can’t be ignored.
Cy Twombly, Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons and Hiroshi Sugimoto are among the all-male roster of superstar artists that Ambe chose, selecting a catalog or monograph by each. She then embarked on her labor-intensive process, delicately altering each page of each book with a series of cuts so that every volume is transformed into a kind of elaborate excavated version of its original form.
As critic Lilly Wei outlines in an essay that accompanies this exhibit, the Tokyo-born New York-based Ambe intended for her actions to be a collaboration of a sorts with each artist. Ambe studied each volume intensely, we’re told, to work `with them through the assimilation of their art, without the need to be personal.’
Yes, there is a certain collaborative reverence here on Ambe’s part as well as a certain cool detachment. But Ambe’s subtractions also ironically add up - however unintentionally - to a delicate riff on 20 art-world heavyweights.
In`Dot on Dots and Layers: Roy Lichtenstein,’ the seminal Pop artist gets his Ben-Day dotted cartoon-like images punctured even more by Ambe’s drilled holes. Ambe adds more sprawl to Twombly’s random sprawling scrawls with random incisions of her own.
The pages of Gerhard Richter’s ‘Atlas’ are mined to the core as if to reach some ultimate source behind the work of the enigmatic German artist. And with ‘Beautiful Inside My Head Forever: Damien Hirst,’ the British prankster known for sticking a dead shark in a vitrine of formaldehyde, will find his monograph volume chopped and stuffed into a short grey filing cabinet.
The current exhibit is curated by New York-based collector Glenn Fuhrman. (Fuhrman is the co-founder of MSD Capital, Michael Dell’s investment fund. Fuhrman’s FLAG Art Foundation in New York presents exhibits of contemporary art and co-produced the catalog to the current show which will go on exhibit there in 2010.)
Ambe certainly performs a collaboration with her honored roster. But in a brilliant stroke, she slices into something deeper as well.
‘Noriko Ambe: Artist Books, Linear-Action Cutting Project’
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays through Dec. 31, Lora Reynolds Gallery, 360 Nueces St. www.lorareynolds.com
Image: Noriko Ambe, ‘Diamond Dust Shoes: Andy Warhol, 2009.’ Courtesy Lora Reynolds Gallery.
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December 9, 2009
Review: ‘Speed Art: 2003-2009'
A kind of surreal violence has always been present in Julie Speed’s meticulous paintings. Pulling as much from the stylistic influcence of Old Master paintings as she does from the substance current events, the Texas artist has garnered a rapid following for her skewered world view — a view that skitters between the absurd and the anxious but always lands in the anomalous.
The new volume from “Speed Art: 2003-2009” (UT Press, $55; web discount price: $36.85) assembles the artist’s most recent work with a 130 color plates in a gorgeous volume. Yes, the peculiar is still present in Speed’s work. But there’s a new urgency of terrorism and war especially in series such as “Still Life with Suicide Bomber.”
A long-time Austinite, Speed relocated to Marfa a few years ago and the wide open West Texas landscape — with its expansive anonymity — seems to have given the artist — never one to follow convention — even more reason to cut loose.
As a bonus to this volume, writer A. M. Homes contributes a Marfa-based short story, “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” about the investigations of the Phenomena Police. Homes’ story borders on the precious, but matches Speed’s oddball sensibilities,
Former Austin Museum of Art director Elizabeth Ferrer offers an essay that suitably gives some context to Speed’s latest output.
And Speed pens an entertaining essay herself that gives insight to her artistic process. And just what is that insight? “Sometimes pictures come singly, sometimes in series, sometimes from a germ, sometimes from scratch,” writes Speed. “(B)ut always one thing leads to the next in a way that feels inevitable.”
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December 7, 2009
Review: Ballet Austin's 'The Nutcracker'
The swish of taffeta dresses heard in early December can only mean one thing: it’s time for Ballet Austin’s “Nutcracker” again.
At the Long Center Sunday afternoon, the patent leather shoe-wearing children were in full effect. Although the “Nutcracker” matinee’s audience demographic suggests the show targets children, the company’s performance attests there are many reasons for balletomanes of all ages to revisit the holiday classic.
This year marks the company’s second “Nutcracker” run in the Long Center, and the theatre’s size allows for the celebration of “Nutcracker’s” full spectacle.
The set, designed by Richard Isackes, creates opulent worlds for ballet dreaming, both in the early first act party scene at the Silberhaus’s home and in the second act’s Kingdom of the Sweets. Many of designer Tommy Bourgeois’s costumes, particularly the party dresses for adult and children and the many tutus of the second act, accentuate the production’s sense of luxury. It’s nice to see that Ballet Austin avoids the “Nutcracker” ballet trap: often the classic veers towards looking run-down and re-hashed. Ballet Austin’s production sparkles.
Much of the dancing, particularly from the company’s women, extended the production’s clear, open feeling. As Snow Queen, Jaime Lynn Witts had a calm dignity. Kirby Wallis’s flash in the Spanish variation and Rebecca Johnson’s sleek Arabian were second-act standouts.
With so many solos and pas de deux, ensemble performances can go overlooked in “Nutcracker,” but the corps dancers in Snow and Waltz of the Flowers deserve recognition. In Snow, dancer Beth Terwilleger seemed a strong, sure leader among a flurry of beauty.
While Stephen Mill’s choreography does not always follow the swells in Tchaikovsky’s iconic score, Mills excels at creating smaller moments of suspension, from the more staid dances done by the parents in the party scene through the delicate variation for the French couple (Terwilleger and one of the company’s most promising recent additions Joseph Hernandez).
As Sugar Plum Fairy, Michelle Thompson made the most of Mill’s signature timing, opening her arms with a slow grace in the Grand Pas de Deux’s final turns. As Sugar Plum Cavalier, Frank Shott, yet again, proved himself the company’s strongest, most confident partner, a quality too often absent in other moments in Sunday’s performance.
While the adults might have been the focus Sunday, the cast’s children are integral to the annual “Nutcracker” event. As Clara, Macrina Butler displayed lovely shoulder and head placement, creating a central character worthy of center stage.
Like Clara, we all deserve a “Nutcracker” this year.
‘The Nutcracker’
7:30 p.m. Dec. 11-12, Dec. 18-22; 2 p.m. Dec. 13, Dec. 19-20, Dec. 23
Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr.
$15-$71
www.balletaustin.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
Photo by Amitava Sarkar.
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Okay Mountain's 'Corner Store' nets PULSE award
Congrats to the collective Okay Mountain for winning the 2009 Miami PULSE Award at PULSE, the contemporary arts fair.
The Austin collective was selected by the PULSE Committee as emerging artists of distinction from their project iin the IMPULSE section of the fair.
‘Corner Store’ was an ersatz off-brand micro-convenience store that sold ersatz items — think fake beef jerky and a simulated slushy machine. Thousands of hours in the making, ‘Corner Store’ was a brilliant spoof on the very nature of trendy art fairs and the swirl of commerce and fashion.
Read a previous post about the project.
‘Corner Store’ was a commission from Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary arts center. The Okay Mountain team received a reported $7500 budget to produce and travel ‘Corner Store’ to Miami along with all of the 11-member collective in tow. The Okay Mountain artists staffed ‘Corner Store’ as clerks.
Any income from sales — yes, the ersatz items were for sale — were reportedly to be divided between Arthouse and Okay Mountain.
The art-making Okay mountaineers gets a $2,500 PULSE prize check. Oh, and they are also offered the opportunity to design a limited-edition PULSE tote bag.
Really? A limited-edition tote bag? Wonder if the judges really understood what ‘Corner Store’ was all about.
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December 4, 2009
AVAA inaugural Austin Visual Arts Award winners
Neither a few snow flurries nor bitterly cold weather stopped a crowd from attending the Austin Visual Arts Association’s inaugural Austin Visual Arts Awards at the Austin Museum of Art Friday night.
Winners at Friday night’s festivities were given a Fearing Award, a bronze metal designed by sculptor Bob Coffee and named after this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award Winner William Kelly Fearing.
- Austin Visual Arts Awards 2009
- Artist of the Year 2 Dimensional Art: Erin Curtis
- Artist of the Year 3 Dimensional Art: Beili Liu
- Artist of the Year Photography: Roberto Guerra
- Artist of the Year New Media: Michael Smith
- Artist of the Year Early Career: Heather Tolleson
- Collectors Circle Award: Bob “Daddy-O” Wade
- Service to the Arts: Jana Swec, Shea Little, Joseph Phillips for East Austin Studio Tour (E.A.S.T.)
- President’s Award: Will Klemm. Roi James
- Patron to the Arts: Becky Beaver
- Lifetime Achievement: William Kelly Fearing
- Lifetime Achievement, In Memoriam: Robert Dale Anderson
- Lifetime Achievement, In Memoriam: Michael Frary
A nominating committee of representative from 22 Austin art organizations nominated their picks in each category and those artists who received multiple nominations moved forward to the selection committee. The selection committee, which included representative from 12 organizations, developed a list of finalists.
See a previous post for a list of members of the selection committee and finalists.
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December 3, 2009
Okay Mountain sets up shop at PULSE Miami
The Austin art collective Okay Mountain has hit the road to Miami.
No, they haven’t abandoned their East Austin digs. They’ve set out to conqueror PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, the super-trendy contemporary art fair that shadows the super-fashionable Art Basel Miami Beach.
‘Corner Store’ is a site-specific installation commissioned from the Okay Mountain collective by Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary art center.
‘Corner Store’ is just that — an off-brand convenience store much like you would find in the scruffy patches of urban Texas, the kind of establishment where cheap versions of everything and anything is sold.
The Okay Mountain crew spent literally thousands of hours constructing hundreds of objects by hand that fill the store. And each piece of inventory contains its own quirky twist on the original.
‘Green Things’ anyone? Or how about ‘You Only Live Once’ candy bars?
‘Corner Store’ opened today at PULSE.
The level of detail to ‘Corner Store’ is staggering. The sheer volume and kind of items reaches an encyclopedic level. So do the store’s features right down to the soda machine, the worn shelving, the cheap poorly-crafted signage and the out-of-date cash register.
The Okay Mountain gang will don uniforms and work the ‘Corner Store’ as if it were the real thing (in a way, it is). And they’ve even created advertising circular on cheap newsprint that blasts “10 artworks under $100” and other deals.
And yes, everything is for sale. Items start at just a few dollars. And there’s no re-stocking. It’s the end of the line for ‘Corner Store’ with everything sold as if it were going out of business.
There’s something wonderfully ticklish about the idea of the arterati perusing Okay Mountain’s hand-made and oh-so irreverent items. After all, the Miami art fairs are the fickle and fashion-conscious art world laid bare. There’s no hiding the raw commerce of the art market nor its self-conscious socializing.
After laboring for weeks, the 11-member Okay Mountain crew — Carlos Rosales-Silva, Corkey Sinks, Jesse Butcher, Josh Rios, Justin Goldwater, Ryan Hennessee, Nathan Green, Peat Duggins, Michael Sieben, Sterling Allen and Tim Brown — loaded up their store and drove it by truck from Austin to Miami, camping along the way to save on funds. They’ll reportedly split the profits of anything sold at PULSE with their Arthouse sponsors.
It’ll be curious to hear how ‘Corner Store’ is received by the trendy crowds at PULSE. After all, the Okay mountaineers don’t shirk from poking at the ribs of any sacred art world cows. But ultimately, Okay Mountain’s art-making mischief is gentle — and wise.
Any one wanna buy a gallon of ‘BBQ Water’ or some ‘Olde Money’?
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November 30, 2009
AVAA announces inaugural Austin Visual Arts Awards
The Austin Visual Arts Association is hosting its first Visual Art Awards this Friday.
The long-standing arts service organization will hand-out awards in a variety of categories. Winners will be presented with a “Fearing” Award, a bronze metal designed by sculptor Bob Coffee, named after this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, William Kelly Fearing.
The event is at 7 p.m. Friday, Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress. Tickets are $25. For information see www.avaaonline.org.
AVAA called on representatives from a dozen organizations and businesses to select the finalists after a nominating committee of 23 organizations, galleries and museums made nominations.
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2009 Award Finalists
- Artist of the Year 2 Dimensional Art: Jennifer Balkan, Shawn Camp, Erin Curtis, Ray Donley, Laurie Frick, Roi James, John Mulvany and Jana Swec
- Artist of the Year 3 Dimensional Art: Beili Liu, Hank Waddell, Catherine Lee, Sunyong Chung, Phillipe Klinefelter and David Everett
- Artist of the Year Photography: Roberto (Bear) Guerra, Barry Stone, Lesley Nowlin, Anna Krachey and Sandy Carson
- Artist of the Year New Media: Sean Gaulager, The Totally Wreck Institute, Michael Smith
- Artist of the Year Early Career: Debra Broz, Alonso Rey Sanchez, Heather Tolleson, Sterling Allen, Nathan Green, Jules Buck Jones and Carlos Rosales-Silva
- Collectors Circle Award: Helmutt Barnett, Damian Priour, Bob “Daddy-O” Wade, Sydney Yeager and Jack White
- Lifetime Achievement: William Kelly Fearing
- Lifetime Achievement In Memoriam: Robert Dale Anderson
- Lifetime Achievement In Memoriam: Michael Frary
- Service to the Arts: TBA
- President’s Award: TBA
- Patron to the Arts: TBA
- The Selection Committee
- Austin Chronicle - Robert Faires
- Austin Museum of Art - Andrea Mellard
- Art Palace - Arturo Palacios
- Art in Public Places - Meggan Crigger
- Austin Arts Commission - Gloria Mata Pennington
- The Blanton Museum of Art - Risa Puleo
- Carver Museum - Bob Jones
- Mexic-Arte Museum- Sylvia Orozco
- Texas Art Collectors of Austin & San Antonio - Carl McQueary
- Texas Society of Sculptors - Nancy Cardozier
- Tribeza magazine - Karen Landa
- Wally Workman Gallery - Wally Workman
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Review: Katie Maratta and Owen McAuley at D. Berman Gallery
Artists Katie Maratta and Owen McAuley share an abiding love and fascination for a sense of place yet take different creative approaches to create their artistic valentines to place.
And yet, on view together currently at D. Berman Gallery, those differing approaches make for a pleasant synergy of comparison and contrast.
The endless expanse of the West Texas landscape inspires Maratta. But forget reverent, colorful homages. Instead the Austin-based Maratta gives quirky graphite drawings all only one inch tall yet some that sprawl four or five feet in length. With meticulous draftsmanship, Maratta renders the stuff of stark rural scenes — barns, highway signs, dust devils, windmills, birds on a power line, endless flat fields — in miniature.
The detail is compelling. And like you do in order to experience the wide open plains, so do you have to travel at length across Maratta’s long drawings in order to see them in their entirety. Diminutive as these landscapes may be, they nevertheless cleverly represent the vast openness of the West Texas plains.
Like Maratta, McAuley also jiggers with preconceived notions of how place is artistically represented. McAuley, who studied at the University of Texas and now lives in New York, focuses on the most quotidian and downright anonymous locations and spaces.
Tire tracks through snow disappear into darkness in one small graphite drawing. A floor lamp barely brightens an almost bare wall in one of McAuley’s darkly luminous oil paintings. In another, a ceiling light casts a glare into the corner of a room while the rest remains dark.
These rooms, those tire tracks, could be anywhere. Or everywhere. Never mind the exact the locale — it’s not important because McAuley delivers the emotional potency of place.
Katie Maratta & Owen McAuley
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays through Dec. 12
D. Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St.
www.dbermangallery.com
Images: Detail of ‘Three Silos,’ Pencil and ink on transfer paper. Katie Maratta (top). ‘Untitled.’ 2008. Conte on paper. Owen McAuley (bottom). Courtesy D. Berman Gallery.
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November 27, 2009
'Over & Under'
Austin artist Jenny Hart shook up the DIY crafting world several years ago when she introduced her “Sublime Stitching” line of embroidery patterns and stitching kits for a new generation. Exercising her love of mid-century graphic arts and illustration, Hart compiled and published intriguing new embroidery patterns for a new generation of crafters to take the domestic art of stitching to a new retro-cool level.
Now, Hart uses her sharp curatorial judgment to gather a sampling of new work made by artists like herself who are pushing the edges of the needlework. The exhibit “Over & Under” brings the work of more than a dozen international artists to Yard Dog Art Gallery.
There’s plenty of boundary-blurring going on in “Over & Under.” Especially the blurring of the difference between art and craft. What’s on view in Hart’s show is craft that’s been transformed into art without ever leaving behind the beauty of the craft of stitchery itself.
These are drawings and paintings made with thread that are all evocative of the trends and concerns of contemporary illustration and art. Strange and quirky riffs on comic book art, decorative mod designs, ironic visual narratives — the zeitgeist of “Over & Under” is very now.
And yet, with their careful tiny stitches, these small-scale works carry an unmistakable nostalgia. It’s a handmade and heartfelt quality that’s hard to resist — and it’s made all the more interesting through sometimes edgy, sometimes odd imagery.
‘Over & Under’
Yard Dog Art Gallery, 1510 S. Congress Ave.
11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.
Exhibit continues through Sunday.
www.yarddog.com
Images: ‘Cake for John,’ (upper) Jennifer Porter; ‘Taretentokaku’ (lower), Takashi Iwasaki. Courtesy Yard Dog Art Gallery
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November 22, 2009
Review: DJ Spooky's 'Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica'
Appropriately, DJ Spooky, aka multi-media artist and brainy hip hop deejay, Paul D. Miller, started his ‘Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica’ by playing a piece of ice. A haze filled the Hogg Auditorium Friday night before the show while sounds of crunching glaciers grew louder. Then Miller took the stage, a piece of a dry ice (the source of the haze, as it turns out) on a silver platter before him. Across the ice he slowly drew a set of metal chimes to create eerie tinkling sounds.
‘Terra Nova’ is Miller’s sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes not so mesmerizing, musical and visual consideration of Antarctica.
Riffing on the concept of Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘Sinfonia Antarctica,’ (Williams’ seventh symphony which originated with the composer’s score for the 1948 film ‘Scott of the Antarctic.’) Miller composed a 70-minute piece for piano, two violins and cello to lead by his live re-mixing of digital and found sounds.
Austin’s alt-classical ensemble Golden Hornet Project — here represented by Graham Reynolds, Hector Moreno, Alexis Ebbets and Joseph Suffield - accompanied, giving full throttle to Miller’s charging and very cinematic score. (GHP collaborated with Miller on his latest release, ‘The Secret Song,’ playing on six tracks.)
On two rear projections screens images flashed by in choreographed collage - swooping aerials of the startling Antarctic landscape, scientific data charts on rising sea levels, footage of a 1950s-era Soviet polar exploration, maps historic and current and deliberately provocative phrases such “ice is a geological clock.”
Though cleverly edited, the hardly-subtle, nor deep, collage grew repetitive. And in the end, Miller’s new millennium travelogue didn’t necessarily take us to a new point: Mostly, we already know the polar environment is threatened.
But if the unoriginality of the visuals wore, the music redeemed. And when considered as a live chamber symphony with some video and digitized accompaniment — rather than a new visual/aural re-mixed art form as may have been suggested — then ‘Terra Nova’ pleased.
Miller stylized his score with a kind of driving crescendo-filled minimalist repetition. Cinematic, often dire or plaintive in mood and only partially reflective, the music nevertheless communicated a sense of urgency.
Miller’s media mix-up isn’t for everyone. Some audience members walked out Friday night. But for others ‘Terra Nova’ deserved a very spontaneous standing ovation. Likely, the final point to ‘Terra Nova’ is somewhere inbetween.
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November 20, 2009
Is EAST the SXSW of art?
Chatter surrounding this year’s East Austin Studio Tour — now extended over two weekends and sandwiching a week happenings and programs — has some calling it the SXSW of visual art.
Is it?
Not really. After all, EAST is a neighborhood-specific local-only event. SXSW is a major international affair.
But EAST does this year have that sense of occasion and community that can emerge from a festival experience. And there’s that frenzy of so many things to do and see that creates a certain kind of shared excitement.
One more weekend of EAST. And while it’s hard to choose what to see, a worthwhile starting place is with the kind of indie galleries and collaborative studio complexes that give East Austin a specific vibe — like Big Medium, Pump Project, Co-Lab and Birdhouse.
‘Two Houses’ by Dan Kaplan at Big Medium
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November 19, 2009
Artist Jeanne-Claude is dead at 74
With her orange-dyed hair, artist Jeanne-Claude was an ever-present companion to her husband Christo, collaborating on his ambitious and grand site-specific installations.
Now, the New York Times, among other news sources, is reporting that Jeanne-Claude is dead at age 74.
She died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm.
Most recently, the couple grabbed international headlines when they altered New York’s Central Park with more than 7,500 metal gates draped with orange fabric. An estimated 4 million people saw “The Gates.”
In 2006, the couple visited Austin on the occasion of the exhibit ‘Christo and Jeanne- Claude: The Würth Collection’ at the Austin Museum of Art.
In an interview, she admonished me to never refer to her and Christo as the wrapping artists.
“Simply because we are not,” Jeanne- Claude said emphatically. “We have created so many works that have nothing to do with wrapping.”
Photo: AP/Ed Andrieski
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November 18, 2009
DJ Spooky's 'Sinfonia Antarctica'
Inspired by a trip to Antarctica, DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid (aka Paul Miller)’s ‘Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica” is a multimedia travelogue by the avant garde turntable master and intrepid re-mixer.
The 70-minute piece — which plays Hogg Auditorium Friday night — is a visual and acoustic portrait of the ever-mysterious yet rapidly changing Antarctic continent.
Read a feature story on the show here.
DJ Spooky will participate in an online chat 1 p.m. Thursday.
For the Austin gig, Miller has tapped Austin musicians Graham Reynolds on piano, violinists Alexis Ebbets and Joseph Shuffield and Hector Moreno on cello.
And as the Golden Hornet Project, Graham and Moreno, along with Peter Stopschinski, Bruce Colson, Jason Elinoff and Seetha Shivaswarmy join DJ Spooky on his new CD ‘The Secret Song,’ including on the track ‘Measure for Measure.
Photo by Rita Antonioli.
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November 17, 2009
Artist selected for Zach Theatre public art project
The City of Austin’s Arts Commission announced today that it has selected artist Cliff Garten to create a work of public art for new Topfer Theatre addition to the Zach Theatre complex adjacent to Lady Bird Lake.
The Venice, Calif.-based Garten will receive a $150,000 commission.
Zach unveiled the design of the $20 million Topfer Theater, by Austin’s Andersson Wise Architects, in October. The sleek 430-seat theater that will be surrounded by a tree-filled plaza and grounds.
“Cliff’s beautiful and thoughtful artistry, working in collaboration with the Andersson Wise team, has the potential to enhance the site in a way that connects Zach to Lady Bird Lake and engages Austinites during the daytime and evening,” said Dave Steakley, artistic director for Zach Theatre.
Garten was selected from among 148 national artist submissions. Through his Cliff Garten Studio the artist has created dozens of public art projects including the recently unveiled ‘Avenue of Light’ sculpture in Fort Worth.
Photo by Laura Seewoester/www.pegasusnews.com
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November 12, 2009
EAST: Co-Lab brings verve to the East Austin scene
The forward-thinking folks who started Co-Lab are tapped into where so much of contemporary art is headed: toward the temporary, site-specific, performance-based projects that bust boundaries of genre and media.
With new exhibit/performances each week, Co-Lab acts as an incubator for those artists who are pushing the edges. For the East Austin Studio Tour, Co-Lab hosts a daily changing line-up of outdoor and indoor installations, interactive pieces and performances including a collaborative wall mural and a bike-in movie.
We asked Co-Lab co-founder and director Sean Gaulager a few questions.
Tell us about the founding of Co-Lab.
Sean Gaulager: Co-Lab was founded in July 2008. Operating from an old warehouse and large outdoor area it serves as an experimental project space for new media, workshops, and sustainability.
Co-Lab is a non-non-profit in that we are a noncommercial space but are not a not-for-profit (say that ten times fast). Built on a gift-economy model Co-Lab does not offer services or products at a cost, when there is artwork for sale it is commission free and all proceeds go to the artist. Should they decide to gift back their time, talents, or monetary donations, it is entirely up to them and is not mandatory.
What kind of feedback have you had from your neighbors?
Gaulager: Over the last year and a half in the neighborhood, we’ve had a wide array of responses from neighbors. Some have been enthusiastic, some have gotten involved, some are indifferent, and some are plain unfriendly. However, it’s felt welcoming overall and I hope Co-Lab successfully projects an inviting atmosphere, open to anyone and everyone.
Did you specifically look for a place in East Austin?
Gaulager: When I was looking for a location, I wanted to return to the East side mainly because my prior involvement in other east Austin art spaces and projects had shown me a prolific, supportive, and collaborative community of artists living and working in the area.
Why is a community garden as part of Co-Lab’s programming?
Gaulager: The community garden is a way for people to come together and attempt to become more self-sufficient. It serves as an ongoing architecture, design, and sustainability project that has had some hurdles, but will continue to grow until it can provide full stomachs for all involved.
It”s always hard when a neighborhood changes or gentrifies. And East Austin has definitely been changing in the last few years. Any thoughts?
Gaulager: I don’t like that art spaces and gentrification always get lumped together as if artists are in league with the developers and loft builders. Most people don’t consider that when areas do become gentrified most of the artists get displaced as well.
Co-Lab, 613 Allen St.
www.colabspace.org
Additional EAST hours: 6 to 10 p.m. Nov. 16, 6 to 9 p.m. Nov. 17-19, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Nov. 20
Image: A performance/screening by The Light Collective at Co-Lab . Photo by Don Mason
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November 10, 2009
Visual artists, you're wanted in City Hall
City Hall wants you, visual artists.
The call has gone for submissions to the next ‘People’s Gallery’ exhibit, the year-long showing of Austin artists in the hallways and rooms of City Hall,
Here’s the notice from the city’s Art in Public Places Program:
Artists, galleries, museums and arts organizations are encouraged to apply for the 2010 People’s Gallery exhibition at Austin City Hall. Applications are currently being accepted for two- and three-dimensional artworks in any medium through Monday, Jan. 4, 2010.
A panel of arts professionals will recommend the artworks that will be on display throughout City Hall from Feb. 19, 2010 to Jan. 28, 2011.
The application procedures and complete Call for Artworks are available on the Art in Public Places website at http://www.cityofaustin.org/aipp.
All applications must be submitted online via the ASAPP! online public art application system with up to five digital images of the artists’ available artwork.
For more information about the application process, artists may attend the Artist Information Meeting at 6 p.m. Dec 2 in room 1029 of City Hall, 301 W. Second St., Austin, TX 78701.
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November 3, 2009
Would you live in a glass house?
Inspired by the iconic modernist Kaufmann House artist Erin Curtis pays homage to — and asks questions of — the idea of architectural perfection in her current exhibit ‘Perspective Threshold’ now at Women and Their Work.
Wednesday night, Curtis is joined by a line-up of design and art talent — Burton Baldridge, Judy Birdsong, Cindy Black, Nicole Blair, Camille Urban Jobe, Kasey McCarty & Michelle Rossomando — and together the group will discuss will how architecture both dictates and responds to the way we wish to live in the world.
‘Architecture and Desire: A Panel Discussion’
7 p.m. Thursday Nov. 5
Free
Women and Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St.
www.womenandtheirwork.org
Erin Curtis’ “Kauffman Pool Set” part of her exhibit at Women and Their Work.
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November 2, 2009
Kleins bring passion, curiosity to Austin arts scene
Since its unveiling in January, Teresita Fernandez’s “Stacked Waters” has become perhaps the most public mark of the Kleins’ philanthropy and art world sophistication since the couple moved to Austin from Houston four years ago.
With its 3.100-square-feet of blue tiles, the soaring two-story installation in the atrium of the Blanton Museum of Art is a bold and adventurous and has a sense of playfulness about it, much like the Kleins themselves.
Read a major profile of the Kleins here.
‘Teresita Fernandez: Blind Landscape,’ a retrospective of the artist’s work, opened Sunday at the Blanton and continues through Jan. 3. Read a review of the exhibit here.
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October 30, 2009
Art Palace Gallery heads to Houston
It’s official news now. The chatter that’s been whispered for several weeks is now public.
After almost five years and lots of kudos, attention and even national press Art Palace Gallery is leaving Austin for Houston, gallery owner Arturo Palacious says. With its innovative shows and sophisticated roster of emerging artists, the East Austin gallery has been a mainstay of the developing indie gallery scene.
In Houston, Art Palace will set up its new home at 3913 Main Street in the Historic Isabella Court building. New neighbors will be Inman Gallery, Kinzelman Art Consulting and CTRL.
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October 28, 2009
Let the Arthouse renovations begin!
With a few ceremonial whacks of a sledgehammer against a wall, Arthouse officials along with Mayor Lee Leffingwell and former mayor Will Wynn kicked off the start of the major renovations on the Congress Avenue contemporary arts institutions.
The $6.6 million architecturally adventurous re-design of the building comes at time when many arts groups have scaled back on programs and future plans. But with $5 million already raised, the Arthouse expansion is on schedule. Re-opening is planned for fall 2010.
New York architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis forward-thinking design promises to be a smart update of the historic downtown building. Check out the project web site.
A model of the Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis designs for Arthouse — with the multi-purpose roof amphiteatre — stands against a pile of debris leftover from the recent wildly popular ‘24 Roman Reconstruction Project,’ artist Liz Glyn’s participatory adventure that had the public building, and then destroying, a miniature version of ancient Rome.
Everything on the buildings first floor — including the staff offices, here just a pile of rubble — will be remodeled. However, the design calls for many features of the historic structure to be preserved.
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October 26, 2009
Blanton 'Petrobelli Altarpiece' lecture a total sell-out
Crowds turned out for Sunday’s lecture by British art historian Xavier Salomon.
Too many in fact.
All 300 seats were sold an hour before Salomon’s 2 p.m. lecture on how he discovered that a painting in the Blanton’s collection was actually a missing fragment of a famous altarpiece painting by Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese. Dozens of people were turned away.
Yes, a good art history mystery makes for a sell-out crowd.
‘Paulo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece’ continues through Feb. 7, 2010 at the Blanton Museum of Art. www.blantonmuseum.org.
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October 23, 2009
Reunification of altarpiece at Blanton solves a big art mystery
Forget ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ We have our own major art history mystery that was solved right here in Austin.
After spending time with the Blanton Museum of Art’s Suida-Manning Collection, Xavier Salomon, chief curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, realized that a small painting by Italian Renaissance master Paolo Veronese was actually the long-missing fragment of a massive altarpiece painting made for a Northern Italian church long-since destroyed.
Now, in a rare reconstruction, all four known pieces of the Petrobelli Altarpiece on view displayed together in one frame, much as if they were a whole again. “Paolo Veronese: The Petrobelli Altarpiece” makes its only stop in the United States at the Blanton.
Read more about the discovery.
And on Sunday, Salomon returns to the Blanton to relate the story of his discovery.
Xavier Salomon, chief curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, discusses the journey of the`Petrobelli Altarpiece’ through history
2 p.m. Oct. 25
Cost: Free with museum admission ($3-$7)
www.blantonmuseum.org
Image: Paolo Veronese, ‘Head of Saint Michael,’ the missing fragment of the Petrobelli Altarpiece.
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October 21, 2009
Damian Priour's first 30 years of sculpture
A fifth-generation Texan, artist Damian Priour has always looked to the landscape of the Texas Gulf Coast for inspiration. His palette? Fossilized limestone and blue and green glass from which, over three decades, he’s crafted abstract sculpture both monumental and miniature.
‘Water Sparks,’ the current retrospective at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, features 50 of Priour’s sculptures, both indoor and outdoor pieces, ranging from maquettes for his monumental architectural work to smaller ‘Primitive Pets’ and ‘Rusted Bolt’ series to several of the miniature chairs that were a part of his recent ‘Texas Chair Project’ which was on exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art.
‘WaterSparks’ was organized by Galveston Art Center curator Clint Willour and scheduled to open in Galveston this fall until — perhaps in a bit of odd Texas Gulf Coast fate — Hurricane Ike last year forced the Art Center to close for repairs. The exhibit will finally travel to Galveston in January. Until then, we have it here in Austin.
Priour gives a talk about his work Thursday night at 6:30 p.m.
‘Water Sparks: The First 30 Years of Sculpture; A Damian Priour Retrospective.’
6:30. p.m. Thursday
Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road
www.umlaufsculpture.org
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October 19, 2009
Roger Shimomura @ the Blanton
Since the 1960s, Japanese American artist Roger Shimomura has probed the socio-political issues surrounding the Asian American experience by combining images from both American and Japanese culture.
Shimomura presents a tangled aesthetic landscape that through its jumble actually reveals much about a conflicting cultural situation. Superman meets geisha and classic cartoon characters clash with traditional Japanese figures in the artist’s layered prints and paintings.
Shimomura gives a talk on his work as part of the Lectures in Art and Diaspora: Asian In America series.
5 p.m. Tuesday
Auditorium, Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Congress Ave.
Free
www.blantonmuseum.org
Image: ‘After the Movies, No. 1,’ 1993. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 56 inches, diptych
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October 15, 2009
Review: 'Erin Curtis -- Perspective Threshold'
Everything about Erin Curtis’ solo show, ‘Perspective Threshold,’ now at Women & Their Work, is joyfully subversive.
Getting the boot? Two maxims of high modernism: ‘less is more’ and ‘ornament is crime.’
‘Says who?’ Curtis’ work declares.
And while modernist architectural icons figure as the subjects of her paintings — Eero Saarinen’s 1955 General Motors Technical Center, for example — Curtis eschews the restrained modernist palette and goes for crazy, intense colors, her use of acrylic paint adding to the artificiality of the hues.
Curtis’ paintings are giddy critiques. Yes, there’s a cool modernist building somewhere in each of these paintings. But those buildings are not entirely legible, drowned out by a riot of ornament. Planes of busy patterning and vivid decoration — historically dismissed as characteristics of folk art or traditional women’s art — disrupt the cool logic of three-point perspective. Nothing is fixed in place here and everything, especially the pictorial plane, is up for negotiation.
In one of the best recent uses of the sometimes awkward Women and Their Work gallery, Curtis moves her colorful critiques off the wall. Photographs of lush, green foliage are printed on immense swatches of billboard plastic fabric and draped overhead at the entrance to and in one corner of the exhibit. Nature — the plastic kind, that is — threatens to take over here.
And a playhouse-scale facade of a modernist house seems to bust out of one wall and invade several yards into the gallery. Step over the house’s threshold and inside you’ll see fake shadows painted on the interior wall, while cut-outs of Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Barcelona chairs occupy the mini room. Nothing real in here.
Outside the mini house, a pair of mini pool chairs surround a mini pool of flat blue sheet plastic. The mini chairs have an ideal view of a mini billboard that sports ‘Perspectivism,’ a cityscape writ in Curtis’ mishmash of flat planes and shapes that have been jiggered with a festive frenzy of stripes, flowers, diamonds and other patterns and thrown out of axonometric perspective.
Exuberant illusion undermines any expectations of order in Curtis’ universe.
So much for cool logic.
‘Erin Curtis: Perspective Threshold’
Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St.
10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays through Nov. 18
www.womenandtheirwork.org
Image: ‘Backwaters’ Erin Curtis
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October 13, 2009
Meet 'Herb & Dorothy' tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS
Now, that the recession has taken the frenzy out of the over-heated — and over-hyped — art market, a new documentary ‘Herb & Dorothy,’ on PBS tonight, reminds us of a couple who, without any independent financial means of their, amassed one of the most impressive collections of art simply driven by their passion.
Beginning in the early 1960s Herb Vogel, a high-school dropout and aspiring artist worked as a postal clerk, and his wife Dorothy, a reference librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library, filled their modest one-bedroom Manhattan apartment with the art they loved — chiefly work by minimalist and conceptual artists who at the time were just emerging and mostly unknown.
The Vogels devoted all of Herb’s salary to acquisitions and lived modestly off of Dorothy’s librarian salary. They had two rules: the piece had to be affordable and it had to fit their tiny apartment
Their first purchase? A small, table-top sculpture by John Chamberlain.
‘Herb & Dorothy’ broadcasts tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS. The hour-long film, by Megumi Sasaki, is kicks off the Independent Lens series, a weekly anthology of new documentaries.
Not only did they become regular fixtures on the New York art scene, the Vogels befriended with many artists including Sol LeWitt, Chuck Close, Richard Tuttle and Robert and Sylvia Mangold.
While ‘Herb and Dorothy’ doesn’t unearth a deep portrait of the couple, it does serve up a glimpse of the Vogel’s and their singular style: They once agreed to take care of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s cat for a summer in exchange for art from Christo.
The Vogels collected more than 4,700 works of art and in the early 1990s moved their entire collection to the National Museum of Art — the first museum they had visited together on their honeymoon in 1962.
With the Vogel collection so large, the couple and the National Museum hatched a creative way to share. Some 50 museums — one in state — would each receive 50 works of art from the Vogel collection with the proviso that the entire gift be exhibited together once within five years and that if it were deaccessioned, it had to be done only as a whole.
To chose the 50 museums for The Vogel 50x50 project, the Vogels used a range of personal criteria. Here in the Lone Star State, the Blanton Museum of Art earned the mantel as the UT museum had in 1997 hosted an exhibit of Vogel’s collection — well, just a part of it, that is.
The Blanton received its ‘Vogel 50x50’ collection this summer.
Image: ‘Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe,’ Richard Pettibone. Acrylic and silkscreen, 1973.
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October 8, 2009
'Contemporary Culture' says it all
Personally, I like the title of current show at Lora Reynolds Gallery, ‘Contemporary Culture.’
When fussy, self-consciously clever titles burden so many exhibitions (do they emphasize burdensome titles in curator school nowadays?), directness is refreshing.
‘Contemporary Culture’ features contemporary artists whose work roots through contemporary events and culture. Artists represented are Conrad Bakker, Colby Bird, Graham Dolphin, Mads Lynnerup, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, Richard Patterson, Peter Sarkisian, Jim Torok and Kehinde Wiley.
An opening reception for the exhibit from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday night will feature Bird — who was born in Austin — talking about his work at 7 p.m.
Also in attendance is Bakker who has beguiled Austin audiences since Reynolds brought the work of the Chicago-based artist to town a few years ago. Bakker’s work has since been acquired by the Blanton Museum of Art.
‘Contemporary Culture’ continues through Oct. 31. Lora Reynolds Gallery, 360 Nueces St. www.lorareynold.com
Image:
Conrad Bakker
Untitled Project: BACK ISSUES [Artforum International, Summer 1969][Stonewall Riots, New York City, June 28, 1969] , 2009
Oil on carved wood
10-5/8 x 10-5/8 x 3/8 inches
Courtesy Lora Reynolds Gallery
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Can't make it the White House? Try the Blanton
Can’t snag an invite to the private areas of the White House where the Obamas have installed 45 works of art, a list of which was announced earlier this week?
Try the Blanton Museum of Art.
Though the Obamas culled their selections from national museums in Washington — including the Smithsonian, the Hirschorn and the National Gallery of Art — work by some of the same artists selected by the first family can be seen here in Austin at the Blanton Museum of Art. With a collection strong in contemporary and modern American art, the Blanton has works by Jasper Johns, Susan Rothenberg, Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn and Edward Ruscha, all of whom are represented now at the White House.
If they’re any indication of cultural taste, the art that the Obamas chose — with consultation from White House curator William Allman — suggest a fairly more broad-ranging taste for art then we’ve seen in administrations past. The Obamas certainly seem to have a penchant for abstract modern and contemporary paintings.
On view now with the Blanton’s permanent collection ‘America/Americas’ exhibit are a sculpture by Louise Nevelson, “Dawn’s Presence - Two Columns,” and an untitled 1943 painting by American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko.
The Obamas also chose a painting by New York-based African American artist Glenn Ligon, whose conceptual works probe the contemporary African American experience. At the Blanton, you can take in Ligon’s “Untitled (Hands/Stranger in the Village #1),” in which silkcreened text from James Baldwin’s 1955 essay on racial discrimination, “Stranger in the Village,” is covered in coal dust, its message obscured as if to suggest that the essay’s meaning has been lost or forgotten over time.
Ligon told the Associate Press,that it was “intensely flattering” for the Obamas to want his painting to hang in their private spaces.
Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. $3-$7, free Thursdays. www.blantonmuseum.org
Image:
Louise Nevelson
Dawn’s Presence - Two Columns, 1969-1975
Painted Wood
116 x 67 x 31 in.
Purchase as a gift in memory of Laura Lee Scurlock Blanton by her children, 2005
Blanton Museum of Art
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October 7, 2009
The Obamas bring modern, abstract art to the White House
The art world is buzzing after the release yesterday of the 45 works art President and Mrs. Obama chose for display in the private quarters of the White House.
Modern abstraction, contemporary African-American artists, Native American Indian pottery and even some 19th-century patent models are among the things the first family chose. It’s a selection that shows a surprising range and a considered approach.
Among the artists chosen by Obamas is Alma Thomas, an under-recognized African-American expressionist painter based in Washington D.C. Here’s a complete list of work borrowed from national museums in Washington by the Obamas:
On display in the East Wing:
Alma Thomas’ “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from the Hirshhorn (right).
Displayed in the Obamas’ personal living quarters
From the National Gallery of Art:
George Catlin’s “A Crow Chief at His Toilette,”
“Camanchees Lancing a Buffalo Bull,” “Mired Buffalo and Wolves,” “Cheyenne Village,” “Grizzly Bears Attacking Buffalo,” “Game of the Arrow-Mandan,” “A Foot War Party in Council-Mandan,” “Ball-Play Dance-Choctaw,” “Buffalo Chase, with Accidents,” “Catlin and Indian Attacking Buffalo,” “K’nisteneux Indians Attacking Two Grizzly Bears”
Edward Corbett’s “Washington, D.C. November 1963 III”
Richard Diebenkorn’s “Berkeley, No. 52”
Sam Francis’s “White Line”
Winslow Homer’s “Sunset”
Jasper Johns’ “Numerals, 0 through 9”
Giorgio Morandi, two paintings called “Still Life”
Louise Nevelson’s model for “Sky Covenant” sculpture
Susan Rothenberg’s “Butterfly”
Mark Rothko’s “Red Band”
Edward Ruscha’s “I Think I’ll …”
Leon Polk Smith’s “Stretch of Black III”
Unknown artist: “Chief Jumper of the Seminoles”
From the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden:
Josef Albers’ “Homage to the Square: Elected II,”
“Homage to the Square: Midday,” “Study for Homage to the Square: Nacre”
Edgar Degas’ “Dancer Putting on Stocking,” “The Bow.”
Nicolas De Stael’s “Nice.”
Glenn Ligon’s “Black Like Me No. 2.”
Alma Thomas’ “Sky Light.”
From the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
William H. Johnson’s “Booker T. Washington Legend,” “Children Dance,” “Flower to Teacher,” “Folk Family.”
On display in the West Wing
In the Oval Office from the Museum of the American Indian: vase by Lucy M. Lewis (Acoma Pueblo), jar by Steve S. (Iroquois), jar by Maria Poveka Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo), the bottle “Intertwining Scrolls” by Jeri Redcorn (Caddo).
In the Oval Office from the National Museum of American History: Samuel F. B. Morse’s 1849 telegraph register patent model, John A. Peer’s 1874 gear-cutting machine patent model, Henry Williams’ 1877 feathering paddle-wheel (for steamboats) patent model.
In the Cabinet Room from the Harry S. Truman Library, Frank O. Salisbury’s “President Harry S. Truman.”
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October 6, 2009
'Hi, How Are You Are You?' artist Daniel Johnston gets an iPhone app
In a case of technology imitating art, the bipolar singer-songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston — legendary in Austin for, among other creations, his ‘Hi, How Are You?’ mural near the UT campus — now has a iPhone app that’s been created based on music and visual art.
Johnston’s quirky cartoon creatures inhabit a virtual world — the game is actually called ‘Hi, How Are You?’ — and as a player sets out to battle the devil-as-frog enemy, Johnston’s quirky folk music plays.
Read American-Statesman tech culture writer Omar Gallaga’s blog note on the game.
‘Hi, How Are You?’ was developed by Austin-based game creators Peter Franco and Steve Broumly of DrFunFun.
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Wednesday: It's arts and crafts night on PBS
Need some free recession-ready arts programming?
Wednesday, it’s arts and crafts night on PBS with the premiere of two series, ‘Art:21: Art in the Twenty-First Century’ and ‘Craft in America.’ And Tuesday you can preview an episode of ‘Art 21’ for free at Arthouse at 6 p.m.
‘Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century,’ a four-part series
9 p.m. Wednesdays, Oct. 7-28
PBS
‘Craft in America: Origins and Process’
7 p.m. tonight
PBS
‘Program Three: Transformations,’ a screening and discussion
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.
Cost: Free
Information: 453-5312, www.arthousetexas.org
Perhaps what makes ‘Art:21’ the documentary series about contemporary visual art, such a pleasure is its directness.
No voiceovers or talking head experts interfere with the Peabody Award-winning series, which begins its fifth season Wednesday. Instead, artists speak directly and do so from their studios or homes or wherever they happen to be making art. And that gives “Art: 21” a certain intimacy and accessibility that’s not always the case with the contemporary art world that love to throw an impenetrable wall between it and an audience.
Each one-hour episode is organized around a theme. This season it’s “Compassion,” “Fantasy,” “Transformation” and “Systems”. But don’t let those organizing rubrics cloud your viewing too much.
More importantly, backgrounds and influences are learned and the series gives a peek into how an artist makes choices about what he or she creates - or doesn’t create — reveals much more.
This season we see South African artist William Kentridge apply his hand-drawn animation techniques to his first-ever design for an opera set. Provocateur Jeff Koons reveals the factory-style art-making method he uses employing a plethora of assistants. Cindy Sherman continues to morph into other characters for her photographs, but takes things to a new tragic level. And Chinese artist Cao Fei speaks through her virtual reality avatar.
Getting a glimpse the artists at work, making creative choices and speaking frankly makes “Art21” like a casual, friendly encounter with some of the most innovate and original thinkers of our times.
Image: Yinka Shonibare MBE. ‘How to Blow up Two Heads at Once (Ladies),’ 2006. © Yinka Shonibare, MBE, courtesy the artist, James Cohan Gallery, New York
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'Marjorie Moore: Labyrinth'
Austin artist Marjorie Moore has always blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and imagination, the past and the present, the natural world and the supernatural imagination.
Now, in an exhibit at Texas State University-San Marcos, Moore riffs on the long history of scientific and botanical illustration with a series of multimedia drawings.
For centuries artists sought to define, categorize and organize the natural world through meticulous drawings. After all, if humankind could identify everything in the wild, then the wild wouldn’t be so wild - and dangerous. Hence, nature drawing became one of the longest threads in the history of art and the history of science, always entwining the two.
For “Labyrinth,” Moore tapped Texas State University’s entomology collection as a point of origin to create her own version of a wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonder, the 19th-century precursor to today’s modern museum. Wunderkammers were part scientific display and part circus sideshow. And in Moore’s wunderkammer, categories are questioned, and the boundaries between science, popular culture and art are eroded.
Is this today’s natural world we’re looking at in Moore’s work, or is this some imagined future of plant and animal life? Moore combines found vintage scientific and storybook images with her collection of toys and nature specimens to produce a blended narrative of the past and the future of the natural world.
‘Marjorie Moore: Labyrinth’
When: 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays-Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 22
Where: Gallery II, Mitte Art Building, Sessom and Comanche streets, Texas State University, San Marcos
Free
Image: ‘Pond Collection #15’
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September 30, 2009
Be a part of art history on Tues., Oct. 6
Want to be a part of art history?
Pablo Vargas Lugo invites you to be a part of his ‘Eclipses for Austin’ project, a commission from the Blanton Museum of Art. And to all participating volunteers, Vargas Lugo will give an original signed artwork that he has produced for the occasion.
The Mexican artist needs 350 volunteers to gather on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., in the stands of UT’s Darrel K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium.
In synchronicity, Vargas Lugo will direct the group to hold and flip black and white cards in sequence to simulate the 10 solar eclipses that will occur in Texas over the course of the next 340 years, The artist will create 10 videos of the event that will be exhibited at the Blanton in November.
‘Eclipses for Austin’
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
UT Darrel K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium
Lunch will also be provided for all volunteers. To play a part in the project email eclipsesforaustin@gmail.com
Watch a digital video sketch of the project:
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More art talkin' on Thursday
There’s plenty of places to talk, or hear talking, about art Thursday night. In addition to performance art pioneer RoseLee Goldberg at Arthouse Thursday, Austin Museum of Art and the Creative Research Laboratory also have gallery talks.
Dean Young: Poetry Reading
Together artist Chuck Close and poet Bob Holman created composite portraits of their friends for the exhibition ‘A Couple of Ways of Doing Something.’ In response, poet Dean Young reads his work, which is largely influenced by the New York School of poets and combines aspects of experimentation and surrealism. His ‘Elegy on Toy Piano’ was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Doors at 6:30 pm., reading begins at 7 p.m. Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave. Free with Museum admission ($4-$5). No cost to museum members or UT students with ID.
Fall Faculty Exhibition: Gallery Talk
In conjunction with the current exhibit of faculty art work, John Yancey, John D. Murchison Regents Professor in Art, and chair of the University of Texas department of art and art history, will moderate a group discussion with several UT faculty artists about their work and process. Panelists will include Lee Chesney, Gloria Lee, Moyosore Okejidi and Dan Sutherland. 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. today. Creative Research Laboratory, 2832 E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Free.
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RoseLee Goldberg at Arthouse
In 1979, RoseLee Goldberg, art historian, critic, curator and author, blazed the trail for the study of performance art with her book ‘Performance Art from Futurism to the Present.’
Goldberg will speak at Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave., Thursday at 7 p.m. in a free lecture. See www.arthousetexas.org.
In 2004 — after several decades working with a broad range of interdisciplinary artists such as Laurie Anderson, Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson — Goldberg founded ‘Performa’, a multidisciplinary non-profit arts organization dedicated to live performance art. ‘Performa’ hosts a biennial festival of new visual art performance. ‘Performa 09’ runs Nov. 1-22.
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September 29, 2009
Beili Liu makes fragile, profound connections
In one the best solo exhibits to light up an Austin gallery of late, Beili Liu’s beguiling show now at D. Berman Gallery transverses a great distance artistically and intellectually, but lands very much in our time and place.
‘Bound’ is Liu’s first solo show since she landed in Austin in 2008 when she joined the art faculty of the University of Texas.
Read more about the exhibit here.
See a slide show of Liu’s current exhibit.
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September 26, 2009
Arthouse raises $5 million, construction set to begin
Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary art center, announced tonight that it has raised $5 million towards its planned $6 million renovation and that construction will begin next month.
The new design — by architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis of New York — will triple the available exhibit and program space from 7,000 square-feet to 20,830 square-feet. The arts venue will re-open in October 2010, in advance of the organization’s centennial in 2011..
“Despite the global economic challenges of the past year, local and national conditions have gotten stronger and a confluence of circumstances have given Arthouse a unique opportunity to leverage today’s highly favorable construction costs and financing rates,” said Arthouse board chair Stephen M. Jones.
The renovation project calls for changes to the building’s facade and both floors, adding new galleries, two studios, a 90-seat community/screening room as well as the addition of a 5,500 square-foot roof top venue for art, film and special events.
The building, at 700 Congress Ave., was originally a movie house, built in the 1920s. It then was a department store beginning in the 1950s. Arthouse purchased the building in 1995 and remodeled the first floor, opening the venue in 1998.
Visit an interactive feature on the project.
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The Roman Republic gives way to the Empire
‘The 24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project’ continues at Arthouse. A miniature ancient Rome takes shape in the Congress Avenue contemporary art center guided by artist Liz Glynn in an extravagant group art-making project and dynamic history lesson.
Read more about it. And head to Arthouse before midnight tonight to join in on the fun.
By mid-afternoon the Roman Republic is complete, aquaducts and all.
Materials were harvested from leftover exhibit preparation and packing materials at Arthouse. The art center will close soon for a year to undergo a major renovation.
Some came in togas and played a board game based on the Roman Empire.
To mark the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire, members of the Univ. of Texas Wrestling Team gave a Greco-Roman wrestling demonstration. Latin phrases adorn banners hung around the gallery. “Audere est facere” means “to dare is to do.”
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The building of Rome begins
“5, 4, 3, 2, 1 — It’s 743 B.C,” said artist Liz Glynn at midnight Friday.
And so began the “The 24 Roman Reconstruction Project” at Arthouse, Glynn’s grand public participatory art-making event.
At the rate of about 1.23 years per minute, Glynn is leading the public in the construction — and eventual destruction — of the Roman Empire using scrap recycled materials.
See the full schedule of events. And head on down to Arthouse.
The seven hills of Rome — including Palatine, the centermost hill — are designated on the gallery floor.
Archaic Rome starts to emerge.
The Tiber River is painted as huts and pagan temples are built.
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September 25, 2009
Tonight: Empire building at warp speed with '24 Hour Roman Reconctruction Project'
Beginning at midnight tonight, and moving at the rate of about 1.238 years per minute, artist Liz Glynn will lead all comers to the building of the Roman Republic, then the Roman Empire and its destruction.
In miniature of course. And at Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.
The free participatory public art-making extravaganza not only features the group building project, but there’s a host of Rome-related happenings too. Greco-Roman wrestling anyone? Be there at 2:30. See the full schedule of events here.
Read coverage on Glynn’s project.
Just as Glynn’s project marks an auspicious era in Western civilization, so does it mark an auspicious moment for Arthouse. The oldest statewide visual arts organization in Texas, Arthouse, which started in 1911 as the Texas Fine Arts Association, is about to begin a major $6.6 million renovation of its downtown Austin home. Once a 1920s movie theater, then a department store, the building at Seventh Street and Congress Avenue will be transformed once again to become a modern contemporary arts venue suited for flexible arts events and multimedia creative displays. The Rome project is the last public event at Arthouse before it closes for a year. It will re-open in fall 2010.
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September 24, 2009
Ann Hume Wilson named as Conspirare executive director
After a nationwide search, Austin Grammy-nominated choirConspirare has selected Ann Hume Wilson as its next executive director, Conspirare officials announced today.
Wilson is currently associate director of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also served as interim director during 2008-09.
“Much as I will miss being at the Blanton, I jumped at the chance to come to Conspirare, which brings such acclaim to Austin through its recordings, tours, and always-moving performances,” said Wilson, in a statement released by Conspirare. “I am thrilled to be returning to the performing arts after many years with museums, and look forward to building more recognition and support for the inspiring art of Craig Hella Johnson and his amazing company of voices.”
Wilson’s job at the Blanton will conclude on October 23 and she will take the helm at Conspirare on November 2. Melissa J. Eddy, who has served as Conspirare’s interim managing director since July 1, will become its communications and grants manager.
A native of Washington D.C., Wilson has over three decades of experience in arts administration. Since 2004, she has been associate director of the Blanton, also serving as interim director during 2008-09. At the Blanton, she oversaw all administrative and operational aspects of the museum and led the institutional branding efforts and marketing campaign for the highly successful grand opening of the Blanton’s new building in 2006.
Wilson has served as director of marketing and communications for the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; manager of public relations and marketing for the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; director of marketing for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; director of public relations for Spoleto Festival U.S.A.; and assistant manager of the Opera Company of Boston. She is a frequent speaker on arts management, branding and strategic planning at national and regional arts conferences.
Wilson bears a connection to a fun footnote in American vocal music history. Wilson is the daughter of the late Washington Post Music Critic Paul Hume who in 1950 earned the wrath of President Harry Truman when Hume wrote a negative review of a solo voice performance by Margaret Truman, the president’s daughter, who had aspirations to be a professional singer. “(She) cannot sing very well … is flat a good deal of the time,” wrote Hume. President Truman wrote Hume a blistering letter of complaint telling Hume “you’re off the beam.”
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September 22, 2009
Photographer Elliott Erwitt in town for two lectures
Famed advertising and journalistic photographer Elliott Erwitt comes to Austin this week for two lectures, courtesy of the Austin Center for Photography.
Erwitt made his mark with candid black-and-white photographs that often captured the absurd situations that erupted from everyday situations. In 1953 Erwitt, who was born in Paris to Russian emigre parents and raised in California, joined the Magnum Photos Agency. He has 17 books of his work published and his photos have appeared in countless publications around the world. He will talk about his career and work.
Elliott Erwitt
7 p.m. Thursday and Friday
Blanton Museum of Art Auditorium
General Admission: $20 (Advanced sales), $25 (At the door)
Students/Seniors/Military: $10 (Advance sales), $15 (At the door)
See www.visitacp.org for ticket information
A four-day exhibition of Erwitt’s prints opens at Austin’s L Nowlin Gallery on Wednesday. The photographs will be on display and offered for sale. The exhibit runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept 23 to 26. L. Nowlin Gallery is at 1202-A W. Sixth St.
A new non-profits arts organization, the Austin Center for Photography launched formally in January. To date, they’ve brought in such photo luminaries as Mary Ellen Mark and Alec Soth and co-sponsored the Austin Museum of Art exhibition of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Upcoming guests include Lauren Greenfield.
Read more about the organization here www.visitacp.org
Image: © Elliot Erwitt, New York City, 1974
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September 21, 2009
Tonight: Early Roman tale told in 1960s-set film
It’s “Mad Men” meets Roman myth in Eve Sussman’s breathtaking, extravagant 80-minute art video, “The Rape of the Sabine Women.”
Conceived as something of a dialogue-less visual opera, “The Rape of the Sabine Women” is a video musical reinterpretation of the legend of the founding of Rome, in particular the episode in which the first generation of Roman men acquires wives by force from the neighboring tribe of Sabine.
Arthouse screens the movie for free tonight at the Paramount Theatre. Sussman will be on hand for a talk afterwards
‘Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women,’ a film screening and artist talk
When: 7 p.m. Monday
Where: Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave.
Tickets: Free
Information: www.arthousetexas.org
Sussman — a Brooklyn-based video artist and art-world favorite — has updated the mythic tale by transporting it to a trendy, hyper-polished 1960s midcentury modern setting. In Sussman’s Rome, the warriors are slim suit-wearing James Bond types while the Sabines are stylishly coiffed women in large sunglasses and Jackie Onassis-style dresses.
Arthouse presents the video in a free screening Monday night at the Paramount Theatre. Sussman will be on hand for a post-screening Q-and-A.
Sussman took as her launching point the artistic interpretations of the Sabine tale as it was rendered memorably in paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David - especially David’s 1799 “Intervention of the Sabine Women.” But Sussman modernized the background of her artistic riff on the ancient tale. Shot against sleek settings in Berlin and also in Athens’ gritty Agora meat market and at a classic 1960s modernist dream house overlooking the Aegean Sea, the lavish production involved hundreds of actors that dramatize the painterly scenes.
A riveting score by Jonathan Bepler adds to the visually intense story and acts as a stand-in for any dialogue. Bepler recorded sounds live on site and also included an ensemble of bouzoukis (Greek stringed instruments) and a chorus of 800 voices.
Sussman’s extravagant retelling of the Sabine tale delivers viewers to a pleasant point just before sensory overload.
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September 16, 2009
Austin Museum of Art announces new exhibit initiatives
In an effort to do more with less during recessionary times, the Austin Museum of Art has re-jiggered its exhibition plan and beginning in November it will present three distinct exhibits at a time at its downtown digs at 823 Congress Ave.
“Reconfiguring our galleries and exhibition schedule will give the community access to a greater variety of artworks and experiences,” said Dana Friis-Hansen, AMOA executive director and chief curator, “and help us better harness reduced resources. As we considered how to do more with less in a tightened economy, we decided the best route was to draw on both the museum’s and the community’s artistic assets.”
In effect, the move ups the number of exhibit the museum will offer from five to eight or so each year to a total of 10 annually. The museum has had to make across the board budget cuts twice in the past year due to the recessionary economy.
Featured exhibits, including traveling shows, will continue to occupy the front and central galleries. Up right now is ‘Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something.’ Coming in November is ‘David Bates’ a retrospective of the Dallas artist.
In the side galleries, the museum will feature loosely thematic exhibits culled from its permanent collection. ‘Collection Selections’ will change roughly every six months and will give the museum a chance to show things that it normally keeps in storage.
Also taking up residency in the galleries come November is the ‘New Works’ series, a quarterly exhibit series that will introduce the latest from innovative local artists. The first year will feature shows by Jade Walker, Luke Savisky, Sunyong Chung and the Okay Mountain collective.
Here’s the ‘New Works’ series schedule for the first year:
Jade Walker, ‘Spectator Sport’
Nov. 21, 2009 -Jan. 31, 2010
Walker creates a bulbous fabric and found object installation that explores ideas about gender and sports.
Luke Savisky
Feb. 13 - May 9, 2010
There’s little about human experience that Luke Savisky doesn’t examine in his film art. Known for stretching the limits of visual media, Savisky uses manual film montage, direct projection techniques, kinetic sets and sculptures and unusual projection surfaces in unlikely environments.
Sunyong Chung
May 22 - Aug. 15, 2010
Ceramic artist Sunyong Chung pushes the traditional Japanese nerikome technique into new territory with her monumental sculpture and her imagery offers new riffs on traditional ceramic art imagery.
Okay Mountain. ‘Untitled (Spin Off).’
Aug. 28 - Nov. 14, 2010
From the Okay Mountain collective comes a fresh look from both ends of the camera lens at mass media. Who is watching who after all? With a studio audience mural and television soundstage installation, ‘Untitled (Spin Off)’ will consider what goes on behind the scenes.
Images: Chuck Close, ‘Self Portrait’ (top). Jade Walker, ‘Figure 1-5,’ installation view (bottom).
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September 10, 2009
'Mark-Making' extended
Arguably one of the smartest gallery group exhibits to pop up this summer, ‘Mark-Making: Dots, Lines and Curves’ at Lora Reynolds Gallery will hang out a little longer as Austin’s art scene gets its autumn groove
The exhibit will now continue through Sept. 19. See www.lorareynolds.com for more info.
What distinguishes ‘Mark-Making’ is the breadth and depth that’s packed into this not-huge gallery.
For one thing, the show’s roster is frankly daunting: Noriko Ambe, Benjamin Butler, Graham Dolphin, Tara Donovan, Teresita Fernández, Dan Fischer, Ceal Floyer, Ewan Gibbs, Joseph Grigely, Mitzi Pederson, Ed Ruscha, Cordy Ryman, Fred Sandback, Kate Shepherd, Tony Smith, Robert Therrien, Jim Torok, Terry Winters and Daniel Zeller.
Phew.
But it’s the premise of this show that rewards repeated viewing. The primacy of the artist’s act is the concern of ‘Mark-Making.’ After all, in the beginning is the mark, the fundamental gesture that every artist performs. And, really shouldn’t we be getting back to basics now?
At the very least, it feels like a refreshing exercise to consider the basic action of art making. A pencil swipes a page. A knife cuts a stack of paper. A line of yarn graces a gallery wall and casts a shadow.
Take note of Ambe’s work in the exhibit, a diptych called ‘Cracking.’ The Japanese-born New York-based artist will have a solo exhibition at Lora Reynolds in November. With exacting precision, Ambe creates a sort of three-dimensional style of drawing by hand-cutting stacks of paper. For her upcoming show, Ambe slices and sculpts artists’ books. The result reads as a kind of three-dimensional topographical reconsideration of each book. And it’s brilliant and mesmerizing.
Image: Noriko Ambe. Cut on catalogues of “Attention to Detail - Curated by Chack Close” at Flag Art Foundation. www.norikoambe.com
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August 26, 2009
Preview of UT's new Visual Arts Center
When it opened in 1963, the modernist Fine Arts Building boasted a gallery with a soaring ceiling. The space became the University Art Museum, later re-named the Huntington Art Gallery and then finally, in 1998, it was renamed the Blanton Museum of Art.
Today, the entity now known as the Blanton opened its major two-building complex in 2006. And now, the space in the Fine Arts Building undergoing a $5 million transformation and will be turnedmed into the new Visual Arts Center, a facility for exhibitions — with galleries inside and an outside courtyard gallery — along with graduate art studios and offices.
The VAC is scheduled for completion in 2010.
Read more about the plans here.
This Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. you can tour the Visual Arts Center.
Tours will begin every half hour and meet at the he College of Fine Arts University Co-Op Student Center on the ground floor of the Doty Fine Arts Building. See a map here.
Designed by noted San Antonio architects Lake/Flato, the project will add an additional 22,000 square feet of space to UT’s Department of Art and Art History.
Places on the tour are limited. You must RSVP to 512-471-1655 or carolynp@mail.utexas.edu
And remember, it’s a construction zone: SAFETY REQUIREMENTS DO NOT ALLOW HIGH-HEELED SHOES OR OPEN-TOED SHOES ON TOURS.
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August 25, 2009
'bobrauschenbergamerica' -- Fall 2009 arts picks: 2
When it debuted in 2003, the New York Times called Charles L. Mee’s homage to Texas-born artist Robert Rauschenberg ‘brashly, unapologetically entertaining.’
A collage theatrical tribute to perhaps the most inventive of all visual collagists, ‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ will get a staging this fall at St. Edward’s University’s Mary Moody Northen Theatre.
Rauschenberg, who died last year at age 82, embraced pop culture and rejected the angst and self-involvement of the Abstract Expressionists who came to the fore in post-war America. The stuff of everyday life became the medium in which Rauschenberg worked as he forged a breathtaking body of work rooted in the creativity chance and found images and not the authoritarian individual artist.
‘bobrauschenbergamerica’ plays 7:30 p.m. Thursday - Saturdays, Sundays at 2 p.m. Sundays, Sept. 17-27. Mary Moody Northen Theatre, St. Edward’s University, 3001 S, Congress Ave. Advance tickets $15 ($12 students, seniors, St. Edward’s community). All tickets $18 at the door.
Image: Robert Rauschenberg, ‘Retroactive I,’ 1963
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August 24, 2009
WPA moves to new studio
The Women Printmakers of Austin are moving to a new studio in the Pump Project Art Complex. The lively East Austin arts space, a former 1950s warehouse, is already home to the working studios and galleries of emerging artists and craftspeople.
WPA will join the Pump Project crowd, opening a printmaking studio for its members and non-members.
Saturday, Aug. 29 beginning at 6:20 p.m., the WPA will be hosting a studio baby shower to raise money and supplies for the new facility. Read the registry of needed suppliess.
WPA will stage its annual exhibit, ‘Multiple Originals’ in the Pump Project gallery Sept. 26-Oct. 17.
See womenprintmakers.com for more information.
Pump Project will be a busy scene Saturday night. Also going on starting at 7 p.m. is the reception of ‘Anxiety,’ Cantanker magazine’s third annual summer catalog and exhibition. Featuring the work of 19 artists from Texas and beyond, ‘Anxiety’ was selected by Austin Museum of Art’s assistant curator Andrea Mellard.
Image: ‘Roulette Farm,’ etching, aquating. Carolyn Kimball, WPA member.
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August 19, 2009
Michelangelo's first painting on view Sept. 26
Michelangelo’s first painting, ‘The Torment of Saint Anthony,’ will go view Sept. 26 as part of the permanent collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
The painting is the first by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) to enter an American collection and one of only four known easel paintings generally believed to come from his hand.
The museum purchased the painting earlier this year for an undisclosed sum, though some news sources have reported that is was rumored to have sold for more than $6 million.
The painting — oil and tempera on a poplar panel measuring 47cm x 34cm — is dated 1487 or 88, when Michelangelo would have been 12 or 13. At that time the artist had befriended an assistant in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio in Florence and is known to have copied an engraving of St, Anthony by a German master called Martin Schongauer — a work already owned by the Kimbell.
Scholars, however, have long debated whether the painting was created by Michelangelo’s own hand or whether it was produced by other artists in the Florentine workshop.
New York art dealer Adam Williams purchased the painting at auction in July 2008 in London where it was sold as attributed ‘from the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio.’ Williams reportedly paid more than $2 million for the painting.
Once in the U.S., the painting was cleaned by restorers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and experts there verified that the painting was from Michelangelo’s own hand. The Kimbell purchased the painting from Williams.
The painting was featured in an exhibit at the Met this summer. It will be on permanent display at the Kimbell.
Image: Michelangelo Buonarotti, The Torment of Saint Anthony, c. 1487-88. Tempera and oil on panel, 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
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August 18, 2009
Eclipse for Austin
Artist Pablo Vargas Lugo needs you. Actually, the Mexican artist needs 350 of you to participate in his next project, ‘Eclipses for Austin,’ a commission from the Blanton Museum of Art
On October 6, Vargas Lugo will gather 350 people in the stands of UT’s Darrel K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium to stage a performance that the artist will film and produce in 10 videos that will be exhibited at the Blanton in November.
In synchronicity, Vargas Lugo will direct the group to hold and flip black and white cards in sequence to simulate the 10 solar eclipses that will occur in Texas over the course of the next 340 years.
With ‘Eclipses’ Vargas Lugo sets p an examination of effect that collective events or activities inspire in people despite everyone’s unique backgrounds. Total eclipses of the sun are a rare occurrence (they happen only a few times per year and only in very specific locations) and throughout history eclipses have provoked astonishment, anxiety, hope, joy and fear in people.
The filming/performance will begin at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6. Volunteers are needed to fill one or more of the following time-slots: 8 to 10 a.m.; 10 a.m. to 12 noon or 12 noon to 2 p.m.
To sign up or for more information email eclipsesforaustin@gmail.com
Watch a digital video sketch of the project:
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August 4, 2009
Don't forget 'The Lining of Forgetting'
You knew you meant to. But you forget.
In our information-blasted age, there’s so much to remember, it’s all too easy, and forgivable, to forget.
Our contemporary conundrum of memory and forgetting is at the heart of `The Lining of Forgetting,’ a smart contemporary art now on view at the Austin Museum of Art.
But this is the last week to catch the exhibit. It closes Aug. 9. Don’t forget.
Read a review of the exhibit here.
Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays- Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays
ww.amoa.org
‘Untitled (From Vietnam to Hollywood.’ Dinh Q. Le weaves war photos with Hollywood stills to reveal pop culture’s ability to gloss over ugly realities.
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August 3, 2009
'Jerry Bywaters: Lone Star Printmaker'
It doesn’t get more Texas than the art of Jerry Bywaters.
The late Paris, Texas native and longtime Dallasite pioneered the style that became known as Lone Star Regionalism. His expressive images captured the landscapes, the small towns, the architecture and the ordinary people of Texas and Southwest.
‘Jerry Bywaters: Lone Star Printmaker,’ an exhibit now at the Blanton Museum of Art, gathers 39 prints the artist made from 1935 to 1948. It also features source photographs and some archival materials that illuminate the Bywaters’s printmaking process.
A member of a group of young painters known as the Dallas Nine, in the 1930s Bywaters helped define a regional artistic identity for the Lone Star State. His interpretations of landscapes, urban spaces, small towns and local characters gained widespread popularity and helped propel Texas artists — and art about Texas — into the national limelight.
Bywaters was fond of taking trips around the state, often with his fellow artists, with sole purpose of finding real life scenes to capture in his fluid, folksy style. Always respectful of his subject matter, Bywaters nevertheless highlighted the whimsy he saw in such scenes as small West Texas towns with hastily built main streets lined by falsefront buildings as an attempt to give the place an air of dignity.
It’s gentle, but there’s a slight air of irreverence to many of Bywaters’ scenes of Texas.
Bywaters also traveled to Mexico where he met famed muralist Diego Rivera. Afterwards, not only did Bywaters incorporate Mexican themes and styles into his art (several prints in the are proof), he also was the first person to author a published review Rivera’s work in the United States.
‘Lone Star Printmaker’ shows the outcome of Bywaters efforts to produce multiple copies of his work so the Texas regionalist aesthetic could spread far and wide.
‘Jerry Bywaters: Lone Star Printmaker’ continues 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 8. Blanton Museum of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Ave. $3-$7, free Thursdays. www.blantonmuseum.org.
Images:
Jerry Bywaters
Paint Colt, 1937
Color linoleum black, ed. 50
Jerry Bywaters Collection on Art of the Southwest, Hammons Library, SMU
Jerry Bywaters
Opera at Popular Prices, 1936
Transfer lithograph, edition 6/30
Jerry Bywaters Collection of Art of the Southwest, Hamon Arts Library at SMU,
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July 28, 2009
Film installation doesn't Mickey Mouse around, curator says
In case you missed it, we wrote about Austin artist Amy Grappell and her compelling video installation, ‘Quadrangle,’ that’s now on view at Arthouse as part of the exhibit ‘NAT 24: New American Talent, The Twenty-Fourth Exhibition.’
You can read that story here.
Hamza Walker, this year’s guest curator for Arthouse’s ‘New American Talent’ and director of education at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society, sifted through the work of nearly 700 artists from 44 states who submitted to the show. From that massive pool, Walker selected 26 artists including eight from Austin.
Walker really, really liked Grappell’s ‘Quadrangle.’ Here’s what he told us:
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It is a superb piece, really first rate work. I can’t remember how many videos I watched in jurying NAT; a few dozen at minimum. Amy’s was one of the first and it set a very very high bar. It is the only video piece in the show for precisely that reason. Nothing else compared. Not only does the work stand out within the pool of applicants, that piece stands out in any context. I live for work of that caliber. It’s the real deal, meat and potatoes kinda work—substantial, serious, compelling, deeply moving and formally beautiful. In short, mature work. No Mickey Mousing around. In addition to the story, it is an outstanding piece of portraiture where the genre is not defined by medium, but whether or not you are good at working with people in soliciting aspects of their personality that speak beyond what they may be telling us verbally.
- Amy’s skill as a seasoned documentary filmmaker serves her well in making the transition to an art context. Although many artists flirt with documentary strategies, they are often unwilling to engage their subject directly. The result is dilettantism especially when it comes to an autobiographical work let alone one with Quadrangle’s complexity. One’s parents are the ultimate subject matter, meaning you really have to have the chops to pull off a work exploring their personal lives.
‘NAT 24: New American Talent, the Twenty-fourth Exhibition’ continues 1 through Sept. 6 Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave. www.arthousetexas.org
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July 27, 2009
Getting close to Chuck Close
Chuck Close redefined the way we consider portraiture. Beginning in the 1960s Close started creating massive painted portraits with a distinctive photorealistic style, typically using photographs as source material.
The super-large scale and hyper detail of Close’s portraits — many are of his artist friends such as Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Andres Serrano and Cindy Sherman — forces a reconsideration of our assumptions of what a painted portrait should, or can, be. Sometimes, people are all too human up close.
Close’s use of photographic source material led to his experimentations with photography as an artistic medium, something the artist has deeply explored in the last decade.
‘A Couple of Ways of Doing Something’ an exhibit coming to the Austin Museum of Art. The exhibit opens Aug. 22 and runs through Nov. 8. Among the programs offered is a Sept. 10 screening of ‘Portrait of Close’s Creative Circle,’ a film that examines the artist and his circle of creative friends, including Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Kiki Smith.
The exhibit features 15 daguerreotypes — which Close used as the basis to create the other works in the show — 20 digital pigment prints, seven 8-by-6-foot digital Jacquard portrait tapestries and two photogravures measuring over 47 x 40 inches. Lyrical praise poems by New York School poet Bob Holman accompany many of the portraits. Holman, a celebrated poet originated the now famous Poetry Slams at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. He now runs the Bowery Poetry Club.
The exhibit is organized by Aperture, the New York-based not-for-profit organization devoted to photography. See www.amoa.org for details.
Image: Philip Glass, 2006 digital orint. ©Chuck Close
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July 23, 2009
Rome, to be built (and destroyed) in day (and a night)
With its impending renovation coming up, Arthouse is staging what promises to be an utterly intriguing all-out art extravaganza with Liz Glynn’s ‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project.’
The super-performance of live installation art takes place Sept. 26. Beginning at midnight, and over the course of 24 hours, more than a millennium of Roman history will be reconstructed through the building of a mini Rome. Using salvaged building materials, found wood, cardboard and other odd stuff will be used, Glynn will direct collaborators and volunteers in the building of Rome which, once it’s completed, will then destroyed.
During the project performers will enact climatic moments of Roman history. Let’s hope they have an Empero Nero fiddling while the Roman Empire collapses.
Also on the schedule are musical performances, poetry readings, scholarly lectures, architectural tours of the historic Arthouse building and, in appropriately Roman Empire fashion, athletic competitions and feasts.
Glynn debuted ‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project’ in Los Angeles.
Glynn’s use of classical antiquity merges with her response to the re-building of post-Katrina New Orleans and war-ravaged Iraq, both situation where the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is used as an excuse for the lack of progress.
Architecture reflects life and politics so what better way to tour an entire empire and its people than to try to re-create at 21st-century hype-speed?
And really, what better send-off before Arthouse closes for its $6.5 million renovation? The former theater turned department store turned contemporary arts place will be re-vamped by architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis. Read more about the exciting project here.
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July 15, 2009
Happy 25th Mexic-Arte Museum
It started as a tiny space carved out of a long-gone downtown Austin warehouse.
Now, Mexic-Arte Museum is one of longest-standing Latino art museums in the country. Currently the museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary with an exhibit culled from its rather eclectic permanent collection.
The exhibit features ceremonial costumes and masks, 19th-century paintings, political cartoons, fine art prints and etchings, folk art figurines, documentary photographs, edgy contemporary prints and video art.
“Mexic-Arte is notable for being one of the first Latino museums founded in this country. Twenty-five years of providing first-voice opportunities to Chicano and Latino artists and providing educational opportunities for a diverse public is a major and wondrous achievement,” said Eduardo Díaz, director of the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C. “I think we can count on Mexic-Arte to continue exploring a wide range of themes addressing fundamental cultural and artistic development and identity issues that directly impact our communities and this country for a long time to come.”
Read more here.
Check out a slide show of the exhibit.
‘A Legacy of Change: Mexic-Arte’s 25th Anniversary Exhibition’
When: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 2
Admission: $5 ($4 students and seniors, $1 children 12 and younger). Free on Sundays during `A Legacy of Change.’
Information: 480-9373, www.mexic-artemuseum.org
`History of Mexic-Arte Museum’
What: A talk by Sylvia Orozco, museum co-founder and executive director
When: 2 p.m. Saturday
Admission: Free
Image: ‘Ya Basta EZLN 1994, Anti-globalization, Zapata Vuve Demandas del Pueblo, Alimentacion.’
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July 9, 2009
Your A-List: Time to vote for Best Art Gallery
This week the A-List, austin360.com’s reader poll, is taking votes for Austin’s Best Art Gallery (with a few art museums thrown in for good measure).
Go to Your A-List and cast your vote.
Voting ends Tuesday July 14 at 11 p.m. You can vote once per hour.
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July 1, 2009
A 'Project Runway' for visual artists? Bravo TV is now casting
It was just a matter of time.
Building on the success of ‘Project Runway,’ ‘Top Chef’ and other creative competion reality shows, Bravo TV has announced the creation of a yet-to-be-titled show (right now, it’s listed on the Bravo site at Untitled Art Project which could actually work as real title) that will pit contemporary artists against each other is some kind of undefined competition.
Casting begins soon in four cities across the country. See the casting notice.
The new series is being produced by Magical Elves (producers of ‘Project Runway’ and ‘Top Chef’) and Sarah Jessica Parker and her production company, Pretty Matches.
Wonder who will be plucked to handle the Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum roles?
The Bravo project isn’t technically the first reality competition series for contemporary artists. Art dealer and impressairo Jeffrey Deitch launched ‘Artstar’ in 2006 that followed eight artists who were selected for a group exhibit at Deitsch’s New York gallery and documented their work readying for the show. The series was screened at a few museums, but never broadcast on a television network.
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June 16, 2009
Talking 'Texas Treasures'
Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Austin Museum of Art and UT’s Ransom Center, ‘Texas Treasures’ assembles masterworks of early Texas art that have been rarely are seen by the public.
Organized by the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art ‘Texas Treaures’ reveals the breadth of Texas art from the origins of classical portraiture and impressionist landscape painting in the 19th-century to the American Scene painting of the Depression era to the many interpretations of modernism at the mid-twentieth century.
Thursday join Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton Museum’s curator of american and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, for her take on ‘Texas Treasures.’
7 p.m. Thursday
Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum
605 Robert E. Lee Road
Free
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June 8, 2009
Blanton launches film series
Sweet — a great way to beat the heat this summer. Head for a film series in the cool in the Blanton’s new auditorium that feature stadium seating,
The Blanton Museum of Art is teaming up with the Austin Film Festival for the ‘New Directions Film Series.’ The series features five emerging independent filmmakers, highlighting diverse perspectives and destinations around the globe. Stories range from the drama of American youth, to the struggles of art making in North Korea, to the vivacious growth of the Nigerian film industry, and more.
All films will be screened at the Blanton’s new auditorium on select Thursdays and Sundays through July 19.
Cost: $3 for AFF members, Blanton members, UT faculty and students; $5 for general public.
www.blantonmuseum.org
Gretchen (2006) 98 min.
Dir. Steve Collins, U.S.
7 p.m. June 18 and 3 p.m. June 21
Gretchen has bigger problems than abysmal fashion sense: She’s 17, painfully awkward and stuck in the most unforgiving place on earth - high school. When her obsession with school bad boy Ricky gets out of hand, her mother sends her to an emotional treatment center to recover. She has to travel elsewhere, however, to truly begin to understand why she fixates on the wrong kind of guy. Starring Courtney Davis as the perpetually uncomfortable Gretchen, Steve Collins’ first feature is a humorously deadpan yet poignant reminder of how the smallest moments can lead to extreme adolescent drama.
Silent Light (2007) 135 min.
Dir. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico
3 p.m. June 28
Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, ‘Silent Light’ quickly establishes the importance of nature in setting the rhythms and routines of the religious, rural lives at the film’s center. Its lauded opening shot chronicles a starry sky slowly giving way to breaking dawn as the cacophonous chatter of crickets chanting, dogs barking, and roosters crowing fills the soundtrack. From here on, birdsong is nearly constant, and images of land and sky frequently hold the camera’s attention for extended durations.
But amidst this pastoral setting, a disturbance is apparent from the outset. A cut from the heavenly curtain-raiser takes us into the home of Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) and Esther (Miriam Toews), where a circulating camera catches static portraits around the kitchen table and introduces us to the couple and their numerous children, the silence broken only by the unnerving tick-tock of a clock until an “Amen” frees the family to eat breakfast. In the somewhat stilted manner between husband and wife, not simply the result of the director’s characteristic use of nonprofessional actors, festering emotions are legible.
The Juche Idea (2008) 62 min.
Dir. Jim Finn, U.S.
3 p.m. July 12
Roughly translated, Juche, the official North Korean religion and political ideology, means self-reliance. But the official text on the state-sponsored philosophy, written by Kim Jong-il, leaves final authority over interpretation of Juche to the Dear Leader, himself. ‘The Juche Idea’ tells the story of a South Korean video artist (Kim Jong-il loves movies!) who takes a residency in North Korea. She becomes inspired by the Juche concept of revolutionary art, and intent to further adapt the ideology to modern cinematic practices. The film is partly told through some of the projects she makes while at the residency-The Small Little Teeth of America: The Tiny Dentures of Imperialism; Flesh Ring in the Sea of Blood; and The Winter of Abundance: Our Hope is the Juche State. As in his earlier films ‘Interkosmos’ (Opening Night, 2006) and ‘La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzal’o (NYUFF 2007), Finn’s signature tone is in full effect. ‘The Juche Idea’ is a deadpan yet poetic look at the relation of image to idea, and an investigation into the role of propaganda and politics in the creation of art.
Shotgun Stories (2007) 92 min.
Dir. Jeff Nichols, U.S.
7 p.m. July 16
‘Shotgun Stories’ tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father, a man that never bothered to give his children proper names. He left the three brothers, Son, Boy and Kid, when they were young. Their last impressions were of a violent drunk who never hesitated to put his own needs ahead of his family. The brothers were left to be raised by their mother, a hateful woman, who to this day blames her children for the life she’s been left with and the man she could not keep.
Their father, having left the memory of his children as completely as he left their home, managed to move on and put his life back together. He sobered up, became a devout Christian, married a wonderful woman, and fathered four new sons. All of who received proper names. His life became a model that most would aspire to, a man successful in business, community and family. His only true failing being the sons he turned his back on. At the beginning of the film, we find Son, Boy and Kid as grown men. The three brothers’ lives progress and their futures play out, but their past inevitably comes to claim them. Following a dispute at their father’s funeral, a feud begins to simmer between these sons and the new young men their father has raised. It is an anger that has always rested uncomfortably in the background of their lives. However now, it is a thing that will rise up to overtake them all. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.
Welcome to Nollywood (2008) 80 min.
Dir. Jamie Meltzer, U.S.
3 p.m., July 19,
Nigeria’s Nollywood is now the world’s third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood. Peace Mission is a guided tour from one of the industry’s major players: producer, filmmaker and founder of the African Movie Academy Awards, Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima. Fitting interviews in between conference calls, parties, and meetings, we get to know something about this thriving and surprising industry through the eyes of a woman determined to see the development of her continent through film.
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June 4, 2009
Austin Museum of Art makes cuts to budget, staff
Responding to an across-the-board dip in private and corporate donations, the Austin Museum of Art has made another round of cuts to its operating budget and staff.
Dana Friis-Hansen, the museum’s executive director, said the institution’s budget has been reduced from $3.6 million to $3.45 million, and five full-time positions have been eliminated, leaving 25 employees. Senior staff have also taken a 10 percent salary cut, and all staff will take one-week furloughs.
In January, the museum made a 10 percent cut to budget and staff. “As an organization, we just have to respond to current economic circumstances,” Friis-Hansen said. However he added that there were to be no dramatic restrictions to the museum’s programming.
Museum hours will remain the same but instead of hosting two simultaneous traveling exhibits at its downtown Congress Avenue location, Friis-Hansen said the museum will bring in one traveling exhibit at a time, initiate a new exhibit series that will feature Austin artists and add another series of exhibits that will draw from the museum’s permanent collection and private Austin collections. Friis-Hansen said the museum is also looking to broaden its programming at its historic Laguna Gloria site in West Austin, where exhibits are staged in the 1916 Driscoll Villa and sculpture fills 12-acres of grounds on the shores of Lake Austin.
“We’re trying to do more with less,” Friis-Hansen. “Our donors are giving; it’s just that many of them are only able to give less than they have in previous years.”
People may have cut back on their charitable donations, but they haven’t stopped visiting the museum. Friis-Hansen said that attendance has stayed steady with an annual average of about 75,000 visitors to the museum.
Other arts groups have experienced some cutbacks in recent months, though not as drastic as the museum’s. In February, Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare laid off one senior staff person. At Austin Lyric Opera, senior staff salaries were cut by five percent. “It’s the smaller donations that have been much more sensitive to this economy,” said Kevin Patterson, general director of Austin Lyric Opera. Patterson said his organization was on target to meet its annual budget of $5 million.
Overall, Austin’s arts groups are faring better than many around the country. In March, the the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles — long-recognized as the world’s richest museum — announced that it was cutting its operating budget by 25 percent and slashed its staff by almost 14 percent after its endowment fell to $4.5 billion, down from $6 billion. In Florida, the 51-year-old Orlando Opera ceased operations in April, the sixth professional company in the country to go under or declare bankruptcy in recent months.
Closer to home, at the Dallas Museum of Art, attendance at the blockbuster traveling exhibit “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” which ran from November to May, drew 600,000 visitors, far less than the 1 million the museum had initially projected.
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June 3, 2009
Memorial set for Robert Dale Anderson
Friends of Robert Dale Anderson, the Austin artist and UT teacher who passed away unexpectedly Sunday, have organized a memorial event for Thursday evening at indie gallery Okay Mountain.
6 p.m. Thursday
Okay Mountain, 312 E Cesar Chavez St. Suite B
Organized by artist Jill Pangallo and Dan Sutherland, the event will include an exhibition of Anderson’s works. Anyone who has works of Anderson’s that are framed and ready for hanging please contact Sutherland at scumpuppy@mail.utexas.edu. Sutherland is compiling stories and sentiments about Anderson, so send those along as well.
Pangallo has generously offered to put together digital images on a CD to project during the evening. Please send images of Anderson and his antics to jillpangallo@gmail.com.
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May 26, 2009
Art talking, this week
Chatter, chatter, chatter: Three recommended art talks this week.
WEDNESDAY
8 p.m., Art Palace Gallery, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez
www.artpalacegallery.com
Austin artist Nathan Green beguiles with his newest series of paintings. Their faux naivety actually speaks more of impossible scenes and situations rather than idealized tableaux. Green’s vivid, fantastical spectacles seem joyous at first, but are filled with a stream of underlying anxiety.
THURSDAY
7 p.m., Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.
www.arthousetexas.org
In the domestic space of testsite, a private home exhibit space, artist Sarah Pepe will create an all-encompassing abstract installation made of crocheted yarn attached that stretches between the walls and ceiling. As a means of questioning the tradition of women’s crafting traditions, Pepe invites to unravel the massive yarn piece and creatively re-purpose the yarn, by knitting or crocheting something for personal use.
At Arthouse on Thursday, Pepe will discuss this project within the larger context of her artistic practice which, for nearly two decades, has focused on issues related to feminism and gender identity as well as what she calls “cultural continuation.”
A collaboration with Arthouse curator Elizabeth Dunbar, the exhibition will be on view at testsite view May 31 - July 5.
THURSDAY
‘Texas Treasures: Early Texas Art from Austin Museums’
Peter Mears, Ransom Center curator
7 p.m., Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum
www.umlaufsculpture.org
Think you know Texas art? Think again. ‘Texas Treasures’ is the first collective exhibit; of early Texas artworks from the collections of the University of Texas Blanton Museum, the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center, the Austin Museum of Art and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum.
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May 22, 2009
Two art happenings this weekend
Transparency Now: New Works by Hunter Cross
6 to 11 p.m., May 22, then by appointment
The East Village, 1200 E. Eleventh St.
Austin artist Hunter Cross stages an exhibit of his multi-media work. In the artist’s words:
‘The 4-5 works using overhead projectors, bingo chips and transparencies are an extension of this work: huntercross.com/art/stack/ I am using the layering of manufactured materials, in this case organizational stickers on glass, to work with, color, form and integrated lighting. In the new work I am replacing the organizational stickers with bingo discs stacked on overhead projectors, producing similar scale to my other works but through compressed means. Conceptually, the work becomes both an object and its image.’
Pretend You Are Rich Art Auction
7 to 10 pm. Saturday, May 23,
Live auction starts at 8 pm. Saturday, May 23
Pump Project Art Complex
702 Shady Lane
www.pretendyouarerich.com
From the event producers:
This is the only faux-riche, live and silent auction event where the bidding starts at $3000 and the winner gets a $3000 instant rebate! (So if you bid $3050 you pay is $50! If you are actually rich and bid $1,000,000 you pay only $997,000!) The proceeds from this event support local artists & Pump Project.
Image: Courtesy of Hunter Cross
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May 12, 2009
Last week for 'Birth of the Cool' -- special late night hours
It’s been a thrilling run, but ‘Birth of the Cool,’ the infinitely cool exhibit on midcentury California art and design, must close this Sunday.
But to give everyone a chance to see the exhibit, the Blanton is extending its hours Saturday until 8 p.m. The museum opens at 11 a.m. on Saturdays.
Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, Sundays noon to 5 p.m.
Also on Saturday, at 7 p.m. there’s a screening of ‘Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Schulman,’ a thoughtful documentary on the photographer who literally made modernism fashionable and popular with his stunning photographs.
Austin filmmaker Eric Bricker, director of ‘Visual Acoustics,’ will be on hand for a Q-and-A after the 7 p.m. screening. Read more about his filmmaking process.
Admission to the screening is free with museum admission ($3-$7). And Blanton officials say that guests can hang on to their receipt and come back on Sunday, May 17 if they don’t get a chance to see the exhibit on Saturday.
See www.blantonmuseum.org for more information.
Image: ‘Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960’ by Julius Shulman.
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May 7, 2009
Blanton Museum names Ned Rifkin, former Smithsonian Under Secretary of Art, as its new director
Ned Rifkin, former Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution, has been named the new director the University of Texas’ Blanton Museum of Art, university officials announced Thursday.
Rifkin, 59, replaces Jesse Otto Hite who retired in 2008 after 30 years with the museum. With Rifkin’s appointment, the Blanton Museum will move from the College of Fine Arts and report to the UT Provost’s office.
The university’s Ransom Center, a rare book and manuscript library and museum, also reports to the provost’s office.
Rifkin will also will hold the position of full professor of art and art history and hold the position as special advisor to UT president William Powers.
At the Smithsonian, Rifkin served as the top administrator overseeing eight art museums, a position he held from 2004 to 2008. During his tenure at the Smithsonian, Rifkin oversaw the renovation of an historic building for the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. He had previously been director and chief curator at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum after serving as director of Houston’s Menil Collection from 2000 to 2002 and the High Museum in Atlanta from 1991 to 1999.
Rifkin received a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a master’s and doctoral degrees in art history form the University of Michigan.
A champion of contemporary art and public art, Rifkin organized a major exhibit of the work of minimalist painter Agnes Martin while he was director of the Menil. When he was director of the Hirshhorn, Rifkin commissioned conceptual artist Olafur Eliasson to reconceive the entrance to the historic museum building by shifting the front entrance to a different side of the building.
“I’m interested in all contemporary creativity,” Rifkin told an interviewer last year. “Art is a part of culture. Culture is what we make collectively. Artists are a kind of beacon.”
Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution.
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May 4, 2009
Robyn O'Neil wins $50,000 Hunting Art Prize
Kingswood, Texas painter Robyn O’Neil has won the $50,000 Hunting Art Prize for her drawing “A death, a fall, a march: toward a better world.”
The prize was announced Saturday night in Houston.
O’Neil’s drawing was selected from 129 final juried participants each of whom had been selected for a single two-dimensional painting and drawing.
O’Neil has exhibited at Whitney Museum in New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; ArtPace, San Antonio.
Here in Austin, O’Neil’s work has been seen at Arthouse and at the Blanton Museum of Art which has her work in its permanent collection. The Hunting Prize is limited to two-dimensional paintings and drawings. No printmaking, photography, collage, assemblage, sculpture, relief, found object, or computer-generated works. It is open by self—submission to amateur and established artists in Texas who are 18 years of age or older.
Twenty artists from Central Texas were named finalists.
The award is given annually by Hunting PLC, an international oil services company. The awards parameters changed to a Texas focus when Hunting moved its North American headquarters are to Houston after a quarter-century in the United Kingdom.
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April 30, 2009
Mexic-Arte wants to stay put, remodel
After asking Austin voters for $5 million in bond money for a new facility at a new location, Mexic-Arte Museum leaders now say they want to remain at their Congress Avenue site and improve the building they had decided to demolish.
In 2006, Mexic-Arte received $5 million as part of a voter-approved $567.4 million bond package. The money was earmarked to help build a $25 million museum on the city-owned Mexican American Cultural Center campus.
But now, museum leaders say a combination of the economic downturn plus a desire to stay at its highly visible downtown location at Fifth Street and Congress Avenue has led them to decide to stay put and consider a more modest plan to remodel their three-story building.
The museum seeks an agreement that would have the city lease the museum long-term and then re-lease it back to the museum. The city struck a similar agreement with the State Theatre, now managed by the Austin Theatre Alliance, which received $1.9 million in city bond money to help remodel the venue at 719 Congress Ave. (The State ceased operations in 2006 after a water main break flooded the stage and basement.)
If the council approves Mexic-Arte’s plan to stay put, the museum would be the second major arts venue to refurbish its Congress Avenue home. The contemporary arts organization Arthouse is about to begin work on a $6.6 million major renovation of its building at 700 Congress Avenue. The Arthouse project is being paid for entirely with private money. Arthouse bought its building, once a theater and then later a department store, with donations in 1997.
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April 28, 2009
Texas art, in the beginning
Yes, Texas’ own art history is not all grandiose landscapes and frontier cowboy paintings.
This weekend the Center for Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art, gathering in town for its annual symposium, hosts an art fair. And a sponsored exhibit, on view through the summer, gathers art work that offers a slightly different take on the expected notions of what Lone Star art history.
Culled from the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, the Harry Ransom Center, the Austin Museum of Art and the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, the “Texas Treasures” exhibit features rarely celebrated masterworks of Texas art from 19th century impressionist landscapes to mid-century modernist abstractions.
Texas Treasures: Early Texas Art from Austin Museums.’
Opening reception: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday.
Regular museum hours: 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Exhibit continues through Aug. 30
Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, 605 Robert E. Lee Road
512-445-5582, www.umlaufsculpture.org
Texas Art Fair
When: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 2, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 3
Admission: $10
AT&T Hotel and Conference Center, 1900 University Ave.
Participating galleries: Beuhler Fine Art, Cliff Logan Art & Antiques, David Dike Fine Art, Heritage Auction Galleries, Rainone Galleries, Inc., Robert E. Alker Fine Art, Russell Tether Fine Arts Associates, Simpson Galleries, Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden and William Reaves Fine Art
Image: Donald Leroy Weisman, “Electronic Icon,” ca. 1958, Blanton Museum of Art
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April 23, 2009
Building a new kind of art festival tent
Three years ago, Art City Austin, a weekend downtown spring arts fair and festival, had a little wake-up call from Mother Nature. A classic Texas spring storm brought high winds the night before the festival started. With nearly 200 artists and their work housed in display tents, the festival site narrowly missed being an art disaster area of blown-down tents and destroyed creativity.
That incident got leaders of the Austin Art Alliance, the nonprofit mostly volunteer organization that runs the festival, thinking. What if we asked architects and designers to create a temporary outdoor gallery space, something sturdy yet portable and affordable? With the group dedicating its fundraising proceeds to the Austin Museum of Art and the Blanton Museum of Art, sponsoring a creative competition seemed like a good fit.
Partnering with the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and Austin Foundation for Architecture, the Alliance last year launched the first Temporary Outdoor Gallery Space (TOGS) competition. Some 139 submissions from designers in 26 countries came in. Architects Amy Wynne and Mark Leveno of Los Angeles netted the first-place honors with a sleek functional modern-looking mini-gallery that they dubbed “A Little Room.”
And that means a prototype of their TOGS will debut at Art City Austin this weekend. Look for the prototype of “A Little Room” at Cesar Chavez Street near Austin City Hall. Later this year it will head to New York to exhibit with the New York chapter of the AIA.
We asked Wynne and Leveno about their design process; they spoke as a unified voice via e-mail.
American-Statesman: What was your inspiration for ‘A Little Room?’
Wynne and Leveno: The design for “A Little Room” is inspired by two major ideas. The first relates to the structure being something that is repeatedly taken apart and rebuilt. Those moments of reconstruction offer a unique opportunity in architecture — to rebuild it differently each time.
The second idea was to rethink how artists display their work. Typically an artist is constrained by the existing gallery space — the lighting, the wall materials, etc. We wanted to create a gallery in which the artist has the opportunity to create a space that is specific to their work. These two ideas converged in the idea of a simple frame with removable wall panels. Artists then have the option to configure the panels however they wish — opaque, translucent, open, white, black, colored, painted upon, textured, etc. Each time the gallery is configured, it becomes an extension and representation of the artists and their art displayed inside and out.
What do you hope ‘A Little Room’ can teach people about architecture and its possibilities?
Architects are taught to think creatively as well as critically about the design. Our goal as designers is to identify potential opportunities to do something innovative that will enhance the aesthetic, experience and functionality of a piece of architecture.
While there are endless solutions to every design problem, the best ones usually surprise you. We hope that people look at “A Little Room” and think that it is beautiful, intelligent and inventive. Ideally it will inspire other designers to think hard about the design opportunities embedded in even the simplest situations.
In regards to transitory architecture, we thought hard about what it means to ship a small building from place to place. The ability of our gallery to pack completely into its base structure to be shipped is essential to the overall idea of the gallery. It means we are creating a space with no waste and a compact efficiency.
Every element in this project is pared down to meet the most basic requirements. The inherent beauty of “A Little Room” comes from having a sophisticated system conveyed through a minimalist form.
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April 15, 2009
Tonight: Erik Michaud lights up Art Palace
In an intriguing variety of media — from video to wood burnings to found object installations — artist Erik Michaud presents enigmatic little tales about nostalgia, youth and a mythical past. Or perhaps its a mythical future? Or an imagined life not lived?
Tonight, Michaud gives a talk about the work in his solo show “The Gates of Dawn” now at Art Palace Gallery, 2109 E. Cesar Chavez St. The talk begins at 8; the gallery is open 7 to 9 p.m. tonight and every Wednesday.
By personalizing mass-produced items like or else transforming detritus with quirky personal touches, Michaud unravels a particularly American yearning for distinction. Aren’t we all supposed to have histories packed with great and fabulous tales?
“The Gates of Dawn” continues through April 29.
Art Palace Gallery
2109 Cesar Chavez
www.artpalacegallery.com
“Blue Sky Hotel” by Erik Michaud.
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April 10, 2009
Lordy Rodriguez sees new states of America
It’s been a long road trip for Lordy Rodriguez.
The Phillipine-born Texas-raised artist has spent ten years systematically re-mapping the United States state-by-state according to his creative imagination.
Now Rodriguez’s 55 imaginative maps — he added the five new states of Disney, Hollywood, Internet, Monopoly and Territory — fill the walls at the Austin Museum of Art through May 17.
Rodriguez’s maps are immediately familiar. Who hasn’t seen similar vividly colored hand-drawn maps in an atlas, on the walls of a school room or held in the lap during a road trip? And Rodriguez has all the expected cartographic components there: the topographical symbols, the road numbers and river names, the border lines, the formal typeface.
But these maps are also deliberately absurd. What if Kansas collided with the Southeast? What if Texas bordered New Jersey? What if every state in America had a port? What if there were new borders, new bodies of water, new mountain ranges?
By re-imagining the entire country, Rodriguez considers the deeper meaning of place in the 21st century. He situates our nation’s capital half-way between the newly imagined states of Hollywood and Monopoly. The names of the towns and cities in Hollywood are taken from the movies; in Monopoly, cities are named after the cites that headquarter Fortune 500 companies.
We long to define ourselves by where we are from, where our families came from or where we choose to live. But in today’s mobile, shifting world, place is more fluid than ever before.
The lacklustre installation at AMOA disappointments and doesn’t do justice to the potency of Rodriguez’s richly imaginative ink drawings.
That’s too bad. Because in his charming, beguiling colorful maps, Rodriguez — who himself has perhaps the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-national background —ask trenchant questions. And perhaps the most important is. how would you map your world?
“Lordy Rodriguez: States of America”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, (Thursdays until 8 p.m.), noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through May 17
Where: Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave.
Tickets: $4-$5
Information: 495-9224, www.amoa.org
Image: “Monopoly” by Lordy Rodriguez. Courtesy AMOA.
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March 30, 2009
Texas Biennial brims with brio: 4
Oh, Jill Pangallo is so funny. But mostly she is smart. And when she weaves funny and smart together as she did Friday night with “Let Me Entertain You,” her solo show presented as part of the Texas Biennial, she comes up with something poignant and a little painful in its truth telling.
Conceived, written and performed by Pangallo, “Let Me Entertain You” was nonetheless culled from writings, emails and notes by 11 of Pangallo’s peers who respond to her email asking for “donated” writing. The theme? Identity.
About 200 people braved a freakishly cold and windy spring night on Friday to fill the seats at the Fiesta Gardens stage and courtyard, a modest municipal facility with its own identity problem of sorts. (It’s plays host to everything from community fundraisers to quincenañeras.)
To such a motley stage, and with a certain do-it-yourself production value of over-the-top costumes and campy style, Pangallo brought a cast of equally motley characters. Some appeared via video; others we saw live.
There was a painfully shallow couple who met on one reality show and auditioned for another. A dowdy woman who found comfort and meaning via YouTube cat videos. An anxious college student who spilled her heart to an answering machine. Even the eccentricities of a Renaissance fair don’t have room for the fantasy self of Pangallo’s sad characters.
These are 21st-century lonelyhearts — people whose ability to communicate has become over-mediated by media to the point that they are trapped by their own utter inability to communicate at all.
That’s sad. It’s also comical. In Pangallo’s hands, it’s Facebook-age schadenfreude writ live and on stage. (Pangallo’s all-too-true monologue about Facebook’s time-sucking erstaz communication made for a real highlight.)
Pangallo understands that ultimately, performance art has to be theater, no matter what conceptual conceits are foisted on it. And theater is what she delivered.
After all, like she said, she was there to entertain us.
Photo: Jill Pangallo as P.J. Chavez.
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March 20, 2009
Blanton exhibit is too cool to miss
It isn’t all that often that the American-Statesman’s editorial board singles out a museum exhibit as noteworthy.
But the Blanton Museum of Art’s ‘Birth of the Cool,’ which we detailed last week, has garnered the kudos.
Read on:
‘Blanton exhibit is too cool to miss’
‘Birth of the Cool’ exhibit in Austin celebrates America’s relentless push for the new and modern in the post-World War II decades.
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March 19, 2009
UT postpones mural from Shepard Fairey, Obama "Hope" poster artist
The University of Texas’ College of Fine Arts has postponed the installation of a mural by Shepard Fairey, creator of the now-iconic Barack Obama “hope” image.
A giant billboard-size mural was to have been installed on the exterior of the Art Building today on campus as part of UT’s Landmarks public art program. But officials have decided to postpone the project until further notice.
From the official UT press release comes:
“We jumped at the opportunity and set the wheels in motion to take advantage of his offer,” says Landmarks director Andrée Bober. “Shepard’s work is important and perfectly suited to our program, but it was ambitious to try to pull it off in just one week. Unfortunately, we ran out of time.”
Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Doug Dempster would like to reschedule the event. “We would still like to see his work here on campus, but the compressed schedule makes it too difficult at this time. As dean of Fine Arts, I felt that we were rushing the process with an important artist and an important installation. I decided that it would be better to slow down and proceed in a more deliberate fashion. I’m sorry that we could not move fast enough for this project to happen.”
Zarathustra James, Fairey’s representative said it was great of Landmarks to welcome Fairey’s work, but that they understood the logistical challenges. “Shepard would definitely be interested in a future project,” said James. “With a little more planning, he’ll even be able to get involved with the faculty and students.”
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March 17, 2009
Texas Biennial brims with brio: 3
Did we say “Eye to Eye” one of the two group shows of the Texas Biennial 2009 is supercolorful? And hands-on crafty? And out to tell you a story — or suggest that you invent your own?
Oh, yeah!
It’s at the Mexican American Cultural Center through April 11.
Christa Mares, “Emprendendora Mujer,” steel, artificial flowers, crocheted thread, wheels, paint
Jeanne Cassanova, Untitled installation (detail), mixed media
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Texas Biennial brims with brio: 2
At the Mexican American Cultural Center is “Eye to Eye” one of the two group shows of the Texas Biennial 2009. Here we see the hand — or really, the eye — of Biennial curator Michael Duncan at work.
Super colorful (or is that supercolorful?), full of story, marked by craft, body-centered, organic and fantastic, swirly and girlie — the 30 artists in “Eye to Eye” all try for maximum impact (a few succeed). And to be sure, there’s plenty of raw energy here: After all, in the self-selecting pool of Biennial entrants swim mostly early career artists looking for a Big Break.
Adrienne Cullins gets all Dr. Seuss, with her “Black Market Kidney Factory.” Half-plant, half-animal, half-whatever, there are organs and veins and roots and bladders that churn in a fabulous tableaux. Oh that we could hear the sound of this churning thing. Or maybe not.
Adrienne Cullis, “Black Market Kideny Factory” (detail), acrylic on canvas
Jeannette Hernandez does much of the same yet her’s is pure body — or at least the body reimagined as a chaotic visual symphony of internal viscera and organs. This can’t be a healthy body, but it sure is gorgeous to look it, gorgeous and grotesque as it is.
Jeannette Hernandez, “Sideshow,” oil on canvas.
Jade Walker gets 3-D crafty with her impulses toward the girlie. She jumbles the handmade with the factory-made to create super-sized imaginative yet disconcerting forms. “Figure #6” is charming with its whimsy, but also eery; compelling yet unsettling with its scale.
Jade Walker,”Figure #6,” fabric, crutches, cotton stuffing, cast rubber.
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March 14, 2009
UT commissions a mural from Shepard Fairey, Obama "Hope" poster artist
Shepard Fairey, the street artist best known for his now-iconic “Hope” campaign poster of Barack Obama, has been commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin’s Landmarks public art program to create a mural on the exterior of the Art Building at the corner of 23rd Street and San Jacinto Boulevard.
The artist’s team will install Fairey’s original composition beginning at 2 p.m. Thursday. The public is invited to show up and watch the mural be installed. Likely it will one Fairey’s signature multi-layered images that feature counter-culture heroes in a retro-like propaganda style.
The Los Angeles-based Fairey won’t commit, however, to be at UT himself to the see mural go up. Although his Obama poster now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., Fairey currently faces multiple vandalism charges in Boston for pasting his work on public and private property. Also, the Associated Press has recently accused Fairey of unfair appropriation of their copyrighted photograph for the “Hope” poster.
Still, it’s widely rumored that Fairey will be in Austin during SXSW. And if he is in town, he’s likely to be postering around town. Fairey’s can also be seen here next week in the exhibit “New Brow: The Rise of Underground Art.”
Born in 1970, Fairey received his bachelor of arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. While still in art school the skateboard-obsessed Fairey started making defiant images on stickers that he plastered in public spaces.
One of his earliest street campaigns was the “Obey Giant,” referencing Andre the Giant, the professional wrestler. The simple black and white image with “obey” across the bottom soon appeared in cities across the country on posters and stickers.
“The sticker has no meaning but exists only to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker,” reads the Obey campaign manifesto. “Because OBEY has no actual meaning, the various reactions and interpretations of those who view it reflect their personality and the nature of their sensibilities.”
The Obey Giant campaign still continues.
And despite his own run-ins with copyright infringement, last year Fairey had his attorneys send a cease-and-desist order to Austin graphic artist Baxter Orr who did his own take on Fairey’s work, creating an image called Protect, with the iconic Obey Giant face covered by a respiratory mask.
Fairey’s work is included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.
The artist’s first museum survey, “Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand,” is currently on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. To complement this exhibition, he installed an ephemeral mural for Tufts University Art Gallery, Boston.
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March 12, 2009
Artist Ed Ruscha in Austin April 2
Don’t forget: Famed Pop artist Ed Ruscha comes to Austin in just three weeks as part of the Harry Ransom Lectures. And the lecture is free and open to the public.
When: 7 p.m. April 2
Where: AT&T Conference Center, 1900 University Ave.
Doors open 30 minutes before the program begins. No reservations required, but seating is limited to 300.
Ruscha’s lecture will be webcast.
In 2001, I spoke with Ruscha when he was here for an exhibit of his work at the Austin Museum of Art.
On the road with Edward Ruscha
Edward Ruscha’s fascination with gas stations started right here in Texas — in Amarillo, along Route 66.
The artist’s now-iconic painting and related prints of a Standard gas station, as well as his iconic art book “Twentysix Gasoline Stations,” were born out of the many road trips he made between California, where in 1956 he enrolled in art school, and Oklahoma City, where he grew up. “I knew at some point I had to get out of there,” the 63-year-old artist said in a recent phone interview. “There’s hardly much room for poets and artists in Oklahoma.”
And so Ruscha hit the road and drove west. Along the way he passed a gas station in Amarillo.
“I found it inspiring,” he said. Just like he found the American West inspiring. “There’s something scary and beautiful at the same time in the wide open West.”
Ruscha took a picture of the Standard station. And then he drove until he saw another gas station that intrigued him. He stopped and took a picture of it, too.
“I just kept shooting pictures of gas stations,” he said. Eventually, those pictures became “Twentysix Gasoline Stations,” his deadpan black-and-white chronicle of service stations along Route 66. And that Amarillo Standard station? Ruscha transformed it into “Standard Station,” now a Pop art symbol.
Along the road, signs and billboards also caught Ruscha’s eye.
“Signs had a new reality for me,” he said. “Some were really kind of primitive, like the little sign marking the town of Jackrabbit, Ariz. It was really just a board held up by some sticks.
“Really, that’s true of all signs — they’re just things propped on sticks with nothing behind them. Even the Hollywood sign is just a false front. And so there was something about driving along, heading west, and experiencing all these false fronts which culminated in the big Hollywood sign. It all became a resource for my artwork.”
One of the more influential voices in postwar American art, Ruscha has always straddled the line between conceptual and Pop art. His work celebrates the quotidian American landscape — the flat horizon of the West, vernacular architecture, the highway — by cleaning up its edges, reducing the detail to heighten the drama.
Ruscha’s passion for driving and cars runs so deep that even in a foray into filmmaking, he still couldn’t get off the road. In 1975, he made “Miracle,” a 28-minute color film starring artist Jim Ganzer and singer Michelle Phillips.
“It’s about a car, really,” Ruscha said. “I’m not sure how essential the story is to the movie. I just kind of dreamt it up. It’s basically a shaggy dog story, about a man’s dedication to his car and his dedication to his destiny.”
Essentially a quirky story that follows a day in the life of an auto mechanic, the film, Ruscha says, is a study in alteration. “It has a lot to do with things blending, with transitions — from the dirty to the clean, from the primitive to the scientific. In an odd way, there’s a remote connection to my painting because my work involves the horizontal blending of paint.”
As much as he loves to be in the driver’s seat, though, Ruscha says, “Making art is an involuntary reflex for me. I’m not in control of it. I guess in a way, that makes me a captive.”
Image: “Standard Station,” Edward Ruscha, 1966
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'Cool' brings in the crowds at the Blanton
The ‘Birth of the Cool’ exhibit is drawing in the crowds at the Blanton Museum of Art.
The survey of all things California cool is bringing in more than 4,000 visitors a week, almost double the museum’s average attendance of the previous few months, museum officials say.
Take your time with this exhibit. Re-visit several times — it’s worth it. There’s much to see and all of it is wonderfully groovy. Leave time to watch the brilliant film and animation shorts, especially the artsy experiments of husband-and-wife creative team Charles and Ray Eames whose singular style of furniture and household objects epitomizes mid-century modernism.
The Blanton exhibit runs through May 17. See www.blantonmuseum.org for info.
And don’t forget the April 8 screening of ‘Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman’ a documentary by Austin filmmaker Eric Bricker. Bricker trains his lens on the seminal career of the 97-year-old Schulman, the photographer whose seamless images helped define midcentury modernism in America. Bricker will be on hand for a post-screening Q-and-A. The movie screens at the Alamo Ritz, 320 E. Sixth St. at 7 p.m.
IMAGES: Top: ‘Birth of the Cool’ installation. Photo by Rick Hall, courtesy Blanton Museum of art. Bottom: ‘Case Study House #21,’ by Julius Schulman.
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Texas Biennial brims with brio: 1
Sassy, bright, overflowing with verve and up-from-your-own-bootstraps independence, the Texas Biennial brims with brio. Curator Michael Duncan has rounded up a herd of exuberant, spirited Lone Star artists determined to make their presence known.
Is all of it really great art? No, of course not. Only a very few works are truly great, and only a few more are very good. But all of the sprawling Texas Biennial — the two group exhibits, the four solo shows, the seven public projects — makes for rewarding, delightful viewing.
It’s the do-it-yourself spirit that makes the Texas Biennial ebullient fun: Indie, artist-run, never-mind-the-art-world — full speed ahead! We do what we like in the Lone Star State and we don’t need to explain it to anyone.
But that doesn’t mean we have our heads in the Gulf Coast sand. Quite the opposite. As the mostly emerging or mid-career Texas Biennial artists prove, they’re acutely aware of what percolates around the now-global art scene. It’s just that these Texas artists don’t play slave to those trends. They do their own thing.
And because there are lots of things that they do, we’ll be making multiple posts to this blog as we peruse and review the Texas Biennial. And forgive the long, image-heavy posts, but it’s just no fun if you can’t see things.
Buster Greybill’s “Bait Box” is brilliant — and also a heartfelt and honorific memorial to the All-American fish that’s swum decades of folklore and tradition. The Huntsville-based artist crafted an enormous bronze catfish and enshrined it on a high voltage box near a forgotten boat launch in the park along Lady Bird Lake, just east of IH-35.
Greybill elevates the ubiquitous bottom-feeding fish to a new level, literally placing it on a pedestal. Albeit, it’s an ubiquitous pedestal (an ordinary utility box), but that makes Greybill’s homage all the more endearing.
Everybody has a fish story to tell — a tale of the ‘one that got away.’ Greybill’s is sharp and sweet and funny.
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March 11, 2009
Austin Museum of Art announces a few changes
The Austin Museum of Art has announced several organizational changes.
From an official release:
“I’m proud to announce the promotion of Judith Sims to Senior Director of Education,” said Dana Friis-Hansen, AMOA Executive Director. “In addition, AMOA will begin the search for a new Chief Curator. Both of these changes will allow the Museum to better focus on serving its varied audiences through strengthened education and exhibition programs.”
Sims has served as the Director of the AMOA-Art School for the last thirty-five years and brings a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience to the position. During her tenure with the Museum, Sims has created innovative programming and outreach including film and video, spearheaded three successful renovations at Laguna Gloria, and served as the Executive Producer of a statewide PBS television series The Territory for the past 25 years. Sims’ new role will unite The Art School and the Education Departments. In conjunction with this promotion, AMOA will also begin the search for a new Chief Curator.
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March 9, 2009
Sound art tours to augment The Domain shopping center
“Recreating The Domain” looks like it could be one of the more brilliantly clever independent public art projects to launch in Austin recently — a free, non-evasive creative and critical exploration of our changing urban landscape.
Organized and curated by sound artist Alex Keller, “Recreating the Domain” will feature artist-created recorded walking tours of The Domain, the North Austin shopping center/residence/office park. Any one will be able to download the walking tours and attend the exhibition on their own time, making “Recreating the Domain” a permanent exhibition.
The project will unveil on April 17 at which point the audio tours will be able to be downloaded from www.recreatingthedomain.org. The show is a featured exhibition in the Church of the Friendly Ghost’s Modern Aural Sculpture Symposium South.
Artists and their projects for “Recreating the Domain” are:
- Vanessa Rossetto, with a sonic analysis of the historical use of land currently known as the Domain.
- James Patrick Robinson, with a sound collage of life and work in the Domain that dissects where corporate culture meets our daily lives.
- Christopher Petkus, with an audio tour that maps the steady disintegration of the tour guide.
- Brent Fariss, with a piece designed to challenge the listener to re-contextualize his environment through interaction.
- Bill Bridges, with a piece that deals with corporate speech, translation, and mistranslation.
In Keller’s own words he explains:
“Our roster represent a cross-section of Austin’s best and brightest media artists, each with an unique perspective on the Domain and how it works in Austin: as a part of the city’s tradition, or as a visitor, or as an employee.
“Recreating the Domain was not designed to create a forum just for complaints about the Domain. I’m interested in the Domain for a number of reasons, and not all of them are negative. Mixed-use architecture is really positive, as is the minimal carbon footprint of an outdoor shopping area.
“However, as someone who is interested in our cultural relationship with the real world of sound, the Domain’s employment of speakers playing fuzak in the middle of a ‘neighborhood’ really offends me. I’m not a huge fan of steep tax exemptions for luxury shopping, either. Obviously, there’s a lot of data to interpret, and I do think that the artists we’ve selected will do it right.
“This show is not officially sanctioned (or officially discouraged) by the Domain. However, since the show will consist of self-guided tours that will be freely downloadable to iPods, the Domain’s consent is not necessary. Anyone will be able to conduct their own tour at any given time, and the exhibition will run for as long as people are attending.”
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March 7, 2009
Texas Biennial honors a Lone Star art maverick
Few have influenced as many Texas artists as Kelly Fearing has.
The 91-year-old Fearing is the ultimate do-it-yourself artist: an independent creative, a dedicated teacher and an artist who defied the artistic expectations of his generation and certainly his regional Texas home far from the world’s arts center of the mid-20th century.
So it’s fitting that the indie artist-run Texas Biennial which opened this weekend, is honoring Fearing for lifetime achievement.
Several of Fearing’s paintings are included in the Texas Biennial’s two group exhibitions at Women and Their Work (1710 Lavaca St.) and the Mexican American Cultural Center (600 River St.).
Sunday, Texas Biennial curator Michael Duncan will present a slide lecture on Fearing and also host a re-creation of the artist’s 1976 creative abstract slide show to the music of C.P.E. Bach. And always one for a creative good time, Fearing will be there.
The ‘Texas Biennial Tribute To Kelly Fearing’ is at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St. Free. www.texasbiennial.com
During his prolific career, Fearing has been referred to as a Romantic surrealist and a spiritual naturalist. He was one of the core members of a group that became known as the Fort Worth Circle in the 1940s and who were instrumental in introducing modernist ideas to Texas art. Fearing and his colleagues were some of the first artists in the state to respond to the bold notions of Picasso, Miró and Modigliani. “We were considered way out at the time,” Fearing said in an interview several years ago. “But we were just doing what we liked.”
In the early 1950s, Fearing landed at the University of Texas’ then-nascent art program where he stayed for four decades. Under his guidance, generations of young artists were encouraged to think and create independently, to imagine worlds far beyond Texas. Fearing also expanded art opportunities for school children, developing one of the country’s first university-based studio art programs for high school and junior high school students.
Fearing himself continued to develop his signature style: stark compositions with crisp focus added to the spirituality of his symbolic tableaux. He combined vibrant color with meticulously rendered figures in natural landscapes: poets, saints and historical visionaries took up poses in rocky natural settings reminiscent of the Texas Hill Country.
Photos: Kelly Fearing in 2003, AA-S photo (top). “Spirit Deer at a Yellow Edge,” 1970, Oil on linen. Courtesy Texas Biennial (bottom).
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February 27, 2009
Giant mushrooms emerge on Auditorium Shores
Those giant mushrooms that just emerged on Auditorium Shores? They’re not a sign of early spring. They’re a sign that the Texas Biennial is almost here.
The indie artist-run biennial is this time coordinating with the City of Austin’s Art in Public Places program to launch seven temporary outdoor projects. The outdoor projects complement the biennial two group exhibits and four individual shows, spread around town. Check the Texas Biennial web site for complete information.
In all some 73 Texas artists are featured in the Texas Biennial 2009.
Earlier this week, artist Bill Davenport and an assistant began installing “Giant Mushroom Forest” onto its site on the west end of Auditorium Shores.
The temporary outdoor artworks will be on exhibition from March through December, in various central and east parkland locations.
- Ryah Christensen, “Door/Not Door,” sited in parkland bordering the east-side Hike and Bike Trail, just south of Nash Hernandez Road
- Bill Davenport, “Giant Mushroom Forest,” sited in the west end of Auditorium Shores, near the Ladybird Lake Hike and Bike Trail
- Sasha Dela, “Variegated Continuum,” sited at the Mexican-American Cultural Center
- Buster Graybill, “Bait Box,” sited adjacent to the boat launch on the east-side Hike and Bike Trail, just south of Nash Hernandez Road
- Ken Little, “Homeland Security,” sited in the clearing between Doug Sahm Hill in Butler Park and the Palmer Events Center
- Colin McIntyre, “Emergence,” sited on a landscaped mound on the west side of Butler Park, immediately east of the parking lot next to the Dougherty Arts Center
- Jill Pangallo, “Looking Glass,” a free public performance scheduled for 8 pm, March 27th at the Fiesta Gardens Courtyard
Photo courtesy Meghan Turner/AIPP.
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February 24, 2009
Ten days til the Texas Biennial
Full of brio and Lone Star chutzpah, the Texas Biennial opens ten days from today — March 6 — with opening receptions for the two group exhibitions.
Los Angeles-based curator and critic Michael Duncan served as the Biennial’s curator, a mighty task which he clearly embraced. And we’re flattered.
In Duncan’s own words:
But while a certain sense of isolation fuels their work, they are hardly oblivious of what’s going on in New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles - as well as Dallas, Austin, and Houston. The state seems newly aware of its own various scenes …
Still, Texas seems largely a self-contained world and that’s what’s good about it.”
“Yellow Line,” Charlotte Smith
“Figure #6,” Jade Walker
“Sideshow,” Jeannette Hernandez
All photos courtesy of the Texas Biennial
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February 23, 2009
People's Choices exhibit winners at Austin City Hall
The people have chosen.
“Buba at Barton Springs” a photograph by artist Roy Mata is the winner of 2008 People’s Choice Award from the annual People’s Gallery exhibit at Austin City Hall. The winner was announced Friday at the opening of the 2009 People’s Gallery exhibit.
‘Buba at Barton Springs,’ Roy Mata. 2003/
Each year, a purchase is made from the People’s Gallery annual exhibition of work by more than 100 Austin artists to build a permanent collection of art for City Hall. Each year, the public is invited to recommend art pieces for the purchase. Mata decided to forego any payment from the city for his artwork which was priced at $100.
And in an interesting development, Zach Booth Simpson interactive video piece “Elevator Goblins” was also elected for the People’s choice. But because of the high price tag of the complex artwork — said to be upwards of $20,000 — the city couldn’t afford to purchase it.
However given that the “Elevator Goblins” was so popular, Simpson offered to loan City Hall “Elevator Dragonflies,” another interactive projection piece that “lives” on the first floor elevator entrance. “Elevator Dragonflies” — which uses infared lights — will be buzzing elevator riders at City Hall for the remainder of 2009.
You can see a video Dragonflies here.

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February 20, 2009
Two weeks til the Texas Biennial
Signs of the Texas Biennial are starting to appear around town. Yesterday Houston artis Sasha Dela began installing her work ‘Veriegated Continuum 2009’ outside the Mexican-American Cultural Center.
Alberto Martinez/AA-S
Dela’s work is one of four projects that are being installed around town in the Biennial’s first foray into public art. The MACC is also host to one of the Biennial’s two group exhibits, “Big Tall Texas Group Show.”
The “Wide Open Texas Group Show” is at Women & Their Work. The opening reception for both shows is 6 to 8 p.m. March 6.
And four artists receive a more considered treatment in individual solo shows at four indie galleries. William Cannings, an English-born sculptor now living in Lubbock, will have his beguiling inflated metal sculptures at Okay Mountain. The group exhibitions will be celebrated with an opening from noon to 5 p.m. March 7.
Photo courtesy Okay Mountain.
More info and previews to come!
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February 18, 2009
Hunting Art Prize finalists announced
A total of 134 Texas artists have been selected to move on to the final round of judging in the 2009 Hunting Art Prize, Hunting PLC, the Houston-based oil services company that grants the award announced today.
The $50,000 prize — a bit of a curiosity in the Lone Star State art world — is open to established, emerging, or amateur artists that are residents of the State of Texas and who are at least 18 years of age or older. Only paintings or drawings can qualify and an artist can only submit one work. No prints, photographs, collages, sculpture, found object assemblages or computer-generated works
The award came to Texas in 2006 from the UK when Hunting PLC moved its corporate headquarters. This year’s winner will be announced at a gala in Houston on May 2. Previous winners Wendy Wagner, Michael Tole and Francesca Fuchs.
Among the finalists are 20 artists from the Central Texas area:
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Luis Abreu, Austin
Andrew Anderson, Austin
Heyd Fontenot, Austin
Joshua Kight, Austin
Ashe Laughlin, Austin
David Leonard, Austin
Suzanne Lewis, Austin
Katie Maratta, Austin
Erick Michaud, Austin
Skip Noah, Austin
David Ohlerking, Austin
Anna Marie Pavlik, Austin
Ellen Tanner, Austin
Krutie Thakkar, Austin
Leanne Venier, Austin
Matthew Winters, Austin
Carol Grigsby, Bastrop
Kathleen Holder, Buda
Randolph Nesbitt, Round Rock
Yuko Fukuzumi, San Marcos
Keith Sanders, Wimberley
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February 4, 2009
Blanton gala nets $2.325 million in donations, tickets sales
Saturday night’s gala at the Blanton Museum of Art welcomed more than 450 guests who fashionably partied in honor of museum namesake and donor Jack S. Blanton.
Beyond the impressive $600,000 in ticket sales, the gala and celebration of Blanton was also cause for announcing some $1,025,000 in gifts to the museum’s $40 million endowment.
The children of Jack Blanton — Eddy and Kelli Blanton, Jack Jr. and Leslie Blanton, Elizabeth Blanton Wareing and Peter Wareing — donated $1 million in their father’s honor, with the monies going to the Blanton’s endowment campaign. The LBJ Family Foundation donated $25,000.
The Blanton also raised $275,000 in in-kind support from corporate sponsors for the event.
Making the biggest visual splash of the evening were the two arts works unveiled. Donated by contemporary collectors and Blanton supporters Jeanne and Michael Klein, a massive site-specific installation by Macarthur “genius grant” award-winner Teresita Fernandez and an untitled wall sculpture by Ghanan artist El Anatsui. The two piece together are valued at $700,000.
El Anatsui, Untitled, 2007, Copper, aluminum, 144 x 195 inches, Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein.
Always visionary in their taste in art, the Kleins took the forward step of commissioning Fernandez to create something that could aesthetically defuse the Blanton’s massive white atrium. Fernandez succeeded brilliantly. “Stacked Water” makes an invigorating yet sublime statement as visitors enter the museum. It encourages thoughtful looking — exactly the mindset needed for a satisfying museum experience.
Teresita Fernandez, “Stacked Waters.” 2009. Gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein.
Teresita Fernandez, “Stacked Waters.” 2009. Gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein.
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Viewpoint lectures announced
Chatter, chatter, chatter
The Department of Art and Art History at the University presents the 18th annual Viewpoint series of visits by leading curators, critics and scholars. The year’s series runs through April with public lectures and seminars by Los Angeles Times visual arts writer and author Leah Ollman, and artist, writer and curatorial adviser Phong Bui.
Admission to the lectures and seminars is free and open to the public.
When:
Public lectures will be held at 4 p.m. on Thursdays: Feb. 5, March 26 and April 16.
Seminars will be held from 2-4 p.m. on Fridays: Feb. 6, March 27 and April 17.
Where:
Art Building,23rd and San Jacinto streets
For lectures, room 1.102
For seminars, room 3.206
Ollman has been writing criticism and features on the visual arts for the Los Angeles Times for more than 20 years. She is a corresponding editor for Art in America and the author of numerous catalogue essays. Her publications include: “Strangely Familiar” (2008), “The Photography of John Brill” (2002) and “William Kentridge: Weighing…and Wanting” (2001). She lives in San Diego and is working on a project exploring the affinities between poetry and photography.
Bui is an artist, writer and curatorial adviser at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Museum of Modern Art affiliate. His numerous installations over the last two years have earned the Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Eric Isenbeurger Annual Prize for Installation from the National Academy Museum. He is the editor and publisher of the monthly journal The Brooklyn Rail, a critical perspective on arts, politics and culture in New York City and beyond.
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January 30, 2009
Review: 'Leslee Fraser: No Sure Footing'
Leslee Fraser is a humorously irreverent commentator. The San Antonio-based artist — currently featured in a solo exhibit at Women & Their Work — pulls from the most commonplace commercial realms to twist well-known images into funny but often dark new scenarios.
Specifically Fraser — whose artmaking practice had to change radically when she was diagnosed with chronic reactive arthritis several years ago — collects kitschy pastel ceramic figurines and toys then arranges and modifies them to startling effect. Fraser does her collecting while power walking around inside malls. In effect, shopping has become her mode of artmaking. And yet it’s the commercialization — the bland mass reproduction, the numbing sameness — of popular imagery that Fraser’s art critiques.
Take, for example, “Precious Little.” The tiny staged scene features one of the strangest of the Precious Moments figurines — the mass-produced teardrop-eyed, pastel-hued little statues of children — this one in spacesuit, a helmet in its hands. Fraser has placed this baby astronaut about six inches from a pile of fool’s gold. In a darkly humorous way you can’t help but feel sorry for the tiny space-traveling tot and what she represents — she’s an allegory for our collective starry-eyed dreams of discovering material riches.
Everything in Fraser’s mini tableaux is topsy-turvy, ironic, upside-down; the titles of miniature installations, pure double-entendre. In “Forbidden Love” a rosy cute ceramic mother pig nurses a dog while her piglets look on in surprise. In “Cock Fight 2” two rooster figurines, slightly altered with craft clay, pair off, one in patriotic American garb, the other in the robes of a Islamic imam: two titans of political and religious faith as warring animals.
Despite their handmade-and-heartfelt look and despite their commercial origins, these odd scenes unnerve. Maybe it’s their miniature scale. Maybe it’s the way in which Fraser, with very deft artistic antics, complete subverts the shallow kitsch of pop culture to weave compelling visual commentaries.
‘Leslee Fraser: No Sure Footing’
When: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays through Feb. 21
Where: Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca St.
Tickets: Free
Information: 477-1064, www.womenandtheirwork.org
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January 23, 2009
Texas art in the White House?
Could there be the work of a Texas artist in the White House?
Well, we don’t know. But we do know that President and Mrs. Obama have had a work by Texas photographer Keith Carter on display in their Chicago home.
A photograph published in the Time-Life’ book, ‘The American Journey of Barack Obama,’ shows the Obamas in their Chicago home during the presidential campaign. On a wall is a print of Carter’s photograph ‘Garlic.’ The 1991 photograph shows an African American woman who has just yanked a stalk garlic out of her Mississippi garden.
A longtime resident of Beaumont, Carter was named as a winner of the Texas Medal of Arts on Thursday. Ten books of his moody and enigmatic photographs have been published, three by the University of Texas Press. Carter’s work is included in the collections of institutions such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum, among others. In Austin, Carter is represented by Stephen L. Clark Gallery.
“Garlic” by Keith Carter. 1991.
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January 20, 2009
The Blanton goes blue
The Blanton Museum of Art seems to have found a way to do something with the cavernous lobby of their Michener Gallery Building, thanks to the generosity of far-sighted patrons Jeanne and Michael Klein.
The Kleins have supported a site-specific installation by Teresita Fernandez, a 2005 winner of the MacArthur Fellows Program, a.k.a the MacArthur genius awards. Entitled ‘Stacked Waters,’ the massive piece consists of 3,100 square feet of custom-cast acrylic that covers the atrium walls in a striped blue pattern resembling water. It should be finished Jan. 23 and will be on view long-term, probably three to five years.
The title of the work, Fernandez said last week as she was installing the work, is a nod to Donald Judd’s stack pieces and his exploration of box interiors. And no, it’s not a reference to any particular body of water.
With its changing stripes of shades of blue and white, ‘Stacked Waters’ seems to undulate in the skylit atrium, reflecting the changing light. “I wanted it to be like a portrait of the day and the changing light,” said Fernandez. “I want it to immerse the viewer. Instead of giving visitors an object to look at, I wanted to give them an experience.”
Fernandez said she also wanted to break the stereotype of atrium art — you know, the expected grandiose mobile. Instead, she’s offering visitors to UT’s art museum a tantalizing, beckoning journey, especially as you ascend the 50 steps up to the second floor.
Even seen in mid-installation, “Stacked Waters” looks like a major — and sublime — improvement to the Blanton’s stark atrium — a vexing overly-large space in a building strapped by its conservative, uninspiring architecture.
Michael Klein, for one, has been seeking a way to enliven the Blanton’s architecture since the place opened in 2006. “It’s like the architect forgot the art,” said Klein when he stopped by last week to visit with Fernandez.
Artist Teresita Fernandez and Michael Klein.
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January 13, 2009
Blanton, UT Dept. of Art launch residencies for Latin American artists
The Blanton Museum of Art in collaboration with UT’s Creative Research Laboratory of the Department of Art and Art History has announced an ambitious new series of artist residencies for emerging Latin American artists.
Called “Mapping Exchange: Artists Residencies Programs,” the initiative establishes a series of three annual artists residencies that will include exhibitions, artist talks and cultural events organized with other university departments.
Spearheaded by Ursula Davila-Villa, the Blanton’s interim curator of Latin American Art, and CRL director Jade Walker — both ambitious emerging arts professionals in their own right — “Mapping Exchange” draws from Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
Austin-Argentina Residency
This residency culminates with an exhibition of works by the visiting artist and selected university-affiliated artists.
Titled “A Strange Land,” this year’s exhibition will investigate citizenship, urbanization and borders and features the work of Erica Bohm, this year’s Austin-Argentinian residency artist. Her work deals with landscape and the different ways in which emotions are conveyed through the idea of landscape.
“A Strange Land” runs Jan. 24 through Feb. 7 at the Creative Research Laboratory, 2832 East Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Admission is free. Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays.
Mexico-Austin Artistic Exchange
A partnership with the Museo Carrillo Gill in Mexico City, the Mexico-Austin Artistic Exchange provides a one-month residency at UT for a selected emerging artist living in Mexico followed followed by a similar presentation hosted by the Museo Carrillo.
This year’s artist is Diego Perez García, who started his career as a photojournalist. In his work, García reconstructs myths and legends through a Mexican sociocultural context.
Ibere Camargo Residency
Organized in conjunction with the Ibere Camargo Foundation (Porto Alegre, Brazil), provides an opportunity for a selected emerging artist (who must be living in Brazil) to spend two months at UT and the Blanton. An international jury selects the artist
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January 2, 2009
Austin Museum of Art cancels downtown project
While revelers and arts patrons were busy preparing for New Year’s Eve festivities, the Austin Museum of Art quietly dropped a ball of its own Wednesday. Talk about finishing up 2008 with a bang — or really, a bust.
Museum officials and representatives of Houston development firm Hines Interests LP announced Wednesday that they were postponing their plans to build a 30-story office tower and a new $23 million Austin Museum of Art facility downtown on the museum-owned block at West Fourth and Guadalupe streets. Both the museum and Hines cited the grim economic climate as the reason the project is on hold.
Did they think no one was looking, announcing it New Year’s Eve? Well, we were.
Plans had called for the museum to occupy the east half of the prime downtown block with a three-story 40,000-square-foot building facing Republic Square Park. Hines was going to purchase — for an undisclosed sum — the west side of the lot for its office tower. Both the tower and the museum were to be designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the firm is responsible for the master plan of the redesigned University of Texas campus, with principal Fred Clarke leading the design team. Preliminary designs were unveiled in February and suggested that the museum would be clean modernist structure featuring plenty of transparent glass.
The project had been scheduled to break ground in 2009 and with completion slated for 2011.
Representatives of the museum and Hines both say the project is merely postponed, not altogether canceled. But a spokesperson for Hines said the company would not renew an option that expired Wednesday to purchase half of the prime downtown lot which the museum has owned since the early 1980s. The sale of the land to Hines probably would have covered almost half of the $23 million needed to build the museum. And now with no partner anteing up, that leaves the museum flat out of luck — and money. The museum’s board has not decided whether to put the land back on the market.
The museum, by the way, selected Hines after 14 developers submitted proposals.
At 40,000 square feet, the proposed new museum would have more than double the museum’s existing space at 823 Congress Ave., where it rents the first floor of an office building. The museum, which has a $4.3 million annual budget, also has the historical 12-acre Laguna Gloria site in West Austin, which includes a restored 1916 villa that hosts small exhibitions and studio buildings for the museum’s art school.
This is the third time in nearly three decades that the museum and its leaders have tried — and failed — to build a downtown museum.
The first time the museum, then known as Laguna Gloria Art Museum, proposed building in downtown Austin was in the early 1980s. In 1985, voters approved $14.7 million in tax-supported bonds for the project. But the real estate bust of the late 1980s sent the project into a tailspin. Also, bickering among major arts groups caused the City Council to rescind its support of the then public-private venture.
Plans by famed architect Robert Venturi were shelved after $3 million was spent on design and administrative fees.
In 1995, the museum moved to its current location on Congress Avenue and made another bid to build downtown. In 1998, architect Richard Gluckman was selected to design a sleek, modern 140,000-square-foot building. A $64 million capital campaign was launched. At the same time, the museum returned $13.7 million in city bond money after museum leaders said they wanted control of their project and its land.
However, in 2001 museum officials decided to build the project in stages and settled on a $43 million first phase.
But then Austin’s high-tech economy fizzled even more and after the abrupt departure of then-director Elizabeth Ferrer in 2002, supporters of the project retreated. By early 2004, the Gluckman design had been scrapped. Of the $14.25 million the museum had raised for the project, all but $860,000 was spent on architect fees and fundraising and marketing expenses.
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March 18, 2008
Arthouse unveils innovative plans for building renovation
A graceful and innovative renovation that will add a new layer to a many-layered historic downtown building will be unveiled at a news conference Wednesday announcing Arthouse’s $6 million renovation plans for its 14,000-square-foot building, known as the Jones Center at 700 Congress Avenue.
Designed by the New York architecture firm Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis, the renovation will triple the existing usable space the contemporary art nonprofit organization currently uses by adding add three new galleries, two artists’ studios, a 90-seat multimedia screening room and 5,500-square-foot rooftop open-air space with a 17-by-33-foot movie screen. Arthouse currently only uses the first floor of the 14,000-square-foot two-story building for its changing exhibitions and offices.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009 and will be completed in 2010.
The organization is also launching $6.6 million capital campaign, of which more than $3.3 million has already been raised from Arthouse board members and other supporters. Monies raised will be used for the renovation project and to establish endowments.
“The building has a rich history,” said architect Paul Lewis. “We’re taking the trajectory of that history and adding to it.”
The majority of the building’ exterior will be perforated by more than 160 laminate glass blocks designed to let light into currently windowless interior areas such as offices. At street level, the current floor-to-ceiling glass windows and awning — both features added when the building was converted to a department store — will be enlarged and a dramatic new lobby and entrance — the awning of which will be capable of suspending artwork and will contain audio speakers for sound projections — will be located directly on Congress Avenue. The original second floor department store display window will be expanded to accommodate rear-screen projections which will be visible from the street at night.
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Inside, a new staircase and a pair of elevators will connect the two inside floors and the rooftop space which will feature a deck of ipe wood panels interlaced with illuminated glass panels.
For an interactive feature on the renovation, click here.
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November 16, 2007
Michael Smith chosen for Whitney Biennial
Artist and University of Texas art professor Michael Smith has been chosen for inclusion in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s signature survey of contemporary American art.
Smith is currently rocking it out at the Blanton Museum of Art with “Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (And Other Collaborators,” the mind-boggling sensory-overloading multimedia darn-wonderful-time exhibit aka “theme park” celebration of the life and adventures of Mike, Smith’s alter ego.
Check out the rest of the selected Whitney Biennial artists here
(“Go For It, Mike,” video still, Michael Smith and Mark Fischer, 1984.)
Several years ago when hosting the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards, the late great Gov. Ann Richards quipped that flying through the DFW airport qualified you as enough of a Texan to get you into the Film Hall of Fame. In that spirit of extending bragging rights way past any reasonable boundary, here’s other Whitney Biennial 2008 artists who have an Austin connection.
Carol Bove, Jedediah Caesar and Seth Price have all been featured in Blanton exhibitions. Rachel Harrison has work in the Blanton’s permanent collection.
William Cordova and Corey McCorkle have exhibited at Arthouse and Fritz Haeg will be featured there in January.
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