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Review: ‘The Trojan Women’
Those left behind by war — women, children, civilians — are marginalized all over again by history, their experiences typically not the stuff of record.
That’s been true to for millennia. And in a smart re-imagining of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’ by Meghan Kennedy and Kimber Lee. we’re reminded that the ravages of war dramatized in ancient Greece resonate with equal tragedy thousands of years later.
Produced by the University of Texas Department of Theatre & Dance and inventively staged by director Halena Kays, this edgy, visceral interpretation of the saga of the survivors of the Greeks’ 10-year war with Troy smartly updates the ancient story to read as a contemporary parable yet doesn’t forsake the classic drama.
Grimy, exhausted, bruised and their hair shorn, the Trojan women emerge from a smoky ruin and face their fate: to spend their lives as slaves and concubines to their Greek conquerors. (Scenic designer Peter Holtin and lighting designer Cheng-Wei Teng create a dark, ruined world of urban rubble. Music by Kevin O’Donnell, played by a quartet in formal wear, adds plenty of atmosphere.)
As the Trojan queen Hecuba, Kate deBuys is alternately beaten down and raw, the life scratched out of her, and then steely with the will to rebel. When she confronts Menelaus — played as swaggering corporate swell by Rodney Richardson — Hecuba unleashes her most powerful weapon: words. And in playwright Kennedy and Lee give Hecuba nuanced contemporary words that nevertheless deliver intelligent bite.
And the cause of this decade-long war and ensuing wreckage? As Helen of Troy Verity Branco is all classic Hollywood vixen with elbow-length gloves and coiffed long dark curls. Branco exudes sensuality. Bu she is also a modern queen resentful of how she’s been made a scapegoat for a war.
Here again, it’s that smart balance of modern psychology and sensibility blended nicely classic character and drama — a balance that makes this ‘Trojan Women’ a smart story for our times.
‘The Trojan Women’ continues through Nov. 8. www.texasperformingarts.org
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Theater for germaphobes
Lately, with fears of the H1N1 flu rocking the public psyche, bottles of antibacterial hand sanitizer grace office desks and retail countertops. In some world cities, medical face masks have become the new accessory. And cultures with affectionate cheek-kissing greetings are now finding their traditions the subject of public health concerns.
A few years ago, when playwright Zayd Dohrn began writing ‘Sick,’ a quirky comedy about a Manhattan family and the absurd extremes they go through to protect themselves from pollution, he had plenty of material at hand. He was living in Beijing during the height of the SARS epidemic. Dohrn relocated to China from post-Sept. 11 New York, where health-threatening environmental fallout from the terrorists attacks was dreaded.
Now here in Austin — as H1N1 fears still makes headlines — Capital T Theatre is opening a new production of ‘Sick.’
In Dohrn’s offbeat play, a family of germaphobes believes they have allergies to everything from junk food to cleaning supplies to the Manhattan air. When their vacuum-sealed home is invaded by a visitor, chaos crescendos.
‘Sick’
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec. 5
Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd St.
$15-$25
www.capitalT.org
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Reggie Watts returns to Austin
For the past two years, the eclectically talented performance artist Reggie Watts has dazzled Austin at his sold-out shows that are part of the Fusebox Festival.
Now, the inimitable Watts returns with his one-man show of improvised music, absurdist comedy and his 300 distinct vocal styles. Prepare for the unexpected and the hiliarious.
Reggie Watts
9 p.m. Nov. 12
Scoot Inn, 1308 E. Fourth St.
$15 ($10 student/starving artist)
www.fuseboxfestival.com
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EAST Explosion: Studio tour keeps on growing
The event you thought couldn’t get any bigger has gotten bigger.
This year, the annual East Austin Studio Tour expands from one weekend to nine days running Nov. 14-22.
Some 154 studios exhibiting the work of more than 280 artists will be open on the weekends of the event — 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 14 & 15 and Nov. 21 & 22.
And this year the tour will also feature 20 exhibition spaces, 49 happenings and 30 programs. That’s mind-boggling.
All that is EAST is free and open to the public.
Preview the list of events here.
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Tell your story to history
The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum wants to hear your story.
Austin-based production house, LifeStories Alive, and publicity firm, Frost Media Relations, have announced that they are partnering with the Bullock in an effort to raise $2 million to launch the Texas Visual and Oral History Project, a statewide oral history video project.
Once the project is funded, the plan is send a mobile video booth to various regions around the state so that anyone can record his or her story for posterity.
Any Texan, that is.
“Tweed Scott, author of Texas in Her Own Words, coined the term the ‘T chromosome,’ where he expressed that Texas is different and the people from the state have a commonality…a Texas pride, that no other state can quite emulate,” said John Sneed, executive director of the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Bullock Museum. “There’s so much truth to the T chromosome mindset, which is why we’re so excited about this partnership in gathering the stories of the people who make Texas so rich, vibrant, and larger than life.”
Funding for the project is expected to come from public/private sponsorships and reaches out to Texans across the state. In the meantime, until the $2 million is raised, the project see will place a stationary video booth at the Bullock beginning mid-2010.
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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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Review: ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’
It’s a not a spoiler to say that everyone dies by the end of ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery,’ a new musical play by Elizabeth Doss, a co-production of Vortex Repertory-Tutto Theatre Company.
Dying — well, murder — gets going from the get-go in this free-spirited if problematic production directed by Dustin Wills.
Doss, Wills and set designer Lisa Laratta place this wanna-be allegory in a stylized world that’s a kind of bayou/Southern gothic. Actors cavort in a shallow pool center stage or climb the sprawling platform structure that rings the center seating section. A motley four-piece bluegrass band strolls around, acting as clowns and chorus both. There’s a husband-killing tough ol’ gal, legendary murderer Stagger Lee, a Bonnie and Clyde-esque young couple and a pair of young backwoods sisters whose crashing boredom leads to — oh, take a guess.
The dead and the living, the past and the present, are intimately intwined in Doss and Wills’ Americana vaudeville-esque setting. And Mark Stewart and Andy Tindall’s twangy bluegrass music provides the aural atmosphere in the perpetually half-lit world. And the ensemble cast is full of energetic acting.
But with little linearity to it, ‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’ trades a little too much on atmosphere. Plenty is suggested and yes, quirky, delightful scenario after quirky, delightful scenario is unveiled and presented for our consideration.
But as imaginative as each of those scenarios are, they lack a kind of friction with each other. Never quite able to stick together, the individual pieces of ‘Murder Ballad Murder Myster’ just miss at being a whole.
‘Murder Ballad Murder Mystery’ continues through Nov. 7. www.tuttotheatre.org
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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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‘La Boheme’ keeps it young
Since its debut more than a century ago, Puccini’s tragic romance about two young lovers struggling in 19th-century bohemian Paris has arguably become the basis of all subsequent struggling-artist love stories.
And while the production presented by Austin Lyric Opera that opens this weekend keeps Puccini’s story in the 19th century (created by the San Diego Opera, the sets riff on the art of painter Toulouse-Lautrec), the cast for this “La Bohème” is most decidedly young
Here’s 30-year-old French tenor Sebastien Gueze who plays Rodolfo in a recent production of ‘La Boheme.’
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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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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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‘The House of the Sun’
Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara based his opera ‘The House of the Sun’ on the true tale of two sisters who fled the Russian revolution in 1917 and lived in virtual isolation in Finland for almost 70 years, refusing to believe that the revolution had ever happened and that their previous life of luxury was over. Finally in the winter of 1987, the sisters froze to death in their house in the woods, a house called Solgården (‘Sun’s garden’).
The Butler School of Music collaborates with the Sibelius Academy of Finland in this new production.
Sometimes characterized as a mystic or romantic composer, Rautavaara nevertheless employs a fundamentally post-modern musical language in which theirs a blend of modern and traditional tonalities and elements.
‘The House of the Sun’
7:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday
McCullough Theatre, UT campus
$10-$20
www.music.utexas.edu
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‘An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story’ screening
Earlier this fall, the University of Texas announced that the acquisition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photo-journalist Eddie Adams.
Adams made history with his 1968 photo of a South Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong prisoner. “Saigon Execution” is widely considered one of the most influential images to come out of the Vietnam War.
The continuing story of the Saigon photograph became the subject of “An Unlikely Weapon,” directed by Susan Cooper and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. A free screening of the film will be offered Wednesday followed by remarks by photojournalist David Hume Kennerly Alyssa Adams (Adams’ widow).
‘An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story’
6:30 p.m. Wednesday
Blanton Museum of Art Auditorium, Congress Ave. and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Free
See a slide show of UT’s Eddie Adams collection.
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Paul Baker, legendary Texas theater educator, 1911-2009
Paul Baker — influential Texas theater educator — passed away at the age of 98.
He died at the hospital on Sunday morning, October 25 due to complications from pneumonia, a press release from Dallas Theatre Center reported. Baker was the founder of the Dallas Thearre Center as well as the founding principal of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Among Baker’s contributions to the fields of theater and education continue to be celebrated. Over a long career as chair of the drama department at Baylor University, Baker honed his ideas about an integrated approach to the study of the arts (theater in particular), an approach still upheld today.
Read anAmerican-Statesman profile of Baker.
The Baker Idea Institute at the Dallas Theatre Center continues his legacy.
A public memorial and celebration of the life and work of Dr. Baker is being planned to take place at Rosewood Center for Family Arts in Dallas in early December. Details to be announced.
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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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Review: ‘Earthwork’
Where’s there a will, sometimes there is art.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Chril Ordal, the delightfully quiet and quirky “Earthwork” recounts the true story of Kansas artist Stan Herd (deftly played by John Hawkes) who sets out to transform a junk-filled lot in New York into one of his lush fields of crop art.
Riffing off the abstract art installations introduced in 1960s by artists such as Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria, Herd combined the cerebral genre of conceptual earth art with his downhome upbringing on a Kansas farm to come up with his own take on the earth-shaping art genre.
Herd used plants and field crops which he carefully cultivated to create massive mostly figurative artworks that could really only be seen from the sky.
In an effort to get his work noticed outside his native Kansas - and to start monetizing his efforts — Herd journeyed to Big Apple in 1993 where he proposes to create one of his giant earthworks on property owned by Donald Trump.
After a decade of heated controversy, Trump won the rights to develop a strip of land along Manhattan’s Upper West Side and to appease his opposition, Trump offered to sponsor an art project on the property before construction started.
To win the commission, Herd offers to fund the project himself and just ask Trump for access to the site. But that means Herd must leverage the Kansas home he shares with his wife and child, risking everything for the chance to get his art seen.
Once in New York, Herd finds himself alone in his endeavor. But soon enough a passel of homeless men who live in nearby abandoned train tunnels takes an interest in Herd’s project and eventually becomes his earnest but motley crew of assistants.
A character piece more than anything else, Ordal’s compact film nicely avoids imposing any grandiose summations about Herd or his art work or even the nature of art itself.
Hawkes captures Herd’s unsophisticated yet headstrong character, delivering a convincing portrait of a man somewhat naive but nevertheless fiercly driven whose sheer force of will leads him on.
(Hawkes honed his acting chops right here in Austin’s theater community of the early and mid 1980s, most notably with “In the West” a critically-acclaimed collage of monologues inspired by the Richard Avedon’s photographic portraits of Westerners.)
Ruination may threaten Herd as he forges ahead with his most unlikely New York public art project. But like Voltaire’s Candide, he chooses to simply, and cheerfully, cultivate his own garden.
‘Earthwork’
Written and directed by Chril Ordal
USA, 98 minutes
Screenings: 6:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1800 Congress Ave. 7:15 p.m. Oct. 27, Arbor Cinema, 9828 Great Hills Trail. Q-and-A with the director following each screening.
Image: John Hawkes as artist Stan Herd. Photo by Hometown Collaborations.
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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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Bass Concert Hall jumps into Pollstar top ten
The University of Texas’ Bass Concert Hall has been ranked number seven for third quarter ticket sales in Pollstar’s worldwide ranking of top 100 international theater venues.
Pollstar, the trade journal of touring artists, booking agents and performance venues, released its third quarter rankings today. The Bass Concert Hall sold 215,237 tickets between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 of this year. Pollstar rated the UT venue number 13 at its mid-year ranking.
The recent rankings positions Bass Concert Hall in the company of major venues such as New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Atlanta’s Fox Theatre and Las Vegas’ Coliseum at Ceasars Palace and ahead of regional venues like the Nokia Theatre in Grand Prairie, Texas.
A sold-out three-week run of the Broadway musical ‘Wicked’ is primarily responsible for the jump in tickets sales during the third quarter though other well-selling shows at Bass Concert Hall this year include violinist Itzhak Perman, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, James Taylor and comedy show Flight of the Conchords.
In November, the Bass Concert Hall will be one of only five venues in the United States to host legendary comic artist Robert Crumb who penned well-known characters and series including Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, Joe Blow and Keep on Truckin’.
TOP 10 WORLDWIDE THEATRE VENUES BY THIRD QUARTER TICKETS SALES
1. Auditorio Nacional, Mexico City — 859,534
2. Fox Theatre, Atlanta — 418,958
3. Colosseum At Caesars Palace, Las Vegas —408,192
4. Auditorio Telmex, Guadalajara — 287,585
5. Radio City Music Hall, New York — 270,883
6. Benedum Center, Pittsburgh — 258,295
7. Bass Concert Hall, Austin — 215,237
8. Nokia Theatre At Grand Prairie, Grand Prairie, Texas — 212,434
9. Beacon Theatre, New York —204,559
10. Paramount Theatre, Seattle — 199,748
Source: Pollstar
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Review: ‘Spring Awakening’
There is a certain irony to the bright red “Mature Themes” warning on posters for the musical “Spring Awakening,” since the show illustrates how restricting knowledge about sexuality becomes dangerous for a group of adolescents in late nineteenth century Germany.
In Tuesday’s show at the Texas Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas, the national tour’s cast of “Spring Awakening” plumbed the depths of teenagers’ anger at adult-imposed conservatism. When the show turned from anger to wretched sorrow, a blanketing silence spread across Bass Concert Hall’s audience.
Following the path charted by rock musicals like “Rent,” “Spring Awakening” mixes high velocity rock and almost sappy emo music by pop star Duncan Sheik. Steven Sater’s book and lyrics, based on Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play of the same title, vacillates between celebrating the pleasure of screaming four-letter words in public places and critiquing the dismissal of children and adolescents as sentient, sexual beings. The show’s teenage characters often relish doing what is forbidden, but social strictures often mean they make these choices without full knowledge of the consequences.
The show asks much of relatively young actors, which could be a recipe for disaster given touring shows often uneven casts. But this ensemble stands up well against the Broadway version. As the central couple, Melchior and Wendla, Jake Epstein and Christy Altomare, give subtle performances. They approach Bill T. Jones’ choreography, a simple repetitive series of hand gestures, with smart shifts of character. When Wendla first does the tiny dance, standing on a chair at the musical’s beginning, Altomare manages to make it look as though someone else’s hands eerily caress her. At the height of his second act frustration, Epstein pulls off a similar, but differently inflected, sense of disembodiment. His hands furiously move across his body as though threatening to tear him apart.
Melchior and Wendla’s relationship, a friendship turned sexual, creates the musical’s through line, even as it explodes the show. In workshop versions of “Spring Awakening,” the creative team positioned the teens’ sex act as rape, but like the Broadway show, the touring version leaves their onstage copulation ambiguous around the question of consent. The directorial choice makes Wendla an ignorant bystander to her own sexuality. As the show progresses the one-time girl leader becomes another body to be shuffled about by adults. Yet Altamore’s piercing, sorrowful voice seems a reminder of the person within the body that becomes little more than a shameful symbol.
As the musical’s second couple, the bumbling Moritz (Taylor Trensch) and bohemian Ilse (Steffi D), depict teens pushed to society’s margins: Moritz because he fails in school and Else because she has to flee her father’s violent grip. As Moritz, Trensch is agonizingly sad, although his choice to make less of Moritz’s earlier comedic charm flattens the character’s emotional journey.
Although “Spring Awakening’s” controversy is usually tied to its frank look at adolescent sexuality, its greatest musical innovation might be its anchor in anger. Although the show closes with the unnecessary sappy “Purple Summer,” otherwise the ensemble comes together mainly to stomp their feet and scream—not sing major chords and hold hands. The show argues that singing together can do more than make us feel good. Sometimes it can unleash fury fueled by oppressive social mores. ‘Spring Awakening’ continues through Oct. 25. www.texasperformingarts.org
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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Austin’s acting A-list stars in ‘Holy Hell’
Need money for your community church to survive? Why not make a horror film? The film industry is, after all, where the big bucks are, right?
That’s the hairbrained plan hatched by congregants of the money-challenged Church on Peachtree in “Holy Hell,” the quirky satire by Austinites Rafael Antonio Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee getting its Austin premiere as part of the Austin Film Festival.
However, when a reactionary Christian organization — Fight4Right — gets wind of the Peachtree project, production on the horror flick is besieged with protests while the mild-mannered yet sincerely devout congregants, led by the noble if naïve Pastor Lane (Ken Edwards) and tense, angry Deacon Pardo (Kenneth Wayne Bradley) are subjected to a negative media blitz.
Isn’t honest faith and a desire to lead a faith-filled life enough these days? Apparently, not for the Church on Peachtree.
The negative news siege culminates when Pastor Lane is ripped to shreds on a talk show by British author and vociferous atheist Christopher Hitchens, (A close friend of the film’s executive producer, Jeff Scheftel, Hitchens actually wrote his own lines for debate.)
All kinds of sacred cows are skewered by Ruiz and Bartholomee in “Holy Hell” - the bizarre contradictions of organized religion, the absurdities of the film industry and the conflict-hungry, spectacle-obsessed media.
If “Holy Hell” is a little rough around the edges when it comes to production values (well, it was made for considerably less than $100,000, producers report), the literally dozens of A-list Austin actors unleash their considerable talents to great affect (Austin theater aficiandos will have fun actor-spotting; Austin residents will recognize local spots where the movie was shot).
Nuanced performances — even in the smaller roles — bring both a smart panache and a sweet sincerity to the over-the-top plot in a script that is nicely written by Ruiz and Bartholomee.
‘Holy Hell’
Written by Rafael Antonio Ruiz and Lowell Bartholomee. Directed by Rafael Antonio Ruiz.
USA: 97 minutes
Screenings: 7 p.m. Oct. 22 and Oct. 28. Rollins Theatre, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Dr.
Image: Kenneth Wayne Bradley stars in “Holy Hell.”
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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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I went to this last year, and I had a great time. Lots of cool things to see.
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Liz, Has your gallery publicized its presence? It you want readers of the austin360.com or the Austin American-Statesman to know about your gallery, send press releases. best, Jeanne Claire
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