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JEANNE CLAIRE VAN RYZIN

Title:
Arts Writer and Critic

Hometown:
New York, N.Y.

Number of years in Austin:
16

Favorite three architects (this month):
Samuel Mockbee, Glenn Murcutt, Gaud�

Favorite town in Mexico:
General Cepeda, Coahuila

Cat person or dog person?
Both.

Three things necessary for a stylish house:
No refrigerator magnets; A striped cat; A lido deck.

Things you might not think an arts critic like me would actually like to do:
Go camping in the mountains, take road trips in Mexico in the heat of the summer, embark on home sewing projects.

Top 10 Austin Arts Events of 2002:

1. "22 to Watch: New Art in Austin," Austin Museum of Art. It was timely, it was lively, it was cool. There are many, many roles a city art museum plays. And one of them is to sniff out the emerging talent in town, which is what Dana Friis-Hansen, intrepid AMOA director and chief curator, along with curators Erica Shamaly and Gail Sanders, did.

2. "El Paraiso," the Rude Mechanicals. How sweet. The Rudes send a valentine to their beloved home state in the form of a whip-smart pastiche of a play. Inspired by a road trip to the Marfa mystery lights and spiked with lots of silly dancing and country-and-western karaoke, "El Paraiso" showed us that there really is no place like home.

3. "Happy Birthday Mr. Cage," Michelle Schumann, Tosca String Quartet, Thomas Burritt and Tony Edwards. The late avant-garde composer couldn't have had a better 90th birthday homage, thanks to Schumann and company, who "prepared" a piano with junk and sat silently for four minutes and 33 seconds.

4. Lance Letscher and Sydney Yeager, D. Berman Gallery. Two long-standing Austin artists roll out impressive new bodies of work in separate shows: Letscher with his wondrous collages of found paper, Yeager with her colorful, unrestrained and lively abstract paintings. Clearly, Letscher and Yeager have gotten something right: That to progress as an artist you must continue to evolve.

5. Cedar Avenue houses, KRDB. Young architects do the right thing with affordable housing in an expensive market. Chris Krager and Christopher Robertson didn't wait for change to happen, they made it happen by building two sleek, modern residences in East Austin under an affordable housing program. And that meant that some average-income people could own an above-average home.

6. "Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Life and Death of #1," Arthouse at the Jones Center. The young Paris, Texas, native who is currently wowing the art world unveiled the energetic though enigmatic characters of an ongoing fable. Fashioned in frenzied lines and shapes, his work is accented by a sundry assortment of plastic bottle caps, fake fur and felt. Deeply felt.

7. Creative Research Laboratory. This University of Texas off- campus gallery, housed in a former East Side warehouse, offers a fast changing schedule of student and faculty shows. Finally, we have ready access to the abundance of talent that UT incubates.

8. It's dance, it's theater, it's . . . Their country may be falling apart, but the Argentine dance theater troupe Grupo Krapp couldn't have been more together, more absurd and more humane. "Huellas en el Agua/Footprints on Water," by Toni Bravo and Sharon Marroquin, gave us a dozen delectable, expressive dances. And Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company proved that � guess what?! � modern dance can be pretty and pretty fun.

9. "A Rabbit's Progress: A Fable in Monotypes by Margaret Simpson," Slugfest Gallery. Once upon a time, an Austin artist named Margaret Simpson made 24 prints that presented the wondrous story of an adventurous toy rabbit who embarked on a journey. Simpson's prints let the viewer interpret the story in any number of ways. And they all lived hoppily ever after.

10. Realty . . . what a concept. No, the Blanton Museum of Art won't be the innovative piece of architecture we once hoped for. But with progress on major capital projects such as the Long Center and the new Austin Museum of Art in a deep freeze thanks to a chilly economy, the museum's long-awaited groundbreaking means that the Blanton will be built and its extraordinary collections will see the light of day. Also, the UT museum scored a major addition to its collection when art historian Leo Steinberg donated more than 3,200 prints valued at $3.5 million.

And bully for the folks at Arthouse, the institution formerly known as Texas Fine Arts Association. They paid off the mortgage on their Congress Avenue digs, the Jones Center for Contemporary Art, leaving them fiscally secure and letting contemporary art lovers sleep a little sounder.

Five recent pieces * :
Feb. 6, 2003: "Getting in Touch with their Mexican Side," XL
Dec. 8, 2002: "A meditative masterpiece) , Life & Arts p. 1
Nov. 19, 2002: "Poet in scrap paper," Life & Arts p. 1
Nov. 7, 2002: "Portrait of the Artist..." XL cover
Oct. 19, 2002, "UT Collection long road home," A-1

* Has also written for New York Times, Architecture magazine, Dwell, Art Papers, Travesias

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