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Glasstire •

Temporary & Permanent: Visiting Art on the University of Houston-Clear Lake Campus

For more than fifty years, the four colleges in the University of Houston System have promoted public art on their campuses. For example, at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL), a short walking tour of the campus includes a permanent collection of works that exert both a Gulf Coast and Space City identity, and a temporary exhibition of Andy Warhol Polaroids gifted to the Public Art of the University of Houston System (PAUHS).

At the entrance of the Bayou Building is Pablo Serrano’s Spir
Glasstire •

Interview: Shahzia Sikander’s Return to Houston with "Extraordinary Realities" at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Shahzia Sikander’s exhibition Extraordinary Realities features drawings produced early in the artist’s career, from the nineties to the early 2000s. We sat down to chat about her origins in the historical genre of illuminated manuscript painting, her infusion of contemporary subject matter and experimental media, and her Houston connections.

Caitlin Duerler Chávez (CDC): Your exhibition Extraordinary Realities at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) features your early career work, including
Glasstire •

Recapping the Marfa Invitational Art Fair

I admit I was an art fair virgin before attending the Marfa Invitational earlier this month.

My prior visit to Marfa in August 2018 had me hooked on the desert vibes, art interventions, and creative community. So when I saw the announcement for the fair back in November 2021, I immediately pitched coverage of the event.

I arrived late Wednesday night in Marfa after a twelve-hour trek from the Gulf Coast. The following day, I spent my early afternoon visiting The Chinati Foundation — the instit
Southwest Contemporary •

Judy Chicago Reprises 50-Year-Old Piece at a Donated, Small-Town House

Through the Flower in Belen, New Mexico is organizing a new installation with a collective of New Mexico artists to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Judy Chicago’s Womanhouse.

This article is part of our Collectivity + Collaboration series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 5.

Fifty years ago, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and a group of their art students from Fresno State College and the California Institute of the Arts opened the feminist art installa
Southwest Contemporary •

Impractical Spaces: 5 Alternative Art Venues in Houston

A book series diving into historical and current alternative art establishments in major stateside cities visits Texas in Impractical Spaces: Houston. Here are five current H-Town favorites from the book.

With world-class art institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Menil Collection, and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Space City has firmly established its position as a Texas mecca for art. However, alongside the growth of these larger institutions is a rich history of i
Glasstire •

Curating for Her Community: Sarah Boehme at the Stark Museum of Art

Throughout downtown Orange, the names of Lutcher, Stark and Lutcher-Stark blazon the facades of cultural and educational institutions, including theaters, museums and schools. Historically, members of this family built a lumber empire — the most notable trace being the imposing Queen Anne Victorian style W.H. Stark House, outfitted in the most decadent custom carpentry. The interior of the house, with its awe-inspiring custom woodwork carved and outfitted from Orange-based lumber, attracted cust
Southwest Contemporary •

Work in Progress with Nick Barbee

Galveston, Texas artist Nick Barbee uses the process of abstraction in recounting American history and personal experiences in his paintings, sculpture, and installation.

The 1,500-square-foot studio of Galveston, Texas-based artist Nick Barbee is located in the oldest wooden church on the island, constructed before the Civil War circa 1859, that once housed a Catholic girl’s school and soup kitchen. In more recent history, St. Joseph’s Church is rumored to have been the site of the buried head
Southwest Contemporary •

Curator Profile: Suzanne Zeller of Foto Relevance, Houston

Houston curator Suzanne Zeller uses their curatorial platform to promote underrepresented queer narratives in contemporary photography.

In their latest show, The Body as Memory at Foto Relevance, Houston, Texas-based curator Suzanne Zeller (who uses they/them pronouns) mounts works of photography that examine representations of queerness from the past, explore individuals’ present experiences, and project future means of writing queer and inclusive narratives. While all ingrained in photographi
Southwest Contemporary •

Studio Visit: Phillp Pyle, II

Houston-based artist and graphic designer Phillip Pyle, II upholds a tradition of collaboration in the historic Third Ward neighborhood.

Houston’s historically Black Third Ward neighborhood is known for its inclination for collaboration in the visual arts. From the midcentury founding of the art department at Texas Southern University by painter and muralist John Biggers to the establishment of Project Row Houses in 1993, socially engaging artwork from decades of talent has provided cultural en
Glasstire •

Soundwaves: An Interview with the Moody Center for the Arts' Alison Weaver

“…and that’s why I selected the title Soundwaves. A sound wave is a pattern of disturbance caused by the movement of energy as it travels outward from the source. We hope that these works will have that same ripple effect on viewers to think differently, or disturb conventional notions, or excite new ideas.”

-Alison Weaver

Five years ago, Rice University in Houston inaugurated the Moody Center for the Arts, a multifunctional space that has built a reputation for robust visual and performing a
Southwest Contemporary •

Work in Progress with Angelica Raquel Martínez

Artist Angelica Raquel Martínez, a Laredo, Texas native, continues her familial legacy of storytelling in works on paper and textile installations.

“I never questioned any of these stories and experiences. It is just like breathing, it is a part of my culture.” —Angelica Raquel Martínez

Raised on la frontera between Mexico and Texas, San Antonio-based artist Angelica Raquel Martínez creates works that straddle the line between reality and dreams, in which familiar animals are made unfamiliar t
Glasstire •

Oneiric Ornament: Caroline Mesquita at the Blaffer Art Museum

When first learning French, many language teachers tell English-speaking students to use cognates, words that look the same and have the same meaning in both languages. However, there are also faux amis, “false friends,” or words that look the same but have different meanings. Noctambules is one such slippery term. In French, it means someone who is up all night, a night owl; in English, however, the expression noctambulist refers to a sleepwalker, unconscious of their nocturnal physical activit
Southwest Contemporary •

Review: Carlomagno Pedro Martínez at Art Museum of Southeast Texas

Oaxacan artist Carlomagno Pedro Martínez uses folk iconography to restage Mexican history at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.

Collecting a Master: Carlomagno Pedro Martínez in the John Gaston Fairey Collection of Mexican Folk Art

October 2, 2021–March 12, 2023

Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont

In San Bartolo Coyotepec, generations of local potters mold the grey clay found only in their small pueblo in central Oaxaca in Mexico into artistic and functional matte and shiny black ceram
Southwest Contemporary •

Review: The Dirty South at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Artists in The Dirty South at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston work with materials and subject matter that reflect a century-long tradition of regional dialogue between Black visual art and music.

The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse

November 5, 2021–February 6, 2022

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

A sweeping two-floor exhibition currently on display at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston—which features more than 130 works that range widely across media
Glasstire •

Prospect.5 New Orleans Reconsiders the Past to Envision a New Future

For the fifth edition of the Prospect New Orleans Triennial, curators Naima J. Keith and Diana Nawi selected the theme Yesterday we said tomorrow, choosing artists whose works consider the influence of the past in informing the present moment. With 51 artist projects at more than 20 venues across the city, Prospect.5 unfolds across art institutions and historic New Orleans neighborhoods. Capturing local and national perspectives of a city cyclically barraged with natural disasters, and a larger,
Glasstire •

Dreamscapes, Midnight Gardens, and the Deep Sea: Kana Harada at Asia Society Texas Center

In a few words, Kana Harada shares some insights about the works from and inspiration for her latest exhibition. In Divine Spark at Asia Society Texas Center, Harada’s sculptural installations and works on paper aim to provide a space for repose and meditation — scenes mined from dreams, gardens and the mysteries of the cosmos and the deep sea.

Caitlin Duerler Chávez: I first encountered your work at your exhibition Celestial Garden at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in June 2020. In that sho
Glasstire •

Home on the Range and Sacred Lands: The West as Home at the Stark Museum of Art

The land is sacred wherever you go…

—Hopi-Choctaw artist Linda Lomahaftewa

Images of our country’s Southwestern landscape began to manifest in pop culture, art, and literature in America and beyond during the nineteenth century. Romanticized visions of the rugged terrain and its inhabitants, including settlers, cowboys, and Native Americans, still, to this day, project mythologies of the American West that permeate the universal imagination. Considering both this mythic vision of the region f
Southwest Contemporary •

Review: 2021 Texas Biennial at SAMA and the McNay Art Museum

The 2021 Texas Biennial explores cross-sections of identity and project optimism in A New Landscape, A Possible Horizon across five venues in San Antonio and Houston.

When viewing Roni Horn’s The Gold Field in 1990, Félix González-Torres was moved by the reflective and uplifting qualities in the work, proceeding to describe it as “a new landscape, a possible horizon…” The simple gesture of Horn’s flat gold mat sparked González-Torres to ponder the prospect of transformation in a seemingly hopel
Glasstire •

Apocalypses, Heaven and Hell: Folk Art from the Collection of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas

In the years since its 2018 acquisition of more than 450 pieces of Mexican folk art from the collection of John Gaston Fairey, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas (AMSET) has organized annual exhibits featuring various gifted works. The earliest shows in 2017 and 2018 scratched the surface of possibilities around the collection; one exhibition focused on introducing the collection and featured a survey of works pulled from different media (John Gaston Fairey Collection of Mexican Folk Art: An Intr
Southwest Contemporary •

Review: Dawolu Jabari at Galveston Artist Residency

Dawolu Jabari’s large-scale drawings in Lessons from Above: Constellation Quilts at Galveston Artist Residency embed Black history, mythology, and folklore into the fabric of the cosmos.

Since its founding in 2011, Galveston Artist Residency has provided artists with living quarters, studio space, and funding to develop a body of work to be exhibited in the gallery culminating their tenure on the island. In this past cycle, Houston artist Dawolu Jabari produced four large-scale mixed-media draw
Glasstire •

Emily Peacock at Jonathan Hopson Gallery and Lawndale Art Center

For the past decade, Houston-based artist Emily Peacock has built a body of work reflecting intimate issues concerning mental health, family, and motherhood with humorous, conceptual devices rendered using photographic and mixed-media processes. Portraiture in her solo exhibition Pure Comedy (2019) at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas featured a pair of oval portraits of the artist and her partner in hazmat suits, reifying the anxiety of new parents in the many measures necessary to protect thei
The Art Studio, Inc. •

New Historiography for Black Excellence: Jamal Cyrus “The End of My Beginning” at the Blaffer Art Museum

At the 1900 Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Dubois presented an award-winning display of “data portraits”—colorful depictions of demographics of African Americans post-slavery through the turn of the century. Information such as the large concentration of Black people in southern states and the total value of their financial assets were illustrated in a visual manner of geometric abstraction, presenting minimalist maps and bar graphs in blocks of color and geometric forms. DuBois strategically presents
Glasstire •

HOTDOG! Summer: Kevin Christopher Clay at the Art Studio, Inc., Beaumont

Inhaling nearly eight hot dogs per minute, Major League Eater Joey Chesnut set a new world record earlier this month at the July 4th Nathan’s Best Hot Dog Eating Contest by eating 76 hot dogs — beating his prior record of 75 — in 10 minutes. Beaumont painter Kevin Christopher Clay, inspired by the hundreds of dogs Chesnut and other competitors scarf down, has painted 164 hot dogs. By grouping his works in three series and a large-scale painting, Clay’s exhibition HOTDOG!, on view at the Arts Stu
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