Visual Art - Houstonia

Thanks to its 20 museums, each with a carefully curated line-up of dynamic exhibitions and events, you could spend a lifetime going from gallery to gallery. Exhibitions, on the other hand, are fleeting. Herewith, a guide to upcoming shows you really can’t afford to miss.

Charles Marville, Haut de la rue Champlain (vue prise à droit), 1877–78, albumen print from collodion negative, Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Image © Charles Marville / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
June 15–Sept 14

Everyone knows Eugène Atget’s sepia-toned photographs of fin-de-siècle Parisian boulevards. But what did the city look like before the boulevards, which were built in the mid-nineteenth century by Napoleon III’s handpicked engineer Baron Haussmann? Charles Marville, the city’s official photographer in the early days of the medium—the daguerreotype was invented in 1839—carefully documented the narrow medieval streets and tightly packed buildings that were destroyed to make way for the modern Paris we know today. Also included are Marville’s photographs of French and German landscapes.

Texas Sculpture Group 2014: A Panoramic View

Lawndale Art Center
Aug 22–Sept 27

Curated by renowned East Texas–born sculptor James Surls, this exhibition features a diverse array of multimedia sculpture—ranging from bronze casting to video performances, from site-specific installations to yarn bombing—from dozens of contemporary Texas artists. The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of iconic Houston artist Bert Long Jr., who died last year at the age of 72.

Dinh Q. Le, Crossing the Farther Shore, 2014 Commission, Rice University Art Gallery, Nash Baker © nashbaker.com

Dinh Q. Lê: Crossing the Farther Shore

Rice Gallery
Thru Aug 28

After his family emigrated from Vietnam in 1979 during the country’s post-war chaos, Lê grew up in Southern California, only to return to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) when he was 28 to become an artist. For this site-specific installation, Lê stitched together photographs of ordinary life in wartime Vietnam, which he found in local antique shops, to form delicate, hanging rectangular structures. The backs of the photographs feature handwritten recollections of Vietnam from Vietnamese-Americans, as well as excerpts from the Vietnamese epic poem The Tale of Kieu.

The Kinsey Collection

Houston Museum of African American Culture
Aug 2–Oct 26

The Kinsey Collection is one of the world’s largest private collections of African American art, artifacts, and documents. Spanning 400 years of history, the collection includes slave shackles, correspondence between Malcolm X and his biographer Alex Haley, a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 book of poems, and an original 1857 printing of the Supreme Court’s notorious Dred Scott decision, which stoked abolitionist anger and helped precipitate the Civil War.

Experiments with Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence

Menil Collection
Oct 2–Feb 1

Inspired by several trips to India, as well as the famous still-life photograph of Gandhi’s few possessions taken after he was assassinated in 1948, Menil director Josef Helfenstein has been planning this exhibition for over a decade. Spanning hundreds of years and multiple continents, the show includes ancient and modern artifacts, including Buddhist statues, Indian quilts, and photographs of Gandhi and other famous proponents of nonviolent resistance. Coinciding with the exhibition will be events honoring Gandhi’s legacy at Project Row Houses and the Houston Public Library.

Camp Logan: Houston Riots of 1917

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum
Aug 23–Sept 23

In 1917, rumors reached an all-black army battalion stationed at Camp Logan (present-day Memorial Park) that one of their members had been killed by Houston policemen. Sergeant Vida Henry, unaware that the rumors were false—the soldier had been harassed, assaulted, and released—led dozens of soldiers in an uprising that left 20 people dead, including five policemen, in the worst race riot in Houston history. In response, the US military held its largest-ever court martial, ultimately sentencing 19 of the soldiers to death. Curated by Houston Community College history professor Angela Holder, the great-niece of one of the soldiers hanged, this exhibition explores the momentous event through contemporary artifacts, including courtroom photographs of the soldiers.

Manjari Sharma, Lord Vishnu, from the Darshan series, 2013, Courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery and the artist

Transcendent Deities of India: The Everyday Occurrence of the Divine

Asia Society
Thru Sept 14

Mumbai-born artist Manjari Sharma’s large-scale portraits of Hindu gods and goddesses look like paintings, but they’re actually photographs of actors in traditional costumes and jewelry posed in front of sets created by 35 Indian craftsmen under Sharma’s direction. Nine of the resplendent six-foot-high images will hang in the Asia Society’s Sarofim Gallery throughout the summer, alongside chromolithographs by Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906), a pioneering Indian artist who depicted scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana.

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Image: F. Wilbur Seiders

Dominique de Menil in a Charles James gown with [and seated on] a sofa of his design, 1951. The Menil Archives, the Menil Collection, Houston. Courtesy Charles B.H. James and Louise D.B. James

A Thin Wall of Air: Charles James
Thru Sept 7
Free
Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross St
713-525-9400
menil.org

A pink wall? Surely not at the Menil Collection, I thought to myself. And yet there it was, along with a lush red concert gown, two smart black hats, and a sofa contoured like a lush pair of lips (above). All thanks to Charles James.

Fashion’s been all the rage in museums for some time now. In just the last few years I’ve seen startling exhibitions featuring Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Jean Paul Gaultier at the Dallas Museum of Art. Before that I saw the 2006 Paris collections on parade at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. I’ve never seen so much Chanel up close, which is the thrill of such shows.

With A Thin Wall of Air: Charles James, the Menil Collection enters this rich company. Organized by assistant curator Susan Sutton, A Thin Wall of Air will be on view through September 7.

Charles James, a fashion designer and interior decorator with deep ties to the de Menils, is enjoying quite a renaissance this summer with this exhibition and Charles James: Beyond Fashion, the inaugural exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s freshly renovated Costume Institute. But there’s something special about A Thin Wall of Air, which brings something of the de Menils’ house into Renzo Piano’s austere halls.

Image: Adam Baker

Charles James, Bustle Evening Dress, ca. 1948. The Menil Collection, Houston. Courtesy of B.H. James and Louise D.B. James.

In addition to being an expert milliner and a highly sought-after couturier, James was the creative mind behind the interior design of the de Menils’ home, which Philip Johnson built. James beat out Mies van der Rohe for the interior decorating job, but perhaps that’s no surprise. Menil director Josef Helfenstein referred to James as a “constant colleague and thinking companion” for the de Menils.

The two exhibition halls pop with saturated blue and fuchsia. As I turned a corner, I realized that this was not my first experience with James. It was in a wonderful exhibition, Body in Fragments, by former Menil curator Kristina Van Dyke, that I first saw Dominique de Menil’s dress form with “Charles James” and “Ideal Standard” blazoned across it (see below right). I remember feeling a sudden and unexpected intimacy—there it was! A stand-in for the body of the visionary behind the Menil Collection. And here it is again, practically the avatar of the exhibition.

It felt equally auspicious to have a now-rare encounter at an opening reception for A Thin Wall of Air with Van Dyke herself, currently the director of the Pulitzer Collection in St. Louis. She looked like she just walked off a Milan runway, and if I had any expertise in fashion, which I definitely do not, I could tell you the designer she was wearing. But as I was admiring Van Dyke’s garb, she was admiring the colorful walls. “You’d never know how colorful the Menil house is from the museum itself,” she observed. Suddenly those saturated walls seemed to fit right in.

Image: Adam Baker

Charles James, Dress Form for Dominique de Menil, ca. 1950. The Menil Collection, Houston. Courtesy of Charles B. H. James and Louise D. B. James.

You don’t have to be an habitué of the Paris runways to appreciate the intricate work of these clothes, the voluptuous geometry and precision, which is especially visible in a museum. Whereas the McQueen exhibition at the Met was like entering a McQueen-themed rock concert, here James’s creations reveal negative space where arms or necks might normally be. I bumped into Museum of Fine Arts Houston director Gary Tinterow, who pointed out the dresses’ intricate details and surrealist touches, which helps explain why these works are paired with the paintings of Max Ernst and Victor Brauner.

Each gown is a show-stopper in a different way. The 1949 red concert gown that opens the exhibition grabs your attention with voluminous folds, while the intricacy of the other dresses requires a look or two at least. I found myself especially drawn to James’s sketches and watercolors. “Drawing for Flexible Dress Form” (1964) washes vivid purples and blues across the page, making the iconic dress form seem like an alien creature of elegant if impossible proportions. There’s also an arresting image of James taken by photographer Cecil Beaton (below left). In the photo, two reflective surfaces split Beaton’s subject into three images. Another photo captures Christophe de Menil, John and Dominique’s daughter, in a Charles James creation, heading to a ball.

Cecil Beaton, Portrait of Charles James, 1929. The Menil Archives, the Menil Collection, Houston. Courtesy of Charles B. H. James and Louise D. B. James.

A Thin Wall of Air has a deeply commemorative feeling. As much as this is a show dedicated to the genius of James, it is also part of an ongoing conversation about the legacy of John and Dominique de Menil. How long will interest in the cult of the de Menils capture the attention of museumgoers increasingly removed from their living memory?

Hard to say. Still, some things never go out of style.

[Full disclosure: Joseph Campana's partner works at the Menil Collection.]

[Editor's note: This story has been revised to reflect the fact that it was not Charles James but Dominique de Menil who designed the ottoman in the show, and that there is no work by René Magritte in the show.]

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The amount of talent that was in and around Houston's music scene in 1968 is simply astounding. All it takes is a quick reading of issue #2 of Mother, Larry Sepulvado's short-lived rock magazine, to tell you that loud and clear as a Roky Erickson howl.

Take the cover.

Unfortunately Mansonesque in retrospect, that's the visage of Rick Barthelme, son and brother of two famous Donalds. At the time, Rick Barthelme was the drummer in the Red Krayola, the psychedelic rock / noise group that coalesced around Mayo Thompson at the University of St. Thomas. Eventually Rick would revert to his full name of Frederick Barthelme and become an award-winning author of New South-based "dirty realism" and "K-Mart fiction," but at the time he was still alienating crowds with the sort of atonal, experimental rock that was capable of alarming the freaks in Berkeley, CA enough to elicit a $10 bribe to stop playing. That's right, Houston out-weirded Berkeley.

That cover photo was taken by the late Les Blank, the soon-to-be-award-winning filmmaker most famous locally for his documentaries The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins and A Well-Spent Life, about Navasota's sharecropping songster Mance Lipscomb. Both are now in the Criterion Collection.

Half of the rest of the photographs in Mother were snapped by a part-time artist, part-time folkie by the name of Guy Clark. "Guy is good at anything that is artistic," Sepulvado noted in his column "For What It's Worth."

So was the Houston of 1968, as that column makes abundantly clear in its first few paragraphs. "Houston is a very fertile ground for talent," wrote Sepulvado. "Already projected from this area is JANIS JOPLIN of Big Brother and the Holding Co., JERRY JEFF WALKER of Circus Maximus both of who [sic] at one time played Houston's folk club SAND MOUNTAIN on Richmond, Lightnin' Hopkins and his brother, MANCE LIPSCOMB, Johnny Nash, and Gale Storm. (?) Impressive, huh?" (Storm was a joke... She was a local who went on to mainstream fame as a postwar pop was then in the twilight of her fame. Also, Hopkins and Lipscomb were not related.)

Sepulvado name-checks some local bands with hilariously dated names: Eden's Children, Ultimate Spinach, Neurotic Sheep. Can you dig, man?

Image: Llloyd Sepulvado

The fool on the hill, illustrated by Larry Sepulvado's late brother Lloyd.

Sepulvado then moves on to the bands he thinks really have a chance to hit it big: Red Krayola, the 13th Floor Elevators, and Fever Tree.

Though none of them exactly seized control of the pop charts, each developed cult followings and critical acclaim that extends into the present. The Elevators were the most psychedelic band of all time, bar none. Chicago's uber-hip Drag City label is enamored with the Red Krayola, who were a primary influence on that city's post-rock scene of the 1990s and early 2000s. Fever Tree managed to chart in 1968 with their single "San Francisco Girls" and rapper Madvillain built a track around their funky take on Steve Cropper's "99 and a Half Won't Do" in 2004.

Sepulvado was also high on The Moving Sidewalks. "Bill Gibbons is an exceptional guitarist with one of those really strange voices," he noted, pretty much describing every ZZ Top album to come. And down in the news and notes section of the column there's this aside: "More from Sand Mountain; Townes Van Zandt has a record contract and an album and single slated for release."

All that plus ruminations on the then-rarely-explored interconnectedness of rock and country music and Donovan's career and renunication of psychedelic drugs. And then there's that interview with the Red Krayola touted on the cover, in which they talk about how they ruined a party at UH and played a disastrous / sublime set (depending on who you believe) at the opening of artist/sculptor David Adickes's new Allen's Landing club: the Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine.

Said the Krayola's Mayo Thompson: "[Adickes] knew Rick [Barthleme] because of the art thing. We used to crash his openings and drink wine and stand around. He got us one time to play this happening. He did a little light show and impromptu number and told us he was opening this club and we hinted about being the house band. So the last time he saw us we were doing semi-rock music. The next time he saw us we had dropped the drums and the Familiar Ugly." (It was the '60s. Explaining "Familiar Ugly" here is too hard to explain.) "We were doing this three-piece thing with clarinets, trumpets, guitars, razors on cymbals, phonograph turntables, and tapes, etc. But he had already asked us to play the press opening for Love Street and we played our music. He hired another [house] band."

Sepulvado asked the band to clarify if they indeed even made it to that opening.

Image: John Nova Lomax

Adickes loves Houston more than the Red Krayola version 2.0

"We played opening night and he knelt down front, wanting us to get off stage," Thompson said. "I'm not knocking him but I don't think he liked us too much. He has provided a certain class to Houston that it did not have before."

All that, plus ads like this:

Image: Jenny Antill

Lord Cholmondeley and Gary Tinterow

Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House
Thru Sept 21
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
713-639-7300
mfah.org

Last week, Lord David Cholmondeley, the Lord Great Chamberlain of the United Kingdom, was in Houston to celebrate the opening of the new MFAH exhibition devoted to his house, Houghton Hall, a grand Downton Abbey–like estate built in the early 1700s by his ancestor Sir Robert Walpole, England’s first prime minister. The exhibition includes furnishings and paintings from Houghton’s extensive collection, including Sèvres porcelain, William Kent furniture, and paintings by William Hogarth and John Singer Sargent—the latter a family friend in the early 20th century.

After leading a tour of the exhibition for the local press corps, the 7th Marquess of Cholmondeley—formerly the Earl of Rocksavage before assuming his current title upon his father’s death—sat down with Houstonia (or rather stood up with Houstonia, there being no chairs in the vicinity) to discuss his art collection, as well as the life of an English lord in the 21st century. Wearing a climate-appropriate ensemble consisting of a navy linen blazer, crisply pressed khakis, a square-end tie, and oxfords—call it colonial chic—Cholmondeley sipped iced tea while politely enduring our inquisition.

Image: Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

First off, how should I address you?

David’s fine, please. I don’t go in for that sort of thing…I guess it would be Lord Cholmondeley. But as you like.

I loved your story about Prince Charles looking for his throne at the opening of Parliament. [The Prince of Wales’s ceremonial throne, which reposes for obscure dynastic reasons at Houghton Hall, is in the exhibition.] Were you there for that?

Yes, it was a joke. He’s very funny—he has a good sense of humor. He knew that it was away, and of course he didn’t need it at all.

So he knew it was in Houston?

Of course, yes. I said we were having a show and it was going.

And he was fine with that? He had somewhere else to sit?

Oh yes. For years he never came to the opening of Parliament, and the last two years he has.

He really has a sense of humor? It doesn’t really come across in public.

He does—he’s so funny, and he’s so quick. He’s helped us a lot, because it’s a lot easier to get sponsorship in England if you have the Prince of Wales as your patron.

I understand that certain parts of Houghton Hall are open to the public.

Yes, every year from May to October. We opened it in 1976.

Was that to help raise money to maintain the house?

Partly that, and there were tax advantages. You don’t have an inheritance tax if it’s a public benefit. I don’t know if you have the same thing in America.

Image: Thomas R. DuBrock / The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Scrim panel of the Saloon at Houghton Hall

I don’t know about that—I’m not a homeowner myself. Many of the people coming to the show are probably Downton Abbey fans.

Yes, it’s amazing. I didn’t know it had made such a success here. I know the guy, Julian Fellowes, who made it. He knows those houses, so he was the best to write it.

How does life today in a great house like Houghton compare to the depiction of Downton Abbey?

In no way does it compare.

You don’t have armies of servants?

No. We’re very private—we have a kitchen and dining room, and we do most of it ourselves. Sometimes when we have a formal dinner we’ll have a cook. But we try to make it as natural as possible. Of course we have a very, very wonderful, nice, dedicated staff who clean the place and do much more, but it’s far more scaled down than in those days.

Do you feel a responsibility to your family to keep the house and the art collection together?

I do. I feel very much that I’m just here for my tenure. Not a housekeeper exactly, but perhaps a curator. [At this point Lord C. spots a few French friends noshing on finger sandwiches. He walks over and chats with them for a few minutes in fluent French before returning—somewhat reluctantly, it appears.]

What do you like to do when you’re in Houston?

I like to go to the Menil Collection, and the Rothko Chapel as well. This time I’m hoping to visit the Turrell Quaker Meeting House. [Lord C. commissioned two Turrell works for Houghton’s grounds.] And then the Rienzi—I’m going to see that tomorrow. It’s a very cultural city. I’ve only spent a few days at a time here, but I’d like to spend more. And I like this rather humid heat. It’s unusual for us.

Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, David.

Thank you.

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As we recently reported, the late Houston hand surgeon Michael Brown's favorite artist was a Russian woman calling herself Anastasia the Great who specializes in customizing the interiors of luxury cars and was recently arrested for stealing items from Brown's estate. So when we heard that the last in a long series of weekly auctions to dispose of Brown's possessions as part of bankruptcy proceedings, including dozens of artworks, was held yesterday at Webster's Auction Palace—it's not a house, it's a palace—we couldn't help but be curious. What kind of art does a coke-snorting, flight attendant–choking, proverbially "disgraced" former hand doctor collect? Among other things, a 7-foot-high Native American figure, two ivory elephant tusks, Meissen porcelein urns, and a Richard Wagner death mask (Brown must have seen the flamboyant, luxury-loving German composer as a soulmate).

But nothing intrigued us as much as Brown's collection of paintings. Of course, the wealthy have always collected expensive art. The slightly less wealthy, like Brown, have to settle for imitations of expensive art. According to reports, Brown, who died last November, furnished each of his several houses in a different style. We don't know which of his domiciles the following works came from, so we'll have to evaluate them on their own merits—or in this case demerits. Webster's offers identifying information about the works, but inconveniently fails to pair the descriptions with the images, so all we know for sure is that the lot included multiple works each by such esteemed brush-handlers as Ed Heck, the late Howard Behrens (whose work, according to Wikipedia, was sold "in fine art galleries and at auction on cruise ships"), Larry Dyke ("best known for his scenic landscapes and paintings of classic golf holes"), and "cowboy artist and photographer" Peter Robbins.

If style is the man, what do these works tell us about one of the most intriguing characters in recent Houston history? (All images from Webster's Auction Palace—please excuse the screen shot artifacts.)

Many of Brown's paintings ape the golden hues and domestic opulence of Dutch Golden Age art. The oddly-shaped fountain in the background of this painting, which feeds into what looks like an artificial canal, suggests a location in the Netherlands, while the exotic peacock has historically been considered a status symbol adorning the gardens of the wealthy.

Still-life flower painting was a hugely popular Dutch Golden Age genre, with Willem van Aelst and Ambrosius Bosschaert being two of the best-known masters of the art, which could attain incredible detail. Unlike their work, which is known for its almost photographic clarity, this canvas is painted in a fuzzy, pseudo-Impressionist style—it looks as airbrushed as a Playboy centerfold.

You quickly begin to notice how few people inhabit the paintings Brown collected—the mark of a true sociopath. Infamously, Hitler's student paintings also contained few individuals, an accurate reflection of his worldview.

If Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens had lived in the 21st century, dropped acid, and been a fantasy enthusiast, this is the kind of hallucinogenic grotesquerie he might have painted.

We at least give Brown credit for the range of artists whose work he was willing to buy imitations of. This shameless pastiche of American Impressionist Childe Hassam, who became famous for his romanticized depiction of late-19th century New York street life, is clearly the model here.

Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" is a bit less impressive in a small, kitschy gilt frame than on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Well, Brown was a hand surgeon. The man just liked hands.

Unlike many of the previous paintings, we can conclusively identify the painter of this bit of dreck, which looks like a mass-produced nursery-room poster: Ed Heck (see partially obscured signature in lower right corner). According to Heck's official website, the artist's canvases were first exhibited in New York City in 1999 and were "an instant hit. The viewer response was overwhelming. Reactions ranged from surprised appreciation to pure delight."

The paintings, we learn, "lead us into a place uniquely Heck, filled with weird and wonderful characters, odd landscapes and quirky visual point of view quite unlike anything else we've seen before." Suck on that, Warhol!

On Sunday, most if not all of these paintings were purchased by Houstonians whose taste in art is as bad as Brown's, or who just wanted to own a piece of Houston infamy. Either way, the worst collection of art in Houston is gone, dispersed among a credulous public. RIP.

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Image: EE Kachinski

360 Degrees Vanishing Kick-Off Party
July 11 from 6–8pm
Free
Art League Houston
1953 Montrose Blvd.
713-523-9530
artleaguehouston.org

When Houston fashion designer Selven O’Keef Jarmon was living in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, one of his favorite pastimes was to stroll through the bazaars looking for beaded items—necklaces, bracelets, even bowls—to buy from the sidewalk vendors. Over time, he began noticing that the vendors were disappearing. When he asked around, he learned that the vendors were giving up—no one seemed interested in buying their wares anymore. Saddened by the apparent demise of traditional beadworking, Jarmon resolved to do something to help the beaders, as well as expose the larger world to the intricate craft.

The result is “360 Degrees Vanishing,” a temporary public art installation by Jarmon that will be unveiled in October at the Art League Houston’s building (which is shared by the Inversion Coffee House) on Montrose Blvd. The piece consists of four large-scale beaded tapestries that will be cover the ALH’s four walls. “I wanted to do a monumental piece as a parody of the monumental idea that beading is vanishing from the landscape,” Jarmon told me.

Image: Courtesy of Selven Jarmon

Original working drawing for ALH installation

The tapestries will be made of around 350,000 acrylic beads and will be assembled over the next four months by 15 of the Eastern Cape’s most skilled beaders, who are being flown into Houston in groups of five. The beaders will live as artists-in-residence at the ALH campus while working eight-hour days at the ALH and Rice’s Bioscience Research Collaborative assembling the tapestries under Jarmon’s direction. The public will be able to observe part of the beading process. The first group of beaders arrives Friday, and will be welcomed with a kick-off party featuring a live performance by the South African dance troupe Ye Africa and food by local restaurants.

Although he moved back to Houston in 2010, Jarmon has vivid memories of watching the female beaders discuss their lives while working around common tables in South African households. “People bring their problems to the table—issues with their husbands, their children, political issues. And some things get resolved in the process of beading. Since we’ve opened this up to the public, we’re hoping that the same kind of sensibility kicks in, in a very organic way, that links two cultures and makes people feel like they’re part of this larger human tapestry.”

Image: Courtesy of Selven Jarmon

Bulelwa Bam, Director of the Eastern Cape Craft HUB

The South African beaders will assemble the tapestries out of 10-by-15-inch sections, which will be bolted onto steel cow panels—lightweight, gridded steel fences used to contain cattle—and mounted on the ALH’s exterior walls. The installation is scheduled to stay up for a full year, after which it will be disassembled and sold to art collectors.

Jarmon, who was born in Houston, first moved to South Africa in 2003, inspired by the 9/11 attacks. “I just felt disconnected from things going on in the world,” he said. “I wanted to be more conscious and more connected to the world in a more profound way than just creating clothing for wealthy clients. Up to that point, that’s what it was about.”

In South Africa, Jarmon designed the formal academic regalia for the new Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha and, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Institute, the uniforms for local schoolchildren. He participated in a reality television program that focused on improving the lives of five poor communities across the country. As part of that TV show, he founded the KWANDA Klothing Label, a collective of South African fashion graduates.

Since returning to the US, Jarmon’s work has been shown at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, in group exhibitions at the Poissant Gallery and the Deborah Colton Gallery, and in the display windows at the downtown Dallas Neiman Marcus. But in the end, he said, it all comes back to fashion:

“Everything has been one big dress. I investigate construction in every garment I’ve done—that’s always been interesting to me. I’m using different materials, but in many ways the construction component is very relevant. I’m still a fashion designer at heart.”

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Valentina Kisseleva was never well-suited for propaganda.

"It did not go well with my style," she said, laughing.

That style, a curious merging of cubism and realism, is far too subtle to rally the masses and often too gently hopeful to arouse anything other than quiet reflection or a smile. Instead, after graduating from the Belorussian State Academy of Art in Minsk in 1977—a time, Kisseleva told me, when "the government controlled everything, including art"—she began creating posters for state-run radio and television stations, as well as murals for public buildings (more than 50 in all, she said). Some of her works were reprinted as postcards, which were distributed by the tens of thousands across the USSR.

Romantic Posters of the Brezhnev Era
Aug 1–31
Free
Russian Cultural Center
2337 Bissonnet St.
713-395-3301
ourtx.org

"Some of the individual works were actually published or reprinted 100,000 times for state distribution," said the artist, who was born in Moscow and now lives in Houston. "I am still surprised by where they showed up."

Kisseleva noted that her art was produced during the USSR's so-called "Era of Stagnation," a period marked by economic depression and social disunity during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev, who served as General Secretary from 1964 until his death in 1982.

"There were not very many opportunities for artists at this time in Russia," Kisseleva said. "So being able to produce posters was very competitive and this was very good money at the time when most people were struggling."

Many of Kisseleva's original hand-painted works are now on display at the Russian Cultural Center in conjunction with the center's current exhibition, Posters of the Gorbachev Era: The Sunset of Soviet Power.

Despite being subject to Soviet oversight at the time, Kisseleva said she remains proud of her posters, and that many were ahead of their time.

"This one reminds people of Banksy," she told me during a recent tour of the exhibition, pointing to a poster of a brick wall with a graffiti tank scrawled across it (see below). "The funny thing is he was probably not even born yet."

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“I sweat at all my jobs,” says the Israeli-born muralist and street artist Anat Ronen, her accent an unlikely mix of guttural Hebrew and South American Spanish, a mélange she soaked up in Haifa from Uruguayan-born parents. “It is nothing for me to work in 115-degree heat.”

She and a reporter are walking from Houstonia’s offices in the Heights to Ronen’s latest piece of art, which is painted on the side of Avis Frank Gallery, and she is hardly sweating. It was the reporter’s idea to conduct this interview during a two-mile stroll in the broiling June sun, which has so far produced only one valuable piece of information: the reporter will never be a muralist or street artist.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Their destination is “Yes She Can,” a roughly six-foot-square portrait of Malala Yousafzai, the heroic Pakistani schoolgirl/education activist who was shot in the face by the Taliban in 2012. Ronen modeled Yousafzai on Rosie the Riveter, the headscarf-wearing, factory line–running, bicep-flexing icon of World War II–era American proto-feminism, though it’s the blue of Yousafzai’s tunic and the red of her scarf that leap out from the mural in the white-hot summer light. To drive home her point—that the real-life Yousafzai will do for women in parts of the Islamic world what the fictional Rosie did for American women—Ronen added one of Yousafzai’s most famous quotes: “All I want is an education and I’m afraid of no one.”

This being Houston, a few passersby have registered their objections. “Some people did not recognize her, so they asked, ‘Why is she wearing this headdress? Maybe we are all becoming Muslims,’” Ronen says, though she seems unfazed by the criticism, or anything, for that matter. “My family is not religious, so I am not afraid of God punishing me. Whatever comes to my mind, I put it out there.” It is a typically blunt assertion, though one quickly qualified. “But nothing too nasty, because in the end, I am a good girl.”

Ronen shuns make-up, perfume and jewelry, and since dabbling lightly in her youth, has never smoked, boozed, or drugged. “I am a very simple person,” she says, her aesthetic skewing toward simplicity too: representative, never abstract. And whether for that reason or another, she is, quite simply, everywhere.

Her most widely viewed work is surely the 360 feet of aquatic- and saltmarsh-themed murals she painted on the safety barriers of the Galveston Causeway in 2009, all while crouched behind a TxDot safety truck as big rigs rumbled past at 70 miles an hour. She’s painted Lone Star emblems on the Katy Freeway and festooned Garden Oaks Elementary with dozens of native Texas plants and animals, including horned toads, scorpions, and birds of every feather. (On their walk, she tells the reporter she’d like to be reincarnated as a bird: “an osprey, or a buzzard,” she specifies, citing two avian scavengers. “That way I would not have to kill my food.”)

That’s Ronen’s 40-foot armadillo with a sunflower in its mouth on the side of a Warehouse District building; her Toulouse-Lautrec-style calligraphy and design on the exterior of the Nouveau Antique Art Bar on South Main; and her Boston Terriers chasing down a tiger on the side of a Heights home’s privacy fence. She’s done restaurant interiors, children’s bedrooms, wall-sized Big Red/Sun Drop ads near Minute Maid Park, and—now that commissions are coming in from coast to coast—a series of murals in a small Virginia town. (Ronen’s breakneck pace is dictated in part by necessity. Since 2008, she has been allowed to work here only thanks to an artist’s visa, for which she must demonstrate each year that she is a working artist whose talents could not be duplicated by an American citizen.)

Her creations are many, and there are none she is fonder of than her large-scale political cartoons, “Yes She Can” among them. Another, “Are We Free?”, features an enormous bald eagle Ronen painted on the wall at The Mullet, a graffiti-art showcase near Almeda Mall. At first, the mural’s apparent jingoism unsettled some in the anarchic street art community. But then Ronen added the final touch—a ball and chain shackled to the eagle’s ankle—at which point it was the patriots’ turn to be unsettled.

I mainly wanted to show how not free we really are—not because of government or conspiracies or anything like that, but mostly because of our possessions. We’re tied to our houses, cars, bank accounts, phones, TVs, computers...we think we are free to choose what we consume and how we live, but are we, really?

“You can never win,” she sighs. “I mainly wanted to show how not free we really are—not because of government or conspiracies or anything like that, but mostly because of our possessions. We’re tied to our houses, cars, bank accounts, phones, TVs, computers...we think we are free to choose what we consume and how we live, but are we, really?”

Another Ronen work, “If Only,” which depicts a beaming Israeli soldier and an eye-smiling Palestinian fighter side by side, each brandishing garish DayGlo Super Soaker water guns, was a standout at last year’s thought-provoking exhibition Call It Street Art, Call It Fine Art, Call It What You Know at the Station Museum. Incidentally, that piece almost never made it to the wall, Ronen reveals. She initially bridled at Station curator Jim Harithas’s giant “Support Palestinian Statehood” installation on the museum’s exterior.

“I got a vibe then and there,” says the Israeli army veteran. “I thought, ‘Maybe I better not do this.’ And then I got back home and thought, ‘Because of that I have to do this.’” Ronen and Harithas clashed at their first meeting and eventually agreed that she would paint her mural without his input. “I say what I think,” Ronen says. “It goes with the territory of being Israeli…. I said, ‘Dude, do you want my art or do you want to argue?’”

By this time, their walk has brought the duo to concrete-lined White Oak Bayou, where Ronen—still not sweating—marvels that nature and beauty can thrive in the epicenter of an increasingly dense, fast-paced metropolis. She notices the smashed skeleton of a snake and a broken dove egg on the sidewalk, and snaps photos of monarch butterflies and white herons in breeding plumage.

Just as the reporter is beginning to swoon in the sweltering heat, the duo reaches Avis Frank Gallery, at which point he tells Ronen how much he appreciates all that she and her fellow street artists have done to beautify Houston over the past few crazy boom years. “It’s the cheapest way to make a change,” she says. “You can tear things down and build them up, but that costs lots of money. This structure was ugly before”—the gallery, whose previous incarnations include a gas station and a bar and grill—“and now it’s beautiful.”

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Dario Robleto, “Man Makes Heart” (detail, in production), 2014, mixed media. Courtesy of Inman Gallery

Dario Robleto: The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed.
Aug 16–Jan 11. Free. The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross St. 713-525-9400. menil.org

One day in the summer of 1977, a young woman named Ann Druyan checked herself into New York’s Bellevue Hospital and asked the staff to record her heartbeat. Druyan was the creative director of the so-called golden record, an actual LP made of gold that would be bolted to the side of NASA’s two Voyager space probes and launched into outer space. In case an alien life form ever discovered one of the probes and figured out how to play the record, they would hear greetings in 59 languages, music from around the world, and a miscellany of other sounds Druyan had assembled under the guidance of famed astronomer Carl Sagan.

A few days before they were to send the finished record to NASA, Druyan and Sagan came up with the idea of recording Druyan’s heartbeat, as well as her brain’s electrical signals. Who knew? Maybe an advanced alien civilization could determine from the brainwaves what had been going through Druyan’s mind.

One of those things, speculates Houston-based conceptual artist Dario Robleto, may have been Druyan’s recent engagement to Sagan, which had happened just a few days before the recording. “Ann is now the only human whose heartbeat is literally on the other side of the solar system,” Robleto recently told me. “And it’s not just any heartbeat—it’s a 27-year-old woman who just fell in love. That’s the electrical signature on board, registered in her EKG and her brainwaves.”

Robleto describes his ambitious new Menil Collection exhibition, The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed—his first solo show in Houston since 2009—as a “hidden history of the human heartbeat.” At the beginning of the project, he set himself the challenge of tracking down three landmark recordings: the first-ever recorded heartbeat, Druyan’s heartbeat from the golden record, and a recording of the first beat-less heart, which was implanted by the Texas Heart Institute’s Dr. O.H. “Bud” Frazer in 2011. (“It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard, and the most haunting,” Robleto reports.)

Although it took several years, the artist finally got his hands on all three, and compiled them onto a sort of collector’s edition vinyl record—the new exhibition’s centerpiece—complete with a box case and liner notes designed by Robleto. Exhibitiongoers can listen to the heartbeats on headphones.

Robleto, 41, a quietly intense man with a passing resemblance to the actor Mark Ruffalo, first became interested in the human heartbeat while a research fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he discovered that the artificial heart designed by legendary Houston surgeon Denton Cooley was collecting dust in the archives. It struck Robleto that the race to build the first artificial heart coincided with the race to put a man on the moon, and that both were happening in the 1960s in Houston. The story of Ann Druyan, whom Robleto will interview on Sept. 23 at the Menil, clinched the connection for him. (Druyan’s marriage to Sagan lasted until his death in 1996; she was the co-creator of the recent Cosmos television series.)

In addition to the recording of human heartbeats, the exhibition includes hundreds of small sculptural assemblages inspired by the connections Robleto began to see between the Apollo program and the quest to build an artificial heart. “I feel like artists can ask questions no one else is asking,” he explained. “As wonderful as the beat-less heart is, for instance, this is where I think artists and others have to come in and sift through the philosophical ramifications.”

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From bars to freeways to elementary schools, muralist Anat Ronen’s work is all over Houston—you just might not realize it.

Image: The Kinsey Collection

"The Gambler," 1990. William Sylvester Carter. Oil on Canvas.

African American Treasures from the Kinsey Collection
Thru Oct 26
Free
Houston Museum of African American Culture
4807 Caroline St.
713-526-1015
hmaac.org

Last week, Bernard Kinsey was at the Houston Museum of African American Culture giving a tour of his private collection of African American art and historical artifacts. He paused in front of glass case containing a small, yellowing book—a 1798 first edition of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African.

“From what we know of Equiano, he was stolen from Nigeria at nine years old, goes on to become captain of a ship, and then writes this book that goes through six editions,” Kinsey told the tour group. “Think about it—six editions in the 18th century. This was before Borders, before Barnes and Noble, before Amazon—he was that popular. This was the book that said, “Here is what being on a slave ship is like.’ He was the only one who ever wrote a book on it.”

Image: The Kinsey Collection

Slave Insurance, ca. 1859. Albermarle Insurance Company.

The Kinsey Collection, founded by Bernard and his wife Shirley around 30 years ago, is one of the world’s most important private collections of African American cultural objects, and for the next three months it will be on view at HMAAC, which under the leadership of CEO John Guess recently completed an extensive renovation in preparation for the blockbuster exhibition, sponsored by Wells Fargo, which is currently on a national tour. Included in the exhibition are items spanning the history of Africans in America, from a 1595 baptismal record—the earliest document of an African on this continent—to a letter from Malcolm X to his biographer Alex Haley. It also includes paintings by contemporary African American artists like William Sylvester Carter, Kennith Humphrey, and Kadir Nelson.

Image: The Kinsey Collection

Paul Robeson in The Song of Freedom, 1936

But the Kinseys’ son Khalil, who co-curated the exhibition with Danielle Burns of the Houston Public Library, emphasized that the exhibition is not just for or about African Americans. “If I’m sitting on a plane and the person next to me asks what I do, I say I curate an American history exhibition,” said Khalil, who was named after Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese-born author of The Prophet. “Because that’s exactly what it is. African Americans have been a part of this country from the very beginning.”

Bernard agreed, arguing that it’s impossible to understand American history without accounting for the influence of African Americans. “You cannot talk about American anything without talking about black folks,” he told the tour group. “Why? Because we were involved in every aspect of every political decision made between 1595 and now.” He cited the Constitution’s so-called “three-fifths compromise,” under which Southern states got to count a slave as three fifths of a person for census purposes, as an example of how the presence of African Americans impacted the country’s history. “That one decision changed the political balance in the country for over 100 years. So once you begin to understand the African American story, you begin to understand America, in a way that you never understood it before.”

Image: The Kinsey Collection

"Bernard and Shirley Kinsey," 2002. Artis Lane.

Given that the exhibition has previously been shown at such prestigious venues as the Atlanta History Center, and that portions of the collection are currently on view at Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center, some people have wondered why the Kinseys chose the relatively modest Houston Museum of African American Art for the show’s Houston venue.

“People have asked, why HMAAC—it’s not on the same level” Khalil Kinsey said. “Well, it should be, that’s why. Because in a city as large as Houston, for this to be the only representation of African American culture is a shame. It’s a shame that’s it’s not supported, that it’s just been out here dangling in a city that is so diverse. Most people would never know this place existed, and that’s why we wanted to bring this show here, to shine a light on this place.”

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In 1973, Texas Monthly published Texas Monthly’s Guide to Houston an approximately 400-page paperback by magazine contributors Felicia Coates and Harriet Howle. In the preface to the book’s second edition, which was published three years later, in 1976, the writers describe in remarkable specificity their imagined readership: “We hope that this volume will prove useful to the salesman just in from Batesville, Arkansas, for the fertilizer convention; the couple and their three children from Linlithgow, Scotland, here for a week’s vacation; the family just dumped by national Van Lines in Ashford Forest Northeast #11; as well as the native Houstonian (on the endangered list) who likes having this kind of information handy.”

When I discovered the 1976 edition this weekend in the Texana section of Becker’s Books in Spring Branch, I immediately flipped to the art gallery listings. How many of the galleries still existed? What was the Houston art scene like in the year of President Carter’s election? Turns out, of the 36 galleries listed in the guide, only six are still around—The Art League of Houston Gallery, the Hooks-Epstein Gallery, the Jack Meier Gallery, Meredith Long & Company (although its Galleria location has closed), the Moody Gallery (which had just opened, and which the guide pronounces "one of the city's most promising"), and the Texas Gallery.

The rest have gone the way of the dodo, but their legacy remains, in the memories of longtime Houston art-lovers and the pages of the Texas Monthly guide. (At least one more edition of the guide was published, in 1983, although there are no copies for sale on Amazon.) Below, a sample selection of galleries ranging from the reactionary (cf. the Mr. Indian gallery) to the avant-garde (the Cusack gallery featured writing on the walls and spots on the floor!). Where applicable, I’ve provided the business that now occupies the gallery’s former address.

The Cronin Gallery

2424 Bissonnet

Specialty: Photography by Geoff Winningham, Ansel Adams, David Batchelder, and about 40 more artists.

Advice: The gallery also carried photography books "for you do-it-yourselfers who shutter to think of purchasing another's work."

Replaced by: Empty lot

Cusack Gallery

5120 Bayard

Specialty: Houston’s most avant-garde gallery

Description:“You’re liable to see exhibits consisting of writing on the walls, spots on the floor, or stripes in the corner.”

Advice:“The newest of the new in art may inspire you, appall you, or make you get out your checkbook."

Replaced by: Lawyer’s office

Galerie Sur La Terre

University Center, University of Houston, 3801 Calhoun

Specialty: Juried exhibitions of work by University staff, students, and faculty

Advice:“Up-and-coming collectors can find up-and-coming artists.”

Prices: $5 to maximum of $500.

Replaced by: Parking lot

Ishtar Gate

Third Level, The Galleria

Description:“Here, in an ever-changing array, are the treasures of the world: 16th century Japanese armor, a 4,000 year old Egyptian necklace, an antique Chinese jade belt buckle, African masks, a gold leaf Buddha with uncut rubies studding his robes, and a Colima dog, to mention a few.”

Replaced by: Unknown

Alfred Lee Gallery

2602 Montrose

Specialty: Regional artists like Jerry Alexander of San Antonio and Jerry Seagle of Austin. “Alfred also beats the drum for African tribal art, and carries a bewitching selection.”

Clientele:“New collectors and smart old ones.”

Replaced by: Condominium development

Janie C. Lee Gallery

2304 Bissonnet

Specialty: The gallery’s windows were boarded up to display the “ENORMOUS” works of Abstract Expressionists like Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler.

Clientele:“Texans who want to cover the wide open spaces with contemporary art."

Replaced by:My Shabby Slips

Jack Meier Gallery

2310 Bissonnet

Specialty:“Wide range of art includes many pieces that would look good on the walls of a living room, den, or sunporch.”

Meredith Long and Company

2323 San Felipe (still there)
Third Level, The Galleria (since closed)

Specialty: 19th and 20th century American Art, including local artists like Dorothy Hood.

Description:“At the San Felipe location, choose antique and contemporary sport paintings in a room paneled like your den.”

Clientele:“Ducks in flight, English thoroughbreds, pointers, and scenes from the chase please both the aesthetes and the gunslingers.”

Moody Gallery

2015-J West Gray ("behind the Ming Palace")

Specialty: Regional artists Lamar Briggs, Lucas Johnson, Stanley Lea, Charles Pebworth, Fritz Sholder, Arthur Turner, and Jack Boynton.

Prices:“Prices for this best-of-Houston work run the gamut, but begin well under $100.”

Current location: 2815 Colquitt St.

Mr. Indian

11th Floor, River Oaks Bank Building (San Felipe at Kirby)

Specialty:“Enjoy a tasteful collection of American Indian goods: rugs, jewelry, artifacts, and prints. No kitsch.” You’d expect nothing less from a gallery called Mr. Indian.

Replaced by: River Oaks Bank Building

Pace Galleries

1770 St. James Place, 6th Floor

Specialty:“Bronzes of wildlife that would grace any handsome old mahogany desk,” “realistic landscapes of Southern scenes,” and “oils of gentle hot air balloons.”

Description:“Pianos are gone. Paintings are in.”

Replaced by: Office building

Robinson Galleries

1100 Bissonnet

Specialty:“Olympic posters can be purchased here.”

Replaced by:Harris Gallery

Southwest Galleries

5825 Kirby

Specialty:“Texas-flavored and wildlife art.”

Clientele:“If bucks grazing among the rocks of the hill country, or wild turkeys strutting through bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush appeal to you, check the oils of Travis Keese, who did the wildlife displays at the Museum of Natural Science.”

Replaced by: Strip mall with Papa John’s, Kolache Factory, and Creative Blinds

Speedby’s Old Prints

5017 Montrose

Specialty: 19th and 20th century English ephemera: calendars, post cards, playbills, and music covers. Also: “Oriental prints, drawings, and watercolors.”

Prices: $1.50 to $300

Replaced by: Law office

Texas Galleries

2439 Bissonnet

Specialty: Contemporary work from New York, Los Angeles, and Texas; Earl Staley is “the token Houstonian.”

Clientele:“Works will appeal to those who are interested in setting off the wall of a twelve story lobby or brightening up the side of a bank. The still life crowd should shop elsewhere."

Replaced by: Buffalo Exchange

Current location: 2012 Peden St.

Watson/deNagy & Company

1106 Berthea

Specialty:“The gallery owners have an eye for the best in contemporary, basically abstract art… In three years, this team has entered the Houston art scene and made a place for itself.”

Replaced by: Private home

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Image: Andres Alcoser

Sexual Selection
Thru Nov 1
Free
Art League Houston
1953 Montrose Blvd.
713-523-9530
artleaguehouston.org

I’m at the age where college friends are on the move, and not just in their professional and personal lives. They’re literally on the move, off and away from Houston. A common theme among these friends is that they’re looking for a city that’s more aesthetically pleasing, a metropolis that might fit better on a postcard. Fair enough, but Houston is far from the eyesore the national consensus makes it out to be. Sure, we’re not pretty-faced Austin, but sometimes you have to find your own beauty. And that shouldn’t be hard to do when organizations like Art League Houston (ALH) are providing wonderfully imaginative public art installations on a regular basis.

Last August, ALH unveiled Patrick Renner’s Funnel Tunnel, the 180-foot-long serpent of an art installation that runs along the Montrose Boulevard median. Its large circular opening and winding serpentine body make it resemble an inverted black hole, except way more colorful. The multi-hued vortex is a blast to the eye, especially for those who drive down Montrose on a daily basis. Despite its enormous size, driving past the installation is swift, ephemeral experience. Flanked by trees and floating above the green grass, Funnel Tunnel is a whimsical appeal to the imagination—but only for a few seconds.

Image: Alex Barber

You can get a much better view of the installation from ALH’s sculpture garden. It’s the perfect distance to enjoy the tunnel in its entirety without haste. And while you’re there, don’t forget to look up. Until November 1, the sculpture garden is home to an installation of its own, local multi-media artist Jo Ann Fleischhauer’s Sexual Selection. Hanging from the branches of the two large pecan trees is a flock of beautifully patterned, vibrantly colored hanging parasols.

The clusters of vivid fabric billow in the wind; those in close proximity to one another appear to be in communication, a physical exchange of swaying, fluttering, and pecking. If that sounds like a description of birds, it’s because Fleischhauer has taken her inspiration from the bird-of-paradise, a tropical species unique in that the females base their choice of mate solely on the aesthetics of the males’ plumage. The result of this beauty-based evolution is feathers that look more like works of art than tools for flight. This is in stark contrast to the normal evolutionary tendencies of nature, in which physical traits develop with the survival of the species as the chief concern. For the birds-of-paradise, mainly found in New Guinea, the aim is to find the most attractive mate to produce the most attractive offspring.

If these parasols look familiar, it’s because Fleischhauer has appropriated them from her 2007 installation at downtown’s Foley House. The Parasol Project gave new life to one of Houston’s historic homes by conveying the spirit of the Foley family through bursts of mushroomed parasols spilling out of the balcony and windows. The parasols were printed with painted MRI brain scans, suggesting the inner workings of the house’s inhabitants. The same blooms now hang from ALH’s pecan trees, but in different sizes. The patterns are mesmerizing even if you don’t know they are based on MRIs. Lively aqua swirls around royal purple, blood orange mingles with blushing pink, and ivy green mixes with sunburnt yellow. The variations are endless, but each parasol has a flirtatious, light-hearted energy.

Image: Andres Alcoser

There is a human element as well. Parasols are manmade contraptions that shield us from rain and sun, but in Victorian times they were also used in courtship. The way a woman held her parasol signaled to men her eligibility and her interest in potential suitors. Coupled with the MRI patterning, Sexual Selection is a reminder of our own mating preferences. Not to say we’re superficial. There’s no ideal here. Each parasol is unique and beautiful in its own palette, just as no two birds-of-paradise are exactly alike.

Even if one isn’t reminded of birds, the installation is still successful in its ability to trigger the imagination. With the Funnel Tunnel only a stone’s throw away, the ALH sculpture garden is turned into a magical place of whirling floral patterns and panoramic streaks of color. At night, both the parasols and the tunnel are illuminated for an equally enchanting experience. Inversion Coffee House is in the same compound, making the garden a perfect 30-minute respite from the helter-skelter of the workday.

Beauty has been found, and it's here in Houston.

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Image: Courtesy of Inman Gallery

Dario Robleto, "Man Makes Heart" (detail, in production), 2014, mixed media

Dario Robleto: The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed
Thru Jan 11
Free
The Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross St.
713-525-9400
menil.org

Starting next week, visitors to the Menil Collection’s new Dario Robleto exhibition will have the opportunity to participate in a pioneering medical study. Designed by neuroscientist Jose L. Contreras-Vidal of the University of Houston and Methodist Hospital, the study seeks to understand what happens inside your brain when you look at art. Visitors will have the option of wearing a non-invasive EEG headset that will record their brain activity as they peruse the exhibition. As they exit the exhibition, they’ll give the headsets to researchers to analyze. After collecting data from hundreds of such visitors, Contreras-Vidal will look for common patterns in the visitors’ brainwaves to try to isolate the effects of an aesthetic experience.

Contreras-Vidal designs brain-machine interface systems that allow amputees, the paralyzed, and other disabled people to operate artificial limbs with their minds, using software programs that translate EEG signals, or brainwaves, into physical action. His ultimate goal is to create systems so seamless that people will be able to move their artificial limbs without consciously thinking about it. In order to do that, Contreras-Vidal has to teach his computers how to interpret brainwaves—all kinds of brainwaves, including those related to aesthetic experiences.

“With Contreras-Vidal, he’s doing science that crosses into art level in its beauty, because there’s an emotional dimension to it,” said Dario Robleto, who met the researcher while doing research for the Menil exhibition. They later decided to collaborate on the study, which Robleto, who loved biology as a teenager and did a substantial amount of scientific research for the exhibition, took as a tremendous honor. “The thing that would make me most happy as an artist is to actually contribute real data to a scientist from what I do,” he told me. “That’s a dream of mine. And this show may be the time to do it."

Robleto was surprised to learn from Contreras-Vidal that no neuroscientist had ever conducted a full-scale study of the effect on the brain of looking at art. Although there had been lab experiments with a small number of research subjects, the Menil exhibition provided the opportunity to study hundreds of visitors in a more natural setting.

“What we’re doing here is trying to increase our knowledge about the brain in an ecologically valid environment—a public setting, a museum, with potentially hundreds of people of different ages and genders and interests,” Vidal-Contreras told me. “So the idea is that if we mine this data set we can find patterns of activity that are common to people.”

When Robleto first met Vidal-Contreras, it wasn’t to propose a research collaboration but to ask a simple question—was it possible to determine what somebody was thinking based on a recording of their EEG? The question was prompted by one of the inspirations for the Menil show, the so-called golden record, an actual LP made of gold that was bolted onto the side of NASA’s two Voyager space probes in the late 1970s and launched into outer space. The record, produced by astronomer Carl Sagan and creative director Ann Druyan, included greetings in 59 languages, music from around the world, and an assortment of other sounds.

On a last-minute impulse, Sagan and Druyan decided to include a recording of a human heartbeat and EEG, so Druyan checked herself into New York’s Bellevue Hospital and asked the doctor to record her vital signs. Robleto was fascinated by the idea of sending a recording of the human heartbeat into deep space, and became even more intrigued when he learned that, only a few days before Druyan went to Bellevue Hospital, she and Sagan had become secretly engaged. “It’s not just any heartbeat—it’s a 27-year-old woman who just fell in love,” as Robleto told me.

For the exhibition, Robleto created a “mix tape” LP of historical human heartbeats, including Druyan’s, from the first recorded heartbeat to a recording of the first artificial beatless heart. Visitors can listen to a sampling of those heartbeats on headphones at the Menil. But while working on the show, Robleto continued to be haunted by a lingering question: Would it actually be possible for someone—perhaps an alien lifeform, happening upon one of the Voyager probes—to figure out what Druyan was thinking that summer day in 1977 based on the recording of her EEG imprinted on the golden record?

“When Druyan and Carl sent the brainwave into space, it was crazy—‘Maybe it will work, who knows? But certainly we won’t be around to know,’” Robleto said, imagining their conversation. To see if Ann and Carl were onto something, Robleto told Contreras-Vidal the story of the golden record and asked if Ann was crazy. The researcher didn’t hesitate. No, he told the artist, Ann wasn’t crazy. “He said he didn’t know if it would be in our lifetime, but he said it was definitely possible,” Robleto said. (Although Sagan passed away in 1996, Druyan is still alive, and will make a joint appearance with Robleto at the Menil Collection on September 23.)

That initial conversation led to the new neuroscience study, which is scheduled to begin on Saturday, September 6. “I’m very excited to work with Dario to do this research,” Contreras-Vidal said. “It’s an example of two very different areas working together to advance understanding.”

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Image: Courtesy of the artist

Sonic Bicycle 1

Transported + Renewed
Sept 1–Nov 30
Various locations
houstonartsalliance.com/transported

Houston is not known for preserving its past. Recent controversies over the Astrodome and the bricks in Freedman’s Town suggest as much. Perhaps the city’s origins and ties to the railroads and port gave Houstonians their sense of forward momentum and robbed them of nostalgia. Attempting to reverse this trend, the Houston Arts Alliance is offering an opportunity for Houstonians to look backward and forward as the city marks both the centennial of the Houston Ship Channel and the completion of the new light rail line in the East End, Houston’s historic transportation hub.

Transported + Renewed is the HAA’s three-month celebration of the East End and “Houston’s love affair with movement, transformation, and reinvention,” as HAA CEO Jonathon Glus puts it. With enough events to fill your fall social calendar between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, Transported + Renewed offers concerts, performances, visual arts installations, parades, and something called a bicycle opera—all of it free.

“We started working on this a few years ago, and we were very interested in the East End, because it’s where our city began,” Glus told me. “It has a tremendous amount of history, and layers and layers of cultural communities. That part of the city, with its proximity to the port, has functioned as our Ellis Island. But it also very under-recognized by most Houstonians.”

Image: Courtesy of the artist

"Houstonality," Pablo Gimenez Zapiola

The whole affair kicks off at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2 in front of City Hall, where Mayor Annise Parker will help the HAA unveil Sharon Engelstein’s sculpture Whatever Floats, a 20-foot inflatable tugboat. (Houstonians may recognize Engelstein from her pink foam sculpture in Hermann Park.) The tugboat sculpture will be displayed at various locations around the city, including City Hall, Market Square Park, and Allen’s Landing.

Among the other events scheduled for September is an official kickoff party on Sept. 4 at Moon Tower Inn; a multimedia exhibition on the history of the Houston Ship Channel at the Houston Public Library’s Julia Ideson building; and a Latino Music Series, hosted by Grammy-winning Panamanian musician Osvaldo Ayala, on Sept. 7 at Tony Marron Park. On Sept. 13, head to Allen’s Landing for a “parade on water” featuring kayaks, paddle boats, Dragon boats, and a fleet of police and fire rescue vessels.

Image: Courtesy of Shrimp Boat Projects

Buffalo Bayou Shrimp Festival

On Sept. 19, the Houston Grand Opera will perform Past the Checkpoints, an operetta based on the true story of an undocumented immigrant growing up in Texas. The three-part Buffalo Bayou Silos art series begins on Sept. 20 with Houstonality & FutureMind, where the work of Pablo Gimenez Zapiola will be projected onto silos along the bayou (see above), accompanied by performances by FrenetiCore Dance and Cirque La Vie. Cyclists can experience the “bicycle opera” starting on Sept. 27 by riding special “sonic bicycles” outfitted with speakers that transmit snippets of music based on the riders’ GPS coordinates (see above).

All the various events in the three-month celebration are in the service of bringing Houstonians to the East End and giving them a greater appreciation for their history, according to the HAA’s Glus. “We want as many Houstonians as possible to see all the parades, art and concerts, and the riches of the East End,” he told me. “The economic development, planning, architecture, arts and design communities are all talking about how we can respect history, respect cultural communities but make our cities more beautiful, more walkable, and function better in a physical way.”

[See the full schedule of events here.]

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The fourth annual Texas Contemporary art fair, which wrapped up on Sunday, featured around 50 galleries from around the country, including 18 from Houston. Despite being an official VIP—I have the laminated red card to prove it—I regrettably missed the benefit preview reception and VIP party on Thursday night, which, according to no less an authority than Shelby Hodge, featured "sophisticated appetizers."

Indeed, I almost missed the fair entirely. On Sunday afternoon around three, right as the Texans were doing a victory lap around the team-that-shall-not-be-named from Washington, D.C., I suddenly realized that I had a scant few hours left to catch the fair before it closed. I jumped in my car and headed over to the George R. Brown Convention Center, where, after spending 15 minutes walking from one end of the building to the other trying to locate the correct hall, I breezed through the entrance, passed by two showroom Infinitis and a stack of free Wall Street Journals, and entered the melee. To my right, I spotted a helpful map of the fair at the Art League of Houston booth.

For the visitor's convenience, certain points of interest were marked.

There was even a useful supply of red dot stickers (sadly depleted by the time I arrived.)

At this point, I began circulating the cavernous hall, keeping my ears open for clues for how to appreciate the bewildering variety of art on display. Below, a few selections from the babble:

Gallerist: "The two art fairs [Texas Contemporary and the Houston Fine Art Fair, which arrives later this month] hate each other and they're always fighting to get ahead of the other. Personally, I wish they would just get over it and have their fairs on the same weekend. Make it one big thing."

Visitor: "I just wonder whether it will scare my kids."

Gallerist: "It's a celebration of life and death. It's not supposed to be morbid or scary. There's no profanity or anything—it should be fine for children."

Gallerist: "This one is done by a practitioner of Chinese medicine. He does most of these works blindfolded."

Visitor: "That's amazing."

Visitor: "The hands are one of the hardest things you can do. The feet she got perfect, but the hands aren't quite right." [For the record, they looked alright to me.]

Visitor: "I definitely like the size of the larger one. And it's got more white space."

Visitor: "Seeing all these eyeglasses together takes me to a bad place."

At the VIP Lounge ("designed by MaRS, furnished by Ligne Roset"): "It's all subjective."

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Get your Walter White prints by Tim Doyle while they last.

Space Montrose has always had a bit of a parking situation. In its old location on Dunlavy, the art, clothing, and jewelry boutique didn't have any parking at all—patrons had to snag a spot on the street. In its new spot—just across Westheimer from the old one—there's a big, beautiful new parking lot...which is very often entirely filled with guests enjoying croissants and coffees at the adjoining Common Bond bakery.

Always one to see the silver lining in things, however, Space owner Leila Peraza is taking advantage of her neighbors hours to offer a special weekly deal. Since Monday is the only day of the week Common Bond is closed, Peraza writes on the shop's Facebook page: "We've decided to make Mondays special in Space since we have all the parking to ourselves!"

"We will be offering a special promotion, event, treats, etc. every Monday," writes Peraza. "We've decided to go big this Monday." In this case, "go big" means that all posters by ultra-collectible poster artist Tim Doyle are 10 percent off. The Austin-based artist is perhaps best known for his work at Nakatomi, Inc., in which he combines pop culture with "lowbrow art" to create colorful prints featuring everything from Transformers to scenes from Rushmore.

Space Montrose
1706 Westheimer Rd.
832-649-5743
spacemontrose.com

Most recently, Doyle printed a series of popular Breaking Bad posters which sold out fast. However, Space has gotten a few more of his Walter White prints in stock—which will no doubt sell out just as quickly today. Get there before they do, or before Space closes tonight at 9 p.m.

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Once you've become a part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real.

So wrote Nelson Algren of his hometown in his 1951 essay “Chicago: City on the Make”, and so local photographer Sebastien Boncy would say of Houston, his home more or less constantly since 1996. A native or the Haitian capital of Port-Au-Prince, Boncy describes himself as existing in a sort of cultural limbo: a Haitian in Texas, a Texan in the other 49 states, a “diaspo” in Haiti, and an “Anglo-Black-guy” in France.

Let’s face it: by traditional aesthetic standards, Houston is an ugly city, a flat and sweltering hodgepodge of concrete parking lots and potholed streets and grim overpasses, mirrored glass skyscrapers and mid-rise office buildings, treated plywood privacy fences, and faux-stucco McMansions. Our monuments, edifices and wonders—man-made and natural—are rare to non-existent. And that is exactly what Boncy captures in his lens, somehow making it all seem captivatingly dreamlike in the process. On his Tumblr, Purple Time Space Swamp, Sebastien Boncy’s Houston is so real it becomes surreal.

Not for him the live oak tunnels in Broadacres or the skyline basking in the warmth of a Gulf Coast sunset; Boncy’s inspirations are the very same humdrum tableaux of strip malls, suburban cul-de-sacs, and welters of power lines that outsiders and natives alike love to lament.

“Houston is nothing but itself,” he said in a phone chat with Houstonia late last year. “Every little bit of it is so basic to me on that level. I am not a big fan of words like ‘authentic’ or ‘real’ but it is very convincing.”

In that sense, Boncy believes it to be similar to his native city. “There’s a straightforwardness I respond to well here that is also very much a part of Port-au-Prince, where I grew up,” he says. “It is so straightforward, in the way that we live, in the way that the city is laid out, and also in the language. We speak mostly Creole and some French. French is a weird language in the way that it circles around things. A vulture language. A beautiful vulture language but like a vulture because it circles around things. Creole is very direct: a lot less Columbo and a lot more Judge Dredd.”

Fotofest press and website coordinator Vinod Hopson met Boncy not long after he arrived here from Haiti in 1996. Back then, Hopson remembers, Boncy was living on the Southwest side and riding the bus. “These two small facts from his history inform his work,” Hopson avers. “He is decidedly urban, and particularly inner-city urban. He is ‘pedestrian’ as in close to the ground, slow, steady, and aware. He is comfortable on the streets, and comfortable working there. ‘Street photography’ is a much admired and aspired to genre in photography. Many try, and most fail because of fear and the fact that they are alien to the environment. They are tourists.” Which is not to say that Boncy’s photos are menacing or “dangerous,” Hopson stresses. “They are not, but they engage the landscape with confidence and familiarity, so they are authentic.”

Hopson remembers a time when they were roommates, when Boncy would ride the bus to and from a teaching job in Denver Harbor, just east of Fifth Ward. Boncy would come home and tell Hopson tales of getting caught in adolescent rock-fight crossfires that reminded him still more of Haiti. “Those bus rides and walks; and others in the Second Ward, off North Main, and other parts of the city, helped cultivate a social aspect of his work. I might call it ‘socialist’, as I know he is a great advocate for the working poor, but he most often proclaims himself an ‘anarchist’ in a pure libertarian sense.”

All of Boncy’s work is available for free for any purpose on his tumblr. “I have my BFA and an MFA and I am immersed in the art world, almost trapped in it,” Boncy explains. “The art world’s business model doesn’t make any sense. The artist’s position as a business entity or profit producer—it’s almost [more] like a vocational thing. Yeah, the occasional person makes a living but I decided I would just embrace that [uncompensated] position completely, just embrace the service aspect of it, interact with my community more.”

To those ends, Hopson says, Boncy also engages in playful modes of exhibition such as hiding his prints in random books. “ It is thoughtful and undertaken with intention,” Hopson says. “Those are the two things I admire most in artists—that they work with thoughtfulness and intention.”

“His pictures of Houston crack me up,” writes local art critic and blogger Robert Boyd in an email. “They are so deadpan, so unassuming. He obviously goes to places where no one else goes to take pictures—distant suburbs, industrial parks, etc. He takes pictures of utterly anonymous non-places. Because of the blandness of the settings (he drains every drop of the picturesque from his photos), what ends up dominating them will be something you would ordinarily never notice. You may see a picture of a generic concrete warehouse building with a strip of grass in front, but what leaps out at you is an off-center pile of dirt. His pictures seem to frequently feature something like that—a shadow, an object, whatever—that disturbs the placid scene in some way.”

Boyd likens the unlikely “stars” in these photos to what Roland Barthes dubbed a “punctum.”

“If a photo were beautiful or dramatic or highly composed, you wouldn't necessarily notice the shopping cart or garage sale sign or the stray plastic bag or whatever,” Boyd explains. “But in Boncy's photos (at least the ones on Purple Time Swamp), these details have a curiously powerful effect.”

“He is a pure critic, questioning and commenting on everything around him—sometimes with words, sometimes with pictures,” Hopson says. “Sebastien is one of the most engaged artists I know—engaged in the process, the history, the theory, and the context. Everything you see in his images, even an image of a beer can in a parking lot, is informed by that intense, multi-layered engagement.”

“I don’t have a set goal when I am taking the pictures,” Boncy said. “Most of these come about in the course of my daily life—I’m going to work, I’m going to the grocery store, I’m picking up my daughter or going to see some friends. Sometimes if I have an hour here or there for myself I will go shoot some, but basically the pictures happen because they interest me. I am always trying to keep friends in Houston because other cities beckon all the time, you know. People want to go to New York, Chicago, LA. But Houston is so convincing. It’s the only huge American town that is tourist-free, so no single part of it feels like a put-on. If it’s a put-on, it’s a put-on for the locals—you know what I mean.”

WHAT Love Street The Houston Scene Market Edition Breakfast, with the Arts & Love Street the Houston Scene Market Opening Reception

WHEN September 9

WHERE MKT Bar at Phoenicia Specialty Foods

ARTISTS INVOLVED 27, with 77 total works of art

FAVORITE ARTWORKS Balloon installation by David Graeve, lighted wooden sculpture by Patrick Renner

SPECIAL GUESTS GONZO247, Apama Mackey, Nicole Longnecker

–Michael Hardy

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