Creature Comforts, Indoors and Out
Andy Coolquitt’s Sculptures and Tableaux Use Urban Materials to Evoke Domesticity Andy Coolquitt has a steadfast interest in domestic spaces. So much so that the Austin-based artist, who has a solo exhibition opening soon at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston [...]
Sean Shim-Boyle: Salt House
Rarely does such a potentially disruptive, even violent architectural intervention feel as organic and sensitive as Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Sean Shim-Boyle’s response to one of the historic Holman Street shotgun houses in Project Row Houses’ Round 38. Reacting to [...]
Mark Fox: If That Then This
Grids are nearly synonymous with the concept of order. Spreadsheets compartmentalize data into cells of information. Graph paper structures the organization of schemas and equations. Even if one does not deal in [...]
Robert Ruello: Open Other Side
Visiting Robert Ruello’s third solo exhibition at Inman Gallery, I was reminded of the term “abstract illusionism,” which critic Barbara Rose coined in the late 1960s to describe painters using trompe-l’oeuil devices to create spatial [...]
Loose Ends: May 2013
Stray Tidbits, Blind Items and Unsolicited Advice Last year’s salutary exhibition American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston played to the MFAH’s strengths, telling a convincing story [...]
The Queen of Conflation
Marcelyn McNeil Blends the Rules in Lemonworld The seductive, curious paintings of Houston-based artist Marcelyn McNeil leave no room to doubt her commitment to a studio-based practice. Just ask painter Howard Sherman, a friend who often swaps studio visits with [...]
Dallas Art Fair Turns Five, Spawns Satellites
New partnerships part of ongoing evolution At the ripe old age of five, the Dallas Art Fair is becoming as sure a sign of April in Texas as wildflowers blooming along the highways – albeit one with a more contemporary edge. More than 80 galleries representing cities from Miami to Milan will set up shop [...]
Princes & Paupers: The Art of Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot is surely one of the best, most influential artists you’ve never heard of. Unless, of course, you’re part of a persistent cult following that Dena Woodall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s assistant curator of prints and drawings, has encountered while preparing the first Callot exhibition in nearly 40 years. The fact that [...]
Don’t It Make Those Brown Trunks Blue?
HAA’s temporary public art project highlights trees’ importance I knew there were trees in the green spaces in the Waugh/Memorial cloverleaf interchange; I just never paid attention to them as I entered and exited. The arrival of The Blue Trees, an ephemeral outdoor installation by Australian artist Konstantin Dimopoulos, has changed [...]
Mike Beradino: Crystal Palace
Remember the first time you punched in “07734” on a calculator only to flip it upside down to show your math classmate the word “hello”? One of the simplest forms of digital manipulation, this elementary school trick transforms numerals into the most basic interaction: a greeting. Mike Beradino’s exhibition Crystal Palace at Lawndale Art Center [...]
Jonathan Leach: Time Does Not Exist Here
An ongoing local parlor game, in which participants try to locate the Houston in Houston art and ask whether there is such a thing, reared its head again in recent months when Houston painters Aaron Parazette and Howard Sherman curated group shows of work by local colleagues and protégés. (Some galleries declined to let their [...]
Geoff Hippenstiel: Territorial Pissings
Much has been made – by me as well as others – of the way Houston artist Geoff Hippenstiel moves between figuration and abstraction in paintings that combine over-the-top impasto with metallic silver or gold spray paint. In his second solo outing at Devin Borden Gallery, Hippenstiel turns that movement into a five-part narrative on [...]
