Eye Candy: Bright-Eyed and Busy-Tailed
By Megan McIlwain
The spring air is crisp, the art is good, and the community activities are plentiful. There are lots to do and see in Houston this weekend, here are my top picks.
THURSDAY
Hunter Gather Project brings you Progressions, an exhibition focusing on patterns – woven, entangled, symmetrical, and cyclical – and how these structures project time, emotion, routine, and/or change with new works by artists Arielle Masson, Cat Snapp, and Samara Rosen.
Houston-based Belgian artist Arielle Masson uses hand-ground pigments she has collected from around the world (amazing..) to create a series of patterns originating from the intersection of two identical circles, demonstrating an endless potential for growth.
From Seattle, printmaker and book artist Cat Snapp interprets thought and emotion as form and line. The repetition of shapes invite meditation on human relationships and the world we inhabit.
Recent Cranbrook MFA graduate Samara Rosen’s large-scale installations are a continuous process of accumulation and dissipation – sewing, cutting, knotting, and binding – that mirrors the entangled nature of existence.
Stop by the opening reception from 6-8 or catch it on view through May 9th.
Mahwish Christy, Untitled, 2024
SENSOR is a new, original, multi-media exhibition of works from an international mix of artists, and activists. The dynamic group of artists addresses the United States military and intelligence agencies’ use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, (UAVs or “drones”). UAVs are a controversial technology. Though the earliest versions (remote operated aircraft) originated during WW I, and saw important and deadly innovation through WW II and the Vietnam War, they only came to greater widespread public knowledge within the last decade and a half, as the post 9/11 wars on terror expanded in Afghanistan and Iraq, and drones strikes reach into Pakistan, Yemen, and now Syria.
Used for both surveillance and weapons delivery, they are an integrated part of modern warfare and intelligence gathering. UAVs are prized for their efficiency, efficacy, and safety, and praised for creating a more “humane war”. They are airborne for days at a time, over conflict zones, controlled by pilots sitting safely at their screens, 8,000 miles away in air-conditioned trailers outside of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Artists:
Lisa Barnard works with victims of missile attacks, drone pilots and psychologists, trying to uncover the secrecies surrounding the use of drones by Western governments.
Trevor Palgen’s hacked drone video, Drone Vision reveals a “drone-eye” view and questions information security between operators and the machines they pilot.
David Birkin’s Severe Clear asks viewers to rethink notions of justice and responsibility during the “war on terror.”
Mahwish Chishty‘s paintings open a dialogue between drones and folk-art truck painting, juxtaposing traditional Pakistani culture with contemporary, 21st Century concerns.
Technology writer and artist James Bridle, and interactive designers Pitch Interactive, examine the unknown and virtual spaces within contemporary war. Both are interested in bringing us closer to understanding the realities and consequences of the technology we use.
SENSOR will be on view at FotoFest at Silver Street Studios with an opening reception Thursday 6-8, an artist and curator tour Saturday at 2pm, and on view through May 9th.
Stop by Art League Houston for an informal video screening and talk with artist Cassie Phan, who will discuss a selection of her videos featured in the exhibition This and the Wall, which is currently on view in the ALH Main Gallery.
This and the Wall features an installation of over thirty sculptural works, and a series of video that occupy the floor of the gallery, deliberately avoiding any direct contact between the work and the gallery walls. Exploring themes of denial, fallible memory and variable human perception, the works in this exhibit are positioned low to the ground, viewable only from either looking down or crouching low, creating a narrative that disrupts the stillness of detachment, and invites an increased awareness of the viewer’s perspective.
Hear all about it from 6-7pm.
FRIDAY
Make your way out to Memorial Park for the Bayou City Art Festival Friday from 12pm-6pm and Saturday/Sunday from 10am-6pm. There will be hundreds of artists and an abundance of media, as well as music and drinks and crafts, oh my!
This years featured artist is Gregory Arth, who will be showing work from part of his tree series, which is inspired by the old oak trees in his property that surround his home and studio.
Advance tickets are just $10, buy them here. See you down on the Bayou.
View the newest exhibition and enjoy a market with food and crafts during the Night Market at Asia Society Texas from 6:30-9:30. The Night Market will celebrate the opening of The Other Side: Chinese and Mexican Immigration to America, which explores recurring issues of immigration, border relations, and labor practices that have persisted throughout United States history and remain today. Artists include Margarita Cabrera, Tony de los Reyes, Zhi Lin, and Hung Liu. By presenting these emotionally poignant and conceptually engaging works, The Other Side hopes to offer viewers a humanized perspective on complex immigration issues often overshadowed by mass media and politics.
Join Fresh Arts for an opening reception of Supernova, a multi-media group exhibition that explores the relationship between art and science.
With twelve artist participants, the work featured in this exhibition explores several areas of the “scientific”. For example, Cassie Hanks creates photographs of extraterrestrial planetary landscapes using organic materials based on data she gathered from rovers, satellites, and telescopes. Laura Murphy’s video transforms patterns formed by magnets and ferromagnetic materials into animated abstract compositions. Amy Richards uses the scanner as a tool to investigate the physical qualities and make up of copper sulfate crystals. Tiffany Sanchez is interested in the inherent artistic qualities of ecosystems and explores this through an installation of tiny terrariums that were created through a series of community-based workshops. Gretchen Freitag creates abstract representations that aim to visualize the physical thought process of memory. Justin Sheehy has built a digital, time-based sketch based upon the complexity and perceived randomness of mathematical chaos. Morgan Jenks, who specializes in aleatoric compositions, creates live performances that explore the relationship between digital data and musical score. Collectively, the work in this exhibition will present a dialogue between the aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of science and the transcendent power of art, proposing a unique relationship that introduces new understanding and meaning.
Supernova is a group exhibition of works by current students and recent graduates of the MFA and MS in Visualization programs at Texas A&M University. The Department of Visualization and its Viz Lab is a unique environment that explores the intersection of art, science and technology. Curators, Krista Steinke and Sherman Finch, intentionally kept the selection criteria for “Supernova” very broad by including art that is either informed or inspired by science. This open criterion allowed for the inclusion of a wide range of media: including performance, video, photography, sculpture, and mixed media. The public is invited to an opening reception beginning at 6 p.m., with a performance at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 27, along with a community workshop entitled Natural Preserves: Aquascaping, on May 9, from 2-4 p.m., where participants may create their own submerged compositions using repurposed mason jars and an assortment of aquatic plants. Both events are free and held at Fresh Arts, 2101 Winter Street, Studio B11.
SATURDAY
Project Row Houses and guest curator Sally Frater bring you the opening of Round 42: The One and the Many: A Self-Portrait in Seven Parts. Round 42 brings together the work of artists based in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe.
In doing so, Round 42 both responds to the mission of Project Row Houses and is reflective of her time spent in residency at PRH, the Third Ward and Houston. Stemming from her ongoing engagement with notions of site, Round 42 will feature photography, video, textile, text-based and sculptural installation. Participating artists include Alexandre Arrechea, Erika DeFreitas, Delio Delgado, Nathaniel Donnett, Kenya Evans, Ayanna Mccloud, and Nicole Miller.
The opening reception begins at 4pm with a special Third Ward Community Market featuring DJ Flash Gordon Parks.
galleryHOMELAND is pleased to announce Zurich Artist in Residence Christoph Hueppi for his first trip and solo show to Houston Texas. Hueppi marks galleryHOMELAND’s fourth visiting artist to Houston and the first at our newest location. Hueppi will be residing in Houston for the duration of his 5-week exhibition and working closely with galleryHOMELAND and our many outstanding institutions, curators, and local artists.
Hueppi’s latest body of work dives deep into the realm and odd mysteries of microscopic organisms, molecular sciences, and developing technologies. Through his paintings, Hueppi’s extreme techniques and loud color palette creates a series of hypnotic imagery and visual vastness. His newest body of work focuses on the strange visual clues used in new scientific developments. Working with surgeon like exacts and precisions, his painting style often times mimics the digital and computer realm of scientific realizations. Focusing on the ideas of bacteria, viruses, cell structure, and microscopic discoveries, Hueppi’s paintings takes a new spin on the unseen. Through his own hand and vision Hueppi beautifully recreates these ideas and progresses through the use of loud colors, fine line work, and a variety of process.
Come out for the opening reception from 6-9 and welcome Christoph to Houston with that southern hospitality.
Over at the Anya Tish Gallery, Marcelyn McNeil is showing her newest body of large-scale abstract oil paintings and introducing intimate, multilayered works on paper in Compact Fictions. She
continues to explore the converging of forms that are simultaneously perceived
as flat and having mass, resulting in a curious and engrossing visual experience.
She describes her
process as “wedging together areas of paint”, creating a “meaningful
infrastructure” as if organizing a workspace or constructing a building. McNeil, a master of intuition, makes way for the evolution of each work, taping,
pouring, sanding, and trowelling the deep, vibrant, matte hues until she has
reached another of the electric compositions she is known for. Paint may drip
and bleed across the canvas, creating incidental color punctuations among the
gestural geometries, and allowing the works to give home to the flawed beauty
of happy accidents. While suggestive of amorphous architecture, the inanimate shapes
emit a bodily presence, forming playful relationships and tensions among each
other, and forging a dynamic harmony that is asymmetrical yet peculiarly
balanced. Teetering between geometric and biomorphic, the aptly placed forms
attain a sculptural quality, giving the illusion that they might exist in real
space.
The opening reception is from 6-8:30 and is on view through April 25th.
Whole Foods Market Montrose is holding an Art Market to benefit the Whole Planet Foundation, which provide grants to microfinance institutions in Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Middle East, who in turn develop and offer microenterprise loan programs, training and other financial services to the self-employed poor. Artists include Mike Vollmer , Larry Crawford , Camille Ellington , Joel Vela, Natalia Kachanovs-Rhodes , Stephanie Deleonarois , Justin Dunford , Gloria Sanchez, Chase Fortuno, Adriane Wiltse , Linda Bocanegra , Ashley Allen, Vanessa Vaught/Hatton Henry, Jessi Mata , Cassey Terero, Laura Robles, Patricia Dun, and Jon Garner with crafts and art of several different mediums. Come out and support globally by supporting locally on the WFM patio from 12-8pm!
SUNDAY
Sunday Streets is back!
From 12-4pm, Cigna Sunday Streets kicks off the 2024 season by going back to Westheimer (from Taft to Woodhead). With no cars on the road, you’ll be able to walk, run, dance bike or play in the streets with friends, family and neighbors.
In conjunction with Sunday Streets, Pop Shop Houston brings you a special edition of Mini Pops the best curated monthly art market in Houston. Shop and browse from 20 makers with DJs, food trucks, and more.
Let’s go fly a kite at Hermann Park from 10am-5pm during the 2nd annual Kite Festival. Free and open to the public, there will be costumed characters, various stage performances, face painting, bubbles, professional kite exhibitions, hula hoops, parachute races, an interactive DJ, a variety of food trucks and several other activities including train rides, pedal boats and motorized sail boats in the Reflection Pool.
TUESDAY
At The Mariago Collective, the sky and the fracture is the newest work by installation artist Jo Ann Fleischhauer. Constructed of a thousand cast glass dodecahedrons and buckyballs suspended from the ceiling, this work encompasses ideas that range from the microscopic to the infinite. Fleischhauer’s work assumes the inexhaustible attitude of an explorer, and this installation is the poetic revelation of all her findings. Let Jo Ann and curator Tommy Gregory walk you through the exhibition with an artist and curator talk from 7-8pm.
