Eye Candy — Flash Flood Warning
Image from Duet Love at Diverseworks
Text by Megan McIlwain
Friday & Saturday
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry — With women’s rights under attack again and growing numbers of young women rejecting the “feminist” label, this moving, powerful documentary could not have come at a better time. Screenings Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
[While you’re at it, check out this movement to put a woman on the $20 bill.]
FRIDAY
The first Poet Laureate of Houston, Gwendolyn Zepeda, will be reading from her latest book, Monsters, Zombies and Addicts at Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA). 7:30 pm, free.
Art League Houston will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Healing Art program and invites you to celebrate at the annual benefit and community party, Peace, Love, and MARTY: A Montrose Art Party, from 6-9pm. Join as Art League Houston honors artist Patrick Palmer, who established the remarkable Healing Art program in 1990 at the height of the AIDS crisis.
This program is highly personal for me. When I began it, I just wanted to help my friends, and anyone who was struggling. The AIDS crisis hit close to home, and I felt like something needed to be done. It is so important for all people, to have a creative outlet, and so often people living with HIV or AIDS do not have the ability to go out and gather supplies. Without this program, many participants might never have made art.
– Patrick Palmer, artist and Healing Arts Program founder
This year’s MARTY is 1960s themed—tie-dye and sky high go-go boots highly encouraged! The event will feature live music by DJ Stephanie Saint Sanchez, delectable bites from Revival Market, beer from Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and special 1960s-inspired libations.
A selection of affordable artwork by Healing Art artists will be for sale in the Main Gallery, as well as an exciting silent auction! A portion of the artwork proceeds will help ensure the continuation of this vital program.
Hello Project Gallery brings you It Takes All Sorts, Rachel Stuckey’s first solo gallery exhibition. Stuckey distorts cinematic tropes and embodies an animistic worldview to consider the shift of healthcare practices from natural and body-centric to synthetic and technocentric. Using the domain of the woods as a laboratory combined with a soundtrack elements from 1970s educational films, native flora become peculiar characters suspended in an ominous landscape.
Check out the opening reception from 7-10pm and/or on view through May 23.
Head out to Diverseworks ArtSpace for Duet Love, a performance of love, lust, and charged energy. Portland choreographer Tahni Holt’s latest work presents coupled bodies performing gendered states around the romantic premise of the “duet.” Holt and her artistic team draw from iconic photographs of hetero couples to drive this inquiry into how bodies perform gender. If masculine and feminine are forces and factors, how do markers of gender and race inflect the movement, emotion and decisions of dancing bodies and how do we as audience read them?
Duet Love premiered at Velocity Dance Center in Seattle on September 4, 2024 and in Portland on September 13, 2024 at PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival.
Performance is 60 minutes and will be followed by a talkback with Tahni Holt.
Heads up: this performance includes nudity.
Seating on Friday at 7pm and on Saturday at 3:30pm is FREE, but seating is limited and reservations encouraged. Make reservations online at www.diverseworks.org
Design Fair 2024 at Lawndale Art Center features examples of cutting-edge contemporary design, as well as vintage modern objects of the 20th century. Visitors to the Fair will be able to meet the designers and exhibitors for an up-close and personal look at the pace-setting designs of today and the mid-20th century.
The Texas Co-Op, a special section of the Fair, features individual Texas-based designers offering one-of-a-kind products. These new and emerging product lines currently are in small-scale production and represent innovations in industrial and object design today.
Shop early for the best modern and contemporary design at Lawndale Art Center. Sip on cool libations from Saint Arnold Brewing Company and nibble on tasty treats from CULINAIRE amongst the finest selection of furniture, glass, ceramics, lighting, books, metalwork and fashion. You won’t want to miss this chance to pick up your next treasure.
Design Fair 2024 Preview Party & Sale is Friday from 6-9pm.
Admission: $60 per Lawndale member / $75 per non-member (includes admission throughout weekend)
Tickets available at the door and by contacting Lawndale Art Center at 713.528.5858 or by email at askus@lawndaleartcenter.org.
Fair Days: Saturday/Sunday from 10am-5pm, general admission $5
Stop by the Menil Collection Book Store from 6-9 for a pop up show of new sculpture and ceramic work from artist Angel Oloshove.
The Blaffer Art Museum on the UH campus will be showing student art from undergraduates and current MFA students.
SATURDAY
Check out what’s going on as part of the Museum Experience Zone 2:
10am-4pm Experience a live reenactment of “The Buffalo Soldiers Story” by Trooper Biggs (hourly) at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum. Bring the entire family to experience history!
$5 admission, $3 for students with ID.
10am-4pm Last opportunity to explore Texas Czechs: Rooted in Tradition exhibition at Czech Center Museum Houston. Enjoy Polka music, dancing, kid friendly activities and movies on the third floor.
Special $5 admission; $3 children 10 and under.
10am-5pm Check out a variety of craft demonstrations by local artist guilds at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Experience pottery making, quilting, woodturning, metalsmithing, and more. Visitors can also explore the featured exhibitions, Dining and Discourse: A Discussion in Three Courses and one day, late in the afternoon…, and shop for unique gifts and art objects for sale in the Asher Gallery.
Free admission.
11am-6pm Explore two new exhibits at the Houston Museum of African American Culture: Collision, Representation vs. Abstraction in Art by African Americans sheds light on issues of authenticity and the black experience in art; and Leaving Mississippi: Reflections on Heroes and Folklore by Najee Dorsey showcases heroes of the civil rights movement, early 20th century participants in civil disobedience and folklore legends.
$5 admission, $3 children and seniors, free for children 5 and under.
12pm-4pm Join Asia Society Texas Center for Ancestor Quest - explore identity and ancestry through fun family trees, themed art projects. All day tours of The Other Side: Chinese and Mexican Immigration to America exhibition.
General hall always free, Sarofim Gallery free for the day.
At 12:30pm, 1:30pm, and 2:30pm Hear from Holocaust survivors at Holocaust Museum Houston as they discuss their experiences during World War II and their lives afterward. Children can participate in a sharing session based on the book The Whispering Town, which tells the dramatic story of neighbors in a small Danish fishing village who, during the Holocaust, shelter a Jewish family waiting to be ferried to safety in Sweden.
$12 adults, $8 seniors, free for members and students with ID.
southmorehouse presents will be hosting events on the lawns of Asia Society Texas Center (ASTC), Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (HCCC) with a theme of IDENTITY.
ASTC: “Where is the origin of ME?”
11am - 3pm
Rummage through the past and present with world music psychedelia and dance, artistically inspired yurts, and the process of creating nonfiction stories based on oral history.
Hosted by Kangaroo Sexxy, sound engineer and dance artist.
HMAAC: “How have I struggled being ME?”
11am - 2pm
A variety of Houston local poets, performers and soul singers will elucidate upon the “struggle.” If you have something to say about your own social struggle, then you most certainly have a forum to preach.
Hosted by Kyle Blue Poetry Organizer of Odd Thursday
HCCC: “Why do the drums of culture beat for ME?”
11am - 3pm:
Explore the fabrication of regional drums and a workshop with a twist of household goods. Adam Carman will demonstrate the creation of drums from the beginning stages to the end. There will also be a craft area and a perpetual drum circle with the Gathering of the Guilds craftsmen.
Organizers Christopher Higham and Michel Muylle bring you Eye Candy, a one-night-only art event featuring work by Scott Angle, Cecilia Beaven, BEXAR, Norberto Clemente, Michael Roque Collins, Vincent Fink, Richard Fluhr, David Graeve, Carlos Hernandez, Meredith Jack, Stephany De Jongh, Michael Macedo Meazell, Patrick Renner, Joelle Verstraeten, and Patrick Washburn. The event also features music by Jo Bird and The 1.5 Star Symphony, and fashion by Jose Sanchez Leather. This is Higham and Muylle’s third year organizing the event, which offers a range of art-collecting opportunities to suit all budgets. Head out to Spring Street Studios from 6-10pm.
Head out to the Menil Collection at 7pm as this year’s Vivian L. Smith Foundation Symposium investigates the use of juxtaposition in the interpretation and display of works of art.
From Surrealist collections to thematic exhibitions, artists and curators use juxtaposition to evoke meanings between objects in intuitive rather than didactic ways, activating viewers to find new resonances. Grounded in the Menil Collection’s longstanding engagement with this theme, the symposium will present a roundtable discussion on the importance of juxtaposition in today’s critical and curatorial practices.
Participants:
David Levi Strauss is a critic, poet and Chair of the graduate program in Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He writes broadly across topics in photography, film, painting and sculpture, often focusing on issues of social and political relevance.
Kristina van Dyke is an art historian and curator. Currently the Director of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, Missouri, she was previously Curator of collections and research at the Menil, specializing in African art.
Serge Guilbaut is an art historian, curator and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. His research centers on post-war American and French art, especially exchanges between the two.
The discussion will be moderated by Allison Myers, PhD Candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin and the 2024-2015 Vivian L. Smith Foundation Fellow at the Menil Collection.
SATURDAY/SUNDAY
Design Fair 2024 at Lawndale Arts Center Fair Days
10am-5pm, general admission $5
Shop among a special selection of vintage modern objects of the 20th century, as well as cutting edge contemporary design. Specialist dealers will offer furniture, glass, ceramics, lighting, books, metalwork and fashion for sale to collectors and enthusiasts alike.
TUESDAY
Head out to Alabama Song from 6-9 for an exhibition of works and a book release – one night only! Featuring:
VI DIEU, STAN LE, M. CALLEN, KATE RASH, DAVE DOVE, WILL BURNS, NICK FLYNN, ADORA RAMOS, LILI TAYLOR, AARON, GOHLKE, RONNIE YATES, BRANDON ZECH, LENA MELINGER, ELISSA TURNER, JASMINE CRUTCH, ANGEL LARTIGUE,, GABRIEL MARTINEZ, JANINE AROSTIQUE, and VICTORIA GONZALEZ.
