At Dress for Success and Women of Wardrobe's annual Summer Soiree, generously hosted by Tootises, fashion-forward attendees dressed in pretty pastels, bold patterns and lots of ruffles — many designed by Houston's Hunter Bell, who showed off her fall line alongside jewelry by Claudia Lobao. Chairs Karishma Asrani, Courtney Campo, Allie Danziger and Melissa Sugulas welcomed guests to the event, which toasted the 20th anniversary of Dress for Success, and raised more than $20,000 for the org.
LAST MONTH, IT was announced that Houston-based artist and Project Row Houses co-founder Rick Lowe’s majestic map collage The Line will be on permanent display to the public at the University of Houston’s new John M. O’Quinn Law Building.
Commissioned for the Public Art of the University of Houston System (Public Art UHS), the oldest and only collecting arts organization within the University of Houston System, the title of Lowe’s 108 x 96-inch acrylic and paper abstract collage, with its layers of emblematic domino-shaped patterns, refers to the Third Ward’s informal demarcation of Scott Street as the boundary between the University of Houston and the historically Black neighborhood in the early 1900s. “I wanted to create a piece that spoke to the complexity around urban development and the history of redlining, with the goal of ultimately inspiring people to examine these topics,” said Lowe in a statement.
Lowe, a MacArthur Genius who is represented by blue-chip gallery Gagosian, has explored these topics in other works, including his large-scale topographical painting “Project Row Houses: Hindsight,” which was a part of 2022’s acclaimed Urban Impressions exhibit at Rice University’s Moody Center for the Arts. “University of Houston is in the Third Ward, and it’s important to emphasize we are part of the community,” said Public Art UHS curator Michael Guidry. The abstracted cartography of The Line quite literally blurs these boundaries, and by doing so, imagines an initiative on the part of UH and Third Ward stakeholders to work together to preserve the heritage and culture of their respective communities.
In a statement, University of Houston Law Center Dean Leonard Baynes said the installation of “The Line” highlights the issues and topics students are learning in their courses and research and aligns with Public Art UHS’s mission to promote cultural exchanges and engender social consciousness. “These artworks are mirrors,” said Baynes, “sometimes reflecting social inequities, and referencing what our faculty teach: Knowledge, ethics, compassion, and remedies designed to make the world a better place.”
From Your Site Articles
- Art Really Is a Tool for Health and Healing — and This Only-in-Houston Conference Will Prove It ›
- In MFAH’s ‘Extraordinary Realities,’ Pakistani Painter and Glassell Alum Invites Viewers to Confront Biases ›
- An Art-Scene Power Player Honors Houston Creatives with Menil Portrait Show ›
- Rice Show Explores How Humanity Meets Urban Sprawl, Spotlights Top Houston Artists ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep Reading
Show less
THIS WEEKEND, A new show goes up at Anya Tish Gallery. Dialogues: A Convergence of Color and Form features works by Colombian-born painter Tatiana Escallón and sculptor Marisol Valencia, who hails from Guadalajara, Mexico. Escallón’s large-scale abstract paintings are filled with color and action, and Valencia’s twisted and folded porcelain and steel sculptures are just as beautiful as they are unsettling. While each artist explores wildly different mediums of expression, hot-blooded emotion is contained in the colors they choose and the forms they create. The show opens Friday, Jan. 12, and both artists will be present.
'Ways to Endure' by Valencia
This isn’t the first time Escallón has shown at Anya Tish. Last summer, two of her paintings, “La Fiesta (The Feast)” and “Voz de Mujer (Woman’s Voice),” were included in Strike the Match! — a sensuous, all-too-brief pop-up exhibit of Texas-based female painters curated by Tish and gallery director Dawn Ohmer. Both of those paintings began as original poems, and throughout her work, words in both Spanish and English share space alongside harried-looking dots, dashes, and longer lines, not unlike the emotive, gestural work of such abstract expressionist heavies as Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly. Using acrylics, oils, graphite, and materials such as rope and wood, Escallón conjures a form of assemblage that is closer to alchemy than collage.
Valencia has lived in the United States since 2004, and recently completed the Block XXI program at the Glassell School of Art and was awarded a certificate of achievement for her studies in ceramics. Her new series of sculptures Ways to Endure is the result of her experimentation with the physical properties of porcelain, and a comment on how we endure or crumble in the wake of tragic circumstances. Each sculpture begins with an ordinary cardboard box as its armature, which Valencia covers with a porcelain slip, and then fires at an unusually high temperature. Out of this unusual but methodical firing process unpredictable cracks, textures, and deformations occur, as each box crumbles or collapses entirely.
Dialogues: A Convergence of Color and Form is on view through Feb. 24.
From Your Site Articles
- ‘Selfie with Godzilla’?! Artist Fuses Reality and Science Fiction in Multimedia Gallery Show ›
- Show of Texas Artists — Including Houstonian Who Works with Glitter and Giftwrap — to Open at Tish ›
- Provocative Pop-Up Show Transforms Montrose Gallery for Two Weeks ›
- Immigrant Artist's Colorful Abstractions Push Viewers to Sit with Discomfort - Houston CityBook ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Keep Reading
Show less