THIS SUMMER, ANYA Tish Gallery alights with Strike the Match! — a bold pop-up show of provocative works by four Texas-based female artists whose large-scale paintings have transformed the gallery into a highly charged, sensual environment.
This thoughtfully curated and installed show includes Kristen Brashear, Marcella Colavecchio, Tatiana Escallon, and Heather den Uijl — emerging artists Tish and gallery director Dawn Ohmer have kept an eye on and decided should hang together for the summer, the goal being to expand the viewer’s notion of what a painting can be. Strike the Match! opens June 16 and runs through July 1. So you better hustle, as this is a show you have to see in person.
Colombian-born Escallon’s abstract paintings “La Fiesta (The Feast)” and “Voz de Mujer (Woman’s Voice)” both began as original poems, with no initial visual in mind as to how her words might come to life on a canvas. Fragments of Escallon’s writing (“Words that caress, hands that nourish, joy never leaves me.”) are discernable on top of, but more often beneath, layers of acrylic, oil and mixed-media, like thoughts scrawled in haste lest the feeling behind the poetry is forgotten. The blues in “La Fiesta” saturate Collavecchio’s Strike the Match, where a lit match illuminates the nude figure of a young woman, head held high, as its glow travels from between her breasts to the stretch of her neck. There’s a very intimate, mature exchange happening here, not just between the subject and whoever she is looking at, but between the painting and you the viewer.
Meanwhile, Den Uijl arrives at her mysterious, oil-on-canvas works through a back-and-forth process, beginning with applying paint to canvas, photographing and digitally manipulating the image, then recapturing it with the brush. The resulting shapes and shadows are both strange and beautiful. Somewhere, Dorothy Hood is smiling.
And in Brashear’s multi-layered collage Quilled Garden, flower petals unfold and ripened berries prepare to burst across an unframed, patchwork canvas of paper, burlap, and other textiles, evoking what the artist describes as the “unifying experience of nature and the passage of time.”
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HOUSTON-BASED CELEBRITY artist Jumper Maybach has partnered with Kromara Candle to create a limited edition series of luxury, color-changing fragrance candles.
Each candle is inspired by Maybach’s artwork and combined with Kromara’s proprietary color-change technology, which allows the burning candle to morph from one color to another before returning to its original color. Based on by Maybach’s painting "Aliens Among Us," the hand-poured, made-in-the-USA candles are hot, smell great, and are crafted to help spread Maybach’s mission to “seek love, peace, and happiness, and watch hate disappear forever.” It’s a tall order, but change often begins with the smallest of gestures, and these unusual candles, which come in three distinct colors, are certainly designed with love.
Maybach
Maybach is the alter ego of one Corpus Christi-born Ben Workman, who worked a miserable, soul-destroying government job for 37 years before bravely making the leap into the art world via the persona Jumper Maybach, an out and proud gay man with a penchant for clown makeup and a talent for creating eye-popping, abstract art. Now an internationally recognized and successful artist businessman, Maybach has been the Official Artist of Houston Pride and served as Official Artist in Residence for Pride events in Richmond, Nashville, and San Diego. Maybach is also a member of the Greater Houston LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, a member-funded organization dedicated to fostering an inclusive business community and promoting economic inclusion. In August, Maybach will show at the prestigious Hamptons Art Fair in Southampton, New York.
In a statement, Kromara General Manager and Head of Brand Brian L. Aiken describes his company’s collaboration with Maybach as “a labor of love.”
“Our brand values are clearly aligned and focus on the celebration and magic of colors and creating unique experiences that amaze and delight,” he says. “And what better time to celebrate those values than during Pride Month?”
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