Orchestrating Success
The Conductors of the Texas Music Festival When is a conductor more than a conductor? When he (or...
Houston
Close Up Space
When we first meet editor Paul Barrow, the protagonist of Molly Smith Metzler’s Close Up Space, making its regional premiere at Main Street Theater (MST), he’s self-righteously ripping through a series of emails from the headmaster at his rebellious daughter’s boarding school, tearing apart extemporaneous words and phrases [...]
‘Round 7’ at Lawndale Art Center
Why do we copy? Why do we appropriate imagery? Is it inherently different from the source? Perhaps these questions aren’t all asked overtly or even consciously in the Round 7 Lawndale Artist Studio Program Exhibition, but these themes percolate when considering the three artists together. The exhibition features work from [...]
Blue Man, Marshmallows & Possibly Some Blue Trees
A visit with Houston Native Shane Andries First came the trees, as in Konstantin Dimopoulis’ fabulous public art...
Steve Brudniak: The Science of Surrealism
Comte de Lautréamont was a 19th-century poet whose famously cryptic line – “beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table” – was adopted as one of Surrealism’s aesthetic credos. Nearly sixty years later, André Breton, one of the founders [...]
Clarissa Tossin at Window into Houston & Sicardi Gallery
A common undergraduate exercise for architecture and design students tasks them with going out and taking pictures of “things used as other things.” Jack Lemmon’s character in The Apartment famously used a tennis racket to strain pasta, and I not so famously use an old sewing table [...]
No Paint at Gallery Sonja Roesch
In the 1970s and 80s modern land art was in its infancy, the steel industry was at its peak, and holograms were stunningly cool. No Paint at Gallery Sonja Roesch features a group of six artists whose art practices stem from this era with surprising relevancy and impeccable curation [...]
Mid-Century Melancholia
Abby & Nancy Dish on Mid-Season Mad Men The Abby and Nancy Show (the one in my head)...
Recked Productions Takes to the Pool
Recked Productions Up For Air Imagine you are strolling around Hermann Park and you notice a gaggle of...
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 [...]
River Oaks Chamber Orchestra: Big Bang Encore
With the Houston premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra and TwoPercussionists by Jonathan Leshnoff as its centerpiece, the season finale for the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) lived up to the promise of its title and gave the orchestra an opportunity to go out with a “Big Bang” [...]