“I’m not a sarcastic painter,” Marcelyn McNeil tells me near the end of our conversation in her east Houston live/work space. She has just finished explaining the title of her upcoming solo effort at Dallas’ Conduit Gallery. Love and Theft, on view Sept. 10-Oct. 15, is a nod to her commitment to the old-school practice of painting and an acknowledgment of the constant appropriation and regeneration of formal abstraction in today’s teeming art world.
Gabriel Dawe spent two weeks in August scaling the Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s atrium, suspending one thread at a time. The exhibition, Gabriel Dawe: Plexus no. 34, is on view through Sept. 2, 2017.
The Austin non-profit, Co-Lab Projects, is an incubator for more than 100 artists who often rely on collaboration to make their work. For example, the painting duo Drew Liverman and Michael Ricioppo, who function as a unit called YOUNGSONS, had a show in May at Co-Lab’s pop-up location and created a large-scale outdoor mural. So it makes sense that when Co-Lab founders Chris Whiteburch and Austin Nelson decided four years ago to launch Art of the Brew, a beer + art collaboration, it was instantly one of their most popular endeavors. This year’s event takes place on Sept. 3.
What is an art gallery? No, really: What is an art gallery?
What is its purpose? What should it be allowed to do? Is it a fluid, flexible space to be filled with art for purchase? Art for interaction? What if that interaction is a party where drinks are served and live music is played? What makes an art gallery different from an event space? Does art only belong in a gallery?
Laura A. L. Wellen interviews Suzanne Weaver, newly appointed Brown Foundation Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at San Antonio Museum of Art, about the distinct offerings of the museum collection, her Texas roots, and raising the bar for collaboration and creativity.
On view at the Menil Collection through Oct. 16, As Essential As Dreams: Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Stephanie and John Smither borrows its title from the idea that the desire to create and collect is a deeply rooted human instinct.