Rarely does such a potentially disruptive, even violent architectural intervention feel as organic and sensitive as Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist Sean Shim-Boyle’s response to one of the historic Holman Street shotgun houses in Project Row Houses’ Round 38. Reacting to [...]
Grids are nearly synonymous with the concept of order. Spreadsheets compartmentalize data into cells of information. Graph paper structures the organization of schemas and equations. Even if one does not deal in [...]
Visiting Robert Ruello’s third solo exhibition at Inman Gallery, I was reminded of the term “abstract illusionism,” which critic Barbara Rose coined in the late 1960s to describe painters using trompe-l’oeuil devices to create spatial [...]
There are two sides to every story, but it’s easy to pick a favorite when the fight is between a sniveling Count and a fiery gypsy. Verdi’s ever-popular Il trovatore, Houston Grand Opera’s last production of the season, shows why revenge is something to savor. First performed in Rome in 1853, the music in this opera is structured very differently from Wagner’s [...]
Send two identical love letters to two married women, and even a lovable scoundrel deserves to be dumped in the brook with the dirty laundry. There may be no honest, civil or sober men in Verdi’s Falstaff, but it makes for a hilarious opera, and Opera in the Heights’ production had the audience [...]
Stray Tidbits, Blind Items and Unsolicited Advice Last year’s salutary exhibition American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston played to the MFAH’s strengths, telling a convincing story [...]
Spamalot Returns to TUTS The knights who say “ni”, along with killer rabbits, flying cows and other assorted antics, arrive at the Hobby Center this month when Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) presents Monty Python’s Spamalot, a self-proclaimed “rip off” of the movie Monty Python [...]
Life Under Mildred’s Umbrella In the early days of the new millennium, while still a creative writing undergrad at University of Houston, Jennifer Decker fielded an unexpected request from one of her professors. This professor, she was told, was writing a play. And she seemed, just maybe [...]