#10 – Frankenstein The Trouble Puppet Show
AUSTIN—Trouble Puppet, the Austin-based company known for its DIY steampunk aesthetic, will present Frankenstein: The Trouble Puppet Show, through Nov. 22 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater. In this original adaptation of the popular monster tale, Victor Frankenstein conspires with his scientist wife to birth a hybrid life form, who escapes a Romanian asylum en route to Paris in the middle of the Reign of Terror.
IMAGE ABOVE: Trouble Puppet Theatre Company in Frankenstein.
Photo by Chris Owen.
#9 –Mysterious Muck at Circuit 12 Contemporary
DALLAS – Instead of having gallery mainstay Clark Goolsby exhibit his own work, Dustin and Gina Orlando of Circuit 12 Contemporary drafted Goolsby to curate. The resulting show, Mysterious Muck, a group show featuring the work of nine artists, will be on view at the gallery Nov. 21 through Jan. 2 and explores, in the words of Goolsby, “how our current access to information has influenced collage.”
Jennifer Nehrbass, What About William, 2015, mixed media on wood, 12″ x 9″
#8 – Houston Cinema Arts Festival
HOUSTON—Houston Cinema Arts Festival offers over 60 films and events Nov. 12-19 at several local venues. Highlights include all the space-based programing of CineSpace, which features the CineSpace contest, installations, and a spotlight on Filipino cinema. Notable celebrities include Richard Linklater, Luke and Owen Wilson, Kid ‘n’ Play and Houston native Trey Edward Shults, who will receive the Levantine Emerging Artist Award for Krisha, the hit of SXSW 2015. As always, because this is a Cinema arts festival, expect films on dance, theater, visual art, literature, and even architecture.
Traveling Light, with guest animator Laura Heit, takes place on Nov. 15 at She Works Flexible.
#7 – Angelbert Metoyer’s Life Machine
AUSTIN – Wunderkind painter, sculptor, and multimedia artist Angelbert Metoyer based in both Houston and the Netherlands has work on view in the Contemporary Austin’s Strange Pilgrims, through January 24, but if you can’t get enough of his bizarre mythologies, Co-Lab, in Austin’s Canopy complex, hosts a solo show of Metoyer’s barely decipherable installation work through the end of November.
Engelbert Metoyer, Life Machine, 2015. Mixed Media.
Courtesy the artist and Co-Lab.
#6 – Pinocchio at AtticRep
SAN ANTONIO—AtticRep celebrates its 10th anniversary with a performance Teatro del Drago’s Pinocchio, Nov 11-22 at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. The show is a culmination of a longstanding relationship between AtticRep and the Famiglia Monticelli, a notable troupe from Ravenna, Italy, established in 1820. Fifth generation brothers Mauro and Andrea Monticelli reimagine the novel-inspired character into a musical-cum-movement spectacle with one omission: Spoken dialogue.
Teatro del Drago in Pinocchio.
Photo courtesy of AtticRep.
#5 – Jonas Criscoe and Brian Johnson at GrayDuck
AUSTIN – Jonas Criscoe is a mixed-media artist interested in creating art that rejects the art-historical trajectory, instead acquiring images and patterns from media as diverse as quilt-making and graffiti, and molding them into something new in an attempt to recreate the way our brains truly experience the world: As a wealth of images converging into one. Brian Johnson takes the opposite approach to our visual experience, eliminating details as he invites us to seek clarity. Confluence then Redaction puts these two artists and their radically different approaches to achieving a simulation of reality side by side at Austin’s GrayDuck Gallery through Nov. 22.
Jonas Criscoe, Kudzu Jungle, Acrylic and Collage on constructed panel, 24″x43″x9″
#4 – The New York Baroque Dance Company at Dallas Bach Society and Ars Lyrica
DALLAS/HOUSTON—The New York Baroque Dance Company appears as part of Dallas Bach Society’s A Tale of Two Cities: Baroque Music in Paris and London, Nov. 14 at SMU Caruth Auditorium, and again with Ars Lyrica in Houston as part of Homage to the Sun King, which features Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s chamber opera Les arts florissants, and works by Lully and Rameau, Nov. 20 at Hobby Center.
New York Baroque Dance Company
Photo by Julie Lemberger.
#3 – Masters of the 70s and Contingency Plan at Rice
HOUSTON – Chris Sperandio is working hard to change how and where contemporary art is experienced at Rice. Over the last several years he has launched four different arts initiatives on campus, two of which you should check out ASAP. At Emergency Room, a contemporary art gallery of sorts, Contingency Plan, an exhibition of experimental prints by artist and educator Carmon Colangelo is on view through Nov. 22 while at CATS, the Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop, you can see Masters of the 70s, an exhibition of vintage comics and original art, including drawings by Jack Kirby and Curt Swan (through Dec. 1).
Poster for an exhibition of original comic book art and vintage comics at the Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop.
#2 – Bruce Wood Dance Project Turns Five
DALLAS—Bruce Wood Dance Project celebrates its fifth season on Nov. 13-14 at Dallas City Performance Hall with an expansive rep, which includes Whispers, choreographed by Southern Methodist University graduate Albert Drake, and a new work by BWDP artistic director Kimi Nikaidoh. The show also features Bruce Wood’s breathtaking work, Liturgy.
Bruce Wood Dance Project dancers Kimi Nikaidoh and Harry Feril in Albert Drake’s Whispers.
Photo by Sharon Bradford.
#1 – Ed Blackburn: All the News That’s Fit to Draw
HOUSTON – If you don’t know Ed Blackburn, you probably haven’t been in the Texas art world too long. Primarily a painter, the current UNT professor is known of late for his pop-inflected and very often political works on paper but the man has had a storied career in Texas and this month Rudolph Blume Fine Art/ArtScan Gallery is celebrating at least the last twenty years of Blackburn’s career with a retrospective of sorts. Catch it through Nov. 21.
