Pan Recommends for the week of July 11 to July 16

Robert Boyd

This is the biggest art weekend of the summer. The Big Show at Lawndale is always huge, and galleries take advantage of that hugeosity to host the annual ArtHouston event at many galleries around town. That means lots and lots of openings. Here are a few of the events and openings we'll be checking out.

THURSDAY

 
Mariano Dal Verme, Untitled , 2013, Graphite, paper, 21 1/4 in. x 29 1/8 in. 

Mariano Dal Verme: On Drawing at Sicardi Gallery, 6–8 pm with an artist's talk Saturday at 2 pm. These don't seem to be drawings in the traditional sense--the gallery writes "The resulting sculptural objects are not exactly graphite on paper; instead they consist of paper in graphite, and graphite extending out from paper."

FRIDAY


Irby Pace, Blue and Yellow Make Green

31st Annual HCP Juried Membership Exhibition at the Houston Center for Photography, 6–8 pm with artists talks Friday at 5:30 and Saturday at 11 am. This show features a large selection of photographers: Elisabeth Applbaum (Jerusalem, Israel), Pedro Arieta (New York, NY , Allison Barnes (Savannah, GA), Christopher Borrok (Brooklyn, NY), Shelley Calton (Houston, TX), Joy Christiansen Erb (Youngstown, OH), Caleb Churchill (Houston, TX), Betsy Cochrane (Oyster Bay, NY), Maxi Cohen (New York, NY), Rachel Cox (Albuquerque, NM), Jessica Crute (Houston, TX), Donato Del Giudice (Milan, Italy), Miska Draskoczy (Brooklyn, NY), Camilo Echavarria (Medellín, Colombia), Teri Fullerton (Minneapolis, MN), Preston Gannaway (Oakland, CA), Erik Hagen (Culver City, CA), Christopher Harris (Rockvale, TN), Dave Jordano (Chicago, IL), E2 (Elizabeth Kleinveld & E Paul Julien) (New Orleans, LA & Amsterdam, Netherlands), Phil Jung (Jamaica Plain, MA), Ferit Kuyas (Ziegelbruecke, Switzerland), Alma Leiva (Miami, FL), David Lykes Keenan (Austin, TX), Rachul McClintic (Bossier City, LA), William Miller (Brooklyn, NY), Robin Myers (Jamaica Plain, MA), Irby Pace (Denton, TX), Alejandra Regalado (Long Island City, NY), Robert Stark (Los Angeles, CA), Jamey Stillings (Santa Fe, NM), Jeremy Underwood (Houston, TX), Robert Walters (Omaha, NE) and Kelly Webeck (Houston, TX). This really is the other big show of the weekend. Don't miss it.


Lillian Warren, Wait #50, 2013, acrylic on mylar

Lillian Warren: Alone Together at Anya Tish Gallery, 6–8:30 pm. I'm not sure if any of these pieces are the same as the ones in her solo show at Lawndale from last summer, but either way, this series of paintings is really interesting and worth seeing.

 
Earl Staley, Bouquet 29, 2013, 36 x 36 inches

The Big Show at Lawndale Art Center, 6:30–8:30 pm. This year's guest juror was Duncan Mackenzie, of Bad at Sports fame. The selected artists are Hannah Adams, John Adelman, Alonso Bedolla, Kari Breitigam, Adrian Landon Brooks, Chadwick + Spector, Raina Chamberlain, Perry Chandler, Monica Chhay, JooYoung Choi, K.C. Collins, Felipe Contreras, Terry Crump, Andy Dearwater, Alex Larsen and Alexander DiJulio, Jennifer Ellison, Avril Falgout, Bryan Forrester, Kelli Foster, Caitlin Fredette, Luna Gajdos, Daniela Galindo, Bryan Keith Gardner, Matthew Glover, Nerissa Gomez, David P. Gray, Carrie Green Markello, Casey Arguelles Gregory, Sarah Hamilton, Jorge Imperio, Jenna Jacobs, Sandra A. Jacobs, Jeremy Keas, Bradley Kerl, Galina Kurlat, Marilyn Faulk Lanser, Melinda Laszczynski, Joan Laughlin, Eva Martinez, David McClain, Leo Medrano, Susannah Mira, Kia Neill, Mari Omori, Bernice Peacock, Eric Pearce, Ellen Phillips, Page Piland, Julon Pinkston, Eduardo Portillo, Cinta Rico, Natalie Rodgers, Darcy Rosenberger, Nana Sampong, Kay Sarver, John Slaby, Rosalind Speed, Earl Staley, Adair Stephens, Alexine O. Stevens, Saralene Tapley, Happy Valentine, David H. Waddell, Camille Warmington, Chantal Wnuk, Martin Wnuk and Tera Yoshimura. Whew. Of this group, I'm quite familiar with about 15 of them and there are many whose names I have never heard before. That's what's exciting about The Big Show. Now a word of warning--this is going to be one crowded opening. There will 67 artists (well, 66--I hear that Earl Staley will be in Beaumont for an opening of a solo show at AMSET) with their friends and family, as well as the usual Lawndale crowd. It will be an environment very conducive for partying, but not so much for looking at art. So if you want to actually see the art, I recommend checking it out Saturday.

SATURDAY


Getting ready for Funkmotor at Peveto

FUNKMOTOR at Peveto, 6–11 p.m. It's summer, so Peveto is getting funky with the aid of UP Art Studio. Features work by 2:12, Daniel Anguilu, Article, Brian Boyter, Burn353, Dual, Empire INS, FURM, Gear, Marco Guerra, JPS, Santiago Paez, Pilot FX, Raiko NIN, Sae MCT, Lee Washington, Wiley Robertson, Jason Seife, Justin West and w3r3on3.

 
Sebastien Bouncy photo

the soothsayer by Benjamin Gardner, A Nice Place to Visit by Ana Villagomez and Miguel Martinez, Grand Canyon by Jonathan Leach & Sebastien Boncy and Sana/Sana by Monica Foote at Box 13, 7 to 9:30 pm. Four new shows/installations open at Box 13 this Saturday. Take the drive down Harrisburg and check it out.

 
Rob Reasoner, Untitled 5.06, 2006, 19 x 19 inches

Chromaticism: New Paintings by Rob Reasoner at McClain Gallery, 2 to 4 pm. I would characterize these paintings as consisting of jolly colors laid down in an anal-retentive manner. Is that fair? Go see for yourself!

WEDNESDAY

 
Graciela Hasper,  Untitled,  2008,  acrylic on canvas,  77.6 x 83.9 inches

Mighty Line with Jillian Conrad, Jeffrey Dell, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Sharon Engelstein, Sévulo Esmeraldo, Manuel Espinosa, León Ferrari, Jessica Halonen, Graciela Hasper, Darcy Huebler, Bethany Johnson, Jonathan Leach, David Medina, Devon Moore, Richard Nix, Robert Ruello, Pablo Siquier, Carl Suddath and Randy Twaddle at Williams Tower Gallery, 6 to 8:30 pm. If all the group shows this weekend weren't enough, hop on over to uptown and check out Mighty Line featuring some heavy hitters!

Pan Recommends for the week of December 6 to December 12

This is a relatively slow week compared to last week as we wind down towards Christmas. Here are a few shows and performances coming up that have caught our attention.

Thursday

Interface: Artists and the Digital Age at Williams Tower Art Gallery at 6 pm [up through January 11]. This show has a wide selection of artists, including several that I don't think of when I think "digital" (Aaron Parazette, Lillian Warren, Rusty Scruby). Interestingly, Rachel Whiteread is among the artists. Ironically, this show has no website.

Windows on Main at the corner of Main and Winbern (across the street from Double Trouble), 5 pm to 10 pm. Two installations are part of this edition of Windows on Main: "Congress Applauding (Address on the Program for Economic Recovery, Ronald Reagan, April 28, 1981" by Anna-Elise Johnson and "There was a man bitten by a snake" by Romain Froquet and Rahul Mitra. A nice place for a drink and some art.

Friday

ZZzzzzzz by Nathaniel Donnett (as part of Stacks) at the Art League, 6 pm. I'm not sure whether to expect an installation or a performance or both, but Nathanial Donnett is going to use shredded stuffed animals and the dreams of four volunteers who slept in the gallery to access black imagination. Sounds like a tall order--I'm curious to see what he's done.

Cold War Paintings by Michael Acieri at Avis Frank, 6 pm. Arcieri is an artist who wears the influences of James Rosenquist and Gerhard Richter on his sleeve. Expect a little Mad Men nostalgia in this show.

Saturday

Background Noise, a studio art show by Lucinda Cobley and Nelda Gilliam at 218 Avondale, Houston TX 77006 from 11 am to 6 pm. Two Houston artists show their stuff. Expect abstractions on glass and plastic from Lucinda Cobley, if her past work is anything to go by.

Shaun El C. Leonardo performing Arena at the Progressive Amateur Boxing Association, 2 pm to 4 pm. Part of the CAMH's ongoing series of performances for Radical Presnece: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, this one promises to be action packed.

Autumn Knight and Megan Jackson: La Querelle Des Monstres at Project Row Houses from 7 to 9 pm. More performance this weekend. The description says it uses "conjoined twin culture." I had no idea that there was such a thing as conjoined twin culture, but I'm kind of naive that way.

Pan Recommends for the week of October 4 through October 10

Here's what looks good this week. Let us know if we overlooked something special!

FRIDAY

Paperwork, a group show at Darke Gallery, October 5, 2012 from 6–9 pm. Works on paper by Wendy Wagner, Lillian Warren, Lovie Olivia, Rabéa Ballin, Kia Nell, Steven J. Miller and John Adelman. This is especially notable because it features Wendy Wagner's first new work since her brain surgery in May.

Joey Fauerso: Interior at David Shelton Gallery on October 5, 2012 from 6–8 pm. Fauerso did a funny naked video last year at Box 13, and it looks like the nakedness will continue at David Shelton Gallery. Excellent.

 SATURDAY

Zinefest at Super Happy Fun Land on October 6th, 2012 from 3pm - 8pm. I thought the internet had pretty much killed zines, but I guess their are people who prefer physical objects over electrons and protons. You can meet a bunch of them at Zinefest!

Daniel McFarlane: In Industry at the Galveston Arts Center on October 6, 2012 from 5–9 pm. Tough call! Lots of interesting stuff happening in Houston Saturday night, but this Daniel McFarlane exhibit in Galveston is sure to be a winner. I hate it when that happens.

Winter Street and Spring Street Studios Fall Artist Exhibition at the Winter Street Studios on October 6, 2012 from 5–10 pm. 110 artists will be there showing off their stuff, including the uncategorizable Solomon Kane (the artist, not the vampire-fighting Puritan).

Ariane Roesch: Simple Machines and Simple Dreams at Redbud Gallery on October 6, 2012 from 6–9 pm. Looks like more glowy artwork from Ariane Roesch. And we love glowy art.

 

Lillian Warren's View from the Windshield

by Robert Boyd



The Pearl Fincher Museum displayed a sense of humor about itself in putting up Drive-By Landscape, an exhibit by Lillian Warren. Warren's paintings of traffic and multi-panel paintings of landscapes and city views as seen from the point-of-view of a moving car are an ironic comment on this suburban museum. Located deep in the heart of Spring, the Pearl Fincher is 27 miles away from the MFAH. Furthermore, it's well within its neighborhood (and far from any freeway), so unless you are from the area, you might need your GPS to find it. It's location is deep, deep suburbia, the land where people have to drive to get anywhere.


Lillian Warren, Traffic 19, acrylic on mylar, 36 x 48 inches, 2011

Consequently, when you see a painting like Traffic 26, it's easy to imagine I-45 going into town from Spring at 7 am. The frustrating crawl of the commute, devoid of context--I imagine the drivers chatting on the phone or eating or putting on makeup. It's not too dangerous to do these activities as 5 mph. Henry David Thoreau couldn't have imagined this scene when he wrote that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." But it comes to mind when I look at Warren's Traffic series.



 Lillian Warren, Traffic 26, acrylic on mylar, 40 x 30 inches, 2011

But what also comes to mind is her technique. These paintings look like watercolors. You can see where the paint pooled or leaked into other wet areas. It has the appearance of wet-on-wet watercolor painting. But watercolor painting depends on the absorbancy of the paper. Warren is painting on mylar, which is completely non-absorbant. My assumption (which surely may be wrong) is that she is using a spray bottle to wet the surface of the mylar, then painting with highly watered-down acrylics. The effect is hazy and shows the artist's hand at work. This hand-made quality of the painting is consistent throughout the work shown in this exhibit.


Lillian Warren, Interchange April 19, 6:55 pm, acrylic on canvas, 6 panels, 62 x 23 inches, 2008

About half the paintings in the show are the ghostly traffic paintings. The other half are these multi-panel landscapes like Interchange April 19, 6:55 pm.The landscapes are acrylic on canvas, and they have a soft, painterly look. I think her approach to painting is influenced by Edward Hopper, and her subject matter as well seems like an updating of Hopper's house pictures and city -scapes. The impression the viewer gets is that Warren took a series of photos while driving by a specific location and that these were the basis for the multiple images of the same landscape. The specificity of the time in the titles reinforces this.


Lillian Warren, A137 - April 01, 4:31pm, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 45", 2007

Painting the world from the point of view of the car is an important thing to do because we see the world that way. Particularly the world outside our offices, our schools, our homes. If as fuel becomes more expensive, driving becomes more of a luxury, works of art like this will remind us of both the freedom and the blandness of driving. The landscape is less important here than the sense of movement, of passing by.

I want to close on a note that is not particularly relevant to the artwork. Like lots of artists (if not most), Lillian Warren has a day job. Unlike most artists, she is an executive with an MBA working for a small strategy consultancy called Portfolio Decisions. (She was also board president for Diverse Works for many years.) I'm always intrigued by artists who exist partly in the world of business. The most famous example is probably Charles Ives, the great experimental American composer. In addition to his startling music, he ran Ives & Myrick, an insurance agency that was a pioneer in estate planning early in the last century. (Ives & Myrick was absorbed by Mutual of New York.)

For the past 150 years or so, we have had a notion of the artist as an outsider. He (or she) was bohemian and lived outside the class structure. We expected artists to be wildmen, to be anti-bourgeous, even when they became successful. Consequently, the notion of an artist who is also a businessman (and not in the Damien Hirst sense of being a successful self-promoter) is, well, shocking. But as I think about it, I think Warren's business career possibly does affect her art, especially if she is getting up every morning and commuting to the office.