Endings and Beginnings

Robert Boyd


This has nothing to do with beginnings and endings--I just liked it (hat tip to Scott Gilbert)

Goodbye Joanna. Hello Brandon. There was a slightly confusing news bit in the Houston Press recently about the Joanna closing up. I asked Cody Ledvina about it, and here's what he told me.

The Joanna's last show is May 31st (Bill Willis). I'm doing all the press on Monday. Brian [Rod, Joanna's co-director] and I decided it was time to wrap it up. While I'm moving on to The Brandon, Brian will be working on projects in Houston and Austin.
"Brandon"? Was "Chad" taken?
Brandon is my puppet who happens to also be the director of the space. Although Chad is equally as funny a name for a space.
Is Domy closing?
I don't know. That's up to Dan [Fergus, owner of Domy]. There is the possibility of it moving next to Brasil in what is currently "Space". I know a lot of people will be upset.
Are you just taking the whole Domy space?
It'll be all gallery space. We have our fall programming already in line to start with a large group show in September.
Why are you guys closing tha Joanna?
I think it was just time. Brian wants to focus on other projects and because he was the lease holder of the space I totally respect his decision. It was totally amicable.

Domy closed down in Austin, and I guess it could happen in Houston. Let me say, as someone who has spent hundreds of dollars over the years on books at Domy, that its closing would be tragic. But given the tough market for "brick and morter" bookstores, I would understand. Nonetheless, while I have nothing against Space, the world is full of stores that sell tchotchkes but still needs eccentric art bookstores like Domy.

All that said, welcome Brandon!


Future site of Brandon. (Via indiehouston.org)

 
Charles Burns at the 2010 BCGF

Goodbye Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. In the world of art comics, there are a bunch of small festivals around the country and in Canada. At any given time, one of them is considered the standard bearer--first APE, then SPX, then MoCCA and most recently the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. (Now the champion is TCAF in Toronto based on what I've heard).  The BCGF has run since 2009. I attended two of them--2010 and 2012. I loved the 2010 festival but was pretty miserable at the 2012 festival. My misery was mostly my own fault, but part of the problem in 2012 was that the festival had gotten too big and too crowded for its physical venues.

The festival was owned by three people: Dan Nadel, who is also the owner of the comics and art book publisher PictureBox and co-edits the Comics Journal website; Gabriel Fowler, owner of Desert Island, which is my favorite comic store in the world (visit it if you're ever in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn); and Bill Kartalopoulos, an independent scholar of comics who has recently started a publishing company, Rebus. Apparently tensions between the three owners had increased over the past few months, and on May 16, Kartalopoulos and Nadel announced the end.

Nadel, Kartalopoulos and Fowler each have a different take events, but I think in part the end of the BCGF can be attributed to its success. After the 2012 show, they must have realized that they needed to grow or die. But growth is a big commitment. Each of these guys is quite busy with other stuff, and growing would have probably required serious sacrifices in time from all of them. Would Nadel be willing to give up working of the Comics Journal, or would Kartalopoulos be willing to drop Rebus in order to expand the BCGF? Apparently not, and I don't blame them.

According to the article in the Comics Journal, Fowler still seems pretty keen on a show of some sort. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if he got together some new partners and put on a similar show with a different name.


Michael Heizer, 45°, 90°, 180°, 1983, Color lithograph, screenprint, etching with stamps on paper. 

Not really relevant to the topic at hand, but I don't know where else to put it. This lithograph by Michael Heizer is being auctioned right now--the perfect gift for an art-loving Rice University engineer. The lithograph is a spin-off from the large piece in the engineering quad at Rice, 45°, 90°, 180°. Since it was installed in 1984 (I was an undergraduate at the time), it has been a popular site for climbing expeditions, sunbathing and other activities.

 
Photo by David Rod from Rice News, 2007

A Tomb Grows at Rice University

by Robert Boyd (Rice BA, 1992, MBA 2008)

You have probably heard about the big new James Turrell thing being built at Rice. Called Skyspace (he couldn't come up with a new title?), it will sit in front of the Shepherd School in the no-man's land between the Jones School and the Baker Institute. This is what it's supposed to look like.



James Turrell, rendering of Skyspace

Here's another imaginary photograph of it:



James Turrell, Skyspace, Pomona College

Ha! Fooled you. (Fooled me, too, initially. A reader with good eyes pointed out my error.) That is a photo of another James Turrell Skyspace, made in 2007 at Pomona College. He's going to keep making them until he gets it right, I guess (or until people stop paying him to). Ours is currently being built. Here it is last night (I was over at Rice for a class and for the latest Rice Gallery show).



James Turrell, Skyspace, under construction



James Turrell, Skyspace, under construction

It looks like a tomb for a minor Sumerian tyrant. It really does have the look of an ancient burial mound. Instead, it will be apparently used as a musical performance space for Shepherd School students. I guess that's because concert spaces are something that they lack, unless you count this or this.

Skyspace is prominent on Rice Public Art, a new website (new to me, at least). This is a good thing to have because Rice's campus has a lot of interesting art on it, and this website provides a stroller with a guide. There's just one problem--it's incomplete. It lists nine pieces, including one in Fondren Library and one in the BioScience Research Collaborative that I don't know are accessible to the general public (I'll go check them out and report back). But it doesn't list Jim Love's Paul Bunyan Bouquet in the courtyard of Lovett College (is it gone?!) and most bizarrely, it doesn't list Willy's statue--the statue of William Marsh Rice right smack dab in the middle of the main quad.

It's like they are only interested in showing off their newest public art (although the Heizer piece has been there for a long time).

Since we have pieces by two of the big-name Earthworks guys at Rice, we should go for four-of-a-kind and get pieces by Nancy Holt and Walter de Maria.

Earth Art at the Apartment Complex

Robert Boyd

We think of Earth Art as being located in remote locations in places like Utah, Arizona, or New Mexico. But Michael Heizer has specialized in bringing earthworks into the city. You can see one in the north lawn of the Menil, for example, or most spectacularly in the engineering quad at Rice University--45 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees (1984). You'd be forgiven if you wondered if Michael Heizer had been hired to decorate the Sun Blossom at Woodlake apartments on South Gessner Dr.



I've driven by this conglomeration of granite semi-cubes many times and wondered about it. The look like enormous slightly dissolved sugar-cubes, poured randomly from the sky. The occupy a space where one might normally expect to see a fountain or other landscaping. After years of being curious, I finally decided to ask.




So I stopped by SunBlossom at Woodlake and spoke to a woman working there. She told me that the property was owned by a Taiwanese woman, Leeshan Birney and her husband James. James apparently was the one who came up with the novel landscaping idea seven years ago. Prior to that, that space in front of the apartments had been occupied by a fountain.



When I was a kid growing up in West Houston, I was fascinated by rocks because there are no rocks here. They seemed unbelievably exotic! I loved seeing the rocks in the Natural History Museum, but just as much, I liked seeing the rip rap and shot rock used at construction sites and the granite seawall at Galveston. (Needless to say, as an undergrad at Rice in 1984, I was delighted when 45 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees was installed on campus.) This pile of granite draws my attention in the same way as shot rock did when I was a kid.



And it definitely sets the SunBlossom at Woodlake apartments apart from the cookie-cutter crowd of apartments nearby. So Leeshan and James Birney, I declare that your granite cubes is one of the best examples of corporate plop in Houston. It looks great, it's fascinating, and it calls attention to the apartments in a good way.