Archives 2009: July - December

August 21 - September 26, 2009
Opening Reception Friday, August 21, 2009 from 6:30-8:30 PM
Artist Talks at 6 PM

Lawndale Art Center 30th Anniversary Exhibition
Curated by Clint Willour
August 21 - September 26, 2009

John M. O’Quinn Gallery

Clint Willour takes a look at the last five years, since Lawndale’s 25th Anniversary Show and gathers new work from artists who have shown in each of Lawndale’s four galleries, as well as from The Big Show and the Artist Studio Program.

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Me, Mine, and not Yours | Joe Ives and Jahjehan Bath Ives
August 21 - September 26, 2009

Mezzanine Gallery

“I’ve grown tired of your company, I wish you would go away, I need
a moment to myself, could you please be quiet.” After years of living with someone these are things that we often think when our “other” walks into the room. What if we were no longer polite, what if domestic politics took over our house, what if we could simply employ the tactics of our childhood to gain that needed isolation? For their exhibition at Lawndale Joe & Jahjehan Bath Ives present an installation of sculptures and videos for
the Mezzanine Gallery created by their antiheros who playfully make suggestions and recommendations of isolationist tactics that anyone
can employ to gain some alone time.

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Paper or Plastic? | Nathaniel Donnett
August 21 - September 26, 2009

Grace R. Cavnar Gallery

Nathaniel Donnett is interested in the study of human behavior, its psychological and emotional impact on society and how society affects
the collective and individual consciousness of African Americans and African American culture. He addresses social issues and the human condition through observational analysis, narratives, codes, and signifiers. Donnett uses traditional and non-traditional materials to reconstruct the meaning of these materials and objects while shifting through frameworks of time references and fluctuating dual meanings of communication. Donnett’s Plastic or Paper series references the historic brown paper
bag test that was used to separate darker and lighter skinned African Americans, thus creating a sense of division, neglect, ostracism and envy. This series explores its history and the effect of the test, the social residue, and its impact in contemporary society. A hierarchy was created within the African American community with issues of hair texture, skin tone, and the acceptance or rejection of African features as it relates to beauty. This work is also a metaphor that uses art as a healing agent by analyzing and confronting personal baggage.

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The Green™ cyber web | Adela Andea
August 21 - September 26, 2009

Project Space

The Green™ cyber web is a kinetic installation incorporating the latest computer gadgets in an intricate spatial web design, using formal aspects
of visual geographic models of internet maps. Electronic components connected to several computer power sources suggest a static and dynamic confrontation of the virtual reality of computer generated cyberspaces with the realm of the environmentally sustainable industry
of consumer electronics. Andea uses the green cathode light in reference to the current question of “what constitutes green.” The concept of this installation is based on the complexity of the dilemma of making consumer electronics an environmentally sustainable industry. The materials are chosen for their symbolic meaning and also become the subject matter.
This installation mitigates two extremes, between the valuable resources
of information and the end responsibilities for recycling, giving a different meaning to the phrase “residual value.”

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Also on view

Snack Projects | featuring Bill Davenport
August 21 - September 26, 2009

Snack Projects is a miniature and portable art space, a “gallery” measuring 11” x 20” x 13”, organized by artists Michael Guidry and Robert Ruello. Snack Projects will feature the work of both local and regional artists throughout the 2009-2010 exhibition season at Lawndale Art Center.

Snack Projects will feature the work of artists Bill Davenport, Rachel Hecker, Claire Chauvin, Gerardo Rosales, Dean Ruck and Nancy Douthey.

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Lawndale from 1979 | James Surls
August 27, 2009
6 PM

John M. O’Quinn Gallery

In conjunction with Lawndale Art Center's 30th Anniversary, Lawndale Art Center founder James Surls, presents a talk on the origins of Lawndale, its unique place in Houston's art community, and its relevance today.

Followed by a reception at Barbara Davis Gallery where James Surls's From 2009 is on view through August 29, 2009.

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SPIN5: Flash Dance! | HCP
August 28, 2009
8-11 PM at Houston Center for Photography

HCP’s annual Friendraiser is almost upon us! Join HCP and Lawndale Art Center for SPIN5: Flash Dance! with Leigh Boone's Pickin's, a raffle to benefit the Leigh Bess Boone Foundation.

Music: by DJ Shoe
Special Guests: Principals and members of the corps de ballet from Houston Ballet.... and another surprise performance!
Beer: by RealAle
Food: by Tacos a Gordo (not included in ticket price)
Dress code: 80's attire, flashdance style!

Tickets: $10 advance and for Lawndale and HCP members and 80's attired folks; $15 at door. Ticket price includes HCP pint glass and open bar.

Call for Entries: Participate in SPIN5 by showing us your '80s-style pics and/or flashdance style images! Weren't alive then? Fake it! Upload images to our Flickr page by August 20, or bring your printed images to the event. Limit 5 images per person. All images that are on theme will be exhibited at the event. The best self-portrait performance-based image will be included in the exhibition Artist as Performer, on view at HCP from September 10 - November 8, 2009.

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Museum District Day  
September 12, 2009
11 AM - 4 PM

During this year’s Museum District Day, visitors are invited to help in celebrating Lawndale’s 30th Anniversary by making mini piñatas, enjoying complimentary ice-cold lemonade and decorating our back patio with sidewalk chalk. Visitors of all ages are encouraged to cool off by taking a look at our current round of exhibitions, including Lawndale’s 30th Anniversary Exhibition, curated by Clint Willour. Please join Lawndale and our fellow Houston Museum District neighbors in this free and exciting annual event!

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2009-2010 Lawndale Artist Studio Program
Participant Slide Talk
September 17, 2009
6 PM

2009-2010 Lawndale Artist Studio Program participants, Dawn Black, Nick Meriwether and David Waddell, give an informal presentation of their work and plans for their residency at Lawndale.

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Lawndale Art Center night at the Ballpark
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Game time 7:05 PM
Astros v. Cardinals

Come out and cheer on the Astros with Lawndale friends! Purchase tickets in View Deck I for $15.$4 for every ticket sold will be donated to Lawndale Art Center.

To purchase: Log on to astros.com/lawndale Create an account and use special password:LAWNDALE to make your purchase.

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Bayou City Art Festival Downtown
October 10 and 11, 2009
10 AM – 6 PM

As a Non-Profit Partner of the Art Colony Association, Lawndale Art Center hosts a booth in the Creative Zone of the Bayou city Art Festival. Lawndale Art Center’s booth offers a fun and easy art activity for children visiting the festival.

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November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010
Opening Reception Friday, November 20, 2009 from 6:30–8:30 PM
Artist Talks at 6 PM

Blow Up Heart | Monica Vidal
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

John M. O’Quinn Gallery

Monica Vidal has been using variations on the tent and the body as the primary themes in her work for the past 5 years. The tents have anthropomorphized with a palette of anatomical colors and textures that evoke muscle and tissue. She has a reoccurring character named the “hive”. It's a tent that has mutated and become organic, but with a pattern that suggests textiles The hive is both a place and an entity.  Vidal also uses herself as a character in the work.  In the drawings she wears a ritual costume inspired by an image of Xipe Totec, an Aztec God who traditionally represents spring and renewal. For Blow Up Heart, Vidal brings her drawings into the three dimensional realm. Shown will be a “hive” built to scale. She will also assume her proper role in a costume based on her drawn counterpart, for the opening night only.

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Grotto | Kia Neill
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

Mezzanine Gallery

Through sculpture and installation, Kia Neill creates simulations of nature that blur discomfort and the fantastic. With her installation Grotto, Neill mimics extraordinary, almost alien, natural landscapes, such as caves and coral reefs, as well as enlarges the diorama of their miniature collectable counterparts, which serve in household aquariums, souvenir cases, gardens, etc. In this work, Neill attempts to produce an environment that reifies metaphysical association and fantasy such bizarre landscapes can induce. Neill places an emphasis on gaudy or absurd embellishment so to render an enhanced synthetic ideal. “I am particularly interested in cavernous spaces as a setting such as this, may offer a type of sanctuary and yet can also evoke feelings of entrapment or disorientation. While constructing a work such as Grotto I pay attention to the possible impact the structure may have upon the viewer’s physical comfort and boundary while incorporating a strong lure of spectacular phenomenon. My aim is not a realistic replication, but to suggest geological and biological form amply to provoke the viewer’s imagination, in a way causing the viewer to become a participant in the work.” —Neill

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Moonlight Towers | Andy Mattern
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

Grace R. Cavnar Gallery

In 1895, the City of Austin acquired a street-lighting system from Detroit, Michigan consisting of thirty-one 165-foot tower lights. The network originally ran on hydro-electric power and provided illumination to the city center and surrounding neighborhoods. By the late 1930s, however, the lighting system was all but obsolete, and yet the city kept it in use due to public admiration and advertising value. However, for a variety of reasons including public safety and urban growth, more than half of the original towers have been removed over the years. Today, the so-called "Moonlight Towers" occupy a seemingly random assortment of locations from residential neighborhoods to high-traffic intersections downtown. This series of photographs is a catalog of the remaining towers, systematically seen, as they are nearly identical. Including the supporting guy wires, each tower traverses nearly an entire square city block, but today these unusual structures easily go unnoticed. Amid the tangle of surrounding infrastructure they are looming and yet unseen. The towers are perhaps most visible at twilight immediately after the lights turn on. Photographing during this brief window of time, the result is a monumental view of each tower, alone and idealized. And yet the sameness of each tower redirects attention to the surrounding context, shifting these apparently typological photographs to an investigation of place punctuated by the industrial objects they depict. In 1995, the then seventeen Moonlight Towers were added to the National Register of Historic Places and were celebrated with a $1.3 million restoration effort. However, at the time of this writing, only fifteen towers still stand; two of the seventeen officially recognized towers have been removed due to new construction downtown. It is unclear if they will be reinstalled.

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Vicious Venue | Shawn Smith
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

Project Space

Shawn Smith’s work explores the depiction of nature through digital technology and comments on the effects of technology on our perception of the world. Smith’s recent work explores his interest in birds of prey as a source of conceptual inspiration and analogy. Smith is fascinated by vultures and the visceral way most people react to them. For his exhibition in the Project Space, Smith asks the question, “What would a digital vulture eat if it was somehow trapped inside this reality?” Vicious Venue is a sculptural installation consisting of a group of life-size pixelated vultures devouring an analog office full of obsolete technologies (like a typewriter, rolodex, and a rotary phone). The viewer becomes an intruder into the space, as if they are stumbling into the middle of the ongoing carnage as the vultures pick the office’s carcass clean. Smith’s current work highlights the collision of the digital world and the real world by creating pixilated sculptures interacting with found objects. For his installation in the Project Space, Smith pushes the scale and scope of his current work by creating an installation that creates a narrative and brings these objects to life. The title of the exhibition, Vicious Venue, refers to the double meaning of “venue” as both a place, and a group of vultures.

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Negotiation | Jasmyne Graybill
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

3rd Floor Hallway and Stairwell

As an interdisciplinary artist, Jasmyne Graybill uses site-specific installations and sculptures to explore and magnify the ongoing negotiations for space that arise everyday between nature and domestic life. Borrowing from the familiar forms of fungus, lichen, mold, and barnacles, she invents and sculpts fictional organisms that graft onto manufactured domestic objects and infest the nooks and crannies of architectural spaces. In her exhibition Negotiation, Graybill uses latex, flock, and pigments to meticulously sculpt a fictional parasite that is invading Lawndale’s public stairwell. Exploiting the stairwell as an alternative “host”, Graybill’s installation embellishes nature’s uncanny ability to flourish in synthetic environments.

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Also on view

Snack Projects | featuring Claire Chauvin
November 20, 2009–January 9, 2010

Snack Projects is a miniature and portable art space, a “gallery” measuring 11” x 20” x 13”, organized by artists Michael Guidry and Robert Ruello. Snack Projects will feature the work of both local and regional artists throughout the 2009-2010 exhibition season at Lawndale Art Center.

Snack Projects will feature the work of artists Bill Davenport, Rachel Hecker, Claire Chauvin, Gerardo Rosales, Dean Ruck and Nancy Douthey.

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Also on view

Hypnopomp | Britt Ragsdale, University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Art Studio Residency
December 2–19, 2009
Opening December 2, 2009 6–8 PM

Room 317

Lawndale Art Center and the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts present Hypnopomp, a installation by Mitchell Center alumna Britt Ragsdale. Through sculptural objects and audio components, Britt Ragsdale explores the combination of hypnopomp and sleep paralysis. Hypnopomp is the scientific term referring to the cognitive state leading out of sleep. It is considered much more emotional and credulous in comparison to the experience of dreaming in hypnogogia, or the cognitive state of entering sleep.

Commonly combined with sleep paralysis, when the brain suddenly awakes from sleep while the muscles are still paralyzed by REM atonia, hynopompic hallucinations merge with normal vision to create an experience that many people have equated to supernatural encounters.

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December 2, 2009
Performance at 7 PM

Chin Xaou Ti Won

John M. O'Quinn Gallery

Chin Xaou Ti Won is a Houston-based Synth-pop/contemporary classical duo, comprised of Marcus Cone and St-Michel. The music draws on heavily from 80's New Wave, Anime-Pop/Video Game Music and 20th Century Minimalism - all belted out on a stack of synths, electronics and walls of percussion. Often dubbed by critics as film music, CXTW's music is built strongly around melodies, ranging from the simplistic, yet catchy, to the lush and contemplative.

For more information about Chin Xaou Ti Won please visit their website.

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