On Saturday, I decided to take a nice long walk down Main Street. I thought I’d walk to the Museum of Fine Arts, and once I got started, I decided I’d also stop by Lawndale Arts Center, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and DiverseWorks on the way. I thought about going to Inman Gallery and Devin Borden Gallery, which are both on Main, too. It’s kind of a longish walk—four and three quarters miles—but the weather was mild and Houston is free of hills, so it was an easy stroll.
It was the perfect day for a walk because winter is definitely over. (Now, three days later, winter has returned. . .) People were out enjoying Saturday, wearing shorts and t-shirts. I like when beautiful people emerge from their winter cocoons. As I walked by Midtown Park, I heard percussion. A small group of six people were playing Brazilian percussion—I saw three berimbaus and several tamborims and pandeiros. I stayed and listen to them do a song—more of a chant.
The first art space I visited was the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, which has two excellent shows up now. I didn’t take photos because HCCC has always been a little strict about that. One show was a group show of artists who used recycled material to make sculptural objects, and a show of artist-made rings. I liked both and recommend seeing them.
Next door to HCCC is Lawndale. I’m not going to try to write about every show, but I do want to highlight some work that I enjoyed. In the main gallery, there was a three-person show. Every year, Lawndale hosts three resident artists and they all get a group exhibit. This year, the artists were Loc Huyhn, Ryan Crowley and Jamire Williams. Huyhn’s work had a nostalgic feel. His paintings a older Vietnamese couple, who I take to be Huyhn’s grandparents based on the titles of the pieces.
These are mostly images without drama. For the most part, Huyhn is not depicting events. They feel more like snapshots. Nor does he attempt to portray the two grandparents realistically; he has a cartoon shorthand for drawing them.
His biggest piece is called Greetings From America, where the two grandparents sit on either side of a large panel depicting an seascape. His approach is to paint them in black and white, so there is a little bit of the feeling of old black and white photos. Like I said, his work evokes nostalgia.
Two floor pieces are titled Bà Ngoại and Ȏng Ngoại. A quick google search tells me these are Vietnamese terms for maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather respectively. (Are there other languages that have different words for maternal and paternal grandparents?) These two pieces rest on the floor and exist as three different flat layers.
Eldest Child (A Portrait of my Mother as a Child with My Grandpa and Grandma) is another nostalgic image in black and white.
The one image depicting an event rather than people posing as if for a snapshot is I Waited For You. It is quite colorful. It appears to depict a real incident, perhaps with Huyhn’s grandmother sick in bed with his mother beside her. It is again drawn in an expressive, somewhat cartoony style.
But Huyhn does have two realistic portraits of his grandparents in a piece called An Altar (Remembrance and Reverence). Huyhn employs a painterly, sketchy style to show us what his grandparents look like. I don’t know enough about Vietnamese domestic culture to know what the significance of such an altar is, but remembrance and reverence are its stated purpose. According to Wikipedia, “Ancestor veneration is one of the most unifying aspects of Vietnamese culture, as practically all Vietnamese, regardless of religious affiliation (Buddhist, Catholic or animist) have an ancestor altar in their home or business.”
I found this group of artworks quite moving. Not only did it include an altar, the exhibit itself was a kind of an altar to his grandparents. Rarely do we see a contemporary artist take on such a sentimental subject; I would like to see more of this.
Another artist in the show is Jamire Williams, who has an unusually impressive resume. His work combines the church and (indirectly) music. That “indirectly” is ironic, because Williams appears to be a musician as well. The music part of this artwork is various musical instruments, musical electronics, and sheet music. But none of is appears very useful, For example, FROM GENESIS TO THE MAPS features a hymnal in a plastic bag.
THE TESTAMENT & THE TRANFIGURATION is a large, multi-part piece that includes several defaced sheet of sheet music. I’m reminded of some of the musical interventions of the Fluxus movement (and a descendent of that tradition, Michael Galbreth). His markings on the sheet music can’t be “played”—except perhaps through the interpretation of avant garde, improvistory musicians.
Speak O Lord is a mike stand for a giant. The microphones appear to be growing out of soil.
This pile of black construction paper, BEAUTY FOR ASHES, is intriguing but mysterious.
I have no idea of what idea Williams is trying to convey with this body of work. But I am intrigued by it, which is all that really matters to me. My lack of comprehension is, weirdly enough, part of my pleasure with the work.
The third resident artist is sculptor Ryan Crowley. His work is a series of chaotic assemblages. The pamphlet that accompanied the show used a map to help viewers locate and name each work, but I found Crowley’s section of the map hard to read. Therefore the titles below each image may be connected with the wrong works.
Envelope / Lung
Guard
Meth Breaks
Skewedelabra (and Smoked)
In the mezzanine level is a solo show by Angelica Raquel called Spirit Epoch. Raquel was born and raised in Laredo, and calls on borderland folklore as her source for her art in this show. She creates animals out of felted wool which appear cute on the surface, but are really quite disturbing.
For example, Los Tesoros De Mi Abuelito features a two headed lamb with its guts spilling out. But included with this disturbing image are beautiful little details.
Even more disturbing is El Gato Blanco: The Wrong Cat and the Fate of Tio Thomas. I wonder what folktale is behind this grotesque image.
Not all the images are weird or disturbing—some seem quite folkloric and anodyne. The painting Guides of Day & Night could be adopted into a Disney movie.
But then you have amazing multimedia pieces like Ghosts of the San Miguel Ranch. This seems to be a specific reference to an actual place, but my google searching didn’t uncover anything that I can link to Raquel’s images of a burning ranch. One could assume that 12 people perished in the fire, as there are 12 ghosts floating above it in Raquel’s installation. I like how the folklore veers from things that seem closer to mythology (like Guides of Day & Night) to neighborhood-level or town-level legends, like the ghosts haunting a burned-down ranch.
In Raquel’s show, as well as that of Williams and Huyhn, I get a sense of rich, interesting lives through family, music, church, and very localized myths. It was a very energizing stop on my long stroll.
I continued down Main to the Museum of Fine Arts, which I will discuss in my next post.
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