A Trio of Houston Exhibits
Art at La RucheHTX and Art League
Just before the really cold weather hit Houston, I decided to get out of my cocoon and see some art. I was especially curious to see what was happening at La RucheHTX residency—an institution that was completely new to me. I like learning about new venues for art to happen in Houston. The fact that people keep coming up with new exhibit spaces, residencies, festivals, etc., keeps Houston from hitting an artistic rut.
I showed up at La RucheHTX at the end of an artist’s residency. His name is Josh Allen.
He is a painter and a fashion designer. The swirling pattern on the back of his jean jacket is a motif he repeats in pretty much all of his fashion and artwork.
Allen describes himself as someone influenced by abstract expressionism. He calls his twisty trademark design a “Chaos Monogram” in his design practice. His design business is called Richardandgrace.
This combination of fashion and fine art is new-ish to me, but I read somewhere that at the first Op Art exhibits in the 60s, there were already stylish attendees wearing Op knock-offs. Fashion and art have been closely linked for a long time. The other stuff on view at the residency were meaningful personal items brought by Allen.
Over at Art League, I saw exhibits by Brittany Ham and Eli Ruhala that I liked a lot. If I had to characterize the work of each in one word, it would by “mom” for Ham’s and “dogs” for Ruhala’s.
Eli Ruhala’s show is called “Significant Otherness”—a term that comes from Donna Haraway’s “Companion Species Manifesto”. This is about as close to art theory that I am going to get in this post. This exhibit has been mounted once before in 2023 at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene.
When I saw these somethat ghostly canine images on the drywall, it made me think grimly enough of the images of H-bomb victims flash burned against walls in Hiroshima. But perhaps the way to imagine it is as a form of psychic photography, as if the images of dogs and their human companions have been psychically imprinted on the walls of their home. As if the love between a person and dog were powerful enough to manifest as visible images.
As you look more closely at the images on these walls, you realize that there is built in to it a love story between two humans. I can’t tell if the dogs are a metaphor for the beloved other person, or if it is about love between a couple and their dogs. Not knowing is fine though because whichever interpretation is correct, this viewer felt love pouring out of this artwork.
That feeling was also present for me in Brittany Ham’s small exhibit in the hallway gallery, We Have Been Here Before. Ham is a artist and art educator in San Antonio. This exhibit consists of four small paintings and two woven works. The paintings were surreal visions of womanhood and nature combining. If Yves Tanguy had painted woodland scenes, they might have looked a little like these paintings.
The two textile pieces were produced using a Jacquard loom. With We Have Been Here Before, the idea of a woman combining with nature is unavoidable. Kneeling woman’s legs on either side become twisty roots, going underground and occasionally surfacing, like the live oak trees in Baldwin Park near where I live. Those ancient oaks’ sagging branches go anderground before resurfacing.
The Art League’s description of the show says that Ham “explores the profound and transformative experience of parenthood.” The pieces I’ve described don’t seem to have any obvious connection to parenthood, but the last artwork in the exhibit, At All Times, seems to be in honor of rambunctious youngsters.
The materials—woven tapestry, sewing pins—locate At All Times as “woman’s work” since sewing and knitting are historically female occupations, necessary for homemaking. As are taking care of energetic children, who love to climb and swing on the furniture.
A surreal as the work is, I felt the love radiate from Ham’s body of work. It may seem like sentimentality on my part, but I had similar reactions to both Ham and Ruhala. Both of these shows are on display until April 11.
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