Every year I attend the Big Show at Lawndale. I usually write something about it. Some of the same artists are frequently included, but established local artists mostly aren’t here. I assume that they don’t feel the need to be in an open, juried art show with all of Houston’s Sunday painters. Or it could be that they don’t want to crowd out Houston up-and-coming artists. Either way, the Big Show gives one an opportunity to see a bunch of art by a bunch of artists about whom I know nothing at all. And that’s exciting.
The flavor of the exhibit depends on a combination of two factors: the juror and the work submitted in a given year. Obviously a juror’s tastes and artistic mission will impact the work she selects. The numerous artists who submit works may be themselves responding to artistic impulses unknown to the juror. This year’s juror was Dr. Kanitra Fletcher, who is Associate Curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. She worked on the exhibits Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power and Afro-Atlantic Histories. So one would expect an interest in art by and about African Americans. There are two categories of art that are heavily featured that make me wonder whether they reflect Fletcher’s artistic interests or if they reflect the collective voices of the artists—or some combination of the two. That is a huge emphasis on portraits as well as a focus (ironically) on abstract paintings. Beyond those two broad categories, the exhibit has a bunch of various odds and ends as bubble up every year from Houston’s creative soil.
I want to look at these three classes of art individually. Let’s begin with a whole bunch of portraits from this year’s Big Show.
Crystal Coulter is a MFA student at UH. Her work appears to consist of self-portraits like this one. On her website she poses with a bunch of her paintings—she seems involved with fitness and health (based purely on how she looks in these photos). Meh appears to be the first in a series called “Healing”. It suggests that the healing is mental. Meh is a perfect word to describe being bored, lacking enthusiasm—the empty room enclosing the figure reflects this. But while the subject may be the artist’s anhedonia, I think the extreme foreshortening must have been a delightful challenge to draw and paint.
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