Box

Last June, Geri Hooks died. She was 86. She had owned the art gallery Hooks-Epstein since 1969. I knew her and was involved in some small ways in her gallery—I hosted artists talks, bought a few items from Hooks Epstein over the years, and wrote about exhibits there. I was saddened by not surprised when Hooks passed away.

I heard that there was a group exhibit in Hooks’ honor. I didn’t go to the opening, but a few days later I decided to swing by. The group exhibit is called The Box. I went in and talked to Yvonne Garcia, the gallery director. She told me the story of The Box. Hooks wanted to do a themed group show. The theme was “the box.” She made a list of artists she wanted to ask to participate. Then she died.

It was decided that The Box would be turned into a memorial for Hooks. The gallery is packed with 44 small artworks. In theory, they are all related to the idea of the “box”. In some cases, the box element is obvious.

This statue of an African-American worker satisfies the “box” requirement, by virtue of being in a wooden box. The piece is called Vision and it is by Kelly and Kyle Phelps. These twin brothers are ceramicists who specialize in images of workers. They are a bit like old-school 1930s Marxist artists in that regard. I find the work quite powerful.

Lydia Bodnar-Belahutrak used an old-fashioned wooden paint box (I had one just like it when I was in high school) as the support for her work Artist Studio (Boxed Series). I don’t know much about her, but I have seen some of her political work. Bodnar-Balahutrak is a Ukranian-American artist, and much of her work touches on Ukraine and the situation there. But this one is a much lighter, more playful work.

There are so many little details in this recreation of an artist’s studio, I wanted to zoom in on a few.

This is a work that delighted me.

Ward Sanders was included, not surprisingly. I love his work. He produces works a little like Joseph Cornell did, but less delicate. This one is called Quantum Theory of Fields. I’ve written about Sanders in the past a few times, and more important, I own tow Sanders boxes. If you look at Sanders CV on his website, the only solo exhibitions he has had have been at Hooks Epstein. As far as I know, none of his work is in any museum collections.

I want to say this right now: Ward Sanders is a great artist whose work deserves to be in Texas museums and who deserves a large solo show. He is a vastly underappreciated artist.

This is Black (A Path in Progress) by Ronald L. Jones. I’ve seen Jones work in various locations over the years, and the work I’ve seen of his have been large, site-specific works made with yarn. Sometimes they are indoors, sometimes outside. They aren’t works you would find in most commercial galleries. But apparently he has started doing smaller works (or perhaps he was always doing them and I just didn’t know about them), and has signed with Hooks-Epstein for representation. He is to have a solo exhibit there in January, but you can get a preview of the work with this piece in Box. The idea of stringing taut string over a space is replicated on a tiny scale here. It’s as if his installations have been shrunk and placed in a small table-top box.

But as I said, not all of the pieces were literally boxes. This photo by Rabéa Ballin is called The Box: Quarantine Portrait (W.E.). W.E. (assuming this is a photo of W.E.) does have a very boxy hairdo.

It Was Only 1905 by HJ Bott is a creamy square. It fits the “box” theme in that boxes are also square shape. After all, we all have to check off boxes with, say, pictures of cabbages on them to prove we are a human online. Please check off all boxes containing curvilinear abstractions.

Aaron Parazette give us empty boxes in his painting Trilobyte.

Sometimes the boxes are images of boxes, as in Mayuko Ono Gray’s Pulsating Still Life—Composition with a Box. She drew a highly realistic box of Franzia cabernet sauvignon. Is “the world’s most popular wine” any good? An article had two sommeliers rank all of the Franzia boxed wines. They ranked Franzia’s cabernet sauvignon the second best of the brand’s boxed wines.

I think Shane Murphy’s two paintings (Hangover in Nice on the left and Hangover in Munich on the right) don’t have any box theme except by virtue of being perfect squares. I have no idea who Shane Murphy is, but I liked his tiny Patrick Caulfeild-like paintings. They look like what someone waking up on a bench in a train station might see.

I live in a tiny box in the sky. I feel a little like the men and women in Clara Hoag’s sculptures. They are people with buildings on their faces. The pieces are Bray Head #13 and Bray Head #15.

Marcos Hernandez Chavez uses a square peg board with wool strands forming the image in this piece Naturaleza Muerta con Jarro de Tierra Nueva.

Leamon Green’s Thela Brines — Light/Sight — Small is a square linoleum block print combined with silkscreen. I don’t know if it is part of an edition. I like how the figure is foregrounded by being darker than the background, and the colors are perfect.

Meredith Jack’s tiny steel sculpture seems utterly un-box-like. Looking at it (from this angle), it reminds me of a π. If it is a π, that makes it even less box-like. I always think of π in relation to circles and spheres.

These are just a small selection of the work on view. This exhibit is absolutely packed with drawings, paintings, box-like sculptures by many of Houston’s best known artists (including Edward Lane McCartney, Gael Stack, Floyd Newsum, Kermit Oliver, Michael Kennaugh, and Karin Broker). For a tiny gallery, it’s an amazing show. I think artists when given a chance to honor Geri Hooks jumped at the opportunity.

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